“This is incredible.”

I pick up the wine glass from the table and take another look out the massive windows. Central Park is beautiful from the ground, but from here—from this exquisite restaurant overlooking the park—everything has a kind of magical quality in the evening sunlight.

I just wish it didn’t make my chest ache like this.

“I’m glad you like it.”

Levi sits across from me, impeccable in a tuxedo. And me? For the first time since my family’s chaos began, I’m not the least bit underdressed. To call the piece he had waiting in the car for me a dress would be an injustice. It’s a gown, sleek and gorgeous and somehow tailored exactly to my curves. When he unzipped the garment bag outside of a private changing room tucked down the hall from the restaurant, the silver flecks in his eyes caught the light and made his hopeful expression so intimate it took my breath away.

“Is this alright?” I couldn’t believe how hesitant he sounded. It was a far cry from the man who strode into my parents’ house and offered me a hundred thousand for our family’s legacy. My heart twisted just to hear it. All for me—it was all for me.

“It’s unbelievable.” I’d given him a big grin, but underneath the fluttering excitement in my gut was something cold and shameful. I shoved it away. “But I don’t have shoes.”

He’d reached into the bottom of the garment bag, pulling out a smaller, matching bag. “You think I would forget shoes?”

Not only did Levi not forget shoes, he chose a pair of Manolos that manage to be both striking and comfortable.

I take another sip of wine. It’s a moscato, smooth and sweet with no alcoholic sharpness. Levi reaches for a roll with a grin. This has to be one of the most high-end restaurants I’ve been to in at least a year, and it feels good, like slipping into—well, like slipping into sweatpants at the end of a long day. Only these sweatpants would be made of the finest material money could buy and custom-sewn for you.

I love it here.

It’s also making me feel slightly off-balance in a way that I can’t quite explain.

Maybe it’s just being with Levi. I’ve been floating on a giddy cloud since I left his place last weekend, doing my best not to make any sudden moves, not to do anything that can puncture the balloon of happiness in my chest. I’ve wanted to call him every night and talk to him until dawn like he’s my first high school boyfriend and I’m so obsessed with him that going an entire night without a conversation would kill me, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want to cross that line. Even if I do feel that way, at least in the privacy of my own bedroom, in the dark, when nobody can see me clutching my pillow and blushing.

I want him, right now.

The air between us hums with it, and I push away the creeping sense of vertigo, of being on the edge of something dangerous, and smile back at him. “You never said. Why the sudden change of plans?”

He taps his fingers against the roll, then reaches for his butter knife, a gleam in his eyes. “Does it really seem that sudden to you?”

A wave of heat moves down from the back of my neck to the base of my spine. “In a way.”

“But in another way, that night you spent at my penthouse…” He shakes his head, buttering the roll, glancing down at it with a little shake of his head. “I know you want to keep things separate. Business and pleasure. But after the wasteland of the weekend, I decided it was time for pleasure rather than business.”

“The wasteland?” I laugh, and he joins in. “Was it so bad to have a few days apart?”

“Yes.” Levi looks into my eyes, his gaze going earnest in a flash. “Yes, it was, even if we’re still figuring out where that pesky line is.”

“What pesky line?”

“The line between professionalism and taking you to the nearest bed.”

I blush—I can’t help it. “I’d say the line is my family’s estate.”

“You say that now, but every time we’re there…”

“I know. There’s just something about you that pushes me over the edge.”

“So you do know what the weekend was like.”

I bite my lip. This is exactly what I wanted. I wanted separate time with Levi, away from the task of sorting my family’s things for sale. The more things that disappear from the house, the more I feel their absence. The more I think about storage units, about squirreling everything away until I can afford a place large enough to fit it all.

“I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“Ruin it?” He puts the roll down, all of his attention on me. “Why would you ruin anything?”

“Because I still feel…” I can’t look at him while I say this, so I look back out over the park. “Torn.”

“Torn about me?”

“Not about you. I’m—” I almost let the words come tumbling out. I almost tell him right then that I’ve fallen in love with him. “I don’t know how to make this all…right.”

“It seemed right enough to me last Friday.” That wicked grin, his cut jaw…I’m melting in my seat.

“Trust me.” I raise both hands in the air. “I have no complaints about last Friday.” In fact, I’m wishing last Friday had continued into Saturday, and Sunday, and every day since. I want to feel that satisfied every day of my life. “I just don’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

“The wrong impression as in…you’re after my money.”

He’s so blunt about it that my mouth drops open. “Yeah. I don’t know if I would have said it like that, but that’s it.”

He reaches across the table for my hand, taking it in his, looking me in the eye. “Ruby, believe me when I say that I do not think you’re with me for the money.”

“With you…” The words come out just above a whisper.

Levi grins. “With me. I thought it might make it easier on both of us if we took the next step.”

“Tell me you’re not going to propose right now. That would be insane.”

He laughs, and a burst of pleasure moves across my chest, almost blocking out the heartache underneath. “Be my girlfriend, Ruby Ashworth.”

All the reasons to say no flash through my mind. He’s an arrogant billionaire, and I’m on the verge of tumbling back into the middle class. Hell, I’ve already fallen off the ladder of my family’s wealth, and there’s not likely to be any recovering it. Being his girlfriend won’t change any of those things, and what will I do if the differences between us rear their heads somewhere down the line? What if I can’t take it, in the end, that he’s the one orchestrating this auction, putting my family’s things in other people’s hands? What if? What if?

They flash through my mind, and then they’re washed away, swept up by the moment, by the look in his eyes, by the pounding of my own heart. “Yes,” I say, grinning back at him. “I will.”