Page 167 of The Faking Game
“Forever?” I echo. “Even if you don’t want one now, you’ll want a real wife one day.”
He leans his head back against the chair. “No. I won’t.”
It hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does, the insistence that he doesn’t want the kind of relationship that I do. The real kind of love that I’ve always wanted to experience one day. The kind of love that’s been growing inside me, forhim, now feels like it might choke me.
“I guess we both have our deadlines, then,” I say.
His expression darkens. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?” I counter. “You have to be married before you turn thirty. I don’t want to be a virgin after I turn twenty-five. We have a few months left.”
His jaw tightens. “Those two are not comparable.”
I shrug, like this is nothing at all, like my heart isn’t aching. “No, it’s true. Yours is much more serious.”
“I should have told you.” West’s free hand tilts my head back to meet his gaze. “I never wanted you to think that this was a possibility.”
“But it is,” I tell him. “You’re not the kind of man who loses.”
“Nora,” he says.
“It won’t be one of the women your mother wants you to marry,” I guess. “It won’t be a big wedding. Maybe it’ll be an assistant of yours, someone you work with. Someone you pay. A quid-pro-quo agreement. But you won’t lose Fairhaven.”
“Nothing has to change,” he tells me. “Nothing.Do you hear me? You and I, nothing has to change.”
“Everything changes,” I say. “It’s the only certainty in life.”
His fingers dig into my waist, tighten until I can feel the pads of them. “I won’t be controlled. Not by my mother, and not by a trust written by a man who’s been dead for almost a century.”
“And yet,” I say, tracing my nail along the scruff at his jaw, “youarein the market for a wife, and that’s entirely his doing.”
West’s teeth grind together like he hates that fact. I bet he does.
I’ve never felt this way before. The anger, the want, the frustration. It all coalesces aroundhim. And Fairhaven. He can’t lose it. Of course he can’t.
I don’t want to lose it, either.
“Sir.” It’s Madison again. She nods at West and then at me. “Sorry to interrupt. But we apprehended someone taking pictures of you two. Michael is interrogating him now.”
West’s face hardens. “Take me to him.”
RAFE, WEST AND NORA
West
We just caught someone photographing Nora. He’s one of several hired to cover her, or so he says. He works for an undercover security agency.
Nora
Guess who hired them.
Rafe
What the fuck? How did you make him talk?
West
The guy’s a hired gun. All you have to do is pay him more.
