Page 48 of The Sheikh's Purchased Bride

“This is supposedly the city’s premier matchmaking service,” she had started in arrogant tones, “but I doubt you’ll be able to find someone worthy of a date with me. I very nearly earned an Academy Award, after all…”

Emma had continued her boasting until Zoey’s mother, Melinda Forde, swept into the elegant reception area. Feeling something very much like disgust, Zoey saw her mother’s ersatz smile and heard her rolling, sycophantic, voice.

“Welcome to Melinda Forde Singles, my dear. Please allow me to say that your performance in Marble House moved myself and my daughter to tears. ‘Jenifer Swan’s brief and tragic music career is portrayed to perfection by Ms. Knightly’,” she said, quoting a review she had read in the Times. “I just hope our agency can perform as well for you as you have for your adoring public. A client like you deserves only our finest, most experienced matchmaker.” So saying, Melinda had taken the former actress back to Zoey’s stylish, well-appointed rear office.

The train came to a halt, and Zoey inwardly celebrated as the rotund man saw his stop and left the train. She swore in her head when that gentleman was replaced by a fossil of a woman that smelled strongly of liniment.

Zoey had settled on reading A Study in Scarlet, but between the smell and her thoughts, she was finding it hard to concentrate. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself sitting at her desk. Emma Knightly sat across from her, sipping a glass of complimentary champagne. Zoey was asking the actress a series of question and plugging her curt responses into her computer. The answers, and Emma’s dismissive nature, were grinding her nerves, but Zoey kept her composure. That was her job, after all. Within five minutes, it was perfectly clear what Emma wanted: a wealthy man who would be mesmerized by her beauty and put his fortunes at her command. It was obvious Emma didn’t care about love in the slightest, and the moment she realized that, Zoey knew she should have sent the woman away, or at least tried to get her to consider something other than her materialistic desires, but even back then, Zoey had known there was precious little point.

Zoey had long ago learned that trying to argue with customers was more trouble than it was worth. She’d scanned the system until her eyes landed on Edward Alva Brooks Jr., a man that fit the bill perfectly. She was sure the fifty-five-year-old would be attracted to Emma’s body, and that Emma would be attracted to his money. They had nothing in common, no shared values, nothing two people could build a lasting relationship on, but Zoey didn’t argue. She simply made the match.

She forced herself to keep reading her Sherlock Holmes mystery. She knew it was the only relief she was going to have for several hours. In a few moments she would transfer to another train, which would take her the rest of the way to the Manhattan offices of her mother’s relationship services agency. From the moment she arrived until four-thirty that afternoon, Zoey would be tasked with ignoring her own emotions, lying to people, and above all, turning a profit.

All day long, she would listen to women—almost always former actresses and models—complain about the men that had formerly been in their lives. How they neglected them, how they lied and cheated, how they never earned enough money, and on and on. Men came though Melinda Forde’s doors as well, with complaints of draconian women, gold diggers, and unfaithful lovers. Each of these people would tell Zoey they were looking for true love, but when she questioned them, she always found that was the last thing they sought. And on it would go, hour after hour, until the hypocrisy became a physical weight upon her heart. Each day, it became harder and harder to suffer through, and Zoey was sure that soon, quite soon the way things were going, something in her mind was going to snap.

A sudden thought cut through her misery like a laser, and all at once, Zoey felt a small welling of hope within her. She only had to make it to the end of the day, and then something wonderful would happen, because for the first time in forever, she had a date of her own that evening. She’d had to sneak behind her mother’s back and use the Ember dating app to accomplish that much, but she felt that the ends justified the means.

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