He runs his hand through my hair, and the sensation is so sweet and so intoxicating, I stay there. We stay like that.

He obviously knows he affects me. But he looks affected too, his body stonelike and buzzing with tension. We’re both affected. He brushes the tips of his fingers along the bare back of my dress, the warmth of his hand sending shivers through my body. We’re in an alcove, and there’s this intense you-and-me vibe.

Intense you-and-me vibe . . .

“I never do this.” I try to unwind his arms from around me. “Give me back my badge, please.”

“What for?” he murmurs, scowling softly.

“I need my badge. I’m . . . this isn’t . . .”

“No,” he says softly.

“I feel naked without my badge.”

He grins. “It’s still no.”

I groan and turn away, and when I glance at him, he’s looking at me with perfect amusement.

“Can I ask you some questions?” I say, reaching out a fast hand, catching him off guard and pulling my badge out of his jacket.

He laughs when I quickly step back so he can’t recover it; then he falls sober and recovers the distance he lost, his steps slow and measured. “Do you want to talk about Interface?”

I feel like Do you want to talk about Interface? has become code for something else.

“Yes,” I say primly, clipping the badge to my dress.

He looks at me. “Ask.” He seems pretty content to be interviewed, so I breathe a sigh of relief at last.

“What are your goals for Interface?”

He tucks a loose hair behind my ear. My ear burns when he eases back his hand. “To be number one in the market, leave the competition behind.”

I see him, hear him, his ambition, his determination, and their effects only grow stronger in me.

“Do you . . .” I trail off when he lifts his hand, caressing my cheek with the knuckles of one hand.

“You never stop working, do you?” he interrupts, scowling a little. “In that sense, you’re like me.”

I scowl too. “You’re answering with a question.”

“You’re not asking the right questions.”

“God, Saint! Why do you like to tease me so much?”

Laughing, he leans closer, until his face is level with mine and I can smell the soap on his skin. He holds me by the chin with the pad of his thumb and forefinger. “Why do you blush every time I do?”

“My skin is white, it’s almost translucent. I blush easily.”

“I only see you blush with me.”

His eyes are both comforting and disturbing, hot and cold, closed off at the same time they seem to be stripping me. “Do you think about me, Rachel?”

“At work, yes. I think about you in the office. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Partly, yes. I think about you in the office too, but I also think about you in bed.”

“Saint, the commissioner would like to speak with you. Miss Livingston, I’m Dean.”

I’m so hot right now, I’m mortified I get to meet Saint’s PR person like this, but I shake his hand nonetheless and try to act calm and collected, not in the least Saint-affected. “Dean, oh yes, so nice to meet you.”

Malcolm extracts the badge from my grip. “Press time is over,” he informs me. All the cold has fled his eyes; they look beyond warm, blazing like fireballs as he looks at me. “Take care of her, Dean.”

“I will.”

He goes inside.

Dean and I soon follow.

I ask Dean how long he’s worked at M4, how the hiring process was. We’re talking about his job, and how impressed I am with Interface, when I spot a familiar face across the room. I stiffen when the hawklike, tiny pointy nose and the long dark hair register in my brain. Victoria?

Her eyes widen from across the room, and she points at me, to my complete and utter horror. She starts charging over.

“Rachel?” she calls.

God, seeing a colleague from Edge, one whom I don’t trust and one who knows exactly what I am doing here, I did not expect to feel so small.

I brace myself for a second, then I stand to greet her.

Playing the perfect innocent, she seems absolutely delighted as I perform a quick, perfunctory introduction to Dean.

“Dean, wow, and you’re Saint’s PR person?”

“Victoria . . . meet me at the ladies’? Dean, will you excuse us?”

I try to appear calm and mermaid-like as I start in the direction of the restrooms, keeping my eyes ahead while Victoria walks smugly next to me.