Manwhore +1 (2 page)

He won’t take his eyes off me.

“Mr. Saint?”

He frowns a little as he realizes he wasn’t listening, only looking at me, and says, “Yes.”

He leans back and extends his arm out on the back of the couch, and I feel touched by his eyes as Merrick takes out files and paperwork from a folder while I sit stiff and tight in my seat.

Saint’s energy field is massive and overpowering and so unreadable today. All I can think is: Do you hate me, my Sin?

“How long have you been at
Edge
, Miss Livingston?” his man is asking.

I hesitate, and notice the slow buzzing of Saint’s cell phone resting beside him on the couch. He reaches out to power it off with one hand, his thumb swiftly stroking once across the screen.

The corner of my mouth tingles unexpectedly.

I shift in my seat. “Several years,” I answer.

“Only child, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Says here you won a CJA award for commentary last year?”

“Yes. I . . .” I search for a word through all the
I’m sorry
s and
I love you
s foremost in my head right now. “. . . was really humbled to be even considered.”

Slowly shifting in place and folding his outstretched arm, Saint absently strokes the pad of his thumb over his lower lip, studying me with a gaze that gleams with intelligence, surveying me in silence.

“I see here that you started working at
Edge
before you graduated from Northwestern, correct?” Merrick continues.

“Yes, actually, I did.” I tug the sleeve of my sweater, trying to keep my attention on his questions.

In my peripheral, I still can’t stop being aware of what
he
is doing; Sin. How he sips from his glass of water, how he smells, how tightly his fingers curl around the glass.

His dark hair, the crescents of his eyelashes, how they frame his eyes. His lips. So unsmiling. His eyes, so untwinkling.

I turn my head to face him, and it’s almost as if he was waiting for me to turn.

He stares at me, so deeply into me the way only
he
can, and green becomes my whole world. A world of purely arctic, untouchable, unbreakable green ice.

Nothing this cool should have the ability to make me this hot. But there is heat in the ice. Ice burns just as much as heat does.

“I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought.” I jerk my eyes away.

Flustered, I shift in my seat and look at Merrick. The man is staring at me strangely and with a bit of pity. There’s a slight movement in the direction of Saint as he shifts his shoulders on the couch to face Merrick better, and I notice
Saint
is looking at
Merrick
with a dark but controlled look of displeasure.

“Cut through the bullshit, Merrick.”

“Of course, Mr. Saint.”

Ohgod. The fact that Saint has noticed his man is making me nervous makes me blush tenfold.

“Miss Livingston,” Merrick begins again, pausing as though he’s about to say something monumental. “Mr. Saint has an interest in expanding the services we offer our Interface subscribers. We’re offering fresh content from specific sources, mainly a group of young journalists, columnists, and reporters we’re planning to take on.”

Interface. His newest enterprise. Growing like a monster—a force to be reckoned with on its own, it’s been breaking through all the technological and market barriers in its expansion. I’m not surprised that Saint is taking it into this next step; it’s a genius move, from an admirable businessman, the next logical move for a company just named among the top ten places to work for.

“I love it, Malcolm. I love the idea,” I tell him.

Ohmigod!

Did I just call him Malcolm?

I seem to catch him off guard. For a fraction of a second, his eyes shadow. It’s as if there’s a storm brewing inside him . . . but the next instant, he cools it back down.

“Well, that’s wonderful to hear,” Merrick says then. “Mr. Saint has an eye for talent, as you know, Miss Livingston. And he wants to make it very clear that he means to bring you on board.”

Sin has been watching me the whole time Merrick speaks. He watches as the smile leaves my face, replaced by shock instead. “You’re offering me a job?”

“Yes.” Merrick is the one who responds. “Indeed, Miss Livingston. A job at M4.”

I’m stunned speechless.

I stare at my lap as I register what I heard.

Sin doesn’t want to talk to me.

He’s barely affected by me at all.

He called me, after four weeks, for
this
.

I lift my gaze to his, and the instant our eyes lock, I feel a crackle in my system. I feel it like a jolt. Forcing my gaze to stay on his face, which is beyond unreadable, I try to keep my voice level. “A job is the last thing I’d expected you’d offer. Is that all you want from me?”

He leans forward in a fluid move, elbows to his knees, his stare never leaving me. “I want you to take it.”

Oh.

God.

He sounds just as stern as when he called
Dibs
on me that night . . .

Knotted up inside, I tear my eyes away and stare out the window for a moment. I want to call him Malcolm, but he’s not Malcolm anymore to me, I realize. He’s not even Saint, who teased me mercilessly until I caved. This is Malcolm Saint. Looking at me as if he never held me in his arms.

“You
know
I can’t leave my job,” I tell him, turning.

He doesn’t seem bothered. “We’ll meet your price.”

Shaking my head with a little laugh of disbelief, I rub my temples.

“Merrick,” is all he says.

And Merrick instantly continues.

Sitting tensely in his seat, a huge contrast to Saint’s lounging form, Mr. Merrick explains, “As I was saying, we’ll be offering news content to our subscribers, and Mr. Saint has been a longtime fan of your voice. He appreciates its honesty and the angles you take.”

Red-hot color spreads up my body. “Thank you. I’m super flattered,” I say. “But there’s really only one answer,” I add breathlessly, “and I’ve already given it to you.”

Mr. Merrick forges on with a look from Saint. “This is the proposal for the job and we need an acceptance or decline within the week.”

He fans a set of papers over the table.

I stare at them, unable to register, to comprehend, what this means.

“Why would you do this?” I ask.

“Because I can.” Saint looks at me levelly. His gaze is intense. Matter-of-fact, even. “I have more to offer you here than where you are.”

He’s not moving, he’s utterly motionless, but he’s just set my world spinning to the thousandth degree.

“Take the papers, Rachel,” he says.

“I don’t . . . want to.”

“Think about it. Read it before you say no to me.”

We stare for a beat too long.

He stands with the grace of a feline uncurling. Malcolm Kyle Preston Logan
Saint.
CEO of the most powerful corporation in the city. Obsession of the ladies. Elusive as a comet. Relentless and ruthless. “My people will contact you by the end of the week.”

I wonder all of a sudden if there will ever be a time when this man stops surprising me. I really admire his composure. I admire many things about him. If I thought for a moment that we could fight it out, I was wrong. Saint won’t waste his time on that. He’s too busy reaching for his never-ending ambitions, conquering the world.

And me? I’m just trying to piece mine together from all the debris on the floor.

Inhaling, I gather the papers quietly. I take them and don’t say goodbye or thank you or anything at all, just hear my shoes as I leave.

I open the door and can’t help but steal one last peek into his office; my last glimpse of him is leaning forward on the couch with his hands on his knees, exhaling as he drags a hand over his face.

“Will you be needing anything else from me, Mr. Saint?” asks Merrick with a tone that is almost
begging
for more work.

When Saint lifts his head, he catches me watching him. We freeze and then just stare. At each other. He looks at me warily, and I look at him with all the regret I feel. There are so many things I want to say to him, but this is how I leave, all my words morphed into silence as I shut the door behind me.

His assistants watch me leave.

I board the elevator quietly and stare at my reflection on the steel doors as I ride to the lobby. I suppose I look pretty, my hair down, my attire draping, soft and feminine, against my body. But as I stare into my eyes, I look so lost that I want to dive inside to find myself.

And I realize that love is as ever-changing as a sky or as an ocean: always there, but not always sunny or clear or calm.

Outside, I flag a cab, and as we drive off, for a second I turn and stare at M4’s beautiful mirrored façade.
So regal. So impenetrable
, I think, until my phone buzzes.

WHAT HAPPENED?!

Did u KISS AND MAKE UP?!

TELL US! WYNN IS LEAVING IN 3 MINS AND WANTS TO KNOW

DID HE READ YOUR ARTICLE? Did it make him MELT?

I read Gina’s texts and can’t even summon the energy to text back as the cab pulls into traffic.

“Where to?” the cab driver asks.

“Just drive for a bit, please.”

I look out at Chicago, a city I love and that frightens me because I never seem to feel quite safe in it. Everything looks the same. Chicago is still busy, and windy, electric, modern, wonderful and unsafe. It’s the very same city I’ve lived in all my life.

The city didn’t change. The one who changed was me.

Like a thousand women before me, I fell in love with the city’s favorite bachelor billionaire player.

And now I will never be the same.

After what happened, he will never be mine, just like I always feared.

“I
couldn’t get a read on him. I just couldn’t. I was too overwhelmed just by seeing him and having all these things to say and knowing that he must hate me and didn’t really mean to talk to me at all.” I glance away, inhaling.

“Rachel.”

That seems to be all that Gina can say. She falls morgue-quiet after that.

A few minutes ago, I finally asked the cab driver to drop me off at a Starbucks simply because I didn’t want to go home. Gina immediately caught up with me, and now we’re at a table in the back, in our own little world.

“I am so sad, Gina.” I hide my eyes behind one hand for a minute, my elbow propped on the table. “It’s really over now.”

“Fuck this.” Gina purses her lips. She’s scowling as usual. “Does he even care that you fell in love regardless of him being a player—a manwhore and whatnot?”

“Gina!” I scowl.

She scowls back.

I shouldn’t even be talking to her about this. Gina warned me a thousand times that this would happen. She’d said
Don’t get involved with him
until she tired of it. Because Saint has a record and I was on assignment. But could I have stopped myself from being swept away?

He’s a cyclone and I walked straight into the eye of it when I agreed to write that exposé.

Falling hadn’t been in the plans. Falling for a guy had never even been in my
life
plan. Gina and I were supposed to be single and happy forever—workaholics, best friends for life, and tight with our families. She’d gotten her heart broken before and she’d passed on all the tidbits to me so that I didn’t have to go through that too. And like that I had protected myself. I was never as interested in men as I was in furthering my career. But Saint is not just any man. He didn’t seduce me in just any way. And what we shared wasn’t just . . . anything.

I’m a columnist and I should have a concise word to describe him, but I have nothing other than “Sin.”

Exhilarating, addictive, he is a player who plays it right, a billionaire who is used to being asked for things from people—and in the end, I hate that he must have felt that I was just like everyone else in his life, wanting to get something from him.

No, Rachel, you’re not like everyone else.
You’re worse.

He sleeps with one groupie for four nights, or four groupies for one. He gives them nothing of himself. Maybe he gives them a check for the charities they ask for, as I once heard one ask him, but this doesn’t put a dent in his account. He lets them feed him grapes in his yacht, if they want to; he’s too spoiled by women to stop them. But he doesn’t give them another passing glance when they leave. But with you, Rachel? He let you
in
. He fed
you
a grape in his yacht. He came to your campout not because he likes sleeping outdoors but because he knew
you
would be there. He told you about
four,
his lucky number. The number that symbolizes him going above and beyond the norm. Oh god, I have never been so aware of how deep he’d let me in until I stood before him today, completely cast out of what had become my own personal paradise.

“I would’ve said so many things to him if his man hadn’t been there discussing a position for me.” I pull out the papers and pass them over. “I could hardly concentrate on this with Saint in the room. Even his man was affected.”

She reads under her breath. “An offer of employment for Rachel Livingston . . .” She lowers the paper and stares at me with those sultry dark eyes that are now as puzzled as I feel.

“Interface is expanding into news,” I explain.

She stares down at the papers. “If you don’t want this, I do.”

I kick her under the table. “Be serious.”

“I need more sugar.” She goes to the condiment table, returns, and settles back down with a little packet of sugar she adds to her coffee and stirs.

“What’s a man like him, the CEO, doing in a meeting like that?” She frowns. “Saint is too smart, Rachel. He wanted to make sure you showed up. He fucking
wants
you there. He is offering health insurance for your next of kin. Your mom. Do you realize what this means for you on the work front?”

My mom is my weakness.

Yes, I do realize.

Saint is offering me . . . the world.