Untrue Love Read online

  Donna began walking in the opposite direction. Her apartment was actually the other way, but she was damned if she was going to walk even one block together after such an awkward parting.

  With each step, a bigger cloud formed over her head. It was all so disappointing! She wanted to cry. She wanted to call Evan. She wanted to buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and eat it in front of the television. She wanted all of those things, but she didn’t want any of them. The thing she wanted most of all was to feel hopeful about the future, and that was the one thing that eluded her. The night was dark, the wind was cold, and she huddled down into the thin comfort of her wool coat and searched her mind for a reason to feel good.

  55

  THE INVITATION HAD arrived on Ellie’s voice mail, in a call delivered in the small hours of the morning while she was fast asleep. If she had been awake to take the call, she might have found a way to wriggle out of this social commitment, but Philip had been devastatingly confident in the message he left her.

  “Ellie, it’s time for us to make plans. Time is against us, and we have some obstacles in our path. Come to dinner on Friday and we can get started on creating the bright future that we both know you deserve. 8:00; my secretary will send you the address. Don’t bring anything but your beautiful mind.”

  Ellie took a deep breath and began making her way up the stone staircase that led to the most impressive residence in town. To her unseasoned eye everything about the mansion looked like a brand-new and elegantly executed facsimile of a centuries-old mansion. The building was tasteful and understated even as it broadcast the fact that its owner was a fabulously wealthy man.

  Feeling more intimidated than she would ever admit, Ellie ascended the stairs and knocked tentatively on the door. At first no sound greeted her, and she wondered if Philip might be on the second floor or in one of the back rooms where he’d have trouble hearing the door. She fished for her phone in her pocket, trying to remember if she had his number.

  Just then there was a rattle and the door swung slowly wide. Philip stood bathed in the light from his foyer, divested of the business suit that she had always seen him wearing but somehow still radiating a sense of formality and respectability while wearing a sweater and a pair of slacks. He smiled at her warmly.

  “It is such a pleasure to at last find you on my doorstep. Please come in.”

  Ellie gratefully stepped out of the cold and through the doorway into an interior that was so tastefully-appointed, she half suspected that it was reproduced, detail for detail, from the pages of Architectural Digest. Everything was so perfect, and so perfectly clean, that she was worried that her boots might track in something from outside. “You have a beautiful home,” she said.

  Philip slipped the coat from her shoulders. “It is beautiful, now that you’re here,” he murmured.

  Ellie nearly laughed at how shamelessly he was flirting with her, but she could not deny that she also felt a thrill to be desired by such a powerful man. As she looked around the house, which featured paintings, plants, rugs, and furniture that contributed to a single, unified look, she began to sense that she was very nearly caught in a spider’s web.

  Philip hung her coat in the closet and gestured to her. She followed him down a warmly-hit hallway as they made their way toward the kitchen. “What will you have to drink?” he asked.

  “White wine, if you have it,” Ellie asked, distracted by the paintings on the wall. Philip’s taste ran to the abstract, and she had little doubt that, if she was more knowledgeable in such matters, she would recognize many of the works hanging here. She wondered which was worth more, the building or the adornments Philip had filled it with.

  He handed her a glass. She took a moment to appreciate the fragile beauty of its elegant, sweeping curves and then took a sip of the tart, crisp liquid. “Nice,” she said almost to herself, savoring the flavor on her tongue. She suspected that the wine in her glass had come from a bottle that cost more than she paid in rent.

  “I love your place. Have you had it long?” she asked.

  “In a way,” Philip answered from the kitchen, where he was assembling a plate of crudités. “I’ve owned the land for nearly twenty years, but I never much liked the house that was built on it. Finally I had it torn down so I could build the house I’d had in my head all that time. I’d imagined it for so long, and so vividly, that I pretty much dictated it to the architect. It was a dream come true to see it take shape in front of me.”

  “That must be nice.”

  “What must be nice?” he asked, walking to her and extending a plate for her to sample from. She took a salted radish and popped it in her mouth.

  “To have enough money that you can just decide to tear down your house and build a better one. Where did you live in the meantime?”

  “Well,” he said, as if she had caught him in a white lie, “I don’t actually live here. I work out of my Manhattan offices mostly, and when I have free time I prefer warmer weather—Florida, or the islands. But when I agreed to serve as trustee, I knew that I wouldn’t want to check into a hotel every time I was in town. To function my best I need my own space, with my own furnishings. This is that space.”

  Ellie chuckled, embarrassed at her naïveté. Of course a man like Philip Baptiste would never live full-time in a little town like this. “You have a very beautiful vacation home, then,” she said, half in jest.

  “I’m not sure I agree,” he murmured, taking a sip from his own glass.

  “Why not?”

  “Because no home is beautiful without a beautiful woman inside it, and until now that hasn’t been the case.” His steely eyes locked with hers with such force that Ellie’s breath caught and she nearly took a step backward.

  She smiled and took a sip to hide her embarrassment. It felt as if the wine was already beginning to go to her head. “I have a hard time believing that. A man like you must have women tucked away in every corner of his life.”

  “A man like me?” he asked, amused.

  “Wealthy. Powerful. Older, but not so old that it’s a problem.”

  He chuckled. “I like that. And in answer to your question, yes, there have been women. Probably too many. They’re pretty, they know how to charm a man, and a few of them are smart and funny, too. But not like you.”

  Ellie admired men who knew how to give a compliment. This one certainly qualified. “Is that why you invited me, Philip? To make a pass at me?” She kept her tone playful, but she was feeling a little breathless. What did she want his answer to be? She wasn’t sure yet.

  “I invited you here to talk about your conference, Ellie. There is no hidden agenda. I don’t do hidden agendas. But in the meantime, if you’re asking me not to enjoy your company, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to satisfy you on that accord.”

  Ellie regarded him over the brim of her glass. What would happen, she wondered, if she surrendered to his advances—and despite what he said, there were most certainly advances being made this evening. What would happen if this dinner turned into something more? Would she be one of his conquests, or would there be a chance of something more?

  There was a time, when she was a little girl, that she had dreamed of something very much like this. A hundred times she had imagined the powerful man, a prince or king or famous movie star, who would sweep into her life and make everything glamorous, beautiful, abundant, and easy. She had given up on that dream a very long time ago, but should she have? All those years ago, had she been imagining Philip Baptiste?

  Ellie took a sip of her wine and dreamed a little dream.

  56

  DONNA FLIPPED OPEN the cover of her laptop. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, and she was filled with determination she had built up via a day-long pep talk that she had given herself. She hoped it would be enough to sustain her through this conversation.

  She opened a chat window and checked for Evan’s status. He was online, which was no surprise. Evan was almost always online.

 
“Hey dude,” she typed at him. She waited impatiently for his reply.

  “yo chica”

  “You’re doing OK?”

  “yeah”

  Donna took a deep breath. Here goes. “Is it OK if I call you? There’s something important I want to talk about.”

  It was a long time before his reply came back. Evan didn’t like to talk on the phone. She suspected that it was because a phone conversation trapped him into talking to one person at a time, whereas he could carry on several text conversations at once.

  “not a good time”

  Her mouth tightened in irritation. It had taken her so long to work up the courage to even ask for the conversation, she didn’t want to go through that again. “Really? It’s important.”

  This time the pause was even longer, so much so that she caught herself checking his status indicator to see whether he had dropped offline. At last a new line popped up in the chat window.

  “fine”

  Donna let out a sharp breath, then took her phone into the clammy palm of her hand. Her heart was beating heavily. With unsteady fingers, she navigated to her contacts list, found Evan’s name, and placed a call.

  When he answered, he sounded angry and a little petulant, like a teenage boy called on the carpet by his parents. “So what’s up?” he asked.

  “Were you busy?” Donna asked.

  “Do you care? I told you it wasn’t a good time.”

  “So you were busy.”

  “I was doing some stuff, but whatever. What’s up?” He was getting impatient with her.

  She took another deep breath, steadying herself. “I wanted to talk about us.”

  When he finally replied, he sounded half amused. “Us? What about us?”

  “I wanted to know…I just…I think we’re really good together.” Donna felt terrified now that the line she had been crafting inside her head was out in the world. It had seemed brave and strong when she was planning it, but now the words felt as fragile and pitiful as a baby bird that had fallen out of the nest.

  She waited for what felt like an eternity, but Evan didn’t respond. “Do you think we’re good together?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess,” came his reply.

  Donna’s stomach was slowly filling with a sinking sensation. She forged on, though, because she had nowhere else to go. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Because if it’s a good thing, wouldn’t it be better if we had more of it? Maybe we can have that all of the time.”

  Her heart beat like a snare drum while she waited for his reply. Finally it came. “I have no friggin’ clue what you’re talking about.”

  The words echoed in Donna’s ears for what seemed like a very long time. He was going to make her do it. He was going to make her come right out and say it. In total despair, she took a breath and began stringing the words together into a sentence that utterly terrified her.

  “I’m in love with you, Evan.”

  In the silence that followed, Donna was filled with a sudden panic. It was a mistake, a terrible mistake, this thing she had just said. Even before she heard Evan’s reply, she knew with a terrible certainty what he was about to say.

  It came faster than she was expecting, though. “That’s your deal. I’ve never lied to you. I let you hang around sometimes and maybe I shouldn’t have, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything but you’re just not getting it! I’m not into you that way. And I’ve got a lot going on tonight, so I think we’re done here. Bye.”

  He hung up on her, and just like that it was done. Everything was done.

  57

  ELLIE HAD BEEN home for just a few minutes when she heard a pounding on her door. Instinctively she checked for the smell of smoke, because it sounded like there must be some sort of an emergency. When she looked through the door’s peephole, though, she saw an unexpected face on the other side.

  She swung the door open. In the dim light cast by the hallway light, Paul’s face was half hidden in shadow. She could tell that he was upset, though. His eyes glowed with a haunted light.

  “Paul! You’re the last person I expected to see tonight. What is it?” she demanded.

  He pushed past her and strode into her living room. She wondered whether she should be afraid. Her father was still out somewhere, and she was alone in her apartment with an angry man she barely knew.

  He came to a stop next to her couch, his hands on his hips and staring at the floor. He didn’t look at her when she stepped warily into the room.

  “Paul, you need to tell me what’s going on,” she said, fishing her phone out of her pocket and holding it at the ready. Her door was still open. She wondered how many of her neighbors would hear her if she called for help.

  “Did you—” he began. The words came haltingly, as if he were forcing them past a barrier.

  “Did I what?”

  He turned on her, his eyes blazing. “Philip Baptiste. What happened between the two of you this evening?”

  Ellie was stunned speechless. How did he even know that she was with Philip that night? Was he stalking her? “How…that’s none of your business! You have no business asking anything of me, after what you did in the trustees meeting!”

  He took a deep breath and let it out again, visibly trying to calm himself. “I’m afraid that it is my business. There’s a lot that you don’t know. I wish it wasn’t my business, but it is.” He took a step toward her. “Please, Ellie, just tell me that you’re not falling for him.”

  She took a step back, wondering again whether she should be afraid for her life, or for other things. Beneath her anxiety a spark of anger and outrage was beginning to build, though, and it continued grow until it overwhelmed the other emotion.

  “Paul, I want you to leave. You need to leave right now,” she said. She turned to the side to give him a clear path to the doorway.

  “Ellie, I need to know,” he answered. His face was a jumble of emotions too complicated for her to decipher.

  Her finger hovered over the face of her phone. It would take only a moment to call out for help, and only a moment more to dial 911. “Why?” she asked, giving him one last chance.

  He looked at her. The silence between them felt like a physical thing.

  “Why?” she asked again.

  In answer he strode towards her so quickly that she took an involuntary gasp of breath, then his lips were pressed against hers. This wasn’t like the kiss they had shared before, back in his office when liquor was still an excuse. This kiss was brutal in its intensity. Ellie felt enveloped in him, wrapped snugly in his powerful arms, his mouth tight against hers and their bodies pressed together. For an instant she nearly fought against him, but then there was no more thought of that. There was no room in her mind for what he had done to her, how he had broken his promise and betrayed her in front of the other trustees. Instead she mutely melted into his body, echoing his every move, pressing up to meet his heat as he plunged down into hers.

  They stumbled against a wall. Ellie’s hands followed a path up his back, tracing the gentle undulations of his spine and spreading out to explore the broad muscles of his shoulders as she lifted his jacket up and off to drop on the floor. Their mouths continued to writhe together, a wet and hot tangle of lips and tongues and lust. Desire for this man, desire for what was growing between them, blazed inside her. She wanted there to be nothing between them.

  His fingers pulled impatiently at the buttons of her blouse. While he worked on them, she undid the button fly on her jeans and pushed them down past her hips before returning to work urgently at the buckle of his belt. Now that her treasure was close, her breath came in urgent gasps.

  They were near the couch, stumbling in the direction of the bedroom, but that destination was still much too far away. She pushed him down on the couch and, in almost the same movement, straddled him on the cushions. She could feel what she wanted between her thighs now—an urgency straining against the faded denim of his jeans. She slipped h
er fingers inside the waistband of his pants and touched something hard, smooth, and oh so hot. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, savoring the pleasure of his skin and the anticipation of what was to come.

  Paul grabbed her by the waist and swiveled her around, swinging her down onto the couch so that he could take his place on top. Impatiently he tore off her shoes and drew her jeans down her slender legs, then he stroked his fingers down the downy-soft flesh of her inner thighs, the way a sculptor might trace the contours of his latest creation.

  Ellie’s entire body was singing in anticipation of the way his skin would feel against hers, of the way he would feel inside her. She reached out again and finished unbuttoning his pants, then with a devilish smile pulled him down on top of her. They kissed hard, and she savored his weight on top of her, his smell, and the feeling of stubble along his cheek.

  His hands roamed down from her arms to her waist and then to the waistband of her panties. He pulled back from her just enough to where he could look deep into her eyes, a question within his own. In answer, Ellie nodded furiously: Yes. Oh, yes.

  With a gentle but insistent tug her panties were at her ankles and he was kneeling between her. Part of her wanted to be completely naked, wanted to be in bed, wanted to do this thing right, but a much bigger part wanted nothing at all that could not happen right here, right now, before one more moment passed and they might think of a reason to stop.

  Paul’s mouth plunged to cover hers, their tongues twisted in a slippery dance, and then with a thrust they were one. Ellie moaned into his mouth, and her hands cupped the twin globes of his rock-hard ass. She pulled him farther in until she felt full to overflowing.

  He buried his face in her neck and rocked against her. His passion was like the tide, vast and irresistible in its rhythms. Ellie’s eyes were squeezed shut. Her only reality was what was happening between them. Together they rocked and groaned and climbed up to a crescendo that she could already feel would shatter her into a thousand pieces.