Page 44 of The Love Dare
She’s changed, he realizes in that instant. She’s not the girl he remembers, the one who needed saving. The distance between them made it easy to ignore, but she’s grown up now. New York molded her into someone different—someone less afraid.
He likes it.
He’s desperate for more.
Which is why, when Nina comes to his room later that night, she finds him at the window of the guesthouse, staring at the mansion a hundred yards away, studying the shadows playing over gossamer curtains.
“They’re nailed shut,” she quips as she enters his room. “In case you were hoping for a peep show. We save all your interactions with the women for the camera. No funny business.”
He just grunts.
“A man of few words.”
“Here’s one. Fuck off.”
“That’s two.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose with a sigh. She just grins.
“I will fuck off,” she concedes. “I know you’re tired. It’s a brutal first day. But I need names before I can leave you alone for the night.”
“Names?”
“For your dates tomorrow. Three mini one-on-ones, then the next day is the group outing. So, who will it be?”
“Winnie,” he says immediately.
“…And?”
“Winnie.”
“I need?—”
“Winnie.”
She stares at him for a moment, her calculating eyes almost black in the shadows of the doorway.
“I only want to see Winnie.”
She holds his gaze one second longer, then purses her lips and nods before leaving him with nothing but a reluctant, “Okay,” as she closes the door behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
winnie
The house fallssilent when the chime rings out. Winnie stops mid-conversation. She, Cynthia, Charlotte, and Harper share quick glances over steaming cups of coffee. All at once, they jump to their feet and chirp, “Date card!”
Twenty women immediately flood to the front hall, where cameras wait to capture their reactions as the front door opens. A porter walks in, carrying a single envelope on a gleaming silver tray. Winnie is too nervous to move. She grabs her friends’ hands as her stomach swoops. In the back of her mind, she hears that deep tenor again, his whisper thrumming through her.
O, I am fortune’s fool.
She knew what he was referencing immediately—that day in his room, that moment when she’d been so sure he was about to kiss her she almost blacked out until her stupid brother interrupted. Yes, when Romeo said it, he was absolving himself of all blame. But on Tyler’s lips, it sounded like an apology, like a promise. And if he meant what she thinks he meant—that he knew he made a mistake, that he was sorry—then her name will be on that card.
It just has to be.
Which is why she holds her breath as one of the girls—Lenora, she thinks—steps forward and takes the envelope.
“What’s in a name?” Lenora reads. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
