“I am,” I said. “It would be a total waste of a perfectly good person if you were to go through with it.”
“I was going to donate all my organs and my body to science,” he replied. “That wouldn't have been a waste at all.”
“Yeah, well, you'll still be using them for a while so tell the scientists to cancel the party.”
He smiled a bit at that. “You are a strange woman,” he said. “I think that's why I like you so much.”
“You charmer.”
He appeared to reach a decision. “Very well, you may attempt to convince me not to kill myself.”
I rolled my eyes. “How gracious of you—” I began, but abruptly his spine straightened and his chin lifted.
“Don't interrupt,” he commanded.
Ah. The billionaire businessman again. A glimpse of who he had been before he had lost his closest friend and his company, all that he had lived for. The man in control. Suddenly I wondered if this was such a good idea. Well, fine, more of a bad idea than it was already. But I shut my mouth. I could play the role he wanted.
He seemed pleased by my acquiescence. “Good. If we do this, then I must ask for things in return from you.”
I gulped. “What kind of things?”
He smiled. “Nothing you haven't already given me. Submission. Conversation. Your body. Your mind.” He pinned me with those startling eyes, dark and almost sinister in the low ambient light. “Your thoughts. Your memories.”
Hooboy. But fine, whatever. I'd poured it all out before. What did I care if he knew things about me? He'd already opened himself up wider than I ever would have to a person I barely knew. “Okay,” I said.
“I mean it, Sadie. I want to know all about you.”
I nodded. “I understand. I mean, I don't know why, I don't think I'm that interesting, but I'll do it. From now on, I'm an open book to you.”
He tilted his head. “Do you really not know why I find you so fascinating?” he asked. “Why I envy you so much?”
My mouth dropped open. “Envy me?” I said. In a hundred million years that would never, ever have occurred to me.
He nodded slightly. “Envy you,” he repeated. “Part of me wants to break you, you make me so jealous. Part of me just wants to hold you and make sure nothing touches you again. Keep you just the way you are.”
His words left me feeling queer and messed up inside, defensive. “You can't break me,” I blurted without thinking. “I won't let you.”
Silence descended on our table, and I licked my lips again. His intense stare made me nervous, but I refused to show it. Well, mostly. Beneath the table, my hands fiddled with my napkin, twisting and turning it, rhythmically pressing it into a ball and letting it spring back.
“I'll see which side wins out,” he said at last.
“Okay,” I told him. “Then I guess we're both going to try our best.”
He smiled. "Yes, we will. Now why don't you eat? You'll feel better after you do."
With a sigh, I finally acquiesced to his urging and dug in again. The food was delicious, and for a while we ate in silence. My mind whirled, revolving around the bombshells that had just been dropped onto my mental landscape. I had been worried my life was becoming boring, but now it was far too exciting for my own good. I already had second thoughts about this; Malcolm Ward needed therapy, not an affair, but as it was this was probably the best he was going to get.
After I had finished my main course, I set my fork and knife down and dabbed at my lips with my napkin. He was right, a bit of food had done me a world of good, and my thoughts were beginning to calm from the turmoil of his revelations and my own planning. "So," I said at last, "what do you want to do now?
He smiled and polished off his wine. To my admittedly-drunken eyes, he didn't seem at all inebriated. "I think we should board my boat and head out into international waters," he said. "Shut off our cell phones, cloister ourselves away where no one will bother us for a while. Float around on the sea. Make art. Make love."
Make love. The very words sent a delicious stab of heat through me as I remembered the passion of our previous fuck sessions. I wanted very badly to sleep with him again. I felt addicted to him. And I was already here. Already a party to his flight. The only thing I had to lose was my sanity. It'd been a while since I'd done that, though the older I got the less the idea appealed to me.
But he had said I was alive, and he made me feel alive. I'd been drifting along for a while, taking care of business, taking care of Felicia and her numerous problems. Maybe I was just a fixer at heart.
You really have no business trying, I told myself. This is a fool's game, and you are not a fool.#p#分页标题#e#