He was getting mystic on me again, and I was no longer in the mood for his whimsies. “I know you're not crazy,” I blurted suddenly.
Silence fell across the table.
Me and my stupid drunk mouth.
His eyes hardened and he leaned back in his chair, and I suddenly realized that there was another side to him. The side I'd seen when he commanded me to submit to him. The side of him that had made him a formidable businessman and a billionaire at a relatively young age. Mastery. Dominance. Implacability.
I gave an involuntary shiver and forced myself to not look away.
He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, every inch the CEO. “And how would you know that, Sadie?” he asked. “Does it have anything to do with the scars hidden beneath the ink on your skin?”
I stiffened, inhaling sharply. The strictures of the corset restrained my ribs, and I became lightheaded. “That's none of your business,” I said. “But yes. Yes it does. Now don't change the subject.”
He blinked, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. He hadn't expected me to admit anything. “What subject?” he said.
“The subject where I tell you I know you aren't crazy, so why do you act the way you do?”
He tilted his head. “And what way is that?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You know exactly what I mean. Skipping the country with a woman you barely know and buying her thousands of dollars worth of clothes.” God, tens of thousands, probably. The thought made me slightly sick to my stomach. Eschewing decorum, I nibbled on a piece of bread to settle my stomach before continuing. “Declaring yourself to be a tortured artistic genius. Singing with homeless men on the subway and then giving away a thousand dollars just because. Spouting off religious aphorisms in every day conversation. You know. That sort of thing.”
He was silent for a moment, and we stared at each other as Dominic emerged from the kitchen with our first course, a delicate display of fresh mussels with a drizzle of cream sauce. The bread had settled my stomach and it smelled heavenly, but I didn't want to be the first to look away. Dominic, clearly sensing something had gone awry with his fated lovers, faded back into the kitchen.
Finally Malcolm picked up his fork and deftly pried a mussel from its shell. “Who was that on the phone, Sadie?” he asked me. He didn't exactly sound like a disapproving father from a sixties sitcom, but it was close.
“Why?” I demanded. “What does it matter?”
“Because the moment you came out of the bathroom after speaking to them, you acted differently. Whoever it was told you something about me, or warned you against getting involved with me, or something else to that effect, and I would like to know what it was, and who told you such things.”
I pressed my lips into a line. He didn't have a right to know. But then again, I didn't have a right to interrogate his personal secretary.
And I really liked Malcolm Ward. He was weird, but he wasn't trying to be. He was just a guy who had removed his social filter and decided to do whatever the fuck came into his head. The only reason he wasn't singing on the subway as a homeless person himself was because he was so goddamn rich. Why he'd decided to do that was the question.
Surely it didn't have something to do with the fact that he was being investigated by the FBI, could it?
It was all the wine, I swear. And I guess some of it was my own bad judgment, but mostly it was the wine.
“Your secretary called me,” I confessed at last. “Don Cardall, or whatever.”
That surprised him. His eyebrows nearly shot into his hairline. “Don called you? How did he know your number?”
Now I had to look away, worrying my lower lip with my teeth. “He sort of called you on your cell phone about a thousand times while you were asleep and I answered, thinking it might be important.”
I sneaked a glance at him from the corner of my eye, and was relieved to see he looked more puzzled than anything. I'd expected him to be angry. I pressed on. “I asked him what he wanted, and he said he needed to talk to you. I tried to wake you up, but you were passed out. Like, drugged passed out.”
“Mm,” he said. “I do sleep fairly heavily. And I haven't been sleeping much in the past few weeks.”
Few weeks? So not just since he'd met me. Interesting. “Anyway, he was really rude to me, so I was rude back, and by the time you woke up I'd had too much wine and watched too much Croatian television to remember that he wanted you to call him back. So he got my number from somewhere and called me to yell at me for not informing you that he'd called.” I thought for a moment. “And now that I say it out loud, it's all very high school. I also told him I'd accidentally drop your phone in the toilet if he wasn't nicer to me.”