Page 45 of How To Tempt The Off-Limits Billionaire

“Even if Mimi did suspect, she’d respect your privacy and would never tell anyone. But if you are so worried about being outed, why don’t you get ahead of it and issue a press statement to tell the world who you really are?”

“And have them hound me and dig into my life? Radd and Digby accept me, that’s all I ever wanted,” she retorted before flinging up her hands. “Look, I’m not an idiot, I presume that someone at some point will connect the dots but I’m not releasing any information before I need to.”

Fair enough.

“Now, what did Mimi mean when she said that my parents were paid to have kids?” Ro asked him,again. Damn, he’d hoped his question about her true identity would distract her, but it hadn’t worked.

“Can you not let this go, Ro?” Muzi asked, a little desperately. This was between her and her brothers, he shouldn’t even be involved in this!

Ro folded her arms across her chest, defiance in her eyes. And all over her face. “Would you?”

Of course he wouldn’t. Muzi sighed. He yanked his phone out of his pocket and pulled up Digby’s number. The phone rang twice before he heard his friend’s cool voice. Right, Digby was still pissed. That was okay, he was pissed too. No doubt they’d get over it at some point.

Muzi locked eyes with Ro as he spoke into the phone. “She wants to know, and I told you I wouldn’t lie for you.”

“You can’t tell her,” Digby insisted.

“Then you tell her!” Muzi told him and, not waiting for an answer, passed his phone to Ro. She held it up to her ear and held out her other hand to him, needing the contact.

Muzi linked her fingers in his and watched as the color drained from her face, her eyes turning a dark and tumultuous blue. From where he stood, he could hear Digby’s voice but not his words. Still, judging by Ro’s reaction, he assumed Digby was telling his sister the abysmal truth.

Her birth parents only kept her brothers because they were paid a couple of million for each son they bore and—snort!—raised. Gil’s Tempest-Vane grandfather hadn’t thought girls were worth that amount of money, or any, so there was no financial reward for producing a girl.

And, to Gil and Zia, why keep her around if there wasn’t anything in it for them?

When the call ended Ro dropped her hand, stared down at the screen before eventually handing him his phone. Seeing the devastation on her face, he started to pull her into him, needing to comfort and reassure her, but she stepped back abruptly, lifting her hands to ward him off.

“No, please, don’t.” She pushed her hair away from her face and held it back, her eyes extraordinarily dark in her ghostlike face.

Digby and Radd were right, this had been a bad idea. Ro was knocked sideways, emotionally drawn and quartered. What the hell had he been thinking?

“Tell me how I can help you, Ro,” Muzi pleaded, wishing she’d let him hold her.

“I need to be alone, Muzi,” Ro said, her voice hollow. “I need to digest this, wrap my head around it.”

“I’ll wait—”

Ro dropped her hands and violently shook her head. “No, go home. Please!”

“I don’t want to leave you alone, sweetheart,” Muzi told her, sounding and feeling desperate.

“But that’s what I need, Muzi,” Ro replied, and he heard tears in her voice. One tear hovered on the rim of her right eye, but she blinked rapidly and it went away. Muzi watched as she sucked in a deep breath and straightened her spine.

She wouldn’t let him, or anyone else, see her cry.

She had her pride, as did he. And if she needed time alone, he would respect her wishes and give her what she wanted.

Later, he’d hold her. For as long—fifteen minutes or for the next year—as she needed him to.

CHAPTER NINE

ROWASSTILLtrying to make sense of the bombshell Digby dropped nearly five hours later.

Over the past couple of months, on reading or hearing something about her parents, Ro often thought that she’d heard the worst of what they were capable of. Then a new story would surface, one she hadn’t heard before, and she’d be shocked to her core, thinking thatthishad to be the worst of them...

But this was, absolutely, as low as they, or anyone, could go.

She’d been tossed aside, dispersed of because she was a girl and didn’t come with the right equipment. Holy, holy hell.

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