She needed to get away from him, away from his pleading looks and his demands that she tell him her heart's desire.
"I'll just catch a cab," she said when they emerged onto Halstead. She was having trouble shifting her mental gears from a meal that probably cost a thousand dollars-not including tip-to her one-bedroom apartment wedged into a carriage house behind a two-flat.
Good Lord. That meal had probably been more than her rent.
She clung to that fact when Marcus came up behind her and put his hand in the small of her back, propelling her toward the valet. "I'll drive you home," he insisted.
"You don't have to do that," she said, the desperation growing. Because if he drove her home-all that time in the car together? This situation was rapidly moving beyond awkward and fast approaching dangerous.
"But I want to. It would be ungentlemanly of me to not see you home."
"Why?" Why did he insist on playing with fire?
She knew the answer, of course. It was because the flames would not burn him, not as they would her. He might get a little singed around the edges, but that would be the worst of it.
Men like Marcus Warren didn't face the same set of consequences women like Liberty Reese did. That was just a simple fact of life. He could whisper sweet nothings in her ear and kiss her and then, when the morning regret came crashing down on his head, he could simply fire her.
Well, she didn't think he'd do that, not to her. But she might suddenly have another job offer from one of his friends-Jenner, even-and this time, he'd insist she take it. For her own good, no doubt.
This was why she didn't have romantic entanglements. The risk always outweighed what little reward she might glean from a brief physical coupling.
She could not expose herself, not like that. Intimacy would lead to questions and questions and more damn questions.
She didn't want anything to change. Not at work, not between her and Marcus. She wanted him to stay firmly in his office and her fantasies to stay firmly in her head.
The valet pulled up in the Aston Martin and hopped out. He tried to get Liberty's door, but Marcus waved him off. "I've got her."
Against her better judgment, she sank down into the Aston Martin's seats and tucked her feet up so Marcus could shut the door. She watched him as he walked around the front of the vehicle. What had she done to deserve this? It wasn't just that he was gorgeous, a blond god with blue eyes and a runner's body. It wasn't even that he was so rich that money was little more than air to him.
It was that he looked at her as no one else ever had. Marcus saw her. She'd spent her entire adult life-and most of her adolescence-trying to be invisible. Burying herself in her homework so she could get ahead, get out of the projects, get to college-get this job. The only way anyone had ever paid any attention to her was because she was a good student and now, a good assistant. By herself, Liberty was worthless. Well, maybe not worthless. Grandma Devlin had done the best she could, and she wasn't even Liberty's grandmother. She was just a kindly old neighbor who'd lost her own children to the streets and who saw a little girl who needed help.
But Grandma Devlin was the exception that proved the rule. No one else could be bothered with Liberty Reese. She had been invisible to the world-to her own mother. She was valuable only because she made herself valuable.
Maybe too valuable. Did Marcus want her, Liberty Reese? Or did he want what he thought she represented-someone trustworthy and honest, someone who knew her place?
Because he didn't know her, not the real her.
He couldn't. Not now, especially after he'd sat there and told her all the reasons he trusted her.
She would do anything to not destroy his version of Liberty Reese. Anything.
"The address?" Marcus said in a casual tone once he was behind the wheel.
She gave him her address. "It's off of Fullerton." When he looked at her, she said, "Logan Square."
"Ah," he replied, as if he'd ever been there before. She highly doubted he had.
As he drove, she began to panic. What would he say when he saw the run-down two-flat building? When he realized she didn't even live in the building, but in the carriage house out back? Would he start in on how she should ask-no, demand-more of him? And, by extension, of herself?
He simply didn't realize how much she'd already demanded-of herself, of her world. The fact that she'd made it this far was not to be taken lightly.
"This is pretty far from the Loop," Marcus observed as they negotiated Friday-night traffic on the Kennedy.
"It's not that far, really."
"But what time do you have to leave to get to my place for the morning run?" The way he asked it made it clear that this was the first time he'd ever thought of it. "You're at my door at seven every single day."
She fought the urge to squirm in her seat. Point of fact, she was at his door at 6:50 a.m. every day. Then she stashed her backpack of work clothes in a closet where the doorman had reserved a space just for her and waited for Marcus to come down. "The Blue Line is only two blocks from my apartment," she hedged. "It's a straight shot to the Loop and then I catch a bus to your place. It's not bad. At that time in the morning, there's hardly ever any traffic jams."
"Liberty," he said in a stern voice. "I asked you a question. What time do you leave your place?"
She was trapped. "I catch the six oh nine-the train runs every five minutes," she added, as if that somehow made it better.
It didn't. "So you get up-what, at five thirty? Every morning?"
"Basically."
"And you work until six or so every night?"
"Yes," she said, getting irritated. "Do I need to account for my time in between six at night and five in the morning?"
They finally edged off the Kennedy and onto Fullerton. "No, no," he said, sounding lost in thought. "That's not it. It's just..."
"It's just that the rest of us don't have lakefront condos, personal chefs, cars and drivers, and an unlimited budget?"
"I'm not clueless, you know. I realize that very few people live like I do."
"Sure you do-as an abstraction. Have you ever been here? Or to Rogers Park? Ever ventured out of the trendy, safe areas of Chicago?"
His silence answered the question for him.
"This is what I mean, Marcus. This is why I can't go with you to that wedding, why it's ridiculous to think I should even want to. You see me in a specific set of circumstances, but that's not the whole of me. This," she said, gesturing out the window, "this is a nice neighborhood. I have a nice place. I've worked hard for it. But that's not what you're going to see."
He turned onto her street and pulled up to the curb in front of her landlord's two-flat. Then to her horror, he shut the car off and turned to face her. "What am I going to see, Liberty? What am I looking at, right now?"
Me. You're looking at me. That's what she wanted to say. This was a nice place compared with the slum she'd grown up in. This was her getting above her station in life. She'd come up so far that sometimes she looked around and got scared of the heights she now occupied.
Because what he was looking at was a nobody who dared to act as if she were a somebody.
"Money isn't air," she whispered. "Every dollar I make is spoken for. Every grocery trip I make, every lunch I pack, every pair of running shoes I buy is a risk because what if that's it? What if there's no more?"
"Then why didn't you take Jenner's job offer? Why didn't you take a bigger paycheck?"
"Because money isn't the only thing I need from this job."
Damn that truth.
The space between them was already tight. This was not a big car. But there was no mistaking it-that space was shrinking. She didn't know if she was leaning toward him or he was leaning toward her. All she knew was that his gravity was pulling her in and she couldn't fight it any more than she could decide she could fly.
"What else do you need?" he asked in a serious voice. She felt his breath whisper over her skin and she shivered.
"Marcus..." But whatever else she was going to say was cut off as he cupped her cheek in his palm and lifted her face toward his.
"Do you need something else? Something more? Because I do."
In her last grasp at the safety of the way things were, she said, "This will change everything."
His nose touched the tip of hers and she felt his fingers on her skin-pulling her toward him. "What if everything has already changed and we can't go back?"