Page 72 of Saved By the Billionaire

“Bullshit. You can lie to yourself if you want, hell, you can lie to Kate, but you can’t lie to me. I saw it with my own two eyes. Roman Hayes fell in love.”

“Believe me, that’s not what we were.”

“I don’t believe you, and I seriously doubt you believe yourself.”

“Can you just drop it?”

“Why?”

“Tia, this is⁠—”

“You are the most insufferable human being, I swear to God. You fell in love. So what? People do it all the time. And I liked her. I liked her, which proves you have great taste, because I don’t like anyone. Roman, she fits with us.”

He dismissed that suggestion even more harshly than he had the suggestion he’d fallen in love. There was only one other person who fit into the world he shared with Tia, and Grace was gone forever.

“You’re an asshole if you let her go from your life.”

“Well, then, I’m an asshole, because I have no intention of seeing Kate Darcy ever again. It is what it is.”

Chapter Sixteen

KATE HADN’T BECOME AN escort intentionally—and she wasn’t that kind of escort. She’d read the fine print three times over before signing on the dotted line of her employment contract. Sex with the clients was expressly forbidden. This was about standing on the arm of some monied guy, usually an older widower who had a society function to attend, or some businessman in town for a weekend who wanted someone to show him the sights without the complications of romance. It was innocent but more importantly, it was very well paid.

She’d moved to Sydney, because she couldn’t bear to go back to anything familiar; she’d needed a fresh start. And on her first day, a woman had approached her and asked if she was looking for a job. What could Kate say to that? Of course she was. She’d been desperate, and with the repeated assurances that this was a purely above-board agency, and having conducted a tonne of research online to fact check that for herself, she’d agreed to try it out.

But there was a more vital reason for Kate taking on this job.

She wanted to feel something. She wanted to turn up for a job and meet a client—rich, handsome, well-dressed—and feel something in the pit of her stomach, like what Roman had so easily evoked in her. A few butterflies would do, even if they were only half-heartedly flapping their wings. She absolutely didn’t want to date. Not for real. She wasn’t ready for that—she probably never would be again. This was a way of seeing if anyone else could erase Roman’s power from her without any commitment back. And she got paid well for it, so it was a win, win.

A month of dates passed, and Kate threw herself into the role. There had never been a professional escort who worked harder to charm her clients. She dazzled, smiled, learned everything she could about Sydney so she could be as knowledgeable as someone who’d grown up in these streets, and all the while, she buried a heart that was completely broken and utterly ignored. Because she was a survivor. She’d left a lot of people in her life, been made to feel like she didn’t matter, but it had never hurt quite so badly as this. It gradually became a question of not when she’d recover, but rather ‘if’.

“So…this is how you’re gonna play it?”

Roman eyed Tia without flinching. “What are you talking about?”

She rolled her eyes. “How long has it been?”

“You’re going to need to be more specific.”

She jammed a hand on her hips. “Since Kate left.”

Fifty-seven nights. “I don’t know. A few weeks?”

“Liar,” she spat. “You might be able to fool everyone else in your life, but I’m different.”

He grunted.

“You miss her.”

“This again?”

“Yes. And it will be this each and every time it needs to be, until you tell me the goddamn truth. No, until you do something about it.”

He ground his jaw, hating this. Hating the conversation, hating how his body responded, most of all, hating how much Tia was right. He missed Kate in a way he thought might have the power to kill him.

Even now, fifty-seven mornings after her departure, he woke up and reached for her. That was if he’d even slept. He’d given up on bed. He usually drank himself into a stupor in the lounge room, one scotch after the other until he passed out for a few hours, then woke up seeking her, craving her, hearing her, as though her ghost had moved into his penthouse. Maybe he should ask Tia to sell it?

“The thing I’m doing about it is moving on.”