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“Only because we both found our passions early on,” he said evenly.
“Yeah, well, I found mine, too. Bumming around the world having a good time.”
He toyed with a pen he picked up from the floor. “A lot of young people do that while they’re trying to figure things out. There isn’t much of a road map for people like us, the ones who’ve grown up with high-achieving parents. Every kid wants to make his family proud, but when your parents are the best in the world at what they do, it’s a little tough to pull off.”
“You and Lucy did. So have my brothers. Even Clay. He’s not making much money now, but he’s amazingly talented, and he will.”
He clicked the pen. “You can match every success story with one about a trust-fund baby living an aimless, club-hopping life between stints at rehab, something you seem to have avoided.”
“True, but . . .” Her words, when she finally spoke them, sounded small and fragile. “I want to find my passion, too.”
“Maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong place,” he said quietly.
“You forget that I’ve been everywhere.”
“Traveling around the world is a lot more fun than traveling around inside your own head, I guess.” He discarded the pen and rose from the couch. “What makes you happy, Meg? That’s the question you need to answer.”
You make me happy. Looking at you. Listening to you. Watching the way your mind works. Kissing you. Touching you. Letting you touch me. “Being outside,” she retorted. “Wearing funky clothes. Collecting old beads and coins. Fighting with my brothers. Listening to birds. Smelling the air. Useful stuff like that.”
Jesus wouldn’t sneer, and neither did Ted. “Well, then. That’s where your answer lies.”
The conversation had gotten way too deep. She wanted to psychoanalyze him, not the other way around. She plopped on the couch he’d just vacated. “So how’s that fabulous contest coming along?”
His expression darkened. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“Last I heard, the bidding for your services had gone over seven thousand.”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
She’d successfully diverted the conversation away from her own defects, and she propped her feet on the footstool. “I saw yesterday’s USA Today at the club. I can’t believe how much national attention this thing has started to attract.”
He grabbed a couple of books from a narrow table and shoved them back on the shelf.
“Great headline in their Life section.” She sketched it out in the air. “ ‘Jilted Jorik Fiancé for Sale to Highest Bidder.’ They painted you as quite the philanthropist.”
“Will you just shut up about it?” He actually snarled.
She
smiled. “You and Sunny are going to have a great time in San Francisco. I highly recommend you take her to the de Young Museum.” And then, before he could yell, “Can I see the rest of your house?”
Again that snarl. “Are you going to touch anything?”
She was only human, and as she rose, she let her eyes drift over him. “Definitely.”
That one word blew the summer storm clouds from his eyes. He cocked his head. “Then how about I show you my bedroom first?”
“Okay.”
He headed toward the door, then came to an abrupt stop and turned back to glare at her. “Are you going to critique?”
“I’ve just been in a mood, that’s all. Ignore.”
“I intend to,” he said, with a healthy dose of malevolence.
His bedroom had a pair of soft, spare chairs for reading; lamps with curled metal shades; and high windows that admitted light but not the views the rest of the house afforded, which gave this room a deep sense of privacy. An ice gray duvet covered the platform bed—a duvet that hit the polished bamboo floor even faster than their clothes.
Right away she could tell he was determined to correct past mistakes, even though he had no idea what those mistakes were. She’d never been kissed so thoroughly, caressed so meticulously, stimulated so exquisitely. He seemed certain that all he needed to do was try a little harder. He even put up with her attempts to take over. But he was a man who served others, and his heart wasn’t in it. All that mattered was her fulfillment, and he suspended his own satisfaction to deliver another pitch-perfect performance on her body. Carefully researched. Perfectly executed. Everything done by the book. Exactly as he’d made love to every other woman in his life.
