Manwhore +1

“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.

FOUR WEEKS + 1 HOUR

“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.