Come with me to the Interface inaugural tonight
M.S.
You mean as press?
Rachel
We can discuss when you arrive—Otis will pick you up at 8 p.m.
M.S.
I’d love to go as press. Thank you for the news opportunity.
Rachel
“Silver is the bomb on you,” Gina says approvingly as I twirl around to get her verdict. She keeps nodding and nodding, obviously pleased. “Stunning, Rachel. He doesn’t stand a chance.”
“I’m not sure about this dress of Wynn’s, it’s so sexy.” I take in the long, silky curves of my body in the full-length closet mirror. “If he doesn’t stand a chance, neither do I.” I laugh, then fall sober and feel my cheeks go hot.
I remember the way we both couldn’t stop kissing the last time we were together, and wonder what he’ll do when he sees me in this. The material is sleek, shiny, and cool. Fit for a mermaid, and the fabric clings to my every curve like a man’s lips would, and his hands could.
“What do you mean?” counters Gina. “He’s a playboy. Hello? You don’t like that sort of guy. You and I are the smart girls, remember?”
Following the urge to inspect my feet, I then search for my clutch, tucking it under my arm. “I gotta go.”
“Rachel!” Gina calls. “Just think of the story. You’re flesh and bone, but try to leave the flesh and bone, the heart and the woman, home. Take your brain with you, that’s all.”
I bite my lip and nod, wishing I felt more confident. I need a Malcolm Saint vaccine, for immunity, and I need it now. “What are you doing tonight?” I ask Gina.
“I’m going with Wynn and Emmett to watch some movie premiere.”
“Okay, have fun.”
The night is cool and a little rainy as I slip into the Rolls-Royce, the driver shielding me with an umbrella, and my heart flutters when the scent of the car’s leather interior, which I associate with Saint, reaches my nostrils again. I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, my chest, everywhere. I wish I could leave the flutters home.
As the Rolls pulls into traffic, I mentally caution myself against overthinking tonight. I’m obviously going to pretend we didn’t kiss. Definitely that I didn’t ask him to. Then I realize I’ve never really had the courage to speak to his driver, so this time I clear my throat and start with, “How’s your day, sir?”
“Good, Miss Livingston.”
“It occurs to me we haven’t been formally introduced.”
“Otis.”
“Nice to meet you, Otis. How long have you been working with Mr. Saint?” I ask, trying to get back into investigative mode.
“I’m sorry, miss, but I’m not free to say.”
“Oh, come on.” I laugh a little, but he doesn’t say more.
“Do you transport all his dates around town?”
A shake of his head.
“Give me one, at least,” I insist.
“All right. No,” he says.
“Only his businessmen?”
“That would be Claude.”
I roll my eyes. “He has several drivers, of course.”
He nods.
“Who do you drive around?”
“Usually? Saint.”
“Why are you driving me?”
“Saint,” he answers.
“And who drove Saint to the event if you didn’t drive him?”
“Saint.”
Amusement curls my lips. “Have you known him long?”
He hesitates.
“All right, so I know I said one. Just give me one more. Your boss is so elusive.”
“I’ve known him since he was fourteen—and Mr. Noel hired me to keep him out of trouble.”
I’m surprised into silence by this.
“Oh, I know it’s coming. Fine job I did?” he asks.
“I didn’t say that. Everyone knows your boss has a mind of his own. I don’t think anyone could’ve controlled him.”
“The more they tried, the less controllable he became.” He shakes his head. “I’ve spoken too much.” He looks up at me in the rearview mirror. “But he trusts you . . . and I trust his judgment.”
“What makes you say he trusts me?”
“Hunch.” He shrugs. “Comes from knowing him over a decade. First of his girls I get to drive around.”
I blush. “Oh, I’m not one of his girls.” And I’ll never be.
He smiles knowingly and helps me out of the car, and one sumptuous lobby later, I step into the lap of absolute and complete luxury. Water fountain. Glowing crystal chandeliers.
Getting a little more nervous with each step I take, I walk down a long hall outside the ballroom and straight to the press entrance, where I wait my turn to give my name to one of the ladies in charge.
“Hi, Rachel Livingston from Edge, please.”
“Good evening, Rachel, let me find you here on my clipboard list. . . . Hmmm. Well . . . let’s see. . . . You don’t seem to be under the L. Any middle name under which I can check too?”
When I shake my head, she goes over to one of her coworkers. They whisper for a bit, comparing clipboard pages, until finally, illumination seems to strike the woman I was talking to. Her expression changes from a worried frown to a beaming smile as she scrambles back to me. “Oh, well, mystery solved! You’re with Saint himself—this is quite the development!” she whispers excitedly, pointing to the guest entrance. God, really? More flutters.
Pasting a false smile on my face as if I’m happy about this—well, am I?—I walk down a long hall and follow the sound of the music past soaring columns and below vaulted ceilings. I venture deep into the crowd, walking amid his eclectic group of friends and employees. I become aware of the women and how they instantly size me up as competition for Saint’s attention. The men stare too, their gazes appreciative. I’ve got great hair and long legs, and interesting eyes . . . maybe I’m not a buxom blonde, but I’ve got a great ass. Oh god, look at him. I almost stumble when I spot him at the far end, near a chocolate fountain.
His backside is to me—so impressive, my mouth dries. I can see the definition of his back and arms in the jacket he wears, his black slacks hugging the best male body I’ve ever seen.
Callan points Saint in my direction, and I spur myself forward again as he turns around. His eyes catch mine, and the whole time I approach with uneasy steps, they stay trained on me. His chest goes wide as if he’s pulling in a sharp breath, and I can’t breathe.
He’s in black tie and a devilish suit, his hands at his side. He’s unsmiling, his jaw tightening when he notices the other men looking at me.
I see the women flanking him, and I’m hit by a wave of jealousy so deep I tremble.
We kissed—that’s all. I don’t care what he does. I’m not interested in him in an intimate way, I keep reminding myself. Not in a woman’s way, just a reporter’s.
He’s just a man—a playboy, womanizer, hell, a manwhore—and I just need to store all this information and then write an exposé so people can experience what I’m experiencing.
It doesn’t matter that he stands with two women. They’re not touching him, but oh, yes, I can tell from their glum expressions that they have before. He’s used them. And they have used him. But it doesn’t matter if people use him, or if people even understand or know the real him, because all I care about is getting this exposé right. Right?
This isn’t about me, it’s about a story about the man.
Still, my stomach aches with unfamiliar possessiveness as I stop before him. He looks at me, straight into my eyes, and I look straight into his.
“Did you think you would get away with using the press entrance?” he asks me, lips quirking. Hmm. He’s got me pegged, hasn’t he?
“Did you enjoy not writing my name on the list and making everyone scramble to nearly kick me off the premises before they realized you wrote my name down next to your name?” I tease back, one eyebrow rising.
He laughs in true enjoyment. “Excuse us,” he tells the group, earning me a couple of venomous stares from the women as he takes my arm and slips it into the crook of his and draws me away.
“That’s quite a dress,” he whispers with a twinkle in his eye, his dark head ducked so he can say it in my ear.
“What does that mean?”
He smiles as he leads me to the table where Callan and Tahoe sit, each with a drop-dead-gorgeous girl. Saint pulls my chair out, then sits next to me as the room continues filling up.
“Are all the new Interface employees invited?” I ask him, looking around.
He nods, looking at me intently. “There are several connecting rooms to fit everyone. This room is mostly for directors and members of the board.” When I only smile, he spreads his arm out on the back of my chair and leans forward so that his voice is all I can hear, not the classical music in the background or the conversation. Just a voice in my ear. “Why do you insist on labeling yourself press?”
“I am press. I can’t delay writing the Interface story anymore, my magazine needs me to turn it in.”
“You don’t need a press badge to catch my attention. Nor do you need a badge to interview me.”
“Do you even lift anymore, Carmichael? Didn’t think so,” Tahoe baits Callan at the table. Because I’m so unnerved and unused to having a man’s attention like Saint’s attention is on me, I try to divert myself with their antics.
“I lift,” he argues.
“Haven’t seen that since I last fed my unicorn,” Tahoe drawls.
“It’s true, bro,” he answers.
“Saint, do you mind a suggestion for later?” Tahoe asks as Saint shifts in his seat to face him, the move bringing him closer to me. I instantly sit up straighter.
Saint sips his drink lazily, lips curling. “I’m down for whatever.”
“Good. Because you know what we should do . . .” Tahoe begins.
Saint: “That always precedes a terrible idea. So naturally, I’m game.”
“Let’s hit the pool on the top level.”
He chuckles and then looks at me only, his attention drawing my own helplessly back to him. “I like your friends so much better than you,” I say softly, so that only he hears.
In the warm lights, his gaze gleams like something liquid. His voice is quiet. “Do you really?”
“Yes. Really.”
Silence. My heart beats fast. He lifts his hand and brushes my hair behind my ear, and my earlobe burns when we hear a woman say from nearby, “Saint, I left my shoes at your place the other day. Can I still tell you about the charity I was hoping you’d—?”
“Monday at M4,” he says without inflection, his attention fixed on me.
The woman shoots me a look of pure hate, then is gone. I wonder if he’s sleeping with these women. I wonder—
“At least I know what they want. My bed or my wallet. Or both,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. His lips twisted adorably at the corners, he studies me. What do you want from me? those eyes ask.
“You should work out with Saint sometime. He’d kick your ass, probably. It’d be fun for you two,” Tahoe tells Callan from a distance.
As Sin looks down at me, I feel his hand slip under the table in search of mine. There’s the barest brush of his thumb when he finds my fingers, and then we hear the voice of an elderly man up on the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming today—we’re very excited about the inaugural dinner for the one and only Interface. I know you’re all as excited as I am to be part of this innovative family. And here with us is the genius behind it all, a man known for his edge, wit, and incredible zest for life. I give you, Malcolm Kyle Preston Logan SAINT!”
“I’ll be right back,” he whispers, his breath hot in my ear.
I’m blushing bright red from the touch of his hand, imprinted on my back as he stands and caresses me under the fall of my hair. As he heads for the podium, I can’t take the stares coming my way and the way I feel hot under my dress, moist between my legs, so completely affected I decide I can’t be with him tonight. I can’t sit here and pretend to be his date. It’s too wrong and it’s too much work for me.
I stand quietly as I hear him greet the crowd in that authoritative voice of his. “Good evening, and thanks for that, Roger.”
As I slip out the entrance and head to where the tables for press badges are set, I spot his assistant Cathy.
“Cathy, hi, do you remember me? I met you at—”
“Miss Livingston, of course.” She motions toward the ballroom. “Everything okay with your table?”
“Oh, it’s the best table, which is why I really can’t sit there. I’m here as press, you see. It’s such a misunderstanding, and Mr. Saint is so busy . . .”
I’m surprised by the way her face basically blooms when I mention him. “I understand,” she says quietly. “I did worry a good girl like you might be concerned about his reputation.”
“No, I mean . . . well, yes, that’s exactly why I need my badge. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression.”
“Especially him?” She looks at me, and I blush. “I can give you a thousand badges, Miss Livingston, but if he wants you, he’s going to come after you. He does have the patience of a saint when it comes to getting what he wants.”
And you’re in love with him, I think, but say nothing because, thankfully, she’s printing my badge. “You’re happy working for him?” I ask.
“I wasn’t working at all until I began working for him. He was the only one who would give me a chance.” She smiles and hands me the badge.
Quietly, I head back into the room, and when I hear his voice in the microphone, rushes of electricity crackle down my spine. A wave of applause sweeps the room as everyone claps in excitement.
Standing in the back, I’m turning my badge over in search of the clip when I realize dozens of heads are swiveling in my direction. There’s no more Saint up on the podium.
Because he’s wending his way through the crowd, his wide torso carving a path as he comes straight for me.
“Are you done?” He doesn’t sound angry or impatient but . . . almost.
“I . . . yes.” Quickly, I lift the badge and try to attach it to my dress.
He takes my hand in his. “I do love those ears of yours, but they don’t seem to hear very well,” he murmurs in amusement. “You won’t be needing this.” He plucks the badge from my fingers.
“What? Why?”
“Saint!” a voice nearby calls. It’s a member of the media, asking for a shot, which Saint denies with a hand signal.
He then tucks my badge into his jacket pocket and takes my hand back into the crook of his arm. “Come,” he whispers in my ear, already leading me to the side of the room, to the doors that lead out onto a terrace overlooking a golf course. He steps out onto the terrace with me, and only then do I manage to pull my hand from the warm crook of his arm.
“I don’t think we should be here. Everybody saw that.”
“So?” He lifts his eyebrows, and I stand there, at a loss. His eyes gleam in the moonlight, and he looks succulent. Edible. Not just his lips, every part of him.
Slowly, his gaze slides downward. He radiates a vitality that draws me like a magnet. It unnerves me, but something in his voice soothes me. “Do you blame me for wanting you to myself for a few minutes, Rachel?” he asks, his voice husky.
I have a thousand pictures of him, but none like this. The face I see right now isn’t for any camera; it’s for nobody to see. Not even me. There is pure, organic, unfiltered emotion etched across his features, roiling in his eyes.
He squeezes my hand to keep me from backing away from him, and then he reels me closer to him, his lips pulling into a smile because I resist a little.
“Come here,” he coaxes, finally managing to make my body loosen up enough for me to go where he wants me. Close to him.
He’s so magnetic, so beautiful as he looks down at me and brings me close enough to smell him. I imagine reaching out to touch his hard jaw, running my tongue up his tan chest to that laughing mouth.
I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking. Why he’s smiling like that. There are smiles that just make you want to smile back, but this smile makes you want to kiss it so hard.
He’s the first to move instead, his hand lifting only a fraction to rest on my face. “You look gorgeous,” he murmurs, and he brushes my lips with the pad of his thumb. I shiver involuntarily. “I could feast on your mouth . . . even longer than last time.”
“No, no kissing,” I breathe, but for a second, I let myself absorb the feeling of being close to someone who’s so much bigger and harder.
He runs his hand through my hair, and the sensation is so sweet and so intoxicating, I stay there. We stay like that.
He obviously knows he affects me. But he looks affected too, his body stonelike and buzzing with tension. We’re both affected. He brushes the tips of his fingers along the bare back of my dress, the warmth of his hand sending shivers through my body. We’re in an alcove, and there’s this intense you-and-me vibe.
Intense you-and-me vibe . . .
“I never do this.” I try to unwind his arms from around me. “Give me back my badge, please.”
“What for?” he murmurs, scowling softly.
“I need my badge. I’m . . . this isn’t . . .”
“No,” he says softly.
“I feel naked without my badge.”
He grins. “It’s still no.”
I groan and turn away, and when I glance at him, he’s looking at me with perfect amusement.
“Can I ask you some questions?” I say, reaching out a fast hand, catching him off guard and pulling my badge out of his jacket.
He laughs when I quickly step back so he can’t recover it; then he falls sober and recovers the distance he lost, his steps slow and measured. “Do you want to talk about Interface?”
I feel like Do you want to talk about Interface? has become code for something else.
“Yes,” I say primly, clipping the badge to my dress.
He looks at me. “Ask.” He seems pretty content to be interviewed, so I breathe a sigh of relief at last.
“What are your goals for Interface?”
He tucks a loose hair behind my ear. My ear burns when he eases back his hand. “To be number one in the market, leave the competition behind.”
I see him, hear him, his ambition, his determination, and their effects only grow stronger in me.
“Do you . . .” I trail off when he lifts his hand, caressing my cheek with the knuckles of one hand.
“You never stop working, do you?” he interrupts, scowling a little. “In that sense, you’re like me.”
I scowl too. “You’re answering with a question.”
“You’re not asking the right questions.”
“God, Saint! Why do you like to tease me so much?”
Laughing, he leans closer, until his face is level with mine and I can smell the soap on his skin. He holds me by the chin with the pad of his thumb and forefinger. “Why do you blush every time I do?”
“My skin is white, it’s almost translucent. I blush easily.”
“I only see you blush with me.”
His eyes are both comforting and disturbing, hot and cold, closed off at the same time they seem to be stripping me. “Do you think about me, Rachel?”
“At work, yes. I think about you in the office. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Partly, yes. I think about you in the office too, but I also think about you in bed.”
“Saint, the commissioner would like to speak with you. Miss Livingston, I’m Dean.”
I’m so hot right now, I’m mortified I get to meet Saint’s PR person like this, but I shake his hand nonetheless and try to act calm and collected, not in the least Saint-affected. “Dean, oh yes, so nice to meet you.”
Malcolm extracts the badge from my grip. “Press time is over,” he informs me. All the cold has fled his eyes; they look beyond warm, blazing like fireballs as he looks at me. “Take care of her, Dean.”
“I will.”
He goes inside.
Dean and I soon follow.
I ask Dean how long he’s worked at M4, how the hiring process was. We’re talking about his job, and how impressed I am with Interface, when I spot a familiar face across the room. I stiffen when the hawklike, tiny pointy nose and the long dark hair register in my brain. Victoria?
Her eyes widen from across the room, and she points at me, to my complete and utter horror. She starts charging over.
“Rachel?” she calls.
God, seeing a colleague from Edge, one whom I don’t trust and one who knows exactly what I am doing here, I did not expect to feel so small.
I brace myself for a second, then I stand to greet her.
Playing the perfect innocent, she seems absolutely delighted as I perform a quick, perfunctory introduction to Dean.
“Dean, wow, and you’re Saint’s PR person?”
“Victoria . . . meet me at the ladies’? Dean, will you excuse us?”
I try to appear calm and mermaid-like as I start in the direction of the restrooms, keeping my eyes ahead while Victoria walks smugly next to me.
Even the way she walks is like she’s having sex with the floor or something.
“Saint is absolutely eating you with his eyes. Why aren’t you clinging to him, chatting him up?” Victoria says when we’re finally in the ladies’.
I make sure that all the stalls are vacant, then go to the sink and open the water.
“It isn’t like that.”
“What? It isn’t like what? Like that dress isn’t begging to be peeled off—”
“Shhh!” I glance around at the stalls, checking a second time that they’re empty.
She follows and inspects every one of them herself. “Don’t worry, I’m not telling. Helen will kill me if this blows up.”
I rub my temples and sigh. “Can you explain to me what you’re doing here?”
“I called a few of my contacts when I heard you weren’t on the press list. I wanted to get the deets.”
“The deets on what, Victoria? I’m here. This is my . . . I’m here. And it’s all under control.”
She eyes me dubiously. “Okay. Well then.” She makes a ceremony out of washing her hands, taking forever to pat them dry. Then she checks her makeup. “I suggest you go out there and use your feminine wiles. You’re a woman, a pretty one. And in case you haven’t noticed, every other woman out there is giving Saint come-hither looks but you.”
She leaves.
I stand there, looking at myself in the mirror. I’ve lost all semblance of color from my face. I feel physically ill. I’m certain that if I walk out there, Saint will see right through me. He’ll know what I want from him, that I want everything including his secrets, and he’ll know why I shouldn’t have kissed him the way I did at the Interface building. What we did there felt so intimate to me, so . . . so unprofessional on my part, considering what I have to do.
All my insecurities rising to the surface, I call for a cab with my cell. I wait a few minutes, then slip out of the bathroom and find one of the women from the press-badge table.
“Could you please tell Mr. Saint that the woman whose badge he has in his pocket had to leave, she wasn’t feeling well?” I ask her, grateful when she agrees.
Outside, my cab is waiting across the street, and I leap over a few puddles and climb inside, the bottom of the dress completely ruined. I thank the driver when I get home, then I pull off my dress and my shoes, slip into my Northwestern T-shirt, and sit on the bed, motionless, thinking and feeling blank and numb.
I never thought I would ever do anything to hurt somebody. I always thought I was on the good guys’ side, on the side of rightness. Seeing Victoria today while I was both working and not working made me see what I am. What I’m doing.
I’m a hypocrite. I’m . . . a liar.
That little game bullies try to make you play when you’re a little kid—if you were forced to kill one to save the other, your mom or your dad, who would you choose? Sometimes in life you have to make a choice like that, a decision so hard you can’t make it, you would rather sacrifice yourself. But that still means Edge goes down.
I peer into Gina’s room, but she’s not back yet. I go back to my fetal position on the bed and I turn on a local gossip show on television, trying to distract myself.
“Tonight at the Interface inaugural, Malcolm Saint speaking . . .”
A snippet from a while ago appears, and my stomach tumbles as if I’ve just taken a steep drop on a roller coaster. The video cuts back to the news anchor and an image of us, Saint and me, as he took my hand and led me to the terrace.
OHMIGOD!
“A young lady’s early departure is causing confusion among the press; this is the image taken earlier of Saint with her, arousing much speculation as to whether Saint’s got his eye on her. Early word is that she’s a member of a small magazine in the area but wasn’t on the scene as press. First time ever Saint’s been linked to a reporter. It will be interesting to watch future developments.”
“Agreed,” the coanchor says.
“Ohmigod!” I turn off the TV, toss the remote aside, and cover my face in my hands. I’m breathing in and out, in and out, when my cell phone vibrates. It’s Helen.
You’re on the news. Vicky texted. Said he looks absolutely hooked? I’m impressed
I groan, “I’m going to throw up now.”
Sick with self-loathing over my disgusting duplicity, I grab a pillow and bury my head there. I don’t answer Helen. I delete her text instead, then I reach for my lifeline, the only thing that has kept me going when it’s gotten rough:
Love you, Momma
