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“My business partner, Bryce, chose you,” I say in the softest voice I can manage. “I thought he explained it. He usually does.”
“Yes,” she says tersely. “He did. But I thought that was a front, a way to make this more civilized. But you’re really, honestly saying…there’s no chance of anything happening here, between me and you, Logan. Is that it?”
I nod before she’s even done. It’s impossible to even think about being with another woman, anybody but my Lucy. My body feels as if it’s going to revolt at the thought.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she says.
“Something like that.”
She pushes away from the balcony, tossing me my phone. I catch it and quickly tuck it into my pocket.
“What is it, then? Are you gay?”
“No.”
“So you want to go to the party,actlike we’re interested in each other, then go home to our separate beds and fall asleep and pretend it never happened.”
She could speak for days and days and not even get close to convincing me to abandon Lucy – to forget about my loyalty to her.
“Yes,” I tell her. “That’s about the size of it.”
Her expression drops for a moment. She seems hurt, her forehead furrowing, then she huffs and waves a hand as though it doesn’t mean anything anyway.
“Fine. Your loss.”
She strides past me, returns to the kitchen, and opens and closes cupboards. If she’s looking for booze, she won’t find any.
I lean against the balcony, looking across the city, trying to imagine Lucy out there. I try to think about what she’s doing, who she’s with, and why she called me.
Taking out my phone, I go to my call log, studying her number.
We need to leave for the party – to catch the red carpet and the paparazzi at the right time - but I can’t resist the urge to call Lucy back first.
It rings and rings, at least for a minute, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to get her voicemail. But then she answers, her voice tight.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Lucy,” I say, in the friendliest, least I-want-to-claim-every-piece-of-you voice I can manage.
“Mr. Logan?”
“Mr. Logan himself,” I say, laughing quietly. “I didn’t think you were there.”
Just hearing her voice reignites the hunger in me, the blazing and burning; the embers hissing, spitting, and howling forher.
“Somebody else answered, I mean,” Lucy goes on.
I wonder if I’m judging her voice right, if that really is jealousy, or if wishful thinking has taken over.
“I’m going to a charity event,” I say.
“Well, you’ve got one heck of a date. Maxine Waterson. I loved her inNever Cry Twice. Amazing.”
The topic of conversation has now thrown herself on the couch. She has one hand over her head as if going for the cliché of the year award.
“She’s not my date,” I say.
I have to. Lucy deserves to know.
