by Amelia Wilde
“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 28
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.
Then I wait for the silence to break.
Chapter 29
Carolyn
On Sunday morning, I sit at my desk and stare out the window for a full five minutes, my hands hovering over the keyboard of my laptop.
The travel agent didn’t reveal much, but this isn’t the end of the line. I can always look for information from sources in Bari, but where do I even begin?
The answer comes to me in a flash so obvious that it makes me think being in love has turned my brain to useless mush.
Gerard has to be my first call.
I haven’t used his services as a private investigator in at least two years because it always makes me feel vaguely slimy to hire a professional to go undercover to confirm rumors, but sometimes—if they’re egregious enough, and if the site gets fixated to a ridic
ulous degree—I’ve paid him to get the job done so I can give out a Magnolia confirmation.
His specialty is obviously New York City, but people like Gerard know other people, and if anyone knows a person on the ground in Italy, it’s going to be him.
He answers on the second ring. “Jones.”
I’m digging through my purse while I make the call, trying to find the pens that are constantly disappearing from my desk.
“Hi, Gerard. It’s Carolyn.”
“Carolyn!” he says, sounding genuinely pleased to hear from me. We usually meet at a discreet bar to discuss the results of his investigations, and he’s an excellent conversationalist—if completely not my type. “Are you calling about a job?”
“Don’t hate me.”
“I could never hate you,” he jokes. “You need a number.”
“I do.”
“Who for?”
“Do you have any associates in Italy, by any chance?”
He pauses for a moment, and I pin all my hopes on the next words to come out of his mouth. “I do know someone there. Her name is Aida.” He rattles off the number and I thank him profusely. I want to get this woman on the phone before too much more of the day goes by. Though…it is Sunday, so how much can she get done anyway?
It doesn’t matter. I dial the number.
It rings four times, and then a woman’s voice, one with a British accent, answers on the other end of the line. “Aida,” she says, no last name.
My shoulders tense up. I hope she’s as professional as Gerard. I don’t think he’d recommend someone sloppy to me, but if you don’t meet in person, there’s a better chance people won’t take you seriously.
I explain to her who I am and how I got her contact information, and God bless her, she doesn’t ask any questions, just runs through the arrangements for paying her. “Five thousand up front,” she says in a tone that brooks no negotiation. The other ten when I have all the necessary information.”
“Agreed,” I say.
“What am I looking for?”
I tell her the bare outlines of Ace Kingsley’s story, realizing in the middle of the telling that there’s not much to go on. “There’s a rumor going around the city that he murdered his wife. I want to know who his wife was, if she died, and if he had a hand in it.” A lump rises in my throat, and I swallow it down. This part—this is business. I have to separate it from how I feel about him.
“Spell his name for me?” I imagine Aida with a dark notebook of some kind, scribbling down details on the other side of the ocean.
“Ace Kingsley. K-I-N-G-S-L-E-Y.”
“And you’re prepared to learn an answer that might not be favorable?”
“Yes.”
“Is he in the United States currently?”
“New York now, but he only came back recently.”
“I’ll begin work immediately.”
“Let me know what you find out,” I say lamely, but she’s already ended the call.
There’s a strange tightness in my chest. What was I looking for in the purse? I can’t remember. Do I really want to find this out about Ace?
Will it make me love him any less?
There’s a loud knock at the door—the hand on the other side comes down three times—and I almost jump out of my skin. I’m three feet from the door. My cheeks go red and hot, like I’ve been caught doing something illicit, illegal.
Trying to get my pounding heart under control, I go to the door and peer out the peephole. When I see Ace standing in the hall, my heart sinks.
Shit.
What if he heard me?
My first instinct is to retreat from the door, pad silently into my bedroom, and pretend I’m not here.
But that would make me a pathetic coward. Instead, I pull open the door and do my best to look excited.
“Ace! I thought you were busy this weekend. Did you get done early?”
In spite of myself, I am happy to see him. The warmth of the happiness conflicts with the burning guilt churning in my gut.
There’s something strange flashing in his eyes, but Ace just runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I did.” He searches my face—Jesus, did he overhear what I was saying just now? And how much?—and it nearly undoes me.
The urge to tell him—to come totally clean, to not have any more secrets from him—is so overpowering that I actually open my mouth to do it, to release myself from the pressure of this secret career, to set him free of what he just heard, if it was anything at all. But before I can get the words out, he steps forward, takes me into his arms, and kisses me so hard it bruises my lips. He’s in the entryway and kicks the door shut behind him pressing me up against the wall.
“I couldn’t wait to see you,” he growls into my mouth between kisses. “I couldn’t wait another second. Not another goddamn second.”
Chapter 30
Ace
I want to confront her about what I just heard through the door, but the moment I see her face, the fight goes out of me.
I just want my hands, my lips, on her.
In the back of my mind, all my common sense is screaming at me to stay away, stay far away, until I can sort all of this out, until I can figure out who she was telling about me, but my heart dismisses it. Maybe she was just talking to a friend. Maybe it’s none of my damn business. Maybe I just want to bend her over her bed, and when the truth comes out, then I’ll know, and there’s no point in rushing it….
I have her pressed up against the wall, kissing her hard and deep like I’ve wanted to all weekend. What the hell was I thinking, staying away? If I’d been with her all weekend, she wouldn’t even think about her phone.
That’s a crazy idea, an absurd idea, that spending the weekend with me would make Carolyn want to cut off contact with everyone in her life, and I don’t want that. No. I’m just on fire for her in a way that makes me try to find a justification for everything that I want. Before her, I didn’t need justification. Now I do, but the taste of her skin is driving me wild.
“I couldn’t wait to see you.” The words come out as a low growl, into her mouth, in the space between kisses. “I couldn’t wait another second. Not another goddamn second.”
It’s hardly the accusation I want to level at her. It’s just the plain, unvarnished truth. Her eyes make me want to tell her everything. Everything.
And rumors are starting to break. I’ve been able to ignore it, I’ve been able to look past it, but the woman at the Swan was still in the calm before the storm. Once those people find out….
If they find out from Carolyn….
I don’t care. In this moment, with my hands beneath her tank top, running over her smooth skin, forming a complete thought is impossible. My heart beats with nothing but need for her, overriding my instinct for self-preservation.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of her yoga pants and pull them down, dropping to my knees to bury my face in the front of her panties before yanking them down over her hips to join the pants on the floor. She gasps when I follow suit with the tank top and then her bra, pressing her now naked back up against the cool surface of the wall one more time before I scoop her into my arms and stride across the apartment to her bedroom.
She’s already panting when I lay her down on the bed, and she immediately goes to her hands and knees. My clothes are off in seconds and I climb on the bed behind her, the mattress caving from my weight, running my hands down the backs of her thighs, my cock ready to burst.
I’m dying to be buried deeply inside her, dying to be close to her, and Carolyn encourages me, sticking her ass out toward me and swaying her hips from side to side, inviting me in.
I don’t refuse.
I plunge into her in one swell movement, burying myself in her to the hilt. She’s soaking, ready, and holds herself steady until I bottom out and she bites back a cry. It’s so filled with pleasure, and something else I can’t name, that it sends me into a frenzy, fucking her so hard she has to brace herself ag
ainst the comforter.
She only gets wetter, and at some point what she’s saying, over and over, becomes clear. “Yes…yes…yes….”
So I wasn’t the only one.
I fuck her until I’m right on the edge, and just before I go over, I reach around and find her clit with my fingers, bringing her over with me, both of us tumbling into a dark explosion of pleasure, and then sweet oblivion.
When I wake up, light is cascading into the room, but Carolyn is deep asleep, her mouth slightly open, and my heart is pounding.
This is my chance to find out what she’s hiding from me, if anything.
It makes my gut clench, to sneak around in her home like this, but if I’m going to maintain any semblance of control over this situation, I have to know.
I get out of the bed as carefully as I can and stand perfectly still, waiting to see if she’ll stir.
She doesn’t, and I take the opportunity to put my boxers back on. Doing this naked seems ridiculous.
For cover, I grab my own phone. I can always pretend to be making a call.
Then I go out to the living room, where she keeps her laptop.
I hesitate before I open the cover. This is fucking wrong. Maybe the Ace Kingsley of the past who didn’t give a shit about what women thought might not have any qualms about this, but I do.
I open the cover of the laptop anyway.
It’s password-protected, the empty box hovering next to a stylized image of a blue flower.
My muscles go weak.
I have no idea what the password is, but now I’m halfway off the hook.
The second thing I want to see: her phone.
She had it in her hand when I came in. What did she do with it?
Yes—she shoved it into her purse. I can’t remember when.
I slide it out of the bag with trembling hands. Unlike the computer, it has no password.
I scroll through recent messages, not clicking on any of them—somehow that crosses the line to me—and none of them seem to mention my name. I’m just going to look at recent calls.
There are several going to a contact marked as her boutique, but several that aren’t…and I recognize the numbers as international ones. From Italy.
