column at the back. See if we can use celebrities instead of travel writers.”
“Really? It was just an idea to boost readership.”
“I know. I like it. I’ll make sure that Maurice knows you came up with it.”
She smiled. “I don’t care about that.”
Tristan leaned one hip against the side of her desk. “What do you care about?”
“World peace,” she said, completely deadpan. She didn’t want to have a serious discussion at work, but this was the only time when Tristan really opened up to her. It was almost as if he knew she’d only let things go so far in the office.
“Ma petite, are you going to leave me for a beauty pageant?”
“Not my scene.”
“I know. This is your scene, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Working with you suits me to a tee.”
“Just working?”
“Well, we don’t live together.”
“And whose fault is that?” He sounded almost huffy.
“Yours.”
“Mine? I asked you to move in with me.”
“More like ordered.” She smiled. Take that.
“It didn’t do me a lot of good.”
“You wouldn’t want a woman who just said yes to your every whim.” That she knew.
“Try me.”
“Try you? How?”
“Move in with me. Stop making me take you back to Brooklyn every night.”
“What would change if I did that?” She was so tempted to say yes. Had been since the first time he’d told her to move in with him.
He leaned in close. “We’d be together all the time.”
“But just temporarily.”
“Is that what’s stopping you from saying yes?”
She wasn’t going to answer that question. She’d have to reveal too much of herself, too many things she’d long kept hidden. She glanced down at her computer screen and clicked on the instant messenger button to summon Maurice. The sooner they had someone else in the office, the better it would be for her.
“Sheri?”
“Hmm…”
“Look at me.”
She glanced up.
“I want to know why you haven’t moved in with me. The truth this time.”
She folded her hands together on her desk blotter and then pulled them apart. “It is the temporary thing.”
“I don’t understand how it’s any different if you move in with me,” he said.
Sheri pushed her chair back from the desk and got up, walking around so that he wasn’t leaning over her. “The difference is I’ve never lived anywhere but that brownstone.”
Tristan stood up from where he’d been leaning against the desk. “The brownstone is your home.”
“Yes. It’s my home. It’s the one constant I’ve had in my life since I was eight, when my mother died and my father dumped me at my aunt’s, and, as you pointed out, what we’ve got going is only temporary.”
Tristan didn’t say anything else and Sheri wanted to curse at herself for letting the conversation get so personal. She really tried to be cool and breezy whenever she talked to him. Always tried so hard to keep her emotions bottled up and a secret from him.
“Is that it?”
“No…I’m also afraid that, if I move in with you, I’ll start to buy in to the fantasy you’ve written for us. I might start to really believe that I’m your fiancée, and that would be devastating for me when you leave.”
“All relationships end.”
“How do you figure?”
“Even the strongest and most loving relationships end with death. So no matter what, everything is temporary.”
“Tristan, that’s sad.”
“What is?”
“That you view life that way.”
“It’s realistic, Sheri. Hell, if you were to admit it, you see things the same way.”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
“Even though you won’t leave your little brownstone?” he asked.
“That’s different. I don’t see relationships as temporary. I see them as unbalanced.”
“I’m not following.”
Sheri crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Tristan. His eyes were misty gray today because of the shirt he had on. He was so handsome, sometimes she worried that he’d wake up to the fact that there were a million gorgeous women in the world who’d gladly be his pretend fiancée and do whatever he asked of them.
“My reality and that brownstone are tied together. I see relationships as unbalanced because I’ve always been the one to care more than everyone else. And in the end, they’ve all left me behind.”
Tristan didn’t say anything and she felt like an idiot for revealing what she had.
“I’m going to run down and get Maurice.”
She walked out of the office and down the hall, trying to pretend that nothing had changed, but knowing that everything had.
At the end of the day Tristan was tired. Sheri had made excuses to be away from her desk for most of the afternoon and he’d let her. There was work to do and he didn’t need the distraction that she presented.
But in the back of his mind all he thought about was what she’d said about people leaving.
He thought in terms of temporary because his life had always been in constant change. The only thing he really counted on was his friendship with Gui and Christos.
And even that was changing, with Christos’s marriage. He was happy for his friend, but at the same time concerned for him. Christos had never allowed himself to love a woman before, not the way he was in love with Ava. Tristan hoped they had a lifetime together, but his experience had taught him that they probably wouldn’t.
There was a knock on his door.
“Enter.”
The
