Page 74 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire

The atmosphere shifts in the silence that hangs between us. Suddenly everything feels less lighthearted, more meaningful, maybe even serious.

“But I’m worried about something.” His eyes half close and there’s a weightiness to his tone. “I might not have given you the right impression of myself.”

His seriousness brings a whisper of dread to my chest. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you might not like the real me.” He curls his fingers and brushes the backs of them down my cheek with a light touch that makes my skin remember it’s alive.

“It’s okay.” I rest my hand on his chest right over where his heart is beating like it’s about to burst. “You already told me you haven’t always been the rich investor dude who can wander around mucking out donkeys whenever he likes. And that’s way better than someonewho had everything handed to them on a platter and doesn’t appreciate it.”

He sinks his teeth into that oh-so-succulent bottom lip for a second. “That’s only part of it.”

“You mean there’s more to the story about losing the family house and having to get a job?”

He tucks my head under his chin, pressing my cheek against his chest, which rises then falls with one huge, deep breath.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” I rest my hand on his firm bicep.

“I do want to.” His heart thuds against my ear like a bass drum. “I want to tell you everything. I want you to know me.”

“I feel like I know you,” I admit.

“But I’m scared you won’t like what you find out.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who’s scared of much.”

“I’m scared of you thinking badly of me.”

I lift my head just enough to pop a kiss onto the side of his neck. Goose bumps immediately erupt around it. The clear sign that I turn him on reassures and gratifies me at the same time.

“Try me.” I drag my lips across his skin to test the extent of my driving-him-wild skills.

“We had this little house in the Roxbury neighborhood of the city. Mom and Dad bought it before I was born. They inherited the down payment from my mom’s dad and could just about scrape together the mortgage payments. Apparently, it was a wreck and Dad did a lot of the work on it himself so they could have a nice home tostart a family in.”

He swallows hard.

“It felt huge to me when I was a kid. But I think it was actually pretty small. Three bedrooms, one bathroom upstairs. Living room and kitchen downstairs. A small patch of grass out front, no garage. And a square yard out the back.”

“Sounds similar to mine. Mom and Dad worked all the hours on the planet to keep it. I wished we could just move somewhere cheaper so they’d have to work less and could stay home with me more.”

“What do they do?”

“Mom’s a nurse. Dad’s a plumber.” I run my fingers up his chest. “But go on, this is your story.”

“I had the middle-sized bedroom. Then when Ethan and Luke were born, I moved into the smaller one so they could share mine.”

“See, we’re the same. Small home. Hard-working parents.” I stroke the muscular curve of his shoulder.

“When I was eighteen, our whole block was bought up for redevelopment,” Miller says. “The houses, the local shops, everything.”

“Why?”

“To put in a big grocery store, an office building, and apartments.” His face tightens, the pain in it palpable.

“They would have had tobuyyour house, though, right? So your parents wouldn’t have walked away empty-handed.”

“If you can call itbuying.” He almost spits the last word. “It was around the recession, and property values had dropped so much that what they gave us for it only just paid off the mortgage. So my folks were left with nothing to put toward a new home. They were starting over from scratch.”

“Shit.”