Page 45 of Dating the Billionaire

He would fall asleep. And when he did, she would slip away. She had to, before she had to tell him the truth and he got angry with her. Or worse yet, began to hate her.

She didn’t want him to hate her. She wanted him to love her. And that scared her even more than the thought of telling him the truth. That scared her into feeling like her mother, desperate for the love of a man.

So desperate that she might lose herself completely. No. She had to leave once he fell asleep. And she had to stay away from him.

She’d already lost her heart to him. She couldn’t lose anything else.

She was gone.

He woke alone. Even before he opened his eyes, he knew she had left. The bed was cold. And he felt empty and more alone than he could ever remember feeling.

He’d thought it before, but this time he was fairly certain that he wouldn’t see her again. When he’d admitted in Le Bar that he’d needed her, her eyes had widened with something that had seemed like panic to him. Or maybe that had just been a projection of what he’d felt when he realized that he needed her.

He hadn’t needed anyone since he’d started working, started supporting himself...and he’d still been a child when he’d been forced to do that.

But he could have sworn he’d seen panic on her face, too.

She’d made it clear from the beginning that she was too busy for anything serious. But he suspected she wasn’t too busy; she just wasn’t interested in anything serious.

And he’d gotten serious about her.

Hell, he’d gone and fallen in love with her—which was so damn crazy, given that he really didn’t even know her.