Manwhore +1

My eyes well with unshed tears.

“How to stop at four? You know? I never expected . . . I never expected you to be the way you are . . .”

The heat is stealing into my face and I can’t bear having his eyes on me. It makes me anxious that I can’t read them so I stare at his throat, at his beautiful, perfect tie.

“I wasn’t going to write the article anymore. I told my boss I wouldn’t, except Victoria—I told you about her. Remember? She’s . . . she’s the one who always seems to do better than me. She released her article and I was desperate for you to hear my side.”

I inhale shakily, my eyes still on fire.

“I can’t bear to think what you think of me but I need you to please believe me when I say not one moment with you was a lie. Not one.”

With a slow, deliberate move that makes me breathless, he stands from his chair and walks to the window, giving me his back.

Oh god, what must he think of me! How he must hate me. Think I used him. Lied to him.

I stand and take a few steps but I stop when I hear him take four deep breaths, and just like that, I crumble, and a tear rolls down my cheek.

“Malcolm, I am so sorry,” I say.

I quickly wipe the tear away before he can see it. He’s still facing the window as he mutters fuck me under his breath and shoves his hands into his pants pockets, his anger like an incoming hurricane in the room. It seems to be costing him everything to keep that simmering energy of his on a leash. I have never seen him like this. Not ever. He’s under control, but there’s a storm inside him and I can feel it.

Finally, he speaks, and his voice is so low and controlled that I’m afraid of the force of the anger it conceals. “You could’ve talked to me. When you kissed me. When you told me about Victoria. When you needed my comfort, Rachel. When your neighbor died. When you couldn’t see eye to eye with your family and friends. You came to me when you needed me. You came to me when I needed you . . . you could have talked to fucking me, trusted fucking me.” He turns and leaves me breathless when I feel the full force of his flashing green eyes on me. “I could’ve made this go away so fast.” He snaps his finger. “Like that. With one call.”

“I was afraid of losing you if you knew!”

A flash of bleak disappointment crosses his face, and as he stares me down, his green eyes could melt steel. “So you kept on lying instead.”

I wince and stare at his throat.

An eternity passes.

“There’s nothing more here for you, Rachel. Except a job. Take it.” He goes back to his chair and drops into his seat.

I can hardly speak. “There’s you here. Don’t shut me out because I made a mistake.”

As I walk back, it’s the first time I feel his eyes run over me, evaluating what I’m wearing. They were supposed to make me feel powerful and good, these clothes, and I feel tender and naked and fake. So fake. Thinking any clothes would make him see me differently. Thinking something so superficial could hide the real me—the flawed me.

I’m blushing when I sit again, and Saint doesn’t say anything at all. He’s stroking his thumb slowly over his lower lip, the only part of his body moving now.

“Consider my job offer,” he says.

I shake my head. “I don’t want you as my boss.”

“I’m a fair boss, Rachel.”

“I don’t want you as a boss.”

I wait a moment. His gaze smolders with frustration.

“You shouldn’t want me here,” I blurt out. “I am not a good journalist, Malcolm. If you want to know the truth, I lost the heart for it. I’m worthless to you. I’m not someone you will probably ever trust again.”

He cocks his head with a slight frown, as if curious over this development. “Take a week to think this through. In fact, take two.” He watches me as I struggle for words.

“I don’t want to hold you up—”

“You’re not.”

The way he studies my features causes a thousand tiny pinpricks of awareness inside of me. I know this stare. It’s a stare that makes my heart race because I can tell he’s trying to get a read on me.

“What’s so wrong about working with me?” He narrows his eyes.

I shake my head with a soft laugh. Would I even know where to begin?

I think of his assistants, half in love with him or worse. I don’t want this to be me. I don’t want to be forty, in love with a man I can never have. At least when I had my career goals, ambitious as they were, I always imagined I’d be able to attain them someday. But him? He’s already as unreachable to me as all of the sixty-seven Jupiter moons.

“Even if I dared leave Edge, which I won’t, but even if I did, I’d never accept a job I was unsure I could even do.”

“You can do it,” he says, firm and calm.

“I’m telling you, I can’t.” I laugh a little and lower my face.

When he speaks, his voice is soberly low. “I’ll stop asking you to work for me when you prove to me you can’t write anymore.”

“How am I supposed to do that? Write you something bad?” I scowl in confusion.

He seems to ponder that for a moment. “Write one of my speeches. Write the one for tomorrow. You’re familiar with Interface, its business model, objectives, cultural footprint.”

I narrow my eyes.

“If it’s as bad as you say, I’ll back off,” he adds with the kind of lazy indulgence only people who hold all the cards emit.

He sits behind his desk with a familiar little twinkle in his eye, so powerful and tanned and dark-haired and green-eyed and toe-curlingly masculine, challenging me to rise to his bait. The temptation is so strong, I have to fight it.

“I can make it bad enough you’ll stop asking me to work for you.”

“But you won’t.” His eyes gleam, and his lips form a smile that causes all kinds of visceral tugs inside me. “I know you won’t.”

I sit here, struggling.

I want to see him. I want to have an excuse to see him.

“This wouldn’t mean I’m working for you. You won’t pay me for this. It’s just so you can see that writing is . . . hard. I’m not who you need at M4, Malcolm.”

I’m feeling tingles in my stomach from the smile he wears. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“When do you need it by?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“And the event is at noon?”