Page 16 of This Beautiful Lie
“Dean—”
“Ten thousand.” When I didn’t respond, he kept going. “Fifteen.”
I inhaled sharply, because that kind of money...
It would change things.
Rent. Bills. Groceries without anxiety. A cushion I’d never had before.
“Twenty,” he murmured, as though he could see me slipping and wanted to catch me before I hit the ground.
But instead of tempting me, it snapped me back to reality.
Because the higher his price climbed, the clearer it all became.
Dean didn’t think my rules applied to him. He thought another zero would make them disappear.
Sure, I could spend a week smiling, clinking glasses, pretending. I could keep things light and easy. I could ignore the way Dean’s hand made my pulse skip, or how my stomach twisted every time he looked at me like that.
I could do it.
But I wouldn’t.
Because the money wasn’t the problem.
The problem was the way I already leaned toward him without meaning to. The way I liked him too damned much—and I knew better than anyone how dangerous that could be.
I finally found the valet ticket and closed my bag with a snap.
“Sorry,” I said, forcing a smile. “I’m not for sale.”
I turned on my heel. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Dean Weston.”
“Em, please.”
I stopped.
The sound of my name—my name, not Vivienne—froze me in place.
Slowly, I turned to face him, heat crawling across my chest like a warning flare. “What did you just call me?”
Dean’s lips pressed into a firm line as if he hadn’t meant to say it, as if the name had slipped out before he could stop it. But it was already out there, and I could see the truth in his face.
I stepped closer, my voice low. “Howdid you know myname?”
I went to great lengths to keep that part of me hidden. To stay anonymous. Safe. And the fact that he knew—really knew—who I was? It chilled me to the bone.
I’d spent years covering my tracks. I never used my real name online. My business was registered under an alias, payments filtered through encrypted processors and dummy accounts. I paid monthly for layered VPNs, premium firewalls, even private domain masking services that scrubbed metadata before it could ever be traced. My photos were stripped of location data, my email routed through an end-to-end. No one—not clients, not colleagues—ever knew more than what I allowed.
And yet, somehow, he’d found me.
“I know a guy,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
I stared. “A guy.”
He nodded once. “A private investigator. He traced it through your website.”
I blinked, a chill running through me. “My website is private.”
