I remembered my T-shirt. To err is human was printed on the front. To know the rest, he would have had to turn around and watch me from behind.
He reached for a pear from the bowl on the island. “I did.”
My gaze was riveted to his hand, the loose yet secure hold he had on the pear.
“You didn’t ask your housekeeper to do it?”
“She was out most of the week. Just came back this afternoon.”
I looked down at the smudges on my plate—all that remained of my dessert. A hot thrill had zigzagged through me when I’d thought that he’d made the trips because he’d wanted to. But now it seemed he’d done it only because he had to…
“That’s really nice of you,” I said, trying not to sound as deflated as I felt. “I hope it didn’t interfere with your schedule.”
He bit into the pear. “I traded an overnight shift with a colleague.”
His shirt stretched with the movement, revealing a braided cord around his neck, which dipped with the weight of an unseen pendant. It shocked me how badly I wanted to know the shape and material of that pendant. “When do you have to take that overnight shift?”
“Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow was Saturday. I turned my spoon over. “Did I ruin your weekend?”
“Effectively. I was going to sleep for thirty hours straight. Now I’ll have to work for thirty hours straight.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. I can’t let a dog starve. Besides, I didn’t help entirely out of altruism—Biscuit was going to be my introduction to this really beautiful woman.”
I licked the back of my teeth. Finally, an expression of unambiguous interest on his part. But what exactly was the nature of this interest? “Well, introductions are done.”
“So they are,” he said softly.
Our gazes held again. The fridge hummed. Rain pounded on the skylight. My breath echoed in my head, all erratic agitation.
“Would you like some more?” He broke the silence, pointing at the tiramisu dish with the half-eaten pear in his hand.
“No, thank you. It was delicious, though.”
He took my spoon and plate to the sink. I stared at his back. The shirt was a perfect fit across his shoulders, hinting at the lean, graceful build underneath.
“If I understand you correctly, you are the stereotypical workaholic, looking for some no-strings-attached sex.”
Shit. Did I say that?
Or should I instead be surprised that it had taken me this long to get to this point, I who had invited myself to his house after midnight on the flimsiest of excuses?
It was never tiramisu that I wanted, was it?
He turned around and considered me. The flare of heat on my skin—as if someone had aimed a blowtorch at my throat and cheeks. “I wouldn’t say no-strings-attached literally—sometimes it’s fun to be tied up in bed. But yes, a metric ton of sex is right near the top of my Christmas wish list.”
He bit into the pear again. The sight of his teeth sinking into the firm flesh of the fruit caused a jolt of lust in me such as I hadn’t felt in years, perhaps ever.
Everything about our encounter was out of the ordinary. I couldn’t tell whether I wasn’t quite myself—or whether I was more myself than I’d ever been anywhere, with anyone.
The rain let up all of a sudden, its steady drumming softening to a pitter-patter on the roof. The fridge, too, fell quiet. But my heart continued to rattle my rib cage, its fast, hard slams thunderous in my ears.
He lowered his gaze for a moment, then looked back at me from underneath his eyelashes. “Is silence consent?”
Yes.
I wanted him to come closer. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted him to take whatever sorcery he was working with and enfold me securely inside.
My hand settled around my throat. My skin was hot, my pulse a rapid staccato. “Not to a metric ton of sex. Maybe once, tonight. I’m saving myself for marriage.”
“So am I, but you can lead me astray anytime.”
It was the sexiest thing anyone had said to me in a while, so much so that I had to clear my throat before I could speak again. “You’re sure you want to do this? I mean, I was wandering around in the rain. Next thing you know I could be boiling your bunny.”
“I’ll send my bunny into protective custody first thing tomorrow morning.” He put away the remainder of the tiramisu without taking his eyes off me. “Don’t underestimate the desperation of a chronically underlaid man.”
The intent in his gaze…I bit a corner of my lower lip. “Then we’d better get to it. You’ll need to sleep soon so you don’t kill patients tomorrow.”
Did he swallow? The very handsome column of his neck moved in a way that made my heart beat even faster. “In that case, would you mind standing against that wall?”
I glanced in the direction he gestured. Unlike the other walls in the kitchen, this one didn’t have exposed bricks, but was smoothly plastered. I hopped off the stool on wobbly knees and set my shoulder blades against the wall. “Like this?”
His gaze pinned me in place. I didn’t feel as if I were leading anyone astray. Quite the opposite—I felt as if I were a girl from a convent school, secretly meeting a boy from a motorcycle gang.
He rounded the island and came up to me. Dipping his head close to my still-wet hair, he said softly, “So this is what rain smells like on a woman.”
I couldn’t quite breathe. Sex should be exciting, of course, but my reaction seemed to have shot right past excitement to land somewhere near trembling anticipation.
He loosened the sash and pushed the robe off my shoulders. I was entirely exposed, my heart pounding.
He sucked in a breath. I spread my fingers against the wall, trying to hold on to something—anything. His eyes dipped low, then lower, before they met mine again.
I panted, the sound primal. Animal.
He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, revealing a runner’s build: strong shoulders, slim waist, beautifully cut abdomen.
I closed my eyes for a moment, overcome by lust. When I opened them again, it was to the sight of my hand on his upper arm. And then I did something that surprised me: I leaned in and nipped his shoulder.
He grunted. I found myself pressed hard against the wall, his hand between my thighs. For a moment I thought he’d be rough, but he touched me lightly, delicious little caresses at just the right places.
“Yes,” I whimpered. “Yes.”
He kept on with those clever fingers, finding all my most sensitive spots, stroking and teasing me, making my toes curl and my thighs weak.
I didn’t want him to ever stop. Then all at once I wanted more—skin, contact, the heat of our bodies pressed together. I unbuckled his belt, unzipped his jeans, and touched him through his boxers. And almost yanked my hand back in shock—if a man had to pay tax according to the size of his endowment, Bennett would owe the government a lot of money.
“Do you have a condom?”
He extracted a foil packet from his pocket and spoke into my ear. “Very unprincessy of you, Evangeline. I expected to work much harder.”
“Take off your clothes,” I rasped.
He did. Then he opened the packet and rolled on the condom, his motion swift and efficient.
I stared. He caught me staring. “Like what you see?”
On the tail end of those words, he pushed into me. I expelled a lungful of air. God, that felt good. I wrapped my legs around him; he drove so deep my breath shook. He lifted me higher and licked my nipple. Pleasure rippled through me.
The next moment something else rippled through me: incredulity, as if I’d just woken up and realized what I was doing. I’d been entirely seduced by this man, in a way that had never happened to me before.
He braced one hand under my bottom. With his other hand he touched me again between my legs. Sensations flooded my nerve endings, drowning out everything in my head except a raging need for more.
More of this very grown-up enchantment—a separate reality altogether. I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave its soft cocoon. I didn’t want to head out to the night, back to my own reality.
Or my actual self.
But already I was crying out, throaty, desperate sounds. Already my sensations were gathering and cresting. I plunged my fingers into his hair, buried my face in his shoulder, and held on as my orgasm steamrolled over me, leaving me trembling in its wake.
Bennett was nearing his own peak, his thrusts hard and forceful. His breath caught. His teeth sank into my shoulder. And suddenly I was coming again, a climax that picked me up like a rogue wave and crashed over me just as violently.
MODERN ENCHANTMENTS WERE BROKEN NOT by the strike of midnight, but the wallop of ferocious orgasms.
I loved standing in Bennett’s embrace afterward, listening to the sound of his breath slowly returning to normal. I loved the small drop kisses he left on my jaw, my neck, and my shoulder. I loved the way he sighed, cupped my face with one hand, and murmured, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, “Sweetheart, you blew my mind.”
But I already knew our time was at an end.
His scent was that of the night—cool rain and summer foliage. I trailed my fingers up the musculature of his arm. My other hand I laid against his heart, feeling its strong and still-wild beat.
He kissed me on my temple. “Can I get you something? More tiramisu? A smoke?”
I played with his pendant. It was a glasswork semiabstract sea turtle about an inch across—the sort of souvenir one might bring back from Hawaii for a teenager. Not at all what I’d expected.
Which only made me more curious. “You smoke?”
“Officially not anymore, but I have a secret stash—you can’t be a doctor unless you are a hypocrite about your own health.”
I wanted to see that secret stash of cigarettes. I wanted to hear the story behind his pendant. I wanted to know whether he could still make me laugh when the sun was high in the sky.
“I should go,” I said quietly. “You have to work tomorrow. You need your sleep.”
He pulled back and traced a finger along my brow, a tender gesture, yet with a hint of melancholy. “True. You don’t want to be subpoenaed to testify at my malpractice trial because you kept me up all night and caused me to remove the wrong lung from Mrs. Johnson.”
That wrung a small smile from me.
We fell silent. Not an awkward silence, more like the kind that comes when two friends watch a spectacular sunset together. And then he broke away, disposed of the condom, and pulled on his clothes, giving me a view of his taut gluteal muscles.
When he was dressed, he picked up the bathrobe from where it had landed on the floor and handed it back to me—I realized only then that I hadn’t moved at all. “Let me go check on your clothes,” he said.
My clothes were warm and dry. I put them on. We walked out and got back into the Roadster, this time with him driving.
The rain had stopped. The clouds were parting—who knew there was a full moon tonight? Moonlight shimmered on wet leaves and glistened on the dark asphalt path. It limned Bennett’s chiseled features, making my breath catch.
Collette’s house was barely a quarter mile from his. All too soon he pulled into her driveway. “I’ll watch you from here.”
I let myself remain where I was a moment longer than necessary before I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for showing me a great time.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said. Then, after a pause, “I hope whatever was bothering you earlier won’t look so bad when the sun rises.”
Chapter 2
THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN THE sun rose, I was already packing. At noon Collette walked in—she’d canceled the vacation she’d planned to tack onto the end of her assignment and returned early, so I could go back to Manhattan. An hour later I was on the train, phone in hand, scrolling through the brief backlog of texts between Bennett and me.
I’d first called him on Monday, five days ago. And he’d texted me that evening. Biscuit walked and fed. House key back under the sundial. Do you need me again tomorrow?
I’d just spent a couple of difficult hours with Zelda, getting shouted at. I knew it had been the mania talking—Zelda was in a place where she could do no wrong, and anyone who stood in her way became a source of immense frustration. All the same, by the time she finally fell asleep I’d been shaking. Bennett’s offer had brought a surge of relief: At least I didn’t have to think about Biscuit for another day. If you don’t mind, I’d be ever so grateful.
Consider it done.
We had similar exchanges until Thursday evening—Zelda had come down from her hypomanic state and I needed to go back to Cos Cob anyway for the handover of house and dog back to Collette. I can take it from here. Thank you for everything.
No problem.
They were the texts of a busy man who took his responsibilities seriously. But I couldn’t have imagined that he would also be…beguiling.
This morning, after I finished packing, I’d taken Biscuit for a long walk. Twice we’d passed his house. It was set back quite a bit from the road, but built on a small incline, so I could still see the second story, with its white walls and green trim.
I didn’t run into him. And he didn’t call or text. A good thing—what happened between us should be an event in stark isolation. The perfection of a leaf preserved in amber.
Last night, after I reached Collette’s front door, I’d turned around to wave good-bye. I expected to see the Roadster reverse and drive away. But it didn’t. As seconds ticked by, it sat in place, a muscular, palpable presence.
I took a step toward him, my mind racing with possibilities. The hell with Mrs. Johnson’s lung. If Bennett turned off the car and came out, I would keep him up all night—and make him late for his shift.
He reversed and drove away. I stood a long time, my hand braced on a pillar of the porch, watching the direction in which he’d disappeared.
ZELDA AND I LIVED ON the Upper West Side, a stone’s throw from Central Park, in a narrow, four-story stone-and-stucco town house. Some people believed the house to be part of my late father’s inheritance, and he’d never disabused anyone of the idea. But he’d bought it for a pittance in the early eighties, when Manhattan’s real estate market hit rock-bottom. Second-best investment he’d ever made, he used to say, after the Andy Warhol original that he’d picked up for two thousand dollars and a used dining room set.
Inside it was comfortable and slightly shabby, full of books, records, and Middle-earth memorabilia. Zelda thought the place resembled a hobbit hole. To me it looked more like Wallace and Gromit’s house—old-fashioned, but with a sense of whimsy.
Zelda sat in the living room, a pair of jeans in her lap, a heaping laundry basket on the coffee table before her. Her fully grey hair, usually in a stylish layered cut that reached her shoulders, was tied up in a messy ponytail. “Hello, darling,” she murmured, as I bent down to kiss her on her cheek.
Those two words formed part of my oldest memory: that of the first time we met. Eva, this is your new mother, my father had said. My new mother’s eyes had twinkled with curiosity and a zest for life. She’d brought me a teddy bear dressed up like a Buckingham Palace guardsman. And when she’d crouched down, offered me her hand to shake, and said, Hello, darling, in her cut-crystal English accent, she’d instantly become the love of my life.
I sat down next to Zelda and pulled a couple of T-shirts out of the laundry basket.
“I’m back.”
A few beats passed before she answered, “How are you?”
I could never know how difficult it was for her to respond—could only guess by the vast difference between her usual bubbly self and this subdued…prisoner. “Fine, busy as usual.”
To keep up the appearance of a
normal conversation, I prattled about what I still had to do to get ready for the fall semester. By the time I ran through my checklist, she’d finally finished folding the pair of jeans in her lap and was staring at the laundry basket, willing herself to reach out and take another item.
The undertow of hopelessness, the most insidious part of depression, sometimes made the simplest tasks seem as daunting as setting out across the Sahara Desert with no compass and no supplies. I couldn’t bear to watch her struggle. Mumbling something, I went to the kitchen and filled two glasses of water. But when I came back she’d succeeded—she had a pair of my pajama bottoms in her hands.
Tears filled my eyes—from immense pride…and a raging sense of injustice. Zelda had always worked diligently to manage her illness—she saw her therapist twice a week and took her meds faithfully. But sometimes she developed adverse reactions to those meds; sometimes other prescription drugs disrupted their effectiveness.
I went back to the kitchen and wiped away my tears before I returned to the living room. “Don’t discount that victory,” I told her as I sat down.
“Oh, darling,” she said after a minute, “every day without snogging random strangers is a victory.”
I almost chuckled. She’d told me that when she was eighteen, in a fit of mania, she’d kissed three different boys at a pub one night, and had to be dragged home by her girlfriends.
Yet the mania, for all its evils, made Zelda feel great—confident, energetic, practically invincible. Depression, on the other hand, turned her into a husk filled with nothing but despair and self-loathing.
Depression scared me.
When I was in fifth grade, a classmate’s older brother committed suicide—he’d been suffering from a crushing depression and one day he couldn’t take it anymore. I had nightmares for weeks. I never wanted to believe Zelda would give up. But whenever her illness reawakened, the same old fear would sink its claws into my spine. And I’d once more turn into the little girl who was petrified that something terrible would happen to her wonderful new mother.
Zelda was staring at the laundry basket again. This time she did not pull anything out.
The One in My Heart Page 2