“You never stop working, do you?” he interrupts, scowling a little. “In that sense, you’re like me.”
I scowl too. “You’re answering with a question.”
“You’re not asking the right questions.”
“God, Saint! Why do you like to tease me so much?”
Laughing, he leans closer, until his face is level with mine and I can smell the soap on his skin. He holds me by the chin with the pad of his thumb and forefinger. “Why do you blush every time I do?”
“My skin is white, it’s almost translucent. I blush easily.”
“I only see you blush with me.”
His eyes are both comforting and disturbing, hot and cold, closed off at the same time they seem to be stripping me. “Do you think about me, Rachel?”
“At work, yes. I think about you in the office. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Partly, yes. I think about you in the office too, but I also think about you in bed.”
“Saint, the commissioner would like to speak with you. Miss Livingston, I’m Dean.”
I’m so hot right now, I’m mortified I get to meet Saint’s PR person like this, but I shake his hand nonetheless and try to act calm and collected, not in the least Saint-affected. “Dean, oh yes, so nice to meet you.”
Malcolm extracts the badge from my grip. “Press time is over,” he informs me. All the cold has fled his eyes; they look beyond warm, blazing like fireballs as he looks at me. “Take care of her, Dean.”
“I will.”
He goes inside.
Dean and I soon follow.
I ask Dean how long he’s worked at M4, how the hiring process was. We’re talking about his job, and how impressed I am with Interface, when I spot a familiar face across the room. I stiffen when the hawklike, tiny pointy nose and the long dark hair register in my brain. Victoria?
Her eyes widen from across the room, and she points at me, to my complete and utter horror. She starts charging over.
“Rachel?” she calls.
God, seeing a colleague from Edge, one whom I don’t trust and one who knows exactly what I am doing here, I did not expect to feel so small.
I brace myself for a second, then I stand to greet her.
Playing the perfect innocent, she seems absolutely delighted as I perform a quick, perfunctory introduction to Dean.
“Dean, wow, and you’re Saint’s PR person?”
“Victoria . . . meet me at the ladies’? Dean, will you excuse us?”
I try to appear calm and mermaid-like as I start in the direction of the restrooms, keeping my eyes ahead while Victoria walks smugly next to me.
Even the way she walks is like she’s having sex with the floor or something.
“Saint is absolutely eating you with his eyes. Why aren’t you clinging to him, chatting him up?” Victoria says when we’re finally in the ladies’.
I make sure that all the stalls are vacant, then go to the sink and open the water.
“It isn’t like that.”
“What? It isn’t like what? Like that dress isn’t begging to be peeled off—”
“Shhh!” I glance around at the stalls, checking a second time that they’re empty.
She follows and inspects every one of them herself. “Don’t worry, I’m not telling. Helen will kill me if this blows up.”
I rub my temples and sigh. “Can you explain to me what you’re doing here?”
“I called a few of my contacts when I heard you weren’t on the press list. I wanted to get the deets.”
“The deets on what, Victoria? I’m here. This is my . . . I’m here. And it’s all under control.”
She eyes me dubiously. “Okay. Well then.” She makes a ceremony out of washing her hands, taking forever to pat them dry. Then she checks her makeup. “I suggest you go out there and use your feminine wiles. You’re a woman, a pretty one. And in case you haven’t noticed, every other woman out there is giving Saint come-hither looks but you.”
She leaves.
I stand there, looking at myself in the mirror. I’ve lost all semblance of color from my face. I feel physically ill. I’m certain that if I walk out there, Saint will see right through me. He’ll know what I want from him, that I want everything including his secrets, and he’ll know why I shouldn’t have kissed him the way I did at the Interface building. What we did there felt so intimate to me, so . . . so unprofessional on my part, considering what I have to do.
All my insecurities rising to the surface, I call for a cab with my cell. I wait a few minutes, then slip out of the bathroom and find one of the women from the press-badge table.
“Could you please tell Mr. Saint that the woman whose badge he has in his pocket had to leave, she wasn’t feeling well?” I ask her, grateful when she agrees.
Outside, my cab is waiting across the street, and I leap over a few puddles and climb inside, the bottom of the dress completely ruined. I thank the driver when I get home, then I pull off my dress and my shoes, slip into my Northwestern T-shirt, and sit on the bed, motionless, thinking and feeling blank and numb.
I never thought I would ever do anything to hurt somebody. I always thought I was on the good guys’ side, on the side of rightness. Seeing Victoria today while I was both working and not working made me see what I am. What I’m doing.
I’m a hypocrite. I’m . . . a liar.
That little game bullies try to make you play when you’re a little kid—if you were forced to kill one to save the other, your mom or your dad, who would you choose? Sometimes in life you have to make a choice like that, a decision so hard you can’t make it, you would rather sacrifice yourself. But that still means Edge goes down.
I peer into Gina’s room, but she’s not back yet. I go back to my fetal position on the bed and I turn on a local gossip show on television, trying to distract myself.
“Tonight at the Interface inaugural, Malcolm Saint speaking . . .”
A snippet from a while ago appears, and my stomach tumbles as if I’ve just taken a steep drop on a roller coaster. The video cuts back to the news anchor and an image of us, Saint and me, as he took my hand and led me to the terrace.
OHMIGOD!
“A young lady’s early departure is causing confusion among the press; this is the image taken earlier of Saint with her, arousing much speculation as to whether Saint’s got his eye on her. Early word is that she’s a member of a small magazine in the area but wasn’t on the scene as press. First time ever Saint’s been linked to a reporter. It will be interesting to watch future developments.”