Fuck. She is the last thing I need to have to deal with right now.
Still, I open messages and read the seven texts she’s sent in quick succession.
How is the photo shoot going?
Are you okay?
I know how much these things bother you, but you have to just keep your head up.
Don’t let the photographer get to you. Remember you’re beautiful and that’s what matters.
And don’t worry about that article in OK. Nobody believes that trash. Focus on wowing them at the shoot. Awards season is getting ready to kick off.
Did you take a tranquilizer this morning like I suggested?
Do you need me to come over?
It’s a lot, but then my mother always is. I ignore most of the texts—including the one about the article in OK, whatever it was. I wish I could ignore them all, but it’s the last text that alarms me, that takes me from weary to worried in the blink of an eye. She is more than capable of crashing my interview and frankly, that’s the last thing I want right now.
I’m fine
Don’t worry
Don’t come over. I’ll call you later
The phone beeps with her answering texts, but this time I ignore them. Instead, I shove the phone deep into my pocket and try to get her well-meaning words out of my head. She’s not subtle—doesn’t know how to be—but her concern is genuine and that’s what matters. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
As long as she doesn’t come over here and start babbling to Ian about whatever is running through her head, everything will be fine.
But the threat of her imminent appearance still hangs over me and I decide it might be best to hurry this along. Just in case she disregards my instructions not to come. After all, I can’t very well leave my mother standing on the front porch of the house that had once been hers, banging on the door to get in as I rush Ian out the back.
Vanity Fair would not be impressed.
“Is there anything else you want to see in here?” I ask him even as I move toward the door.
He puts down the book he’d picked up when I’d been texting—The Lover by Marguerite Duras—and says, “Actually, yes.”
I wait for the inevitable request to see my bedroom, for the inevitable innuendos and the lust he doesn’t even try to hide.
They don’t come. Instead he turns slowly, examining every nook and cranny of my over-the-top sitting room. His gaze lingers at the watercolors on the wall above the couch, and on the guitar resting drunkenly in the corner.
He’s so quiet in those moments, so self-possessed and reflective and not what I was expecting at all, that I can’t help wondering…can’t help thinking…what it would be like to be with him.
The soft touch of his hands on my skin.
The wet press of his mouth to my neck.
The silken glide of his hair across my lips, my breasts, my stomach.
Heat sparks deep inside of me, unfurls in my abdomen. My nipples tighten of their own volition and I’m suddenly uncomfortably aware of the feel of my clothes against my skin.
Is this what it feels like, then? Is this heightened awareness, this heightened sensitivity, what everyone is on about all the time?
Is this what real, true desire feels like?
His gaze meets mine, then, and the question—whatever it is—is still there. But with it is a sudden awareness, a knowledge of what I’m thinking. What I’m feeling. I can see it in the rapid rise and fall of his chest, can feel it in the wave of heat emanating from him. Can hear it in the sudden harsh intake of breath that shatters the silence of the room.
“Veronica.” My name is husky on his lips, dark, and as he takes a step toward me, I take two back.
I never retreat, never give up ground. Not in public and never, ever in private.
But this is different than my usual encounters. This is real and I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do with that. With him.
“Veronica.” This time when he says my name, it’s a question mixed with some underlying thread of emotion I can’t quite identify.
He doesn’t come any closer and still I take another step back. Still I seek to put distance between us. He makes me nervous when for years I’ve made a point never to let a man matter enough to make me nervous. The fact that he does…I don’t know. Not what it means or what I’m supposed to do about it.
I lick my lips, force moisture into my too dry mouth. “What else do you want to see?”
“What?” He sounds as dazed as I feel.
I swallow, ignoring the bowling ball in my stomach and the heat still sliding along right under my skin. “You said you had something else you wanted to see in here. What is it?”
“Something that matters.”
“I don’t understand.” Is this sudden onset of lust making me stupid or is he talking in riddles?
“I want you to pick one thing from this room—besides the ceiling your dad had made for you—that matters to you and I want you to tell me why. It can be anything.”
Fuck. No.
Fuck, no.