None of these women are right for him, I thought, shaking my head as I poured over the list again and again. But I knew that I had to pick one for him no matter what I felt. I needed to end this fascination with him, this sinful desire that I knew would never be brought to fruition. I needed to be free from my own wants, from the very thing that could ruin my life and my reputation.
“You have to do this, Gwendolyn,” I said aloud in an attempt to steel my resolve, to bring myself to let go of the man that I had desired for almost a decade. It was like torture, but it had to be done. Stiff upper lip, and all that. Duty. That was what it meant to be British, wasn’t it?
After another few minutes of agonizing over who I would give Tristan to I settled at last on a pretty little blonde woman that had enlisted my services almost a week previously. She had exactly the kind of traits that my stepbrother was looking for, exactly the right personality that he was looking for in his ideal match. She was even prettier that I was.
But she’s not you, I thought, grimacing as I began to draft the email to inquire whether the young woman would be interested in my stepbrother’s company. She had notes detailing her eagerness for a match, for someone who could excite her and make her laugh—and fulfill her sexually.
I felt my heart grow cold as I wrote to the young lady, Patricia Attmore. It felt like I was signing my own death warrant, and once I sent that email Tristan might as well have been gone forever. I swallowed nervously, trying to calm my nerves, strengthen my resolve as I moved my cursor over the “send” button in the upper right corner of the screen. Tristan would be mad not to take a woman like Patricia and beg for engagement, and the logical part of me hoped that he would to save both of us from a scandal, but it wasn’t the logical part of my brain that was screaming the loudest in my mind.
I closed my eyes, tensing for some kind of harsh immediate repercussion as I let the email out into the world of the internet to find its destination in the blink of an eye. I was almost disappointed that the world hadn’t crumbled down around me, perhaps then I would have felt that the utter devastation in my stomach would have been justified. I almost felt like a fool; a foolish schoolgirl with a foolish little crush that would have never gone anywhere much less amounted to anything.
Buck up, Gwendolyn, I thought, taking a slow, calming breath through my nose before letting it out through my quivering lips. It’s better this way. And even if you can’t have him, then at least you can give him the life that he deserves with a woman that he loves. That’s your job, after all.
“But I want him,” I whispered to the chilly silence of my office, reclining back in my chair as I wiped a spot of errant moisture from my eyes.
But you can’t have him, I told myself. You can’t let your feelings get in the way of your job. This is what you do.
I was already tipsy, and it was bad enough that I was practically talking to myself. I felt enough like a loon already, and pining over my stepbrother was hardly going to help matters. No matter what I desired, Tristan deserved my best work, and I was determined to give it to him.
6
Chapter 6
The very next afternoon Gwendolyn had called me to tell me that she’d found me a match among all of her hundreds of female clients. Needless to say, I was impressed to have been matched up so quickly, but when your firm has a reputation like hers, I would have expected nothing less than exceptional.
My date was, apparently, a woman named Patricia—her last name hardly mattered, since the success of my time with her would result in a rather permanent change of it. She looked pretty enough, especially from the pictures Gwen showed me from her Facebook, some of which were very much to my liking—risqué and just barely within the bounds of propriety. Despite how eager I was to take a stab at this marriage business, the more I sat there, the less I actually wanted to go through with any of this. It wasn’t like me to succumb to nerves but something about this made me feel on edge.
I’d been there for almost half an hour before I began to even wonder if this woman would show up, the entire time Gwendolyn’s eyes hardly left me. She hovered like a hawk, making sure I had something to occupy myself with. I watched as she waited, it seemed often more nervously than even I was, for Patricia to walk through the door while Gwen’s assistant tried to get her to calm down.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” I said, trying to convince myself just as much as I was trying to convince her. “I’m a charming man. She’ll never be able to resist my charm.”
Honestly, it wasn’t bedding her that I was concerned about—I knew better than anyone I could get a woman naked and wet in the time it took most people to say “hello”—but that didn’t seem to be the reason why I was so… off.