The Billionaire's Princess - Ava Ryan Page 0,59

don’t want him back,” she says, outraged. “Why are you behaving like this? Just because I’m in touch with an old friend?”

I don’t like that phrasing. I don’t like it at all.

“In touch with? What the fuck does that mean?”

She blinks, then quickly recovers her outrage. “He still texts me periodically. Just to say hello. I called to wish him happy Christmas. And that’s the extent of it. He lives in London, in case you forgot. It’s not as though we could sneak around with each other, even if we wanted to. So I’d appreciate it if you stopped looking at me as though I’ve worked my way through all the men in the city.”

“Why not mention it?”

“Because it’s not that big a deal, you fool,” she shouts. “It’s not that big a deal to me and it shouldn’t be that big a deal to you. Or maybe you haven’t noticed that we’re practically living together, and I can’t wait to climb in bed with you every night?”

Not much could have pierced the red haze of my jealousy at that moment, but her sincerity seems to do the trick. It makes me pause, anyway. But there’s something deeply unsettling about having those big blue eyes look at me with such glowing warmth one second, then realizing they’ve been hiding secrets about her ex the next. I don’t know whether I’m seeing love or treachery. It puts me right back in that twisted place where I thought my mother was just my mother, only to discover that she was a liar, a cheat and a deserter. Three things I never would have suspected of her.

“Oh my God, Damon.” She presses a hand to her chest, looking stricken. “What’s gotten into you? You know how I feel about you.”

That does it. I snap back into my right mind as though waking from some sort of altered state. And in that sudden moment of clarity, I catch a glimpse of how irrational I’m being.

Carly is not my mother.

She’s nothing like my mother.

And I will not ruin her birthday with my creeping insanity.

“Sorry,” I say, getting up and reaching for her, braced for her to smack my hand away. I’d deserve it if she did. But she’s right there with me, opening her arms and pulling me in. We come together in a hard hug and sway back and forth while I try to recapture the joyous part of this evening. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

“Why did that make you so upset?”

“Because I don’t like surprises. Or secrets.” My voice is thick, so I pause to clear my throat. But that lump’s not going anywhere. “And I’ve gotten used to having you around. I don’t want anything to rock our boat.”

A glimmer of exasperation appears in her expression as she pulls back. “Percy is incapable of rocking our boat. Take my word for it. But we don’t need a repeat of the way you just behaved. I don’t respond well to Neanderthals.”

“Noted,” I say wryly. Then I let her go. Swat her ass. “If we don’t get a move on, you’re going to have to deal with my hangry behavior. And no one wants that.”

“We do not,” she says grimly.

I laugh. “Get outta here.”

She takes a few steps but pauses before she gets to the hallway, turning back.

“We don’t have a problem, do we, Damon?”

My own uncertainty is enough to deal with. I can’t handle hers, too. Much better to sweep it all under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist.

“Nah.” I discover, too late, that it’s impossible to look her in the face. I try to smile and realize I can’t quite manage that, either. So I shove my hands in my pockets and hope I look convincingly unconcerned. “We’re good.”

“As long as we trust each other, right?” she asks lightly.

I nod, my mouth suddenly too dry to speak. Forcing myself to meet her gaze turns out to be a mistake, because those eyes ruin me. Her apparent honesty combines with my desperate desire to believe her, creating a compelling combination. But this whole Percy thing has put a crack in something that was fine an hour ago. I want to believe her, but now there’s a shadow over my heart.

Correction: now there’s a shadow over the crater where my heart used to be. And I can’t stop myself from thinking poisonous thoughts.

You’re not going to stand there using those eyes as a weapon against me, Carly. I won’t let you yank my guts out.

17

Carly

“Did