Page 51 of How To Tempt The Off-Limits Billionaire

Pasco looked him in the eye. “And nobody will. It’s her secret to share, not mine.” Muzi released his death grip on the doorframe. When Pasco gave his word, he never reneged on it.

“So, is she sticking around?”

“I don’t know, you’d have to ask her,” Muzi said, his tone bitter.

Pasco’s eyebrows rose. “What the hell have you done, Muzi?”

“Why do you automatically assume it’s my fault?” Muzi demanded, knowing that his tone lacked conviction.

“Because you’re a moron,” Pas replied. He rolled his eyes. “Go upstairs, shower, have a nap. When you’ve slept, things will look better.”

Muzi rolled his eyes at him. “Sure they will.”

He was completely sober, and his life looked pretty bleak.

Muzi was tempted, so tempted, to get drunk again.

Unbelievably, after a shower in Pasco’s apartment upstairs, and a bowl of hearty chicken soup, Muzi stretched out on Pasco’s long leather couch and drifted off to sleep. He woke six hours later, feeling...if not better, then more human.

After washing his face, he snagged some of Pasco’s toothpaste and rubbed it over his teeth. He rinsed his mouth and stared at himself in the mirror, noticing his roadmap-like eyes and the gray pallor of his complexion. He needed to pull himself together and move the hell on.

But the thought of doing that without Ro made his stomach churn. How could he live his life without her in it? He lifted his chin and reminded himself that this wasn’t his first rodeo: he’d survived after being separated from his mom, coped after Lu died.

He could do this. Hewould. But maybe he should go back to having shallow affairs with innocuous women. He ignored the thought that that was how his relationship with Ro began, with him thinking it was all about the sex.

It had been so, so much more. Ro was laughter and color, warmth and wit. She was the sunrise, her presence was the breaking of his night. She was midnight comfort, as her head used his shoulder for a pillow, his early morning jolt of energy, his reason for, well, everything...

Muzi placed his hands on the side of the basin and closed his eyes, sinking under the knowledge that she was everything to him. And that he’d let her go.

He knew, intellectually and through experience, that every day got a little easier, that heartbreak did eventually fade.

He hoped it faded before he did...

But, right now, he knew what he needed to do. He needed to go home, walk his lands and breathe in some warm, sultry air. When he’d done that, he’d spend some time working in his study and on something he could control, and that was work.

He could heal, hewould. He just needed to be alone and to process the past few weeks. Everything would be fine in the end, he reminded himself, and if it wasn’t fine, then it wasn’t the end.

He entered the bar and saw that Pasco had been joined by Digby and, God,Keane. What the sodding hell? Standing in the doorway, he caught Pasco’s eyes and scowled.

Pasco just motioned him over and nodded to an empty barstool to the left of Digby, who turned and gave him an up and down look. “So, you look like crap.”

He knew that already. “What the hell are you doing here?” He growled the words, deliberately ignoring Keane.

Digby gestured to Pasco. “Dr. Phil here sent out an emergency SOS, telling us that you needed us, that you were falling apart.”

Muzi considered wrapping his big hands around Pasco’s neck, but settled for a threat. “I’m gonna kill you.”

“You can try,” Pasco told him, sliding a bottle of water across the bar.

Muzi, needing to do something with his hands, cracked the top. “And what the hell is he doing here?”

Muzi saw the long look Digby and Pasco exchanged. Digby, to his credit, was the first one to step onto the battlefield. “This cold war between you two has got to stop. We’re tired of it.”

Right now, Muzi didn’t give a rat’s ass about their feelings, he had too many of his own he was trying to corral. “He chose to believe the BS his mother has been spouting about me, about me running the business into the ground and stealing money from Clos du Cadieux.”

Pasco and Digby both turned accusatory looks toward Keane. He lifted his hands and, to his credit, met Muzi’s eyes. “Susan is a difficult woman and, with Rafe in the States, I’m all she has. In my defense, I didn’t believe any of those wild claims.”

“And yet you still walked away from me and our friendship,” Muzi muttered, shocked at how much it still hurt. Keane abandoned him, just like his mom. And in a sense, like his grandmother did. Death was the ultimate abandonment wasn’t it? Everyone he loved could, would and did, hurt him...

---