Page 109 of Never Tell Secrets

Once more, he turned me, fastening the zip. He tweaked the soft cotton until it sat just right on my curves.

“What do you think?”

His critical eye roamed over me. “I think you’re perfect.”

“I think you just broke the rules.” I raised my brows at him, still trying to slow the heavy beating in my chest. He didn’t look in the least bit remorseful.

“And I think that this time, you don’t give a shit.” He cupped my face, pulling me to him. “I’ll play by the rules but I’m still me.I can only change so much. I’m always going to enjoy exerting control over you at certain times. Can you accept that?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I can try, but you have to find the line.”

He gave me a short nod before he stepped away, gesturing at the luxury breakfast still waiting for us. “Eat with me.”

I tucked into breakfast like a starving woman, Alfie barely suppressing a grin as I gorged on a blueberry muffin. As I ate, an idea began to percolate in my head. Butterflies fluttered as I worked up the nerve to run it by Alfie. This ‘being in charge’ thing was harder than I’d expected. What if he said no?

“What is it, Lo?” he asked and I looked up at him, startled. “I know every single one of your expressions and right now you’re wearing your ‘chewing on a problem’ face.”

“No problem. Just a thought.” I cleared my throat. “What are your plans for the day?”

“Work.”

“Can it wait?” I asked, not bothering to hide the hesitancy in my voice. “I know you have a lot to do so I understand if you can’t just?—”

“It can wait.” He tilted his head. “What do you have in mind?”

“You. Always.” A flirtatious smile crept over my lips and I popped another morsel of muffin into my mouth in an attempt to stifle it. “This trip was supposed to be about Keira but I have a feeling she’s going to be tied up all day…or rather, Damien is going to be tied up all day.”

Alfie snorted and I continued. “And Maia is with Eli…I wondered if you could spend the day with me.”

Alfie’s face didn’t alter a bit but I knew every one of his expressions too and his ‘frozen river’ one meant that there was a lot going on under the surface that he didn’t want me to see. Like hope, excitement and fear.

“What would you like to do?”

Taking a deep breath I pushed my words out. “I want to spend a day in your world, when you actually like your world, I mean. Not business meetings or monochrome mansions, I want to see your colour, Alfie.”

He stared at me, brows knotting slightly. “You’re my colour, Lo.”

My chest ached at his words and I wondered if he knew how much that meant to me. “But I can show you my world. It’s going to involve obscene wealth though. I know that’s not exactly your cup of tea.”

He was right, it wasn’t, but obscene wealth and Alfie Tell came hand in hand. “I can handle it.”

He broke into a shit-eating grin that had me narrowing my eyes in suspicion. “What?”

He began to laugh, the sound still music to my ears no matter how many times I heard it. “Baby, you should not have said that.”

Thirty-Four

“Aboat?” I stood on the dock, Alfie on one side, Elliot on the other, staring at the vast vessel floating in the sea. “You want to take me on a boat?”

“It’s not a boat,” Alfie replied, “it’s a yacht.”

“Are they meant to be that big?” I thought yachts were tiny things. I pictured a lone fisherman in a little boat, a single sail blowing in the wind. That was nothing like the white, three-tiered behemoth in front of me. I stared at it, wondering how something so huge could still be so elegant.

“It’s a superyacht. Come on.” Alfie took my hand, helping me on boardThe Isabella.

“Dare I ask who Isabella is?”

“I have no idea,” he said as we stepped onto the stern. “I won her in a poker game years ago. The yacht I mean, not the woman.”