Womanizer

Chapter 31

By 1 a.m., I’m ready to bail.

“Come on, stay,” he says. He sounds almost disappointed that I’m giving up already.

“So I get a peek at a strumpet in the morning? No thanks.”

“No strumpets,” he says.

I shoot him an I-don’t-believe-that look but I stay and even make some coffee for us.

At 3 a.m., I set down the papers and doze off to him speaking on the phone with someone overseas.

I feel a delicious warmth spread over me and hands shift me on the couch—then I sense something hard beneath my cheek and a hand stroking the back of my head. I turn a bit and realize my head is on his lap, his hand running down my hair, stroking me.

Sunday morning I wake up to the sound of male voices. I’m disoriented, glancing around and trying to adjust my eyes to the blazing sunlight pouring through the massive arched windows before me.

Someone covered me with a blanket and plumped a pillow under my head.

It takes me a second to realize where I am and another to realize I must look a sight. Attempting to reach the stairs that lead to the second landing, where I assume both the master and guest bedrooms are located, I pass the conference room downstairs and hear a group of men talking animatedly. They’re talking in legal terms and I realize they’re Carma’s law team.

Seven men sit at the conference table, while Callan is the only one standing, wearing the same shirt he wore last night, his jaw shadowed from a day’s growth of beard, his chin resting on two fingers as he looks down at the team with a stance that says “NO BULLSHIT.”

I would have never, ever in my life expected my mailman to live in a place like this. To be like this. I can’t believe that once, ages ago, I imagined he had a one-bedroom apartment, very cluttered—not a Gold Coast home, with a gated entrance, so clean that the floor could be a long, endless marble mirror beneath me.

His energy fills the room. I can see the men scramble to please him and answer his questions. Tall and dark and solemn, he looks about as brooding and bloodthirsty as a vampire acquiring his next ounce of blood. In this case, a struggling business.

Rolling his shirtsleeves to his elbows while he speaks on the phone, he seems oblivious to the men in the room, even to my presence at the door as I wonder if I should say hello or simply go freshen up and leave.

I see the way he frustratedly tugs the top button of his shirt and I wonder if I hallucinated the way he ran his fingers through my hair last night. His hands are tanned, and although big, they are sleek, his fingers long and elegant. His hair is close-cropped, ending just where his collar begins.

I wonder who the guy on the other end of the line is, probably some other investment-savvy genius like him, and for a moment I’d do anything to listen in on their conversation.

Ending the call with a brusque click, Callan finally turns, assesses his employees in one sweeping motion and, to my mortification, suddenly spots me by the door with my hair probably a mess and in the same clothes as yesterday. He lifts a brow and drinks me in.

And I quickly turn away and hurry upstairs, my cheeks red. I head into a guest bathroom and wash my face and find some toothpaste and mouthwash, then I fix my hair and clothes, call a cab for myself, and tiptoe inconspicuously out of the house.

Wynn invited me over to her gallery on Wednesday afternoon, and I’m helping her set up her new artist’s exhibition. My job is the first thing she asks me about, and I’m nervously selecting what to say about it. “It’s consuming,” I settle on.

“He was asking me questions about you the other day,” she admits.

“What do you mean?” I stand in the middle of the gallery space, surrounded by one wall hung with canvases, the other empty.

“Just if you had a guy back home,” Wynn says as she lifts one of the works that will go up on the empty wall.

My eyes widen. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. He’s not like that. I mean, he’s been playing the field for years.” She tsks and shakes her head. “I smell sex, Livvy. And lots of it.”

“No!” I cry. “I mean . . .” I can’t tell Wynn, even though I want to. “He was the first real friend I found in this city, and though it’s complicated now, I feel . . . a bit of a weak spot for him, in a way I can’t explain.”

“I’m thinking he has a weak spot for you,” Wynn says. She smiles at me tenderly, then hoists a small oil on canvas up on the wall. “Tahoe would go ballistic, Livvy.”

“I know! I know. Which is why I’m trying to keep it professional.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to be you right now. These boys can be so irresistible.”

I glance at Wynn helplessly, not knowing what to say.

“Get your fix from some other guy. Or get a toy,” Wynn says.

I’ve had time for neither. I’ve hardly found time for anything other than work. Even time to sleep. He’s been calling in the middle of the night.

“What do you think of HITT on the NASDAQ?”

“Huh?”

“What do you think of High Intelligence Tech Transformation?”

“It’s 3 a.m.”

“You know what they say when you wake up at 3 a.m. Someone’s watching you.”

“Very funny. Asshole. Now I’m scared.”

“Good. Open your computer, tell me what you think . . .”

“Why?”

“Because I told you I’d teach you—you don’t get to pick the times when you want to learn. Now I’m waiting, Livvy.”

Between the late-night phone calls, his current takeover and his increasing interest in Alcore, and Mr. Lincoln getting hit with a stomach bug, I’m consumed by his demands for the week and am amazed how he accomplishes all that he does.