A route that runs days instead of hours, west across the Hill Country and the high lonesome and on toward the mountains, the whole pitch being that the journey is the thing you’re paying for, that a man rich enough to fly anywhere in two hours might pay a great deal more to be unreachable for a week and call it luxury.
It sounds, against my every wish, rather wonderful. So wonderful that I know at once I’m not the customer. There’s no version of my bank account that survives one night of it.
“It isn’t my idea, strictly,” he goes on, in the tone of a man who dislikes admitting any idea isn’t strictly his. “There’s a flagship already running in Japan, the proof of the whole concept. A luxury cruise line on rails called the Yume, a joint venture with their national government, booked out a year ahead. My partner there built it. Yuki Himura.” A pause. “It’s a serious, respectable thing, before you decide it’s a rich man’s toy. People marry off the back of it. We’re bringing the model to America, and the model is couples only.”
“Couples only,” I repeat blankly.
“It’s built on a romantic idea, and a true one. Intimacy, nostalgia, the lost art of being unreachable together for a week. People believe in it, they pay handsomely for it, and the ones in Japan step off it engaged.” His mouth does something wry and cool. “I happen to be the worst possible man to sell it, which is its own private joke. The format requires me to arrive with a woman on my arm and look as though I mean it, and I’d sooner spend the week beside one I’m paying by the day than one who’d start believing the brochure by the second morning.”
“And you assume I won’t,” I say.
“I know you won’t.” He doesn’t blink. “You’d rather chew glass than picture the real thing with me. That’s the whole reason it’s you.”
He’s right, and I resent how right he is, and there’s a warm snag under my ribs that I would dearly love to file under irritation, irritation being safe and the other thing being its exact opposite. So I do what I always do, the move that’s gotten me precisely nowhere with him in eighteen years.
“You could be wrong about me,” I tell him.
He smiles, slow and insufferable, like a man watching a card he’s already counted come up exactly where he left it. “There. I knew you’d say something like that, purely to needle me. You’ve never once been able to leave a thing alone if leaving it alone would let me win.”
The worst part isn’t that he’s right. The worst part is the smile. The smile makes him more dangerous to look at, not less, anda sensible woman would’ve learned by now to stop looking. I’m, apparently, not yet that woman.
“Why fake,” I press, because pressing is safer than sitting here being read like a feed invoice. “You’re rich, you’re new in town, and half the ranching daughters in three counties have decided you’re the catch of the season. Bring a real one. Rent a real one. Why does it have to be a performance?”
For the first time, something closes over his face, a shutter coming down behind those black eyes, and the temperature of the whole conversation drops a degree.
“That’s mine to keep,” he says, closing the subject.
“That’s not an answer,” I object.
“It’s the only one you’re getting.” He says it evenly, and then, before I can push, he lays it down like a single clean card.
“I’ll tell you what I can tell you. There’s a reason it has to be a woman no one can move, and there’s a reason I won’t explain it in this room. What I’ll swear to you, on anything you like, is that nothing about this is illegal, and nothing about it is anything your conscience would object to. You won’t be asked to break a law or a confidence. You’ll be asked to hold my hand at dinner and look like you mean it. That’s the entire job.”
And here’s what being raised by a woman who worked three jobs and trusted exactly no one does to you. I know the shape of a man deciding how little he can get away with telling me. I’ve negotiated with suppliers who do it, with the county, with every man who ever assumed the nice lady with the birds would take what she was handed and say thank you. I know the shape of it cold.
What I don’t know is why I’m still on this porch.
“All I have to do,” I say slowly, “is hold your hand and look at you without glaring.”
“That’s the job.”
“That’s going to be the hardest money I’ve ever earned.” But I’m thinking about the number again, and the north wall, and the kitchen drawer I’ve trained myself not to open, and he watches me think about it, and I hate that too.
“So we’re bargaining,” he murmurs. “Good. I’m listening.”
“Here’s my counter.” I make my voice cool, the way I do with the county, the way I do with men who think a tired woman is an easy one. “You want me to trust you without the why. You want me to get on a train and hand you a week of my life and never ask the question you won’t answer. Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll trust you blind.” I square my shoulders. “But trust runs both ways, Loukas, or it isn’t trust, it’s just me doing as I’m told. So you’ll prove yours the only way a man like you knows how. You’ll pay me. All of it. Up front, in full, before I set one foot on that platform. Not on completion. Not held against my good behavior. Every dollar, in my account, while I’m still free to change my mind.”
I expect him to balk. I want him to balk, honestly. A balk would let me feel righteous and leave.
He doesn’t balk.
He considers me for a long moment, and the closed-off look gives, just slightly, on something that might almost be approval if I believed him capable of it, and then he names a second number, higher than the first, higher than I’d have dared ask,and he says it very quietly, in that accent that thickens when he’s decided he’s won.
“That should cover the north wall, the tax lien, and Dr. Abacan’s last three invoices. I’d round up for the kite, but I’m told he can’t be bought either.”
I want to smile. I manage a grimace, and somewhere underneath it, in a place I’m not going to look at directly, a small cold voice wants to know why it feels like I’ve just made the worst mistake of my life.
Chapter Three
