Home > Hate Story(4)

Hate Story(4)
Author: Nicole Williams

I could feel him looking at me, examining me. I wondered if he’d come into this arrangement with the same notions. No expectations. No room for disappointment. No margin of error for surprise.

I hoped so. I didn’t have a self-confidence issue, but I was also a realist. I knew I wasn’t the traditional Venus men wanted to take a piss on to mark their territory. I wasn’t a head-turner, the body a guy pictured as he jacked off. I wasn’t the first girl asked to dance . . . or the second or third.

Some might have said what I lacked in the looks department I made up for in the personality one. Society might have followed that up with a sympathetic pat on the back, but I took immense pride with my disposition.

Looks dimmed with time. Wit sharpened.

He leaned back into the chair, watching me like he was considering making a purchase. Hadn’t he already bought me? Hadn’t the price already been settled on? The longer his stare went on, the harder it became to not shift.

Like hell. I was not going to squirm in front of this man. I was not going to lead him to the assumption that I could be unsettled by something as small as a penetrating stare.

“Why are you doing this?”

I gave myself time to think before answering even though this answer was as basic as they came. “I need the money.”

No reason why. No explanation as to what had happened to shove me into this corner.

“As much as I need my green card?”

I didn’t look away. “Yes.”

He was quiet, contemplating my answer or scheming a way to get out of this now that I was sitting across from him. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but that was part of the beauty of this kind of arrangement. I didn’t need to know what he was thinking or try to guess or mold my next moves to whatever may have been on his mind. I had no reason to withhold honesty because I just didn’t give a shit what he thought about me.

And no, the irony of honesty being a perk of such a dishonest arrangement was not lost on me.

“And what happens if you suddenly decide to walk away from this?”

His voice held no hint of an accent, and he looked just as “American” as I did. Brown eyes, dark hair washing out to silver, average height and weight, a general apathetic tenor to his voice.

“That won’t happen,” I replied when I realized he was still waiting for my answer. American-looking or not, he was the one who wanted a green card badly enough to drop one million one dollar bills for it.

“How do you know?”

I was sitting across from the guy I was going to marry. I should feel something. I should feel some kind of emotion other than . . . resolve.

Damn. I really was as ice cold when it came to men as Kate had been telling me for years. Ever since Bryant Collins asked me to senior prom and my answer came in the form of a carton of milk spilling over his head.

I might have failed to mention to Kate that I’d overheard Bryant mentioning to a group of his friends that he was going to ask me so he could cross “popping a cherry” off his bucket list. You would have thought a guy with that lofty of a list would have been a bit more discreet with his virgin conquering plans.

So yeah. I’d been Ice Queen from that day on, and I’d fully embraced my title.

He was waiting for my answer. Again.

I needed to stop meandering down memory lane before he took his million somewhere else.

“Because I know exactly what it feels like to have people break their promises, and I will never do that to anyone.” I scooted a little toward the edge of my seat. “I won’t make a promise I can’t keep. And I expect the same from you.”

Maybe it was something in my voice. Maybe it was something on my face. Maybe it was a flatulence issue that had just been resolved, but he visibly relaxed. Almost like he’d just been read the negative results of a biopsy after waiting on edge for weeks.

“And you can promise to follow this through?” he asked, his gaze shifting just over my shoulder. It was faint, but I didn’t miss his nod. “To its end?”

I wanted to glance over my shoulder to see who he’d just signaled, but not before I answered him. I wanted to make sure I was always looking him in the eye when I answered. “I can promise you that.”

He nodded once more, but this time, it was aimed at me. “Then, Miss Burton, I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

My eyebrows pulled together. Had he brought a friend to play lookout like I had? Shit, was he some undercover detective who’d baited me into this whole illegal affair? The guy now standing across from me definitely looked more like some hardened detective nearing retirement than some wealthy foreigner in the market for an American wife.

“You’d like to introduce me to who?”

That was when someone came up beside me. This was not the someone I’d expected. Not at all.

Shit again. I hadn’t had any expectations, remember?

The figure looming beside me exchanged places with the older man. Holy . . .

“Your future husband.”

Where was the abort button?

Not that I could punch it if it magically appeared in front of me anyway because my condition was, by banks’ standards, dire. All the overtime in the world couldn’t save me. Getting my body siliconed the hell out and grinding my ass up and down a pole couldn’t even save me. Nothing short of a windfall of money would save me, and I didn’t have the luck to win the lottery. As far as I knew, this was the only person making me that kind of an offer.

He hadn’t stopped smiling at me, and it wasn’t the friendly kind of smile. It was the kind that made it seem like he was in on some secret I wasn’t privy to. The kind of smile that made me feel like I was being trifled with and made the punch line of a hundred jokes I had yet to hear.

I wanted to wipe the cocky smile off his face, but that would have required touching him and even I wasn’t gutsy enough for that. A woman did not touch a guy like him unless she wanted him to be her undoing. Nope. You didn’t play with fire. You didn’t touch it. You didn’t even come close.

Fire. That was all I saw when I looked at him. I was playing with it by agreeing to this kind of arrangement with him. I’d rather have the grumpy-faced grandpa back.

Even the way he lounged in the chair was smug. Like it was his throne and he was just waiting for minions to come bow before him.

“You’re younger than I thought you’d be.” He broke the silence first.

   
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