My heart leaps as I sit up, inhale, then answer as casually as I can. “Hey, I thought you had something tonight.”
“For you, I do,” he growls softly, voice husky with lust. “Can I come over?”
WAAAAANT.
I want him, want him. WAAANT HIM. Just his voice on the phone runs in my veins like a shot of arousal. “I’m sleeping.”
“Lucky you.”
“Did you have a good time tonight?” I ask.
Is she going to be your favorite now?
“It was okay.”
“Oh.”
“I put an end to the rumors about us. Press should be off your back for a while.”
“Oh.” Delighted surprise flits through me. Is that why he was with her? “Thank you, I guess.”
“Maybe now you’ll go with me sometime to one of these events, Rachel.”
“I can’t,” I say, bed squeaking as I shift to my side and get more comfortable. “But what did you do tonight? Tell me what I missed out on.” I pull my covers over me, waiting for his voice to soothe me like it does.
“Same ole. Most interesting thing of the night was meeting one of my employees. A man who was in a coma, woke up able to speak several languages.”
I laugh. “That’s unbelievable! I love hearing about such inexplicably fascinating things.”
“I thought you’d find it interesting,” he says with pleasure. I hear the sound of a car door. Did he get home just now?
“Which ones? Languages, I mean.”
“German, French, and Russian.” Silence. Then . . . the elevator ting? “See, Rachel”—a teasing tone comes into his voice—“you would’ve enjoyed yourself. I’d have taken care of you tonight.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would have. Plus I have a thing for other languages. A man speaking German, oof.”
“I can speak German in your ear tonight.”
I laugh, then fall sober. I hear footsteps, then the door. I picture him in his room, want to be there with every inch of me. “No, we really can’t,” I breathe.
I hear a creak.
Did he just jump into bed?
“We can, you’re just afraid to,” he murmurs.
“Aren’t you? Afraid? Concerned?”
“I’m not concerned, I’m fascinated by this. By us.”
I feel all my shyness returning. Saint is so perceptive.
Does he feel this pull as strongly as I do?
When I hear him again, his voice surprises me with that deep, almost reassuring quality, its timbre as thick as syrup. “Considering I never expected to have an addiction like you, much less for it to last the week, I’m not letting this go, Rachel,” he whispers.
Hot from the tip of my head to my toes, I stare at the ceiling, warm and afraid, uncertain what to say and where we’d go if I admitted just how far into him I really am. I feel him in my body, still. I feel him still inside me. In places you can’t tattoo. In places nobody’s ever ventured to.
“A challenge, then,” I say. “I’m a challenge.”
“Maybe,” he says, still husky. “The challenge of my life.”
I laugh. “You’re teasing me now.”
He doesn’t laugh.
We stay silent for a while, so silent I can almost hear his heart beating through the phone. His slow breathing. “Good night, Saint.”
“Malcolm,” he quietly corrects.
“Malcolm.”
He chuckles then, at last. “Good night, Rachel. Think of me.”
Oh fuck. I groan.
What does he want from me? What do I want from HIM?
I need to talk to someone who won’t remind me what a mess I’ve made of things.
24
MOTHERS KNOW BEST
I need to see my mother. First, because I need to see that she’s looking a nice healthy color, not gaining or not losing weight because of unstable blood sugar. Second, because I know that she will have something wise to tell me, something that will help me see that maybe there’s a positive to take out of this freaking mess I’ve gotten myself into. I ask the girls to come over with me. I need girl time, which usually makes me feel wonderful. Tea, carbs, talking about Wynn’s aromatherapy shop and Emmett, Gina’s anecdotes about the department store, my mom telling me she’s stolen some time to paint in the room that used to be mine, and topics for my column.
My mother looks perfectly stable. She swears to me that her insulin’s working like clockwork and she’s had no recent blood sugar spikes, no episodes of hypoglycemia.
She’s enjoying the girls’ updates with a big, wide smile and eyes that are, by the second, getting bigger and wider than that.
“So she’s now going to take him down,” Wynn finishes filling my mom in.
My mother looks at me in surprise, then laughs. “Oh, but those young boys, they’re just being boys. They’re just being themselves—they’re certainly not evil. Malcolm Saint has been some sort of bachelor hero since he was born to that devil of a dad!”