“There,” he says, his eyes twinkling happily in the dark. “Now I drive you home.”

There mere thought of it unnerves me. My apartment is my safe haven. I imagine his presence near all my frilly, girly things. What does he want there? If his shirt invaded my thoughts and my space, I can’t imagine what Saint himself will do. I nod, merely because I want, need, to leave an option open, but specify, “Yes, but not tonight.”

And then I just need some distance, from his eyes, from the way my body feels overworked—my heart leaping, every part of me overreacting to his smile, his glance, his smell.

So I head down to the lower deck without even telling him where I’m going, and I leap into the cold water in the tiny bikini—crash! Cold! And then I swim up, wooting when I do.

Tahoe swims nearby, and he blinks at me, his grin turning naughty. “Well, well, well . . .”

“Cut it, T.”

At the voice, I look up. Saint leans over the rail with that small smile, watching me.

I sit that night taking notes feverishly.

Okay, focus on just the facts, Livingston. I exhale and try to push one tiny green grape out of my head. Green eyes asking—demanding—I let him bring me home. And I can’t believe I almost said yes.

He’s a loner—he seemed detached from the group. Always one step ahead, somewhere else.

He is used to women flocking to him. (Are they an afterthought? Background noise? He didn’t seem especially attentive to anyone, but they pole-dance and make out to amuse him!)

I go brush my teeth and head to bed. I settle under my covers. Try to go to sleep. But other things keep coming back to me.

The fact that when he fed me the grape I could feel his hard chest against my breasts and his breath on my face.

The fact that I could always seem to smell him when the air hit me a certain way, and hear him above everyone else.

I try to push these thoughts away, but the more I try, the more they surface. God, I don’t want to dwell on this. I don’t. But if I want this exposé to be good, I can’t block out parts. I can’t pick and choose what’s convenient for me to deal with and what’s not. I grab my pad again and start with one word.

Electric

He electrifies the air.

Then I write down a few more.

Consuming

If he’s around, you hardly notice anything else.

Stubborn

He’s impossible to bargain with.

HE STILL LOVES TO TEASE ME!!!!!

He poked and prodded me about the picture, the grapes, the shirt, even being Rosie’s hero. . . .

I set the pad aside and turn off my lamp, but even in the dark, I still see him watching me in the water from above. And I still feel his fingers on my shoulders as I hopped onboard the yacht again only to feel him wrap a warm towel around me.

10

CAMPOUT

For the last twenty-four hours, I’ve been surfing the Net and clicking through all his newly tagged pictures. There are also some older pictures of girls in bikinis playing mini golf at his place. And pictures of him getting out of a chopper with girl pilots wearing nothing but tiny shorts.

“It really bothers me, seeing all these pictures, because a lot of these girls go to him, he doesn’t ask them to come cling to him,” I tell Gina.

“Dude, Saint is big on whoring around. Must be all the attention he never got as a kid.”

“More like he’s a healthy male and women just throw themselves at him. I’ve seen YouTube videos dedicated to him, of women stripping or washing their cars, offering to come wash his. In fact, look at this. . . .”

We watch a video of a woman with no bra wetting her T-shirt and smiling. “Saint, I’ll wash your cars any day, and clean your pipes, too.”

We burst out laughing.

“He’s got a huge car collection, apparently. There’s a picture, see? There are like thirty cars here. Very rare ones. He’s got a thousand and one toys. Doesn’t that say something?”

“What?” Gina asks.

“When you have everything and nothing is ever enough?”

“How should we know? We barely made rent this month.”

“Come on, be serious. When nothing is ever enough, on some hidden level of his psyche there’s something about this man’s life that’s absolutely empty. I see him work, Gina; it’s like he . . . is obsessed with it. Like it helps him block out something else.”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

She laughs. “You’re so deep, Rachel. Such a philosopher. Send him the bill and save him the therapist.”