The Dirty Series: The Complete Bad Boy Billionaire Boxed Set

by Amelia Wilde

  It might be a good idea to think about turning the heat down a bit, as much as my cock disagrees.

  We exchange a few flirty texts on Monday—nothing too heavy, and she seems a little distracted—but on Tuesday evening, I run into her in the lobby.

  Her cheeks are flushed and her hair is a little disheveled—nothing compared to how it looked after we got out of bed on Saturday—and she’s got a satisfied smile on her face.

  A hard knot forms in my gut before I can stop it. Is she seeing someone else? It’s not like we’ve made any commitment to each other—not really—but if some other man has had his hands on her, I’ll—

  “Ace!” she says, catching sight of me. “I’m sorry I didn’t message you all day.” She comes quickly across the lobby, catching up with me at the elevators. “The boutique has been crazy.” Her eyes shine in the light, and she looks so fucking beautiful, I can’t resist.

  “Hi, gorgeous,” I say, and then—audience be damned—I put my hand behind her neck and pull her in for a kiss. It’s slow and hot and perfect, and it stops only when the arrival of the elevator car interrupts us.

  “Whoa,” Carolyn breathes. “Did you miss me that much?”

  My cock stirs. “More. Come have dinner with me.”

  She hesitates for only an instant, her forehead wrinkling, but then the smile is back on her face. “Okay. But I’m not staying the night.” Her cheeks go a little pinker. “This is pathetic, but I’m actually…I’m actually pretty tired.”

  I move my arm lower to wrap it around her shoulders, and we step into the elevator together. “What do you think I am, some kind of sex addict?”

  “Maybe. I am pretty hot.”

  I laugh out loud. After two full days of missing her, it feels fucking great—this calm, peaceful feeling.

  It would be a little more peaceful if my cock wasn’t already pulsing with need for her, but that will have to wait.

  I order from one of my favorite Indian places, and while we wait for the food to arrive, Carolyn curls up on my sofa, her feet on the ottoman. She gasps a little when I emerge from the kitchen with two glasses of wine.

  “A man after my own heart,” she says, taking one from me and sipping it. Her eyes go a little wider. “This is so good.”

  My heart skips a beat at her words, then it recovers. It’s true. I am after her own heart. And more than anything, right now, I want to know more about her. Anything more. Everything more.

  I sit in the silence with her for a few moments.

  “What made you decide to open a boutique?”

  Carolyn purses her lips, considering. “I was tired of my old job. I was pretty high up in a marketing firm here in the city, but it was just…wearing on me. The day-to-day.”

  “And you love fashion?”

  Carolyn’s mouth quirks into a smile. “I enjoy fashion. It’s not something that makes me go crazy with lust, though.”

  I lean in and kiss the line of her jaw.

  “That might make me go crazy with lust.”

  “I’ll stop,” I say with a grin, pulling back.

  She growls a little. “If I end up staying here, I’ll never get to work in the morning.”

  I hold my free hand up. “Fine, fine. So…what do you really do, then?”

  I expect Carolyn to laugh and say something like “seduce men at the Swan, obviously,” but instead she blinks a few times, shrugging her shoulders. It takes longer than it should for her to answer.

  “Oh,” she says with a little smile. “I really do run the boutique, most days. There’s a lot more to it than selling clothes. Travel, inventory selection…all of that.”

  “You can’t tell me there’s nothing that captures your interest. There must be some sort of heart-and-soul type of thing.”

  She looks away, toward the kitchen, then she turns her head so she’s looking back at me. “Not that I can think of.” Then she grins, eyes shining again, her expression full of playful wickedness. “Last weekend came pretty close.”

  Goosebumps play along the line of my spine. Something isn’t quite right. Or am I just looking for something to be…not right?

  It hits me hard, straight in the gut. We have to get there first. Carolyn isn’t going to open up with me—not totally, anyway—unless we turn down the heat a little, give things a chance to develop naturally. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t really want to talk to me about the hobbies that take up her non-working hours.

  Lately that hobby has been me, but there has to be something else. Perhaps something she’s embarrassed about. I don’t know.

  Our conversation is interrupted by the food’s arrival, and the heaviness lurking in the room clears. It’s damn delicious, and finally Carolyn leans back from the table in the breakfast nook. “I want to keep eating, but I can’t.”

  “Next time I’ll order less,” I say with a laugh.

  “Oh, don’t,” she says, genuinely on the verge of distress. “The leftovers…don’t deprive yourself of that. That’s the best part.”

  “You’ve convinced me,” I say seriously, and she laughs again. I stand up and take her plate, but my hand is aching to take hers in mine and lead her to the bedroom. Still, I can see the dark circles under her eyes, the yawns she keeps stifling.

  “Oh—Carolyn, there’s something I wanted to tell you.”

  She gets up and follows me toward the kitchen.

  “What? That I can’t leave with all of my clothes intact?”

  This woman. “No, I—” The words stick in my throat, but this lie will be better for us in the long run. “I won’t be able to see you this weekend. I’ve got some things to attend to.”

  The corners of her mouth turn down, but only for a moment, and then she smiles. “Thank God. I’ll be able to sleep in!”

  Then she reaches up and pulls my face toward hers, kisses me savagely, and heads for the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Carolyn

  When Saturday morning comes, I wake up bright and early, put on my cutest exercise outfit, and head to the gym before I can convince myself otherwise. I’m in the lull between the early morning gym rats and the later-morning class attendees, so my favorite treadmill is free and the weight room is sparsely populated. It’s ideal.

  I get in a full hour of burn, and then I head back to my apartment, purpose accenting every step. Shower. Breakfast. Then search.

  I shower with military precision, faster than usual, and then move around the kitchen in a pair of clean yoga pants and my favorite tank, only to discover that I’m in desperate need of a trip to the grocery store. I share an assistant with a few other people for times like this, but I don’t want to take the time to put together a list. Deli it is.

  The breakfast sandwiches I order at the counter are gone by the time I get into the elevator at my building.

  I’m only slightly disappointed that Ace is nowhere to be seen in the lobby. It’s a waste, though—he said he’d be busy this weekend, and I have no idea if that means he’ll be in the penthouse at all. For all I know, he’s been gone for hours.

  But where would he go?

  The next thought: Is there someone else?

  I scoff out loud as I unlock the front door to my apartment. I might be ridiculously and prematurely in love with Ace Kingsley, but we’re not together. The moment he admits having similar feelings, everything might be different…but in the meantime, there are more pressing things to worry about, like the rumors that he might be a murderer. And here I am fretting over the possibility that he might be cheating on me with another woman.

  I lock the door behind me with a firm twist and march over to my desk.

  Settling in front of my computer, I take a deep breath. The photograph in the local newspaper is all I have to go on right now, so I’ll start there.

  The first thing I do is log on to an online marketplace for people with translation skills. Within ten minutes, I’ve hired a man—I guess it could be a woman…the screen name offers no indication one w
ay or the other—to translate the entire paper into English. I don’t want to take a chance on Google Translate and have the entire thing be unreadable. He—she?—promises to have it back to me within two hours.

  In the meantime, I do an extensive search of the keywords I can claw out of the non-translated paper. All that comes up are more copies of the picture and the paper on a few obscure mirroring websites, mostly the kind that claim to “index the web” and don’t do anything else.

  The notification that the job has been completed pops up forty-five minutes early, and I abandon the fruitless search and double-click to open the file. The translator has written the English copy in a Word document with labelled sections that correspond to red boxes he’s highlighted on each section in the newspaper.

  The damn thing turns out to be a kind of travel newsletter that tourists can pick up for free at a kiosk for a travel company, which means it’s hardly newsworthy, and the picture could be from any point during his travels.

  Shit.

  I’m at a loss until I find one last line of text at the bottom of the document corresponding to a narrow box just below the picture caption. It reads: “The couple travelled to Rome from Bari.”

  I read through all of the text again, but the sentence seems to be tacked on near the end of an article about Famous Sights in Rome. Maybe it was meant to be part of the caption, and some slipshod designer—probably whoever runs the kiosk, or the travel company—didn’t proofread it.

  They might know something.

  They might also speak Italian.

  But a travel agent should know English….

  I check the clock on my computer. It’s just after eleven a.m., so it’ll be…what…four o’clock in Italy?

  The newsletter, in fine print at the bottom, lists an address and an international phone number, which, conveniently, I can call from my cell phone.

  The voice that picks up on the other end of the line is crisp, British-sounding. “Good afternoon. You’ve reached International Adventurers. Are you calling to inquire about booking future travel, or about a previously booked adventure?”

  “Oh, I’m—I’m so glad you speak English,” I blurt out with a nervous laugh. Where the hell has all my professional demeanor gone?

  “Of course, miss. My name is Phillip. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  I clear my throat. “I’m actually calling to ask about a newsletter I found online that I think your company created.”

  “Ah, yes. We put them out monthly for about six months, then stopped and archived them for our website. Did you find an egregious error?”

  “Well, in the—” I flip the newsletter to the front page, “—March issue of this year, you ran a photograph of a man named Ace King—Ace K. I wondered if you had any more information about him.”

  “I don’t believe so, miss.”

  “Could you check your files? My name is…Christy Kingsley, and I’m a relative of Ace’s.” I leave it hanging in the air, and I’m met with the sound of muffled clicking.

  “It appears that one of our on-street photographers snapped the photo in front of the Colosseum, and he and his wife gave verbal permission at that time for us to run it in the newsletter. Is there an issue with the publication?”

  “No, not at all,” I answer quickly. “And the line below—does that pertain to that photograph? That he was traveling from Bari?”

  “From what I can tell, yes, it does. There’s no other information in our system, however.” There’s a shuffling on the other end of the line. “Is there anything else I can assist you with today?”

  “No. Thank you very much,” I say, ending the call as soon as the words are out of my mouth.

  Not much new information there, and it doesn’t seem like he was a client of the agency, which means….

  Which means nothing.

  Bari is my next clue.

  At least it’s not a dead end…yet.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ace

  I can’t fucking stand being away from Carolyn like this.

  All day Saturday, my body aches to be next to her, so when the afternoon rolls around, I decide to at least make it worth the pain. Three hours in the gym makes my muscles sore, but it doesn’t mask the aching and pounding of my heart in my chest.

  I might as well be back at the Four Seasons, sulking my damn life away for all the good this “distance” is doing me.

  Texting her doesn’t seem like a good option, since I was the one claiming to be busy, and she hasn’t messaged me all day. I’ve been fighting the urge to go down to the lobby for hours, only giving in when I left to go to the gym, but it’s killing me not knowing if she’s here or…elsewhere.

  While the TV plays episode after episode of some crime show I used to watch years ago, my mind tracks down every dark possibility. She could be with another man. She could be lonely, bored, wishing we were together. Although—I don’t necessarily want a woman who can’t be without me for two days. She doesn’t want a man who acts as clingy and pathetic as I feel, either.

  I go out for dinner by myself on Saturday night, but when Noah pulls up outside the restaurant, I can’t stand the thought of sitting at the table alone.

  “You hungry?” I say toward the front of the car, and Noah whips around, jabbing his thumb toward his chest.

  “Who, me?”

  It’s a dick move, but sometimes Noah fades into the background for me. He’s a pretty constant friend, but whenever I get wrapped up in a woman, or…well, a woman…he gets relegated to the back burner.

  “Yeah, you,” I say with a smirk. “You got dinner plans?”

  “I’m working tonight.”

  “Then come on.” I tilt my head toward the restaurant.

  Noah doesn’t have to give it a second though. “Great. I’m starving. Please tell me I don’t have to wear this uniform inside.”

  He’s dressed like he always is, in a black suit with a pressed white shirt. I look down at the outfit I threw on. Slacks and a blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. It’s not quite cold enough to need a coat to walk from the car to the restaurant, and even if it was, I’ve been burning up for Carolyn all day. I need fresh air, even if only for a few steps.

  “Ditch it.”

  He steps out of the car and peels the jacket and tie off, tossing them both onto the opposite side of the front seat, quickly shoving his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. Then he looks at me, eyes narrowed. “Too matchy-matchy?”

  I roll my eyes. “Come on. I’ve got a reservation.”

  The restaurant is perfectly accommodating—they should be, given that I could buy them out today if I wanted to—and changes my seat at the bar for a regular table where two adult men will have more space.

  Noah and I spend the meal discussing…random topics, none of which stick in my mind at all.

  All I can think about is Carolyn.

  When dessert comes out, he snaps his fingers in front of his eyes. “Where are you, boss?”

  “Don’t call me that,” I say with a joking smile.

  “Question still stands.”

  “Thinking about someone.”

  “A woman?”

  He knows about Elisa, so his tone is cautious. I can tell he’s ready to back down if I don’t respond positively, or at all.

  “Yeah.”

  “Same woman?”

  Noah might keep his eyes on the road at all times like a true fucking professional, but he sees everything. He delivered sushi to her apartment, for God’s sake.

  “Yes.”

  He takes a bite of chocolate cake and chews it thoughtfully. “Things getting serious?”

  It’s damn good cake. I want to say, Yes, it’s serious. I’ve fallen for her so hard I don’t know what to do with myself. But the words stick in my throat. If I say it out loud, who knows what will happen? It’s superstitious bullshit, but I just can’t admit it to Noah.

  Not like he doesn’t know. He’s been with me long enough. />
  I still can’t do it.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  He lets it drop.

  By the time we’re finished eating, I’ve had enough food to last me three days, which is the one thing that lulls me into sleep.

  By Sunday morning, I truly can’t stand it anymore. The hours crawl by and the ache in my chest only gets stronger.

  Finally, at noon, I lunge up from my armchair, sticking my keys into my pocket.

  I’m going down to see her.

  I’ve done everything I can to stay away from her, and it’s not working anymore. If I don’t see her face within the next ten minutes, my heart is going to explode.

  It only occurs to me in the elevator that she might not be home.

  When it lets me off on her floor, I hurry down the hall, stopping dead in front of her door.

  Her voice comes into the hallway, muffled slightly by the doorway, and a smile spreads across my face.

  I raise my hand to knock, but something makes me draw up short. It’s the sound of my own name.

  She just be standing right on the other side of the doorway, but I don’t hear anyone else talking, so she must be on the phone, but I hear it clearly:

  “Ace Kingsley. K-I-N-G-S-L-E-Y.”

  A pause.

  “Yes.”

  “New York now, but he only came back recently.”

  Who the fuck is she talking to about me? A girlfriend? It seems pretty damn weird to spell a last name like that.

  There’s another pause, and my shoulders tense. Is she about to walk out of the door right now and catch me eavesdropping? That would be awkward as fuck, but there’s a strange spark in my chest that makes me think I wouldn’t care at all.

  “Let me know what you find out.”

  There’s another rustling. She must be going through her purse, which hangs on a hook in the front entry.

  Well, fuck it.

  I raise my hand back up and knock on the door with confidence, three times.