Page 48 of Beauty and the Billionaire

“Don’t they all?” I asked, thinking that something so personal would be off-limits.

“Sure. But Julian’s is not just some side chick. This is serious. Every few weeks, he’s there. It’s got to mean something to him.” The look on his was battle-ready. He’d found the pressure point, and he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Do you think we should look at other activities?” I asked.

Dominic sucked his teeth. “Let me look intothis.”

As I left him to it, a sense of having done something terrible washed over me. It wouldn’t let me take a lungful of air for the entire afternoon. The nagging feeling that I had opened Pandora’s box and released something foul into our lives wouldn’t leave me.

When I next saw Dominic, he was my dashing man again. He hummed a little tune I didn’t recognize when he joined me in the dining room that evening, planting a kiss on my lips like it was both the main course and dessert.

“You’re in a good mood,” I said when I caught my breath. My pulse spiked as Dominic’s eyes flickered happily, and he sat down.

“What do I have to be sad about?” he asked. “Truly, Zain, life’s finally good.”

A smile stretched my lips wide, and I didn’t know what to say to that. Dominic wasn’t the kind of man who indulged in sheer flattery. He rarely exaggerated for dramatic effects. When he spoke, he spoke his mind.

As we dined and spoke and carried our conversation upstairs to his warm, wonderful bedroom, the burdens I had carried throughout the day remained downstairs in his study, far out of sight and out of mind.

Over the weekend, Dominic took us to the city again on a surprise trip to Neon Nights and the penthouse where my life had changed so vastly. It was the third time we did it, the latter two having been Dominic’s way of making me as happy as I could be.

That night, he danced far more freely and even rubbed elbows with the Neon Nights boys without having to be dragged over. Some invisible force holding him back had loosened the knots that tied him. He dived into the fun of it all without thinking who would see him or judge him. For once, he began to believe that nobody here was out to get him.

It was still early—far too early—to form plans, but we tiptoed around it carefully. The morning after our third trip to Neon Nights, Dominic vaguely mentioned visiting my parents at some point, then quickly added that there was no rush.

The reality was a little tougher than the fantasy in which we had shrouded ourselves. I lived two lives that were stretching me thinner than I thought I could withstand without snapping. My family knew none of it. They weren’t allowed to peek at the things that made me happy. They were unaware of the heights towhich I climbed when joy filled me and lifted me off the ground. Those I loved the most knew only the lies I created by omission.

The morning with my parents and siblings was nice. We had breakfast together and remembered the old times from when I was a child and my two little brothers hadn’t even been born. We laughed softly, and my heart clenched so hard with guilt at hiding myself from them that I had to find an excuse and leave before they realized something was wrong. But to tell them the truth would ruin a sweet moment. It would cause more pain than I thought I could survive.

Dominic and I returned to the warm and quiet mansion upstate, gently closing doors to the rest of the world and savoring each other’s company. On the first day it snowed, well into December, we listened to the fire crackling merrily in the fireplace downstairs in the sitting room, gazing out the window. That morning, much like every morning of the last three weeks, we had exercised together—something Dominic relentlessly pestered me about since seeing my terrible posture at the desk—worked and retreated early to the front-lawn-facing room to watch the snowflakes fill the sky.

“When was the last time you built a snowman?” I asked, my hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate. The snowfall was heavy, snowflakes thick and large, coming down fast. Christmas had always been a big holiday for my family, just as it had been for my mother. I could already smell the orange peel and cinnamon in the air.

Dominic chuckled warmly and thought about it. “Probably not since I was eleven or twelve.”

I smiled before the words reached my tongue. “How about we break that streak in a day or two?”

“Do you seriously want to build a snowman?” he asked.

I sucked my teeth. “I want to seeyoubuild a snowman.”

“I don’t think I’ve still got the chops, baby,” he said, making my heart leap.

“We’ll see,” I said.

Dominic’s attention flicked to the window a moment before I noticed it, too. A car. A car in this weather was making its way along the private driveway. Orwell must have let the car pass the main gates, but Dominic’s expression said he hadn’t been expecting a visitor.

We watched the car drive up to the main entrance. An older man wearing a black coat stepped out and walked to the door, rang the bell, and waited.

I observed Dominic’s impatience as Orwell’s footsteps sounded somewhere in the distance, crossing the tiled floor of the entrance hall. There was a brief exchange before the man in the coat returned to the car and drove away. A heartbeat later, there was a knock on the door of the sitting room, announcing Orwell’s entrance. He wore a soft smile as he greeted us and handed over a folder to Dominic. “Mr. Richardson has delivered the files you requested, sir.”

“Thank you,” Dominic said heartily as he took the folder. He waited for Orwell to step out before he opened the yellow folder, his eyes narrowing in focus and taking on that cold sheen that made me uneasy. In a feverish whisper, he uttered two words that chilled me instantly. “Got you.”

“What is it?” I asked. It excited him, but not at all in a good way. The man I saw before me was the very same man I had met in my father’s shop. “Dominic, what’s in there?”

Dominic lifted his wolfish stare to my face and thrust the folder toward me.

As I took it, I realized it was stamped with red letters declaring it confidential.

---