The Billionaire Bachelor (Billionaire Bad boys #1)(64)

I'm not talking about this, Merina." Reese didn't sound angry so much as serious, but she wasn't going to let him off the hook.

"You force me to draw my own conclusions."

His eyes sank shut but it looked like a tactical move to her.

Okay. She could rise to a challenge. "After a torrid threesome, you became insanely jealous because Hayes was much better at—"

Reese's hand covered her mouth. His expression wasn't furious or amused. Hurt sliced into his eyes and contorted his handsome features. She mumbled his name against his palm and with a sigh, he took his hand from her mouth.

"It's not nearly that adventurous." He grew quiet for so many seconds, she'd begun counting them in her head. When she got to thirty-one, he drew in a breath to speak.

* * *

He couldn't cower forever. He knew that. What had happened with Gwyneth happened and his wife wanted to know. Half of him wondered if it'd be therapeutic to tell her, the other half warning him not to traipse down Emotional Lane and crack his chest open so she could investigate the scars in there.

"It's old news," he said. Hell, it was ancient news. "But if you really want to know…"

"I do." She shifted on his chest, pillowy breasts on his ribs, her comforting weight against his bare skin. What was it about her that made him able to tell her things he swore never to talk about?

He could do this. He just had to stick to the facts, spit it out, and then it'd be done.

"Gwyneth and I dated when I was younger. She was after money, and not a little amount—she wanted the lifestyle." All true. The socialite in her wanted to maintain her status, increase her position in the years to come. Her mother had taught her well. In Reese she'd seen opportunity and nothing more. He just hadn't been privy to her plan until she fucked his best friend.

Loving someone who didn't love him had hurt like a bitch. He'd attempted to ignore it, to anesthetize the pain by pretending it wasn't there. But the numbness always wore off.

"The short of it," he said with forced boredom, "was that Gwyneth was shallow and I was too young to know what to do with my money. I gave her whatever she wanted."

Money. Jewelry. His heart.

"She took advantage of you." Merina's fingers moved soothingly over his skin, grounding him.

"I'm the man, honey. She didn't take advantage of me. Suckered me maybe."

She let him have the deflection.

"Did you date long?" she asked.

Four years was a long time. Age twenty-four to twenty-eight for him, and while they weren't formative years, they were the years he'd started to discover who he was, who he would become.

But that fell under the category of sharing far too much, so he shrugged and said, "Not really."

"A month? A year?" she pushed.

"A handful of months," he muttered. Or fifty of them. Admitting the truth was embarrassing. He had been blissfully blind to Gwyneth's intentions. Believing she loved him for him, not for what he could give her. To this day it made him feel foolish. And foolish men did not run successful companies.

He looked to the window rather than at her when he fudged the truth. "I learned a lesson I needed to learn, and she moved on to greener pastures. Hayes was an up-and-comer, or was until he was fired from Crane Hotels."

"Scandal," Merina whispered, trying to lighten the mood.

"Not quite." That was a flat-out lie. He'd felt scandalized. Used. Pissed. Hurt. All at once and in overwhelming equal measures. He moved Merina's hair from her forehead, admiring her beauty and the honesty brimming in her eyes. Since she'd met him, she'd been lying to everyone she cared about—and to people she didn't. It didn't escape him that he'd given her little to no choice in the matter.

It bothered him now more than before.

"Is she the reason you dated all of Chicago one night at a time?" Merina blinked sweetly, teasing him, which he appreciated. She didn't want to see him hurting. Good thing she couldn't read his mind because a large part of him was hurting for her; for what he'd done to her.

He wanted Merina to believe that Gwyneth had stung his ego, not demolished his ability to commit to someone. And really, he couldn't give Gwyneth that much credit. He'd made a series of choices after she left—purposeful decisions with an end goal in mind. Plus, if anyone had kept him from settling down, he could lay that blame at his mother's feet. Her death had practically inoculated him.

Whatever he had with Merina, he was grateful the end date was on the horizon. The hurt he'd feel letting her go as planned would be easier than learning she'd left him or never loved him or died.

That thought didn't do much to settle him. No relief came from imagining himself in bed alone, no Merina draped over his body.

"It's easier to trust a woman for a night," Reese answered belatedly. He brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckle. She was achingly beautiful, her eyes warm in the moonlight. "Most I could lose was the contents of my wallet. But my 401(k) remains intact."

She hummed. "Who says I won't drain your accounts, Crane? Maybe I'm money and power hungry."

He laughed, and some of that coveted relief came. "You're in love with a hotel. You inked the theme for the building onto your breast. You worry about your father's health. You're concerned about the college girl who more than happily went to bed with my brother tonight. I doubt, even though you 'don't like me,'" he added, air quoting the words she'd said to him when he proposed, "that you'd tempt karma by doing something as lowly as robbing me."

The corner of her mouth curved and he touched her smile with the tip of his finger.

"You're a good person, Merina." In the silence of the room, he counted her heartbeats.

"You're a better person than you give yourself credit for, Reese," she said, her honesty flooring him. "And I like you more than I used to."

He liked her more than was healthy. He liked her in his bed. He liked her swathed over his chest. He liked her in the wrapped dress and especially out of it. He liked her way more than he'd anticipated.

Essentially, that was the problem, wasn't it?