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Nothing more, nothing less. Certainly not the truth. Nothing that would help him to understand the real Effie.
And he realised with a jolt that he wanted to know the real Effie. More than that, he needed to know the real Effie. Even if he couldn’t understand why any more than he could understand why, as he’d listened to her prepared formulaic story, he’d let her soft, lilting voice distract him into imagining that mouth doing so many other things. Imagining her in his bed. As though he was some kind of hormone-ravaged teenager.
It was galling. He didn’t want to want her, and yet since she’d swept into his life he’d felt as though everything he’d carefully built up around himself had been knocked down. And the solid foundations he’d thought he’d put down were now shown up for little more than wet sand.
From the instant Hetti had thrown Effie into his path as his plus one he’d been entranced. He could dress it up any way he wanted, label it with any number of excuses, but the unavoidable truth was that Effie made him hard, and greedy, and savage. And he wanted her with an intensity that was almost suffocating.
All the things his father had claimed to feel about every one of his mistresses when he had rubbed them in the face of Tak’s mother. The old man had never shown an ounce of respect for his wife or for his children. And he hadn’t had a shred of self-control over his own vices. His father had been selfish right to his very core.
Fury and self-disgust flooded Tak’s body. He’d spent his entire life trying not to be like his father—ensuring he wouldn’t be like him by avoiding any kind of serious relationship. Which wasn’t to say he hadn’t enjoyed casual relationships...girlfriends lasting a few months...good sex.
But nothing had come even remotely close to this...hunger gnawing inside him ever since Effie Robinson had walked into his life. He wanted her. In the most primal way that a man could want a woman. He wanted her. Only her. And he couldn’t pretend otherwise any longer.
‘Why did you agree to accompany me to the hospital ball that night, Effie?’ His voice was harsh, commanding, yet he still couldn’t read the expression which flitted across her face.
‘You know why. This is a new place for me...there are men who view my single status as a challenge, and I have a daughter who is the sole focus of my life. Fake dating you was the quickest way to make anyone else back off, and when we “break up” I get to pretend that I’m not dating because I’m not over you.’
‘You have it all worked out, don’t you?’ He ran a finger around the rim of his wine glass, if only to stop himself from reaching over the table and touching her.
‘As much as you do,’ Effie hedged, with that inscrutable darkness shadowing her eyes again.
‘Except that you’ve made me curious about you. I want to know why you’re so untrusting of people. Of men.’
‘It isn’t just about men,’ she answered—too quickly, not realising she was giving herself away until it was too late.
There was no reason for it to feel like such a victory. And yet he leapt on it all the same. ‘Everyone, then. Why?’
‘That isn’t what I meant.’ She flushed crossly.
‘It isn’t what you meant to say, no. But it is what you meant. Deep down.’
‘I thought tonight was about giving a convincing show?’ she bit out. ‘Not about delving into areas of each other’s lives which are best left unexplored.’
It had been. Only he’d changed the rules. Unfairly, perhaps, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. It seemed his usual sense of boundaries was slipping, sliding away from him. Certainly where Effie was concerned.
Why would he have offered to take Nell to that party if not because he wanted to make Effie happy? To show him she needed him?
Why?
The realisation hit him hard and low, and something gathered inside him, gaining momentum, and power, and a voice. So loud that it howled inside him with all the truths that it brought.
It was one thing to want Effie physically. Sexually. But it was quite another to sit here, in this restaurant, in the middle of this performance, and realise that he wanted more. That he wanted her on an emotional level, too.
He wanted to know about her life and her family, about what had happened to mould her and shape her, about every single event which had led up to her and her daughter living in that awful flat in that awful building.
He wanted to know her, truly know her, and to understand her. And he wanted to tell her all the things he’d never been able to tell anyone in his life before. Not even Hetti.
The urge was almost overwhelming. He even opened his mouth to speak. But nothing came out. An internal struggle was going on inside him and it was as though he was floating outside his own body, able only to watch. Never to intervene.
Somehow he managed to rein himself back in. Curb himself. Stifle this insane compulsion which had come out of nowhere.
But it cost him. He couldn’t talk to Effie. Not about any of it. He would never be able to do that. Because if he did then it would mean he was putting his own selfish desires ahead of what he knew to be best for others. Just like his father had done.
He knew the pattern. He’d seen it so many times before, and each time he’d watched it rip out another little piece of his mother’s soul.
Once this initial fervour wore off—and whether that was in a month, six months, a year, much as it felt impossible now, he knew it would happen, it was inexorable, just as his father had always said—he would end up letting Effie down. Hurting her. Betraying her.
Yes, he knew the pattern. He’d just never imagined he’d be the one copying it. It was madness and it had to stop.
