“Because you feel so wonderful all the time.” His eyes were practically daggers to my soul.
He couldn’t have been more wrong if he tried. However, I wasn’t going to enlighten him. Why should I? Zeke could see me as he wished, the way everyone saw me, even those who claimed to love me. They’d never see how I saw myself, how I felt inside.
I hated getting dressed, despised my clothes. The mirror was constantly my enemy, and there was never a time I had any clothes that I actually felt like wearing.
All of that being true, I answered him just the way he’d want me to, just the way everyone did. “Sure, I love getting dressed. It’s so much fun.”
“I see.”
But he didn’t. And he never would, which was utterly disappointing. But men were only ever tuned to your soul in fantasy. In real life, they didn’t know how to touch you, didn’t cater to your wildest desires, and certainly didn’t know what it was that you didn’t say aloud. Marriages were business arrangements, and I’d just been slow to figure it out.
“So, yes, I wrote a book and people liked it. But I think I said everything there was to say about that subject, and I’m not sure that there is anything left to write.”
He rose. “There’s always more to say. Textbooks are updated and celebrities seem to publish three or four autobiographies in a lifetime. We’ll find you another ghost writer and go again.”
If only it had been that easy. “Okay.”
“I’m going to go into your bank accounts tonight and figure some things out for you. Can you be up by nine and ready to go get some coffee and breakfast?”
Nine? That was easy. I never slept very much. I was up way before nine most days. I chewed on my lip. “You can’t get into my bank accounts without my information, passwords, whatever.”
“My guy can get in. Frankly, it’s shocking he hasn’t been able to get your dad’s yet. With your permission, I’ll just have him do that. Unless you want to write them all down.”
The sad thing? I wasn’t certain I knew what they were. I just kind of signed on through my computer which had all my stuff stored, but I didn’t remember what the passcode actually was or even know how much money I had.
What had he called me this morning? Pathetic. Yes, that fit.
I shouldn’t have slapped him. He’d just seen me more clearly than I’d seen myself.
“Layla? Is that fine?”
I smiled. The one I gave reporters who wanted my fall picks for fashion and I wanted to gauge out their eyes, because most people would never get to wear the fall picks either because of money or because they couldn’t fit in the sizes that kept getting smaller and smaller. Hence, my need to run.
“It’s fine. Thank you for your help.”
He took his napkin off his lap. “You look like I just asked you if you wanted to go have a filling drilled in your mouth. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry. Long day. I appreciate the help.” When in doubt, be polite. One of the nannies had taught me that.
Zeke shook his head. “You’re lying, but that’s fine. Keep your secrets. I don’t want them if they don’t apply to our arrangement. I think tomorrow night we’ll start to be seen, to be photographed together. We’ll go to a club that’s opening. I’m over that scene, but I sometimes have to take clients to them. They like to be wined and dined. So we’ll go tomorrow night.”
I’d been to enough clubs in my life that I could actually choke on them. They were all the same when it came down to it, just the themes changed. “Sure. I brought clothes for Bali, not Paris at night. I am going to have to go shopping tomorrow.”
“You look nice in that blue dress.”
I looked down, sort of forgetting for a second what I’d put on. “Thanks. But this is not what the women wear to the clubs.”
“You’re right, of course.” He smiled. “Shows you how much I think about women’s clothing. I’ve always been more interested in getting women out of their clothing.”
My cheeks heated up. He was blatantly sexual in a way I just wasn’t accustomed to. Kit certainly hadn’t been that way, even when he’d been quote-unquote in love with me. Zeke had invited me into his room with his shirt still off. He’d touched me as it suited him to do so. Carried me around. Threatened to spank me for talking badly about myself. And now he was talking about undressing women.
I was strangely naïve, considering the public opinion about me and my relationship status had kept me from being pursued in any blatant ways for a long time.
“I’m sure you are.” I looked down at the table where my plate would have been had it still been there. I wished it were. I could pretend to eat more.
He took a long look at me that I could feel on my skin, even though I was staring down at the table. “You really are young, aren’t you? For moments, I almost forget. And then it rushes back.”
I was pretty sure he’d just insulted me again. That was Zeke’s way with me so far. Be nice, helpful, flirty, and then mean. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Amazing what I’d learned in less than twenty-four hours in his presence, and it hadn’t done anything to lessen how much I wanted him. If only it was me who he was trying to get undressed.
Of course, he’d have to do all the work because I’d probably miss the cues, considering that I hadn’t a clue how to flirt successfully.
“I don’t think it’s a crime to be twenty-two,” I said finally, because something needed to be spoken or it was just going to get even more weird. “And I think I am young in a lot of ways and not young in others. In some capacities, I was born old.”
“Fair enough.” He actually ran his finger over the top of my hand, and I shivered from the contact. Why did he do that, and then in the next breath, be so obviously scorning of me? He was a confusing man. “Are you hoping to move the book writing into a fashion career? Making your own handbags? Or shoes? Or something?”
That was a fair enough question. “No. I’m not.”
His eyebrows shot up. Maybe at how fast I’d said the no. “That might seem a logical next step. Take the success of the book—I looked, it was successful—and turn that into a career in fashion.”
It might. But I didn’t want to do that. “I know I’m frustrating. Why can’t or won’t I just do what made sense? Take steps, make things happen. I was born into privilege. Use it.”
“I’m not interested or concerned with your privilege. That was a non-answer you just gave me. Is it that you can’t draw? Another I’m stupid thing? Because I’m sure in this day and age there is software…”
I held up my hand, imitating him, and he smirked at me as he stopped talking. “I can draw. It’s not that. I just don’t want to.”
I was actually a great artist, when I used to do such things. But I hadn’t given that a go since I was a child and wouldn’t again.
“Wasn’t your mother an artist? She was, right? I remember it was a big deal when she killed herself because out of the two of them, your mother and your father, she was the success at that point. Married the poor guy who was trying to make it. Had four kids and died. Her paintings go for a fortune.”