glasses and handed him one. He added ice to his drink and then sat on the couch. She chose the chair across from him.
“Want to tell me what you’re doing here?” Madeleine asked.
“Having a drink.”
“I thought you were tired and worried about your early flight.”
“Since our flight doesn’t leave until noon you know that’s a bald-faced lie.”
Madeleine fidgeted a little as she sipped her wine. Unthinkingly she brought up her legs and tucked them under her butt. When she looked back to Michael she could see even that simple movement fascinated him.
His eyes were also trying very hard not to look at her chest. She had a tank top on but she was most definitely braless.
“Look, I’m sorry if I pushed you toward her. I thought you liked her.”
“I did like her. I just didn’t want to have sex with her.”
“Why?” The question popped out before she could stop it. It was far too personal. His eyebrows arched up as if to suggest he agreed. But for some reason she wanted an answer. “You heard her. She can make a tired man beg like a puppy.”
“Maybe I have more discerning tastes.” He drank his whiskey in one gulp then opened the second bottle and splashed it over the ice.
“A playboy with discerning tastes. Those two things usually don’t go together.” Like a lot of things about him, the pieces didn’t fit. Madeleine knew all about constructing an image and it was becoming evident that Michael’s playboy image was as real as his environmental-philanthropist cover.
“What do you want? What answer are you looking for here? She didn’t do it for me. She didn’t make my dick hard. I can’t make it any plainer than that.”
Madeleine winced. Not so much at his harsh language but at the anger she heard in his tone. She didn’t know who he was directing his anger toward and she really didn’t care. The last thing she wanted to be talking about was sex. Especially with him.
“I didn’t mean anything. Truly. We shouldn’t be having this conversation, anyway. It’s way too personal.”
“Eff that. What is it with you and the whole no crossing lines? We’re people. We’re talking. It’s personal. With you everything has a rule.”
She snorted. “You really have to ask why?”
“I get it, but it’s like you’re obsessed. Are you worried that if you let loose a little we’re going to pounce on each other? If I see you with your hair down or call you by your name, suddenly I’m going to want to get between your legs?”
“Stop it. That’s enough.”
He abruptly shut his mouth. He stood and carefully set the now-empty glass down on the table between them.
“I’m sorry.”
Madeleine stood, assuming she was going to show him to the door. She should have accepted his apology and said good-night. Instead she felt like she owed him an apology, too. “I know I have boundaries and rules. I put all of them there for a reason.”
“But don’t you let anyone in? Ever?”
No, she hadn’t. She had coworkers she considered friends. There was Ben and Anna, but no, there was really no one she’d let get past her guard in these past seven years. If he knew to what extent, he might think her a freak. But that was her business.
“You have to understand, even before my fall I wasn’t the greatest at relationships.”
“Why not? You’re smart and hot to boot. It should have all come so easy for you.”
Easy. It was almost laughable. Nothing that wasn’t work related had ever come easy for her. Not relationships, not sex. Not ever.
Madeleine shook off her thoughts. That was a place she didn’t want to go. Memories that were better left untouched. But he was still standing there looking at her like he needed an answer.
“I was raised by my father. My mother died when I was young and he was very strict about certain things. Dating was not a priority in our house.”
“Okay? What about in the last sixteen years since you left your house?”
She’d grown cold. Cut off and unemotional. It hurt her to have to acknowledge it and she was angry at Michael for forcing her to do so. “Why do you care about this?”
“Because I know you. I like you. I want to know you better but I keep running into this invisible wall and frankly, it’s giving me a headache. So you screwed the president? Now that has to mean everything? Get on with your life.”
“Get on with my life?” she shrieked. “Because it was what? A few thousand articles written in papers and magazines and online. Three or four books written by people who didn’t even know me but who passed judgment on me. News stories and pictures and twenty-four-hour coverage for what…six months? Seven months. In America, in Europe. Hell, at one point the whole damn world was talking about it. People offered me thousands of dollars for the clothes I was wearing that night. A ten-thousand-dollar offer alone for my underwear, if you can believe it. But I mean, really, why dwell?”
“Hey,” he said, softening his voice. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No, Michael. You brought this up. You said it. You didn’t want to have sex with Charlene. She didn’t make your d-dick hard. You had that choice. You want to know why I haven’t had sex with anyone in seven years?”
“Madeleine, don’t…”
“Because I stopped having a choice. After it all came out…after the things the press said about me, men who knew me, who I thought knew me, suddenly believed me to be a very different type of woman. I couldn’t be in a room alone with a man for five seconds without having to explain that no, I don’t take my clothes off as soon as I say hello. Then came the men who didn’t know me but wanted to bag the president’s girl. Like I had some magic sexual powers that would turn them into world leaders. I had to back away from everyone because I couldn’t trust anyone.”
He moved around the table and took her hand. He didn’t do anything with it, just held it and looked at her.
“Did anyone hurt you?”
“They all hurt me.”
He shook his head. “Did any of them touch you?”
She could see the fury in his eyes along with a harnessed violence that reminded her he came from a very different world than she did.
“No, it wasn’t like that. No one forced me, but no one saw anything other than a woman who would freely lift her skirt. I wasn’t me anymore. I was this sexual prize. I hated it.”
“I’m sorry those men did that to you.”
Madeleine didn’t know what to say but she felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. That he cared. This man who barely knew her when so many men who were close to her in her life didn’t.
