Page 10 of The Billionaire's Secret Kiss

No one could blow my mind like Ella.

She probably thought I'd slept my way through Northern California. She'd be wrong. I'm not going to say there hadn’t been other women. There were. Especially right after we split. It didn't take me more than a few months to realize that empty sex with faceless women would never be anywhere close to being with Ella.

I tried finding another girlfriend and had even dated a woman for a few months. When I'd realized that even a smart, funny, sexy woman paled in comparison to the memory of my first love, I'd broken it off and buried myself in work.

Fatigue dragged at me. By the time I finished eating, I wouldn’t be good for much. I rolled off the couch and snagged my laptop out of the bag on the desk. Settling back in against the cushions, I flipped it open and stared at the screen.

Decisions, decisions.

My email demanded attention.

But I still didn't know where Ella was.

So far, I'd held off spying on her, not wanting to be a creep. But I couldn't ask Vance or Maggie where she lived, and I'd been blocked on her phone for two years. Blocked, but not completely locked out.

Giving in to my baser instincts, I pulled up an app that could track the GPS on her phone, assuming she hadn’t gotten a new one. The app fired up and found her in seconds. My chest tightened in anticipation when I saw that she was only a few blocks away, somewhere in midtown.

I looked up the address, expecting to find an apartment building. It was hard to determine exactly what it was. There was no commercial listing for the address, and it wasn't an apartment. I left the app open, programming it to tell me if her signal moved, and opened my email. There wasn't anything I could do about Ella at the moment, and my company needed me.

Once I had a chance to get some food and a good night’s sleep, I was going after my girl.

This time, I wasn't going to let her walk away.

Chapter Four

Noah

My plan to track down Ella went sideways twenty minutes after I woke up. First thing in the morning, her signal was still at the mystery address in midtown, but shortly after that, it started to move, heading straight toward Buckhead. She was on her way to work at Vance and Magnolia’s house. As much as I wanted to see Ella, I wasn't stupid enough to pursue her there. Acting like a creepy stalker was not the way to win over my potential investors.

It wasn't like I didn't have plenty to keep me busy. I hit the hotel gym, worked out, and went for a run. The rest of the day, I spent at the desk in my suite, surrounded by the detritus of two room service meals and endless cups of black coffee.

My team had made a breakthrough while I’d been sleeping the night before, but as it so often happened, the breakthrough came with bugs. We were all racing to sort them out and see if our progress would stick. It was killing me to be this close to a viable product, this close to more money than any of us had ever seen in our lifetimes, and yet miles away if we couldn't untangle the code.

I finally lifted my head from my laptop when my stomach growled. My brain was on West Coast time as I worked in sync with my team, but my stomach hadn't been filled since noon.

I checked the clock.

4:30 PM.

Ella's signal was moving very slowly. Too slowly for a car. She was either walking or jogging. She was in a popular nearby park, probably out for a run.

I kept an eye on her progress as I changed and splashed water on my face. I thought about getting something to eat but decided to wait and see if I could talk Ella into dinner. When her signal left the park and sped up, I headed down to get my rental car. Following a hunch, I drove to the mystery address in midtown, betting that's where she’d show up.

As I'd hoped, a few minutes after I parked on the street in front of the building, Ella's hatchback passed me, turning into the alley beside the building. I got out of my car and followed her, moving just fast enough to see her car disappear into a garage.

Dammit.

I strode back to the front, planning to ring the bell when she yanked the door open and glared at me.

Her cheeks were flushed, and stray curls of dark hair stuck to her damp skin. I'd been right—she'd been jogging. I tried not to leer at her. Her clothes weren't revealing. She wore long, black, stretchy leggings and a loose, long-sleeve, wicking T-shirt over a jogging bra.

But I knew what was underneath. I knew her body as well as I knew my own. My hands had been all over her the day before, and it hadn't been nearly enough.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded. "How did you find me? I know Vance and Magnolia didn't tell you where I was."

"I tracked you down," I said unapologetically. "What is this place? It looks commercial. Do you live here now?"

The building was a nondescript brick square from the outside, taking up all of a short block, surrounded by commercial properties. There were no windows on the first floor that could be seen from the street, though the second floor had tall multi-paned windows that gleamed in the afternoon sun. It looked like a body shop or a warehouse, not a home.