“You’re assuming that what happened on Saturday will get out. We could just not tell anyone,” I suggested. I thought back to the wedding, and we’d been discreet. No one else had been around when he’d ducked in and out of my hotel room. And afterward, I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. I’d switched off my phone yesterday so I wasn’t distracted during the drive home, and then I’d crawled into bed before my parents got back from their weekend away. My sole focus had been catching up on some of the sleep that the man sitting in front of me had stolen from me.
He looked at me so intently, it was almost as if he were trying to read my mind. “You’ve not told . . . anyone?”
“I know it must hurt your ego, Nathan, but Saturday night wasn’t the first time I’d ever had sex, and I’m not a teenager, bursting to share all the sordid details with my girlfriends.” Okay, so before Saturday it had been a while since I’d had sex. And I’d never had sex like the kind Nathan and I had. But he didn’t need to know either of those things. The fact was, I hadn’t told anyone.
“Not even your mum?”
“My mother?” I asked, making sure I’d heard him correctly. If he knew who my mother was, the woman who had broken the story about him and Audrey Alpern yesterday, he’d definitely want me off his profile. But how would he know? Unlike me, my mother didn’t use my dad’s surname. And although some people knew who I was related to, it wasn’t something I shared widely.
“Or your dad, sister, best friend, whoever you talk about sex with?”
“Have you told anyone?” I asked.
He grimaced. “Like who? Why would I tell anyone?”
“Right. And why would I?”
He exhaled. “So, if we kept it between us . . .”
“We’re the only two people who will ever know. And we’ll both keep our jobs.”
“Unless you decide it’s too good an angle to give up. I mean, it’s a little ironic. Don’t you agree? You’re here to find out whether or not I’m focused on partying or Astro and you’ve slept with me? I mean, you’re a source for your own story.”
He was missing the point. “If I worked for the Sunday Mercury, that might work. But I’m at the Post. Gossip doesn’t sell our newspaper. They don’t want to hear about the four orgasms I had on Saturday night.”
The corner of his mouth twitched as if he was trying to hold back a smile. He steepled his fingers in front of him, his large hands thrust in front of me as if reminding me what they were capable of.
“I think you mean five,” he said, flashing me a grin before moving on. “So, you’re saying there’s no upside in you confessing?”
“I’m saying there’s a huge downside. This is a big enough tangle for the two of us to be sure that it’s a pure coincidence. If it comes out, no one will give us the benefit of the doubt and we’ll both be painted as incompetent, unprofessional idiots.”
“So, it’s like some kind of Cold War pact. I’m America and you’re . . .”
My brain scrambled to keep up with his line of thought. When it dawned on me, I put on my best Russian accent. “I’m Soviet Russia.”
“Mutually assured destruction,” he said, grinning at me.
“Except that it’s our careers and reputations that are at risk of annihilation rather than the planet.”
“A small distinction. And I hope we’re not going to be at war. Cold or otherwise.” His eyebrows pulsed and I remembered why I’d fallen under his spell on Saturday. Did he have any idea how good it had been for me?
“Right,” I said. “Not at war. But our pact doesn’t mean I can’t write an honest account of what I find. You can’t renege if you don’t like how the article turns out.”
“Deal,” he replied, grinning in a totally delicious way that made my belly lift and swoop.
I reached across the table to shake on it and regretted it as soon as he slid his palm against mine. Heat burned through my skin, sending a hot pulse across my body. I snatched my hand away. I’d have to avoid any incidental physical contact with him, ensure he didn’t find out who my mother was, and then write the article of my career—and everything would be completely fine.
Eleven
Madison
Sometimes I wondered if I’d just followed in my mother’s footsteps because of a complete lack of creativity on my part, but sitting in the rescheduled meeting between Nathan and his operations director, I sent up a small prayer of thanks that I hadn’t gone into business. It was so boring. I wondered whether matchsticks were actually effective at holding eyelids open or whether it was just a turn of phrase. I reached across to grab the coffee pot to top myself up. I was going to die of caffeine poisoning if all the meetings were like this. How did Nathan stand it?