4. West
CHAPTER 4
WEST
I get the text between the main course and dessert.
Michael
She’s on a date. We don’t know who the guy is. Currently running an emergency background check on him.
I excuse myself from the conversation I’m in and type back.
West
Do you have eyes on her?
My head of security answers immediately.
Michael
Yes. She’s safe.
Maybe, but she’s also reckless, and that’s a problem. I give my regards to the host of the private dinner and leave the Fifth Avenue apartment with quick steps. She’s out with a man? She’s on a date ?
That guy could be anyone. It could be the stalker, presenting himself as someone new here in New York. Rafe warned me that they’d had more than a little trouble pinning down the guy, and that’s not a good sign.
An obsessed, crazed fan doesn’t fit the profile of someone meticulous and smart enough to outwit a team of trained professionals.
Watching over Nora is going to take all my time, and I have too little of it to start with.
My car is already waiting by the curb. I get in and find Arthur already typing her last-known location into the GPS. We’re a smoothly run operation, and I’ve never been more grateful for it than now.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Arthur says.
“Thanks.” First I had to pull her out of a club. Now I have to interrupt what must be a date. She’s going to be so angry at me.
The idea shouldn’t make my blood run hotter.
But it does, because should really never works around her.
We pull up to the Midtown restaurant. I walk past the line of people waiting for a table. The waiter gives me a tight smile, but I tell him I’m meeting a friend inside. My tone doesn’t invite any questions, and he wisely asks me none.
I don’t see her right away. I do see one of the security guards I hired through the window. His gaze meets mine and he nods toward the back.
And there she is.
Nora is wearing a red dress, her brown hair swept up and away from her face. She’s looking directly at the man in front of her. He’s got sandy hair, and his hands move as he talks.
She looks at him with a small engaged smile that she’s never once given me. Though I’ve seen her use it on others. It’s charming. It also looks fake.
I’m nearly at their table when she looks up at me.
Her eyebrows lift with shock. But then her mouth presses into a thin line. “West. What are you doing here?”
“I need to cut your evening short.” I put a hand on the back of the man’s chair and don’t give him a glance. “There’s a car outside.”
Her date looks between us, confusion evident on his face. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“He’s not important,” Nora says. “I’m so sorry, Mark. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
I level her with a glare. “No. It’s not. Look, Mark, is it? The evening’s over.” I pull out my wallet and put a few bills on the table. “Nora. We’re leaving.”
Her eyes flash, but she’s all gracefulness as she apologizes to Mark. “I’ll text you later,” she tells him, and my hands clench into fists at my sides.
He looks at me again, then back at the money. I wait until Nora walks past me before turning my back to him.
“What the hell?” she hisses my way. Her heels click against the floor. “Why are you here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. What were you thinking?”
“I was in public the whole time. I didn’t run from my guards. I asked them to wait outside. I was doing what you told me to. What Rafe is telling me to.”
I pull open the door and let her walk out in front of me. The cool air feels good. Her anger? Less nice. But at least it’s real. I can work with that. No practiced, easy smiles.
She whirls to face me. “You had no right to do that. No right at all.”
“How well do you know that man?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “That’s none of your business. Mark is nice.”
“Right. And how long have you known Mark?”
“Em… three days?”
I look up at the sky. The tall buildings around us, the never-ending light. “God help me. You have no sense of self-preservation.”
“Yes, I do.”
“This is the second time I’ve had to pick you up late from this area. You can’t try to stay inside for a single night? Do you just crave constant attention?”
Her eyes flash. “I’m not giving up my life.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Yes, you are,” she says fiercely. “I didn’t do anything wrong tonight.”
My face settles into stone. “You’re well-known, Nora. You were on a billboard in Times Square a few months ago, for fuck’s sake.”
Her eyes widen. “You saw that?”
“Hard not to.” She was half-draped over luggage made by one of the storied luxury brands her family’s company owns, her hair mussed like she’d just gotten out of bed, and her eyes staring straight at the camera.
Straight at me every time I passed by.
“Who I date isn’t your business.”
“Why do you want to make my job harder than it already is?”
“Keeping me safe isn’t your job. That task belongs to your security guards, and they’re doing a great job. They were standing outside that restaurant, keeping a steady eye on us the whole time. They were probably bored out of their minds.”
“It is my job. Your brother made it mine,” I say. “That man could be anyone. He could be your stalker. Did you think of that?”
She takes a deep breath. “He is not. I matched with him on an app.”
“Which proves nothing,” I say tightly. She’s on online dating apps? She’s far, far too well-known. “This is serious. Did you act this spoiled with Rafe too?”
“I’m spoiled?” she asks. “Remind me where you’re living. Did you build Fairhaven? Did you buy it? Or did you inherit it?”
Twisted amusement makes my lip twitch. There she is, I think. That’s all her, the true her. Not the kind and sweet little sister Rafe thinks he has. “I’m trying to help you.”
“And I appreciate that. Truly, I do… even if you constantly remind me just how little you want to help. But I still have to live my life.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I brought the guards tonight and informed them of my plans. You didn’t have to get involved.”
I take a step closer and lower my voice. “Whether you like it or not, trouble, I am involved. And until we catch whoever is… obsessed with you, you’re stuck with me.”
“Do you want me chained at your hip? Glued to your side? West, I have things to do, people to meet, places to be.” She takes a step back, like she needs to put distance between us. “I understand the threat, trust me. But I can’t change everything in my life because of the letters. I moved here to start fresh.”
“We don’t know yet whether it’s stopped,” I say. If her stalker stayed across the Atlantic, or if they followed her here.
“Maybe not.” Her voice trembles a little, but her eyes are fierce. “But I’m not giving up my life.”
“Your life of nightclubs and dating strange men? You can still go to work. You can do all kinds of things. Just don’t go to dark places with strangers, which includes dating them.” I shake my head. “Not until you’ve been here for a little while longer.”
“But I have to date.” The words slip out of her like a confession.
My eyes narrow. “You have to?”
“Yes. I have to.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I’m practicing.” There’s color on her cheeks now. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I haven’t dated a lot in the past. I don’t have a ton of practice, and I’d like to one day be in a relationship, so this is important for me.”
“You don’t have a ton of practice,” I repeat.
Her cheeks flame. She looks like she wishes she could take back every single word. “No, and I’m not going to let this stalker keep me inside for another few months. I moved here to…” She shakes her head and looks away, like there’s no point in continuing the sentence.
“I know why,” I say. “For the Fashion Showcase you were chosen to compete in.”
Her eyes dart back to me. “You know about that?”
“Yes. Your brother told me. Impressive.” I run a hand along my jaw. “How the hell can you not have any dating experience?”
“I didn’t say that I don’t have any. I said I didn’t have enough. ” She crosses her arms over her chest. “That guy was perfectly nice, and you were rude to him.”
“Was he as perfectly nice as you were?”
Her eyes narrow. “He might have been the love of my life.”
That makes me chuckle. “Right, and you left him because I told you to, did you? You have never had a problem being yourself around me. If he was the love of your life, you’d still be in there. Or the two of you lovebirds would be on the phone all night after this. I’d be a good villain to bond over.”
“Fine, so maybe he wasn’t all that fun. Or nice,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t still important to me.”
“I don’t see how practicing dating can help you actually find a relationship.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” She looks past me, at the people in the distance. Her expression is shuttered. “Is this the way to disrupt West Calloway’s day, then? Go on a date that he hasn’t been informed about beforehand?”
“Don’t abuse it, trouble.”
“Stop calling me that.” Her eyes flash again.
“That’s what you’ve been these last few days.”
“Only because you’re overly concerned with what I’m doing and who I’m with.” She walks past me to the car and stops by the door. “Are you going to drive me home?”
The annoyed expectation in her voice makes my lip twitch again. “If you stop going on dates with random guys.”
“I promise,” she says, and tilts her head up like a queen without a court, “to stop going on dates with random guys. The next guy, I’ll make sure your team vets. How about that?”
I walk past her and pull open the door to her car. The idea of her with other guys, other dates, makes the smile die on my lips. But I just gesture for her to enter the car.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says, and slides into the darkness of the car.
Because it should be a yes, even if I feel like it’s a hell no .