I shake my head with a soft laugh. Would I even know where to begin?

I think of his assistants, half in love with him or worse. I don’t want this to be me. I don’t want to be forty, in love with a man I can never have. At least when I had my career goals, ambitious as they were, I always imagined I’d be able to attain them someday. But him? He’s already as unreachable to me as all of the sixty-seven Jupiter moons.

“Even if I dared leave Edge, which I won’t, but even if I did, I’d never accept a job I was unsure I could even do.”

“You can do it,” he says, firm and calm.

“I’m telling you, I can’t.” I laugh a little and lower my face.

When he speaks, his voice is soberly low. “I’ll stop asking you to work for me when you prove to me you can’t write anymore.”

“How am I supposed to do that? Write you something bad?” I scowl in confusion.

He seems to ponder that for a moment. “Write one of my speeches. Write the one for tomorrow. You’re familiar with Interface, its business model, objectives, cultural footprint.”

I narrow my eyes.

“If it’s as bad as you say, I’ll back off,” he adds with the kind of lazy indulgence only people who hold all the cards emit.

He sits behind his desk with a familiar little twinkle in his eye, so powerful and tanned and dark-haired and green-eyed and toe-curlingly masculine, challenging me to rise to his bait. The temptation is so strong, I have to fight it.

“I can make it bad enough you’ll stop asking me to work for you.”

“But you won’t.” His eyes gleam, and his lips form a smile that causes all kinds of visceral tugs inside me. “I know you won’t.”

I sit here, struggling.

I want to see him. I want to have an excuse to see him.

“This wouldn’t mean I’m working for you. You won’t pay me for this. It’s just so you can see that writing is . . . hard. I’m not who you need at M4, Malcolm.”

I’m feeling tingles in my stomach from the smile he wears. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“When do you need it by?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“And the event is at noon?”

He nods slowly, eyes glimmering in challenge. “Get it to me by ten.”

“Mr. Saint, your two thirty is here,” a female voice says from the door.

I come to my feet when Malcolm uncoils from his seat. He eases his arms into his crisp black jacket. “Ask Catherine for the guidelines the other speechwriters were working with.” He buttons up, and pauses. “I’ll expect to see your email.”

“Malcolm,” I start, but then stop. After a moment, I whisper, surprising myself, “You will.”

As I watch him head to the door, adrenaline courses through me, every part of me shaking except my determination.

When I get back to Edge, I walk to my seat like a horse with blinders, avoiding everyone. I print out some stuff for the speech and then head home. I haven’t told Gina I met with him, or my mom, or Wynn, or Helen. He’s my secret, somehow, too precious for me to share, my hope too raw and too tiny to survive the questioning of anyone else.

I don’t want to hear if what I’m doing is dangerous. Wrong. Or right. I’m doing it because I have to—I need to—because he asked me to, and this is the only way I can be close to him for now. Yes, I could accept his job offer and be closer for longer—but I’d define myself as his employee for possibly forever. That’s not what I want to be to him.

I stare at my laptop once I get home. Only seconds after I boot it up, a familiar dread starts creeping into me, as it does when I sit to write now.

But I think of Interface. Malcolm. How relentless he is, how ruthless, how innovative, and he’s right.

My pride won’t let me write something I don’t like. I want to dazzle him. I want him to read it and, even if he hates me, I want him to feel awe or admiration for my words. I want to talk to him through the simple act of writing his speech and if he trusted me with this little thing—I don’t want to fail him.

Before I start writing, I call my mother to say hi, check up on her. Then I tell Gina, “I’m going to write!” so she doesn’t just burst into my bedroom. Then I turn off my cell phone, close my browser, and look at my Word file as I put in the first word: Interface . . .

SPEECH

After a night spent writing draft after draft after draft, I’m at Edge early on Friday, quickly sipping an orange juice as I boot up my computer, then diving straight in to edit the best of what I wrote.