Page 72 of The Sexy Billionaire

“I love her, she’s great.” She grins.

“Yeah, she is,” I say, beaming with pride. “We need to get food into us, otherwise this tequila is going to be the death of us.”

“Yes, please, I’m starved.” Paige groans as she curls herself up into a ball.

“What do you want?” I ask, pulling out my phone.

“Pizza, hot, greasy, slice of pie.”

I still; she can’t be serious. New York pizza is not pizza.

She bursts out laughing. “Don’t get all Italian on me. After a big night of drinking, there is nothing better than New York-style pizza.”

“If that’s what you want …”

“It’s what I want. Pepperoni please.” She grins.

With a huff and a pout, I reluctantly ordered New York pizza. “They will revoke my Italian citizenship if they ever find out.”

Paige rolls her eyes. “You’re so dramatic.” She chuckles as she slaps my arm playfully. “Gee, your arms are so …” she mumbles as she starts squeezing my bicep, before quickly pulling her hand away. “I didn’t say that in my head, did I?”

I shake my head, indicating no, and watch as her face turns bright red.

“Okay, you two, I’m off, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Natalia states, coming back looking like a different person. How did she get ready so quickly?

“I made him order pizza,” Paige calls out to her.

Natalia stills and looks over at me. I nod, and she bursts out laughing. “I knew I liked you, Paige.” And with that, she disappears into the evening.

At some point, the sun had set and now there’s nothing but the twinkling lights of the Manhattan skyline before us.

“Oh wow,” Paige says, noticing at the same time I do, and she gets up off the sofa and rushes over to the window. “It’s beautiful,” she gasps, staring at the view.

“It is,” I agree, except I’m not looking at the lights, my focus is completely on her. She turns slowly when the silence between us gets too much and realizes I’m looking at her, not the view.

“Why did you have to break my heart, Gio?”

Her question catches me off-guard, and I take a couple of moments to work out how to answer that. “Because you deserved to have a life, not live in a fishbowl.”

“But we would have lived there together.”

Does she not think I thought of all that? “We were young, love wouldn’t have been enough.” I knew that I would have fucked up, no matter how much I loved her. I wasn’t the man I am today.

Her brows pull together. “You broke me that day you chose her,” she tells me as tears well in her eyes. “You broke me,” she repeats.

Fuck.

She wipes her tears away. “Don’t think my heart was ever the same since,” she confesses.

Those chocolate eyes look up and into my soul, a soul that only she’s been able to touch.

It’s always been her.

Every woman I’ve ever been with, I’ve compared to her.

“Mine either,” I whisper in agreement as a memory filters through.

“Giorgio, what a surprise,” Lucia says, answering the door.

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