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“I see.” Marlee clearly saw plenty, as that time the smile did reach her eyes. “Then my job here is done.”
“No,” Saskia said, her cheeks threatening to ripen like a tomato. “It’s not like that. We’re not...romantically involved.” Financially, sexually, mutually helpingly, at times frustratingly, but not romantically.
After he’d left that first night she’d found the dossier. Her heart had fluttered as she’d opened it, her stomach tumbling as she’d giddily imagined what he’d revealed to her only to find a few random titbits such as his favourite footy players, how he liked his coffee, the phone number of the best dry cleaner in East Melbourne. She’d thought he’d turned a corner. Instead he’d given a lollipop to quieten a noisy toddler.
And while Nate might be charming, hot as the sun and could make her melt with a whisper of breath, the touch of his lips, the slide of a hand, even after he’d given her the most exquisite sex of her life, she didn’t feel any closer to breaking down that door.
“So, honey,” said Marlee, gently breaking into her reverie, “what do you need from me?”
“Well, okay,” Saskia said, pulling herself together. “I have the preliminaries down. Stats nearly done. The who, how old, how many—the dry substance. But it always helps to have a hook. A cheeky bite to get people talking over the water cooler. I had a crazy idea for a formula—”
She shook her head. It wasn’t going to happen. Not right now anyway. Maybe one day. Maybe she’d have to rely on her own experience to nail that one.
“Now I’m thinking about the lies people tell in the search for The One.”
“Such as?”
“Age, weight, interests, experiences. From what I saw, people lie about everything. But how will they ever be able to find someone who loves them just the way they are if they’re not being honest about who they are?”
“You’re a romantic.”
“Aren’t you?”
Marlee’s laughter twinkled with just the right quality. Saskia shot her eyes to the glass bowls, afraid they might shatter.
“We discourage it, of course, in our welcome pack—lying about oneself, not romance—but you can’t stop people from morphing the truth. It’s human nature. I blow-dry my hair, put on make-up, wear high heels. I’ve laughed at jokes told by men who simply weren’t that funny. We create an outer identity to hide our innate vulnerability. But even deeper, it springs from the most primal desire we harbour—to land the alpha male.”
Saskia looked down at her notes, her pen hovering, but she wasn’t sure where to start. Marlee’s claim made scientific sense, and yet she’d never tried to land an alpha male. The men she dated were barely even betas.
Funny, she’d picked on Nate for fighting against the human condition, the biological imperative, and it seemed she was doing the same. Huh! At least now she’d gone alpha, she could see the appeal.
Putting Nate out of her mind as best she could, she said, “So you think it’s natural to lie? Even when looking for love?”
Marlee steepled her fingers beneath her chin as she looked Saskia dead in the eye, her heavily made up eyes hypnotic. “Are you looking for love, Saskia?”
Saskia swallowed. “Oh, sure. Of course. Well, not right now. There have been...men. And it hasn’t worked. For myriad reasons.” Like grand theft. “But I’m sure I’d welcome it if it came calling. Wouldn’t we all?”
Marlee shrugged—a spiky lift of her sharp shoulders. “Everyone’s different. Some people want it so badly you can see the desperation pouring off them in waves. Others want it less than root canal. You, on the other hand, confuse me, Ms Bloom. You have a neat little figure, just-rolled-out-of-bed hair, with a little more make-up your eyes could be stunning, and yet with all that potential you dress like you’ve walked off the set of Oliver. I’m a scholar of human body language, and you don’t give off the usual signs at all.”
While Saskia reeled under this blatant and not altogether flattering character assessment, Marlee brought her coffee to her red lips, her dark bob swinging precisely against her cheek as she took a sip. “What does love look like to you, Saskia Bloom?”
Saskia’s mouth popped open before slamming closed. Because the truth was she had no idea.
“Perhaps the thing isn’t lying about who you are, but misrepresenting your true desires—whatever they are.”
Saskia’s brain sifted through all this new information as if it was creating a fresh Rolodex.
