The One In My Heart

“Is that why you don’t want to see me in them anymore?”


“Exactly. Everything you look great in must be stripped off.”

Unhurriedly he kissed me everywhere. Without any haste he entered me. We kissed, our bodies joined, and went on kissing, until slow-simmering pleasures again more turned needy and frantic.

“I love the taste of your lips,” he whispered in my ear. “I love the texture of your skin. I love the sound of your breaths. “

And then: “I love everything about…about this moment.”

The orgasm that ensued was the most intense one yet.


AFTERWARD BENNETT CLICKED OFF THE TV and wrapped an arm around me. I snuggled closer to him, warm in his embrace.

Was this the illusion of intimacy I’d wanted?

“In Henry V, King Henry says to Kate, ‘You have witchcraft in your lips,’” Bennett murmured sleepily. “Do you know where you have witchcraft, Eva?”

“Do tell,” I answered archly, expecting him to heap praise on my private parts.

He pressed a kiss into my shoulder. “In your eyes.”

What a dirty, rotten thing to say to your fake girlfriend, who’d have to carry around the memory for the rest of her life, wishing she could hear it again.

Everything he said about us always had that glossy patina of plausible deniability—compliments and declarations that were extravagant but ultimately insubstantial.

And I loved and hated them as Gollum loved and hated his precious.

Bennett’s breath slowed to the deep, quiet rhythm of sleep, while I stared into the darkness, beset with an angst I’d come to know all too well, exactly the kind of turmoil I’d hoped to avoid by refusing him again and again.

Why couldn’t he stick to business? I could handle business. I could even handle an occasional bout of frenetic coupling. But I was powerless before anything that lent itself to interpretations of deeper feelings on his part. It was love at first sight. You are the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time. Yes, this is what I’ve always wanted, to make love to you with nothing between us.

When he spoke like that, hope pierced me like arrows—and hurt almost as much. Because I wanted so much to believe every word, every sentiment, plausible deniability be damned. I wanted to forget that we were essentially onstage and focus only on his eyes, his voice, and those words of deeply felt avowal.

Don’t fantasize, Eva, came my sensible-grown-woman voice. You must look at the facts. You must—

Forget lightbulbs turning on. No, this was every massive star in the sky going supernova at once: a blinding blaze of insight.

I was a scientist, a pretty damn good one too. A core principle of science was that the hypothesis must fit the facts: One didn’t bend, ignore, or dismiss facts to suit one’s hypothesis.

All along, I’d postulated that Bennett was using me for other goals. At the beginning my hypothesis made sense—he’d stated as much. But now I had many more facts at my fingertips, and…and…

I was almost afraid to think it. But if I looked at the entire picture objectively, it was much more likely that I wasn’t simply a means to an end. I was an end in and of myself.

Take the time line. What had Damaris Vandermeer told me at Charlotte’s wedding? He went out with my friend a few times last summer and then dumped her like a bag of cement. I’d put money on it that the friend was, on paper at least, perfect girlfriend material, with a strong connection to the Somerset family. Bennett hadn’t gone out with her merely for fun, but to investigate her potential as a partner in his quest for reconciliation.

But then that had gone no further. Why? Because I came into the picture at the end of summer. Because our one-night stand—hell, our one-hour stand—had been as memorable for him as it was for me.

He reconsidered his strategy and started laying the groundwork for the professor. Had we not run into each other the day after Christmas, he’d still have made sure we met again via the new ties he’d cultivated with Zelda.

From that point on, it had been quite the pursuit. The million-dollar carrot aside, his parents aside, what had he been trying to do? To get me to spend as much time with him as possible. He didn’t need to get to Amalfi Coast a day ahead of his parents. He didn’t need to ask me out for Valentine’s Day. He didn’t need to scheme for me to spend the night.

He wanted to.

Only minutes ago, when he’d said, I love everything about…about this moment, that was him barely restraining himself from saying I love everything about you.

As for why he never told the truth except with a varnish of plausible deniability…It wasn’t to play games with me, but to protect himself. I was a begrudging lover. I turned him down constantly. And I was almost always trying to put greater distance between us. If I were a man who had been badly burned in love, I’d approach me with the same kind of cautiousness.