Just One Night, Part 2_ Exposed(43)

When next I awake it’s to the sound of classical music. My alarm clock, of course. I find it easier to start the day with the slow build of a sonata than the sudden scream of an electric guitar. I keep my eyes closed and let myself be drawn into the music. It’s a Baroque piece of the seventeenth-century-master Tomaso Albinoni, a personal favorite. The sound is low and alluring, decadent to the point of being sinful. I become aware of the feeling of Robert’s shirt against my skin and let a small sound of pleasure hum through my closed lips, breathe in deep through my nose . . .

. . . and smell coffee.

Slowly, almost fearfully, I open my eyes. On my nightstand next to my alarm is a steaming cup of coffee.

And another is being held on the charcoal gray armchair of my bedroom, cupped between the hands of Robert Dade.

I don’t move, don’t sit up, don’t say a word. I think about the dreams and nightmares I had had only a few hours before. This doesn’t feel like a dream and yet it doesn’t make sense that he could be here, holding one of my ceramic cups filled with coffee.

“You know he’s a Venetian,” he says, gesturing to my clock radio.

“I’m sorry?”

“Albinoni. He was a Venetian. It seems appropriate when you consider where we met.”

I pull the sheets up to my chin. “How did you get in here?”

“As you may recall, I know how to pick a lock.”

“I have a security system.”

“I know. My company made it.”

“Robert, you can’t just—”

“You do remember that you told me I could come to you in a few days. It’s been a few days.” I turn my eyes to the clock.

“True,” I agree; “it’s also seven fifteen in the morning.”

He sighs, sips his coffee. “Do you know how hard it was for me to stay away this weekend? Knowing that he still has a key to this place? Knowing that he could come here and try to exact revenge at any time?”

The music has taken on a yearning quality. Its melody keeps me calm. “Dave isn’t a psychotic. He’s a man who was hurt. That’s all. He gave me back some of the pain I gave him and now he’s moving on.”

He studies his coffee, tilting it like a sommelier would tilt a glass of wine while looking for clues to its age and weight. “Putting you in that dress,” he says, “displaying you in front of Love as if you were a toy or a prostitute . . . perhaps it’s not psychotic but it does point to a . . . a demonic sensibility.” He looks up from his coffee, locks his eyes on mine. “You think you know what he’s capable of. You don’t.”

I groan and look up at my angled cream ceiling. It’s early; I’m not thinking straight. But for him to break into my home to warn me of what Dave might be capable of seems ironic.

“Those boxes downstairs, those are his things?”

I nod.

“When will he be picking them up?”

“Later this afternoon.” I turn on my side, flash him a pacifying smile. “I won’t be here.”

Robert nods his approval, walks to the bed, puts his coffee cup next to mine. “You won’t see him alone again. It’s not safe. If you need to meet him, you’ll call me first.”

“You don’t have the right to tell me how to handle this.”

“No?” He cocks his head to the side. “You’d risk your well-being just to be rebellious? Why do I doubt that?”

There’s a gentle but mocking lilt to his voice. I bite down on my lip. I should kick him out. This morning he is a criminal. My angel is incensed. But my devil has Hollywood tastes and seeks to glorify the crime.

Perhaps it’s I who has the demonic sensibility.

“Maybe you should take the day off,” he suggests. “Work from my house. Give Love another day to reassess his behavior.”

“No, I need to be at work. I can’t let my personal stressors keep me from my professional responsibilities.”

Robert doesn’t say anything. Instead he pulls the sheet back, runs his eyes over his shirt that covers my body. “You did as I asked.”

Of all the things he’s said and done this morning, that one sentence is by far the most provoking. And yet it oddly thrills even as it alarms. The combination of emotions worries me. He needs to leave the room. I need to drink my coffee, get my bearings, find the good sense to chastise him for his magisterial behavior.

But I don’t move. My request for privacy dies before it ever reaches my lips. Instead I lie here and wait for his next move, knowing deep down that if he demands, I will want to give.

Therein lies the danger.

With a firm but gentle hand he pushes me from my side to my back. “You can go to work today if that’s truly what you want to do. But you’re going to be late.”