“I want you to stay, Faith.”
She zips her suitcase and stands up. “I’m going to be honest with you, Nick, because you know: No one in my life has been honest with me and I really need honest things in my life right now.”
Holy hell. She’s killing me right now. I take a step toward her. She backs up and holds up a hand. “Stop. When you touch me I get more confused.”
“Confused,” I repeat. “That’s what my touch makes you feel?”
“I can’t think when you touch me, Nick.”
“And that’s a problem? Because I can promise you that if you can do a mathematical equation while a man is touching you, he’s the wrong man. I’m not the wrong man.”
“You can’t just spend a hundred and twenty thousand dollars on me, Nick. Or more. You want to spend more.” She presses her hand to her forehead. “I appreciate what you’ve done. You are acting like a hero, and I know in my heart that’s your intent.”
“And you don’t want a hero.”
“That’s not it. I mean, no. I don’t, but I’m not going to be foolish and not see that I’m pretty lucky to have one in you right now. But Nick. We decided on possibilities based on who we are together. And I like who we are together so far.”
“But?” I prod.
“Money changes people.”
“I told you. I’ve had money all my life.”
“I’m not talking about you alone.”
“You think it changes us,” I supply.
“Of course it changes us.”
My mind tracks back to the references she’s made to her ex’s fame and stature. “I’m not Macom.”
“I know that,” she says, folding her arms in front of her. “I do. But I’m still being honest. Once he paid all the bills and made a ton of money, I was subservient to him in ways I should never have allowed myself to be.”
“Again. I’m not Macom, but I have money. I won’t apologize for that any more than I will spending it on you.”
“It’s a six-figure bank note, Nick. It’s not a dress.”
“Whatever it is. I don’t spend money on women, Faith. They aren’t around long enough for me to even think about it. But you. You are different, and if there was a dress that cost six figures and you wanted it, I’d damn sure buy it for you. The money is nothing to me.”
“But it is to me, Nick. I need—”
“What you need,” I say, closing the space between us and before she can back away, my hands are on her waist, and I’m pulling her to me, “what we need, is to fuck, talk, and repeat.” I cup her face. “Abel told me not to bulldoze you. That my money and the death of your mother had stolen your control, and I need to let you have some control. But what he, and you, don’t seem to see, is that you have stolen my control.”
“No one steals your control, Nick Rogers.”
“You have Faith,” I say, my voice low, a hint of rasp. “Because I can’t think when I’m not touching you.” I kiss her, a deep lick of my tongue against her tongue before I ask, “I once told you that I wanted you naked and willingly exposed. I still do. And we aren’t there yet, which means you don’t trust me.”
Her fingers curl around my shirt. “I do trust you. I just want to trust in us. I want to trust that I know what is real. And I don’t want money to get in the way of that.”
“You want real, sweetheart. I’ll show you real.” I scoop her up into my arms and I start walking, heading into the bedroom. And as tempting as the idea is to strip her naked and show her my many different versions of real, I have another destination in mind. A place where I show her just how naked she’s made me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nick
I exit the bedroom with Faith in my arms, where I want her to stay in every sense of the meaning.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Somewhere that apparently speaks louder than I do,” I say, my stride long as I carry her down the hallway toward the room I designed for her, entering her new art studio. Her place to paint, to escape, to forget that damn winery she doesn’t even want to own and yet, she can’t walk away from without foolishly leaving behind a small fortune.
Entering the room, the glossy white flooring that I’d had installed for her painting process beneath my feet, I don’t stop until I’m setting Faith down in front of her current work in progress. “You want real,” I say. “This room is as real as it gets.” My hands settle on her waist. “I didn’t just invite you to stay with me, Faith. I invited you into my life. I want to be a part of yours. That’s real. We’re real. What I feel for you is real.”
“Which is what?”
Words fly through my head: Protective. Aroused. Hungry. Connect. Quite possibly love. “Everything, Faith,” I say. “Everything I can possibly feel. Stay with me this week.” My fingers flex at her waist. “Paint. Prepare for your show, and by the time we go back to Sonoma together the bills will be paid, we’ll know more about the bank, and we’ll set up a plan to keep Kasey motivated.”
“Kasey,” she says. “Right.” She inhales and exhales, and then abruptly twists away from me.
I go to touch her but she is just out of reach and before I can correct that wrong, she is standing in front of the canvas that is her current work in progress, where it sits on an easel. And that space, really like this one, is her space. A place I do not want her to feel I can invade, take, and control. Inhaling, I hold my ground, seconds ticking by and turning into a full minute as she studies the black and white Sonoma mountain-scape that has yet to find color, that one splash of red she always adds in completion.
“This room,” I say, “is supposed to be the red you add to your works: the new life, the possibilities even before I asked you to consider the possibilities. Talk to me, Faith.”
She turns to face me. “I’ve been asking myself that since I stood downstairs with you and Abel. I trust you and yet I was uneasy, and I really think it comes back to control. You have it. I don’t. You create the red splash, not me. Not us.”
“Because I want to help you with Kasey?”
“Because you’re taking over my life, Nick. You have the control. All of it. I have none.”
“Sweetheart, I told you. You have control. More than you obviously realize.”
“Really? Because I just walked downstairs and found out your friend that I had never met knew things about me I had only told you. You should have talked to me about him before he was here.”
Guilt slices through me with the realization that I never even considered talking to her and for one massive reason: He already knew. And he knew because he was involved with my quest to prove she was a killer. I don’t make excuses. There are none. “You’re right. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”