“It’s going to depend on whether I can afford it.”
“I can afford it.”
“My clients pay for my travel here and you’re not my client.”
“Then start working on your aversion to staying with me. No accommodation costs, and I won’t feel like your client when you sashay in with your briefcase.”
“I can’t stay with you, Matt.”
“Why not? You stay with Teague when you’re in New York.”
“Only when my work is finished.”
“Should I point out that you’re not working tonight?”
Pause. He knew that slight twist to her mouth. She was working out what to say. “Teague’s apartment is...spacious. It’s easier there.”
“And I now have a large house. So when you come with the kid, you stay. As long as your ‘form of words’ contains that, we’re good.”
“We’re not good in that case.”
“Why not?”
And she was up, out of her chair, walking over to the fireplace, dragging her hands through her hair—which she never, ever did.
“Why not?” he asked again, when she just stood there looking into the flames.
“It won’t work.”
“Asking again—why not?”
Shake of her head.
“Romy, what’s going on? Why did I buy a house with a million rooms if you and the kid are going to stay in a hotel?”
She turned to face him then. “But th-that’s not why you bought the house!”
“Isn’t it?”
He saw the breath she took, and prepared himself for an argument.
“Okay then, Matthew,” she said, “in the spirit of negotiation—”
“It’s not negotiable.”
“—I’ll agree to stay here, on the condition that I know in advance who else will be here and I can opt out if I’m uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable?”
“I don’t want to impinge on your lifestyle.”
“My ‘lifestyle’?”
“There’ll be times it won’t be appropriate for me to stay, depending on...on who...”
He shot to his feet. “Who I’m fucking? Is that what you mean?” He realized he’d yelled that, but couldn’t get the anger under control enough to care.
“If you’d let me expl—”
“You think I’m going to have someone stashed in my bedroom for after I’ve finished reading my kid a bedtime story?” Yelled again.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like—”
“Will I have to fill out a form? Name, age, occupation, social security number? Nominate what nights of the week I intend to fuck them?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she said, firing up at last and yelling back at him. “I already know what nights of the week! Every damn night of every damn week! That’s the problem!”
“I’m glad you appreciate my stamina!”
“That place we shared back in the day had paper-thin walls! We all appreciated your stamina! Veronica and I used to joke about buying shares in Durex, you went through so many jumbo boxes of condoms!”
“So you counted my condoms and listened in? Interesting.”
“Sadly, the pillow I jammed over my head to filter out the moans, grunts and squeals didn’t quite block everything.”
“What can I say? I do a good job. A better job than Teague, now I think of it, since he didn’t ever stay with you overnight.”
“This isn’t about Teague.”
“No, it isn’t, is it, or maybe I would have heard something.”
“Not over the racket going on in your room!”
“Jealous?”
She raised her chin. “Just over it! Okay? I’m over it! I don’t want to hear you anymore! I’ve had enough of hearing you!” And she was on the move again, storming over to the drapes, trying to drag them open as though their very existence was cutting off her oxygen supply.
He stalked across the room, reached her, spun her. “Then how about you stay tonight and test the soundproofing? In the absence of my usual fuck noises you can listen for the loud howl of sexual frustration that’ll be coming out of my room because I haven’t had sex for two fucking weeks! Does that scare you, Romy?”
“Why should it scare me?”
“Because you’re here alone with me and I...I... Arrrggh! It’s dangerous, can’t you see that?”
“Dangerous how?”
“Jesus, Romy, how naive are you?” Matt said. The room was hot, stifling, claustrophobic. He needed air, needed...something! “Fuck this!” He reached past her, grabbed a handful of velvet, yanked on it, heard a satisfying rip, and then the drapes dropped to the floor. He kicked them for good measure. “When are you going to accept that I’m not your damn hero, Romy? I’m not like Teague. I don’t do chastity, and yet I’ve just told you I have done it, for two weeks.”
“So what?”
“So I’m a sex addict. And you’re here.”
“A sex addict would have made a move on me the night we met! God knows I gave you the chance! So don’t talk to me about not ‘doing’ chastity when you’ve been nothing but chaste with me for ten years!”
“You’re not like the others!”
“Well, that just goes to show that you’re an idiot! Because I am like the others. I’m exactly like the others. I want what they want, damn you!”
Sudden, charged silence.
Matt’s skin prickled, his senses going on high alert. “Tell me what you mean,” he said, breathing the words. “What you want.”
She closed her eyes. Heartbeat. Opened them. “You know what I mean. You of all men know what women mean!” And it was as though the angry energy drained out of her, even though her hands had clenched into fists by her sides. “What I want is you. I want...you.”
TEN YEARS OF not saying the words, and now they were out, hanging between them.
Romy’s heart was beating hard enough to leap out of her body. And Matt looked rigid enough to bounce the poor thing off his chest. Like a stone column. Or...or petrified wood.
Petrified being the operative word.
She choked down a rising bubble of hysterical laughter at the notion that big, bad Matt could be scared of her. She was the one who should be scared. Scared he’d tell her no and leave her with nothing: friendship in tatters, no baby and still no clue about what it was like to...to be with him like all those other women.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Matt said.
And on