Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 90899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
So, I settle for covering her hand with mine as I add, “I’m the fool. I should have told you the truth that first night. I should have told you that I wasn’t an escort, I was just a lost man who’d wandered into his friend’s club and been offered the chance to meet a beautiful woman he’d noticed in the library. From the second I saw you, Maya, I just…I had to know you.”
“So, you lied to me because you didn’t know how to walk up and say hi?” she demands, her tone making it clear she isn’t buying that for a second.
I shake my head. “No, I lied to you because Twyla told me you were looking for an escort, not a date with a stranger who hadn’t been vetted.” I hesitate a beat, letting my fingers slide up her arm to curl around her wrist as I add, “And because I couldn’t stand the thought of another man putting his hands on you.”
She pulls her arm away and slides off the stool, pacing across the room as she mutters, “I can’t touch you right now. Touching you is…hard.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my chest tight.
“I still want you so much,” she says, spinning back to face me, the tears shining in her eyes hitting me like a punch to the gut. “But how can I want you, Anthony? When I don’t even know who you are anymore?”
“You know who I am,” I say, as I cross to her, arms extended in a primal gesture of supplication. “Ninety percent of what I told you was true. The only things you don’t know are that I’m good at numbers, so good that I graduated with two masters’ degrees before my twenty-first birthday, landed a series of jobs in the financial sector that made me a very wealthy man, then walked away from everything one night, when it suddenly became clear to me that my work wasn’t making me happy. It wasn’t my purpose, not anymore.” I drag a hand through my hair, adding in a softer voice, “That was the night we met. I’d just set off a bomb in the middle of my life. And then, there you were, and Twyla was begging me to take the job so she didn’t have to turn you away… It just seemed like fate, and I never planned to take your money. She’s holding my portion of your fee now. She was going to give it back to you tonight before we left the club.”
Maya’s quiet, so quiet that I risk another step closer, bending to catch her gaze. I wait until she looks up from the floor to add, “Please, Maya. This week with you…it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in so long.”
Bottom lip trembling, she asks, “Why? I’m nothing special.”
My heart shattering, I reach for her beautiful face, cradling her jaw in my hands as I whisper, “You are the most special. You are…everything. You’re kind and genuine and good to your core. You’re funny and thoughtful and when I roll over and see you sleeping next to me in the morning, I feel like the luckiest man on Earth. That’s why I kept finding reasons not to tell you the truth. The thought of you leaving… I…” I swallow, fighting a wave of emotion before I add in a rougher voice, “Please don’t leave. Please, just give me the chance to prove to you that this is real. That we’re real.”
Her lip wobbles again, but she doesn’t try to pull away. “I hate that you lied to me.”
“I hate it, too,” I agree. “Dumbest decision I ever made, but I don’t usually make dumb decisions. I promise.”
“But if we’re being completely honest…” She exhales. “If I’m being honest, I don’t know how I would have handled a gorgeous, wildly successful finance guy with perfect hair and a stupidly hot body approaching me at the club that night. It might have felt too scary. Thrilling, but…scary.”
My lips quirk. “I don’t have a stupidly hot body.”
“You have a stupidly hot everything,” she says. “And you were right before, about what I was looking for that night. I wasn’t looking for perfect or real. I was looking for a situation I could control, for a way to have an experience I’d been dying to have in a safe, STD-tested environment, where I wouldn’t get hurt.” She blinks faster as she adds, “I was so afraid of getting hurt.”
“I’m so sorry I hurt you,” I say, smoothing her hair from her face. “But if you give me another chance, I promise I’ll never do it again.”
“You can’t promise that,” she says. “When people get really close, sometimes, they hurt each other. It’s part of being in love. You can’t have the beautiful part without the scary part. Even my parents fight sometimes, and they’re the happiest couple I know. But Dad still forgot their anniversary one year, and Mom still spent two hours crying in the laundry room.”