Page 38 of How To Tempt The Off-Limits Billionaire

Muzi reached out, ran his hand down her arm before pulling back. “Tell me more.”

“I had my life planned, we were going to get married at some point and, in time, we’d have kids. Our lives were jogging along, same old route, same old path.” The wind picked up and blew a strand of hair across Ro’s eyes and she irritably pushed it away.

“As it does,” Muzi murmured.

“Until a hurricane whips you off said path and into a whirlwind.”

“The whirlwind being your inheritance?” Muzi asked. “Bet your ex is pissed that he’s not part of that action now.”

“I never told him and no, my inheritance wasn’t the hurricane.”

“What? You didn’t tell him?”

Ro shook her head.

He whistled, his astonishment obvious. “I’m sure a psychologist would have a lot to say about why you didn’t trust him enough to tell him, but I digress... What was the emotional hurricane?”

Ro’s chest lifted and fell. “My parents wanting a divorce. I genuinely believed they had a rock-solid marriage. I’m still in shock.”

Muzi tipped his head to the side. “These things rarely come from out of the blue, sweetheart. Are you sure that you didn’t miss the signs?”

She’d thought about this, often. And hard. “Nope, I don’t think I did. Every time I’ve seen them, they’ve acted like they always have, super affectionate, super touchy. I never suspected anything. Then the lawyers contacted me and told me about Gil and Zia and I went online and read all about them—”

Muzi mimicked putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. She managed a small smile. “Obviously, my parents’ situation was still on my mind and I couldn’t work out how two serial cheaters managed to stay married for so long when my seemingly hopelessly in love parents were calling it quits.”

“And then you discovered that your ex cheated on you. Slap number three.”

“And that’s without going into the whole I-don’t-know-why-my-parents-didn’t-keep-me suck-fest. I no longer know what love means, what commitment is and, given that both sets of parents are incapable of both, whether I will be able to commit to anyone ever again.”

Muzi’s hand skimmed over her hair. “Ah, Ro.”

“No words of wisdom?” Ro asked him, needing something, anything, to hold on to, to make her believe again. She wanted to, she realized. She wanted to be the woman she’d been, the one who was happy and hopeful, who was excited to be a wife and a mother. To grow old with someone.

Muzi grimaced. “Not having had a long-term relationship in my life, I don’t hand out advice on love.” He looked away, obviously deep in thought. “My only contribution to this conversation is that I think you should discard anything your birth parents did or said. They were outliers, two exceptionally flawed people who found each other and who encouraged the other to be the worst version of themselves. If you discard them, who they were and what they did, you can, maybe, see your parents’ marriage in a better light.”

Ro kept her eyes on him, fascinated by his every word. He was thoughtful and compelling and, so far, his words were full of wisdom.

“Your parents probably agreed not to let you suspect anything about their problems, to protect you. But marriages do fail, people do grow apart, few people manage to stay married forever. People change and so does what they feel for each other.”

That made sense.

“And just because they don’t love each other anymore, doesn’t mean that they don’t love you,” Muzi told her, with compassion in his eyes.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve said that to quite a few of my kids when I heard that their parents are divorcing.”

“Whether you are three or thirty, it doesn’t make it any less true,” Muzi assured her. “As for your ex, he’s an idiot who never deserved you,” he added, scowling. “Did he tell you that it was an accident, that he never meant it to happen?”

“Yep.”

“Then he’s a double idiot. It’s never an accident. Hechoseto let it happen—he could’ve stopped at the first inappropriate conversation, the first time they flirted, when they first kissed—and a consequence of his choice was losing you. He bought the ticket—he gets to take the ride.”

Ro sat up, dropped her legs and held out her hand for him to take, sighing when her hand disappeared in his. “Thank you. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

Muzi squeezed her fingers and lifted her knuckles to his mouth. “I have something else for you to think about...”

Desire, sharp and delectably fizzy, skittered through her. They hadn’t been naked for more than an hour and it was far too long. “Mmm...yes, please.”

His laugh was rich and deep. “I like the way you think but, sorry, I’m not offering to take you back to bed. Mimi called and she wants to see me, to see if I’m okay.”

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