Page 91 of The Billionaire’s Fake Fiancée
He's freshly shaven, hair slicked back as if still wet from his shower. He has on an open-collared white shirt, over which he wears a khaki colored jacket with sleeves rolled up casually to his elbows, and a fresh pair of jeans fraying at the knees.
He looks calm, composed. Those silver-green eyes still, observant, but with a lingering warmth in them that makes me wary. As much as the bunch of flowers in his hand.
Lilies.
Starlight Lilies, distinctive large petals clustered over delicate filaments.
My favorite flowers. He remembered.
A wall around my heart cracks.
I take the bunch from him, inhaling their honeyed fragrance. Yeah, he's trying to be nice to me. Trying to get through to me.
He's succeeding.
I meet his gaze. A pleased look on his facesays he knows he's surprised me. In a good way.
Then I notice the butterfly bandage above his forehead.
"It's nothing." He shrugs it off before I can ask. "Just went a few rounds with a friend."
"Does it hurt?" I ask, curling my fingers into my palm when I'd have reached out.
"And what if it does? Will you kiss it better?" he asks, voice serious.
The last time we had a similar conversation, also after he'd been in a fight—with Eric—it had led to us making love.
Liquid desire streaks through me as I remember that night.
He tilts his head. His lips curve, those sensuous lips that had brought me to the breaking point. He knows. Knows what I'm thinking.
I bite my lips trying to stop from smiling back in reply. Fail. My head is too full of the scent from the lilies to be angry.
"If I'd known flowers were all it takes to get you to smile, I'd have filled our suite with them." His voice is rough.
Silver-green sparks smolder.
His charm is once more lethal. I let it overpower me. Sink into that potent magnetism that is so uniquely Jace.
Nothing has changed.
Here I was, foolishly thinking I was in control, that I could play him at his own game. I am playing with my own emotions. My feelings for him. I had fallen for him, right from the moment I'd first walked into his penthouse in The 99.
Known already my life was going to change.
I'd resisted him then.
I don't want to resist him anymore.
The events of the last month, the death of my birth mother so soon after I'd found her again, has shown me how fragile life is.
Shown me that I, too, have limited time. That I want to fill my life with moments of beauty, of happiness.
Yeah, Jace made me happy.
Turning, I walk to the window, carefully place the flowers down on the small table. My view from this window is not dissimilar to the one from his apartment at The 99. Except he didn't live there anymore.
The Valley gossip blogs had been full of Jace, the fallen Angel Investor. How he'd broken up with his business partner, then moved out to a more affordable area, joining the 'normal' people.
