Page 46 of How To Tempt The Off-Limits Billionaire

Now she understood why neither her brothers nor Muzi had wanted to explain Mimi’s odd comment. They hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But she’d pushed and pushed and here she sat, in the corner of the low stone wall, hurting.

She’d been looking for reasons to like Gil and Zia, to understand them, to find justifications for their revolting choices. But, with this soul-shredding news, she was forced to accept that Gil and Zia were twisted, probably evil, utterly narcissistic and a waste of oxygen. And she carried their genes.

Dear God, the knowledge hurt.

The fact that they thought she wasn’t worth keeping hurt. And knowing that she loved Muzi and that he clearly didn’t love her...

Hurt worst of all.

Ro stood up, brushed the seat of her pants and told herself to pull herself together. Muzi never promised her anything other than a fling, her birth parents did her a favor by giving her up for adoption—her parents adored her and gave her a wonderful life—and her roller-coaster life would even out, hopefully sometime soon.

Ro leaned her butt on the concrete wall and stretched out her legs. She needed to go home, have a shower, drink a glass of wine and spend time with Muzi.

She didn’t know how much time she’d have with him and sitting here, moping, wasn’t productive.

Or fun.

Ro heard her phone ring and pulled it from the back pocket of her shorts, wrinkling her nose when she saw it was Kelvin video calling her. She’d been ducking and diving his calls for ages, maybe she should just answer, speak to him and move on.

She swiped the screen and their eyes connected through the power of technology.

“Hi, how are you?” Look at her, being so adult.

“I’m good,” Kelvin replied, a smile lifting his lips.

He had a great smile, Ro admitted, but it seldom reached his eyes. Muzi smiled less often but she always caught the laughter in his eyes, the amusement turning his brown-black eyes luminous. His smile could power the sun.

And God, those dimples.

Muzi’s, not Kelvin’s. Kelvin didn’t have dimples.

Kelvin peered into the screen, his eyebrows pulling together. “Good grief, you are filthy, what on earth have you been doing?”

Ro turned the screen and panned her camera over the outside of her house before turning it back to face her. “I’m renovating this house.”

“Why?” Kelvin asked, horrified. His distaste amused her. Kelvin did not like to get his hands dirty.

Ro jumped up backward to sit on the veranda wall, the heels of her trainers banging against the rough wall. She shrugged. “It’s a job.”

He nodded. “You must be running low on your savings by now. Isn’t it time you came home?”

If he only knew. “I’m thinking about it,” she told him. She was thinking about many things, including how to incorporate a big, bold African man into her life. And how to get him to include her in his.

“Why did you call, Kelvin?”

He rubbed his hand behind his neck, looking contrite. “I wanted to say that I’m genuinely sorry. I messed up but I want you back.”

“Yeah, you did,” Ro said. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not interested.”

“I made a mistake, Ro. We can make this work, I know we can.”

How to get through to him? Ro thought about and discarded a few options and decided to hit him with the truth. “Kelvin, I don’t love you anymore. I don’t know if I ever did. I don’t know what love is, what it means for me, how it’s supposed to be. But what I do know for sure is that you are not it, that you no longer have a piece of my heart.”

Oh, God, were those tears in his eyes? “Does that mean that you’ve found someone who does own a piece of your heart?”

She could lie and tell him no, but she couldn’t deny what she felt for Muzi anymore, the feelings bubbling and burning, rippling and roaring. Neither did she want to, because those crazy feelings were demanding to be explored, to beacknowledged.

“I have found someone new. I don’t know if I’m in love with him but I’m pretty damn close,” she admitted. “I’m feeling like I am standing on the sharp edge of a knife, that one misstep will slice me in two. He has the power to hurt me, Kel, in a way that you never did.”

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