Page 10 of Edge of Secrets

“Babe.” Monica cracked her gum. “One must suffer in order to be beautiful.”

“That is not my creed, nor will it ever be. I reject it on every level of my being.” I heaved myself up onto unsteady feet. “I’m going out for a cigarette break.”

Monica’s eyebrows shot up. “But you don’t smoke.”

“If I smoked, now would be the moment that I did.” I marched out the back door without taking off my apron, and walked down the street through blaring traffic, my face feverishly hot.

I was so flustered. So discombobulated. God, I was close to thirty years old, and all I had done was serve the guy lunch. Imagine if he and I were actually to ever ... well, no. Better not imagine it at all if I wanted to keep functioning. I was already in a state of total emotional and sensory overload.

It had been years since I’d fooled around with a guy, and the more time that passed, the harder it got to contemplate. My sister Nancy had at least gotten out there and tried. She’d gotten burned a lot, but she’d finally landed a winner in Liam. Grit, persistence and guts had paid off. Vivi and I were so proud and pleased for her.

But that was Nancy, all over. She had courage and perseverance to burn. I didn’t have the stomach to run the risk, or face the kind of feelings that I knew lay in wait for me if I made a wrong move. The way I’d feel if I got used. Hurt, humiliated, rejected.

Not if. When. It was a sure thing, statistically speaking. Anyone who jumped into that particular shark tank had to face the odds. Nobody got through it unscathed.

Elena, my birth mother, had never feared men. She had just used them. Coolly. Expertly. Elena Pisani had been an extremely beautiful woman, and as a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession, she had used her beauty as currency, with ruthless practicality. Elena had always looked flawless, no matter the circumstances. Sexy clothing, shoes, makeup, and hair—seduction and allure. Those were the tools and weapons of her trade. She had always looked, felt, and smelled fabulous.

Which was probably why I avoided makeup and favored baggy, shapeless dresses, frumpy shoes and nerdy glasses. Dressing down blurred my startling resemblance to my mother. Looking like her frightened me. A good therapist would be able to diagnose all my fixations with ease. They were probably all described in the standard manuals.

I had been an inconvenient surprise to Elena, a pregnancy she had unaccountably decided to bring to term. For the first ten years of my life, I watched my mother being kept by a series of rich men in various lavish apartments around the country. When it was convenient, Elena brought me along. When it was not, which was most of the time, I stayed in a series of boarding schools. I was taught to call her Elena, not Mom. She thought that emphasizing her maternity made her seem older. Unsexy.

I’d just gotten old enough to get an inkling of the nature of Elena’s arrangements with this long string of “uncles” when she died suddenly of an undiagnosed brain tumor. There had been only twelve terrifying days from the onset of her crushing headaches to her death under the surgeon’s knife.

There had been no relatives to contact. No savings or life insurance policy to keep me. My mother had no friends to speak of, and her current lover had swiftly vanished.

I had entered the foster system at the age of ten, and three very dark years followed—years that I tried hard to forget. Then Lucia found me.

And that had been my salvation. Lucia, Nancy, and Vivi. A family of my own.

Yes, I had plenty of reasons to be reticent about sex and romance, if I thought about them, though I flinched from self-analysis as from a poisonous spider. I preferred to analyze books rather than my own sad and silly self. Books were much more fun.

One thing I knew for sure. My particular childhood trauma had forged me into a hopeless and insatiable devourer of books. My choice had been brutally simple: romantic escapism or brutal cynicism. Romance was clearly the better choice.

Books were havens, other worlds to escape to. Other feelings to experience. As I got older, I discovered tales of love and passion, and got hooked on those as well. An even more potent haven, with even higher, thicker walls.

It was so much better to spend my time wallowing in the highest, purest sentiments of which human hearts were capable, and if it was all blather and bullshit, who cared? It was beautiful blather and bullshit, and I would dedicate my life to it. Reading it, studying it, teaching it. Hopefully writing it, too.

There was only one problem. My body didn’t care about my high ideals. My body wanted the real, flesh-and-blood thing, faults and all. And a real, live, flesh-and-blood guy with all his foibles and flaws and his ridiculous male nonsense would never live up to my fictional ideals.

Particularly not a guy with no manners, no imagination, no way with words. And deep-set, intense dark eyes that burned with fascinated lust when he looked at me.

I didn’t want it to be about just lust. I had seen what sex purely for sex’s sake looked like. It was cold, sterile, and sad. I didn’t need to see it ever again.

Though Mr. Hyper-focused’s scorching gaze had not felt neither cold, sad, nor sterile. Not in the least.

Enough of this. I had tables to clear, rent to pay, and Snake Eyes to stay alert for. A job interview to mentally prepare for, too. Here I was, stumbling through the crowded streets without even paying the slightest attention to the hordes of people teeming around me. I had to sharpen up, or I’d get stuffed in the trunk of a car, like Nancy. Thank God Liam had come charging to Nancy’s rescue like an avenging angel.

I didn’t have one of those following me around.

After my shift, I changed into my most professional-looking suit and put on some lipstick that Vivi had given me. It was frighteningly red. I stared doubtfully in the mirror. I twisted my hair into the tightest knot I could manage, with all that curly volume, but the sheer weight of it pulled the knot down from the crown of my head to bounce at the nape of my neck in a matter of minutes.

The receptionist’s directions were easy. It was just a twenty-minute walk uptown. I entered the lobby of a large Midtown office building, took the elevator to the sixteenth floor, and found the door. Burke Solutions, Inc., was stenciled on it.

It was a large, attractive office. The receptionist was a fresh-faced young man with rather bulging eyes and a bow tie. He gave me a big smile as I approached, hanging up his phone. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” I said. “I’m here for an interview with Duncan Burke.”

His eyes widened. He blinked at me. “Another poet?” His tone suggested that I was a rare bug that might sting him.

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