Good. I have a 5 pm meeting so I can’t meet you until 8. Will call when I’m done here.
OK
Do you have to get the last word in all the time?
Yes. ☺
OK
TTYL
You win.
Good.
There was no other response from Conner and Nichole smiled to herself. That was the part that always surprised her about him. He was fun. He shouldn’t be because he was arrogant and too used to getting his own way. But he made her smile a lot of the time.
Part of her was worried about how she was going to be able to manage to live with him and not fall in love with him. It was bad enough that they had this bargain. She wished she could keep her emotions out of it.
She wondered what other men’s mistresses did. When she was in college, she’d done an article on a study that was conducted at NYU on brain chemistry and sex, and she knew that no matter how sophisticated society was, at its most basic level everyone was still programmed to find a mate and procreate.
If she tried, maybe she could use science to protect herself, but she doubted it. Conner just didn’t fit in the nice little mold she’d always used to make sure that she didn’t fall in love with anyone.
What she needed to do was somehow figure out how to make every time they were together about the articles she was writing instead of their attraction.
But she knew it would be next to impossible because she wanted him.
It hadn’t taken much prodding on her part to get him to kiss her after lunch. She’d needed it. She needed to know that she wasn’t the only one who was helpless in this infatuation. Conner seemed so much in control—both of himself and the world around him. Something she’d always assumed she was, but he put those beliefs to shame.
Her career had only been so super-important to her because the men she’d dated in the past had been boys. She hadn’t realized that the fun she was having had been designed to shield her commitment until this moment.
She put her head in her hands and stared at her desktop. In her mind’s eye she saw the list she’d written at lunch with Conner and she knew that she’d left one very important thing out of her column.
Don’t fall for Conner.
He’d told her he didn’t want to hurt her, and he’d been honest from the beginning, so she knew if she did get hurt she’d have no one to blame but herself. But that still didn’t help her figure out how she was going to get her story, be his mistress and not fall in love with him.
Conner had expected Nichole to need more time or try to make up some reason why she couldn’t move in with him, but she seemed determined to live up to the bargain she’d struck with him.
His respect for her grew a little bit as he realized that. The more he knew about her as a person, the less fearful he was of anything she’d print about him. But that was a foolish way of thinking. He had to remember that she was here for a story and he was going to make sure that she got the information he allowed her to have and nothing more.
His apartment was a penthouse in a building on the Upper East Side. It ran the entire length of the building and had a glass wall overlooking his patio. He’d spent a lot of money on decorating and it felt like home when he opened the door.
Conner ushered Nichole into his apartment. He was carrying her small overnight bag, leaving her with her computer and purse. Randall was bringing up the rest of her bags, but overall, she hadn’t brought a lot of stuff.
“Welcome to my home,” he said as they walked over the threshold and into the big open-plan living room.
“Thank you. I had to tell my parents I was staying with a friend while my building had some work done,” she said, blurting it out. “My mom calls on my house phone all the time.”
Her demeanor was the only clue that she was at all nervous about moving in with him. As she looked around his apartment, he tried to see it through her eyes. He knew it was stylish and well decorated, but he wondered what she thought of it.
“Okay, do you want to give them my home phone number as well?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. That will make both of them feel better. I don’t want them to know about you, though,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“If they know that I’m living with you, they’ll want to meet you and then, when we break up in a month, they’ll be disappointed for me and for themselves and the grandchildren they are dying to have.”
“My mom is a little bit like that, too.”
“So you can sympathize,” she said.
“I’m going to give you your own bedroom so that you can have some privacy. I know you were worried that my insistence that you live here might have taken that from you.”
She nodded. “Thank you. I actually do a lot of my writing at home because our office is so noisy.”
He led her to a large guest bedroom that was next to the master bedroom. “This room has a desk in it. We can bring the one from your apartment over, if you’d prefer that.”
“This will be fine,” she said.
He put her bag on the bed and then stood there for a minute. He’d never had a mistress before. He had some image in his head of himself as a sheikh and her as his harem girl, but he knew better than to tell her to get naked.
“I’ll leave you to settle in,” he said. “Have you had dinner?”
“No,” she said. “My day was busier than I expected it to be.”
“I haven’t, either. Would you like to join me on the patio in twenty minutes? My housekeeper left dinner waiting for us.”
“Yes, I would.”
He walked out of the room before he gave in to his instincts and swept her into his arms and onto the bed. He had thought about this moment all day long. What he would do once he had her here in his home. He had decided he’d keep her off balance. But he hadn’t counted on her keeping him off balance as well.
He went to his own bedroom and changed from his suit into a pair of khaki shorts and a plain black T-shirt. He reviewed his email on his cell phone and responded to the urgent ones. Then sitting back in the wingback chair next to his bed, he realized that he was excited that Nichole was here.
Sometimes when he was here, he felt alone. He’d never invited anyone to spend the night here before and having a companion appealed to him. The only trepidation he felt was that he had to be on guard not to say anything detrimental she could use in her articles.
There was a knock on his door and he pocketed his cell phone as he went to open it. Nichole stood there in a pair of skintight jeans and a tank top. Her feet were bare and she’d pulled her hair up into a high ponytail.
“So this is your room?” she asked, brushing past him to enter.
“Yes,” he said. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she walked around his room. He’d intended for sex to be the thing that kept her from asking him too many questions, but he hadn’t thought that she could distract him in the same way.
She walked over to the walnut dresser and ran her finger along its polished surface. There was a small watch box on the surface and a picture of his mom and sister from the previous Christmas. Otherwise, the room was devoid of personal mementoes.
“Kind of sterile, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I