by Logan Belle
She couldn’t look at him.
“Regina, it’s great to have you on board.” At that, she managed to meet his gaze. He smiled at her as if they shared a secret—which, of course, they did. She looked away.
“So how long have you worked here?”
“Two weeks,” she said.
“Are you from New York?”
“No,” she said, uncomfortable with having to answer questions. She thought they were there to talk about the fiction award gala, not her. Sebastian looked at her expectantly, and she realized he was waiting for her to continue, to say where she was from. “I’m from Philadelphia. Outside of Philadelphia—the Main Line.”
“Ah, the genteel Main Line,” he said, smiling. She didn’t know if he was teasing her or what.
“My family isn’t like that,” she said defensively.
“So when did you move to New York?”
“A month ago.”
“Wow. You really are a rookie.”
She felt a flash of annoyance. “I’m not a rookie when it comes to books. I have my degree in Library and Information Science. I graduated cum laude.” Ugh, why did she say that? What did she care what he thought of her?
He nodded, as if contemplating this barrage of information. “I’m assuming you’re a fast reader? You like fiction?”
“Yes,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Who are some of your favorite authors?”
She looked at him again, eyeing him warily. “Contemporary or classic?”
“Either one.” He smiled, clearly charmed, or at least mildly entertained. She found him to be patronizing and irritating, but she would be damned if she was going to shy away from his questions.
“Well, Henry James, for one.”
“Ah, yes. ‘The Beast in the Jungle.’ ”
She looked at him in amazement. “You’ve read it?”
“Don’t look so surprised. I was an English major. And yes, I’ve read it. It’s one of my all-time favorite short stories.”
“Only one of them?”
“I think a few of Raymond Carver’s are top of my list.”
She nodded. It was difficult to argue with Raymond Carver.
“Well, this is encouraging,” he said, clapping his hands together. “At least we know we share the same barometer for short fiction.” His eyes were bright. “How about contemporary?”
She thought for a minute, her mind suddenly blank. This was ridiculous—she didn’t have to prove anything to him. She didn’t care if he had majored, minored, and double-minored in English: This was one conversational arena in which she felt utterly confident.
“Jess Walter. Every one of his novels is amazing, and they’re all so completely different from one another. Then, I guess, Tom Perrotta, Michael Chabon . . .”
“Interesting,” he said, as if she had revealed something.
“What?”
“Every writer you’ve named is a man. You must really connect with the male sensibility.”
Was this true? Had she really not named a single female writer? She felt a flash of annoyance. Who was he to judge her answers, analyzing them like some sort of literary Rorschach test?
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” she said. “And you don’t have me fooled for a second, by the way. All this talk about fiction doesn’t change the fact that you’re the type of person who can . . . who can . . .” She faltered, suddenly aware that the force of her indignation had backed her into a conversational corner.
“Who can what?” he asked, clearly amused. His handsome smile, the way he leaned toward her, eagerly awaiting her response, was the final insult.
“Have sex with someone in the library,” she whispered.
“Now, now—I don’t think you should be going around making such serious accusations,” he said, so innocently she thought momentarily that she’d imagined everything she’d seen. And then he started to laugh.
“I can’t believe you think this is funny,” she said.
“Hey, let’s not forget that you were the one sneaking into a private room. You are a naughty girl.”
And then he wasn’t smiling. His eyes locked onto hers in a way that made her insides flip. Her mind filled with an image of that woman bent over, her hair sweeping the floor . . . the look of pleasure on his face as Sebastian thrust into her over and over again . . .
Regina stood up and rushed out of the room.
•
“How’s it going in the library biz?” asked Derek, reaching into her package of Oreos and eating them two at a time.
She looked to Carly to correct her boyfriend’s poor kitchen etiquette, but her roommate was oblivious, perched on the countertop and painting her toenails neon green.
“Uh, fine,” Regina said, opening the refrigerator and retrieving the spaghetti left over from last night’s dinner.
“Any more naked encounters?” Carly asked.
“No,” said Regina.
“Did you tell your boss?” asked Derek.
Regina stuck the pasta in the microwave.
“No, I didn’t mention it.”
“You let the perv stay on the loose?” Carly asked with glee.
Regina shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s necessarily a perv. He was in a private room, and it turns out it’s a room his family donated or something.”
She moved to the dining room table, pushing aside Carly’s latest pile of fashion magazines.
“Uh, hello? You can’t just leave on that bizarre little note,” said Carly.
She waddled into the room with her toes spread out, walking on her heels. Derek followed behind her. “What do you mean, his family donated the room? Who’s his family?”
“I don’t want to tell you,” Regina said.
Carly laughed. “Why the hell not? You finally have something interesting to say, and you’re holding out on us?”
“You’ll just go tweet it or blog it or tumble it, or whatever you do.”
“I will not,” said Carly. “I promise, your kinky little library friend will be our little secret. Won’t leave this room. Right, Derek?”
“Right,” Derek piped up, on cue.
Regina hesitated for a minute, but her need to confide in someone overcame her sense of caution. “Sebastian Barnes,” she blurted.
“What about him?” asked Carly.
“He’s the guy.”
Carly pulled out a seat at the table and plopped herself down, eyes wide.
“You’re fucking with me.”
“No, I’m not. Why—do you know him?”
Derek hovered nearby, clearly very interested in the answer to that question. Carly reached for a W magazine in her pile, then flipped hurriedly through the back pages. Not finding what she was looking for, she picked up another. She studied one page briefly, then shoved the open magazine in front of Regina’s face. It was a black-and-white photo of a lithe woman, bent over to reveal the arch of her spine in a backless dress. Her hands, with ballerina fingers, reached for her feet, almost touching her elegant stilettos.
“Who is this?” Regina asked, oddly afraid Carly would say, “His girlfriend.” Though why would that matter? But instead, Carly pointed to small print at the bottom of the page: Photographer Sebastian Barnes.
It took a minute to register. “Let me see that.” Regina took the magazine and flipped to the next page, and the next. The photograph Carly showed her was just the first of a whole editorial spread, all photographed by Sebastian.
“He’s, like, kind of a big deal,” said Carly. “When he first came up at the magazines, people thought he was a dilettante—because of all the money, you know. But he shut down all the criticism with photos like these.”
Regina put the magazine down. “Well, good for him. That still doesn’t give him the right to us
e the library like his personal playground.”
Carly sighed. “Loosen up, Regina. You should recognize a great New York moment when it’s staring you in the face.”
“Or when you’re staring it in the bare ass,” Derek joked.
They laughed, and Regina pushed the spaghetti around on her plate. Tired of being on the wrong end of Carly and Derek’s pointed humor, she finally spoke up. “What do you suggest I do?”
Carly put her hand on her arm. “Have fun with it. Do you know how to do that, Regina?”
CHAPTER 8
In the morning she found a pile of novels on her desk, all recently published, all well reviewed. Two of them she had already read. On the top of the stack was a blue Post-it note: I enjoyed our conversation about fiction yesterday, though it ended too abruptly. I’d like to continue it over dinner tonight. I’ll pick you up in front of the library at six.
She looked around quickly, as if she had been caught doing something wrong. She shoved the note in her handbag.
“What’s going on, Finch? Do they pay you in free books?” asked Alex.
“No,” said Regina, moving the books to the side. “I’m doing some reading for the fiction panel.”
“Oh, one more thing. Some dude dropped this off for you.” Alex handed her a large coffee table book with a barely dressed brunette on the cover. She had short bangs, and her style reminded Regina of the woman in the burlesque show. The title of the book was Bettie Page: A Photographic History. The name sounded familiar to her.
She turned to the back. It wasn’t a library book.
“Wait—what is this?” Regina asked.
Alex shrugged. “I thought maybe you were taking the initiative to do a little research.”
And then she remembered Alex’s telling her she had a “Bettie Page haircut.” She flipped through the pages. All the photographs were black and white. All were of the striking brunette in various stages of undress, some too bizarre and sexual to look at without her blushing. A photo in the middle of the book was marked with a small white envelope. The photo was a black-and-white shot of Bettie Page sitting on the back of a very ordinary-looking couch. Her hair hung past her shoulders in gentle dark waves, and her arms were covered with elbow-length black gloves. She wore a black bustier, thigh-high fishnet stockings with garters, and black heels that had to be four inches high.
Regina opened the envelope to find a small white card, the type that was usually delivered with flowers. In the same tight, neat handwriting as the Post-it note on the novels, it read: Your homework.
She shoved the card back in the envelope, looking around to make sure no one was watching her.
And that’s when she realized the dinner date with Sebastian Barnes was not an invitation. It was an order.
CHAPTER 9
At six o’clock, Regina walked down the South Stairs to the entrance hall of the library, and then outside into the warm summer evening.
She didn’t actually expect Sebastian Barnes to be there. After a full day of work, she had come to realize that the Bettie Page book and the notes were a goof, a joke—punishment for her having busted him on the fourth floor.
Still, her pulse raced a bit as she walked down the wide marble stairs to Fifth Avenue. She self-consciously smoothed her peasant skirt, then fanned herself with the paperback she was carrying.
“Where’s the Bettie Page book?”
Startled, Regina whirled around to find Sebastian standing behind her. He was jaw-droppingly gorgeous in a dark suit with a deep purple tie. His eyes, dark against his faintly golden skin, were focused on her with such intensity, it made her lose her breath. And again, she marveled at the perfection of his face, the dramatic angles and fine features that were somehow beautiful but also deeply masculine.
“What?”
“The coffee table book I gave you. I can’t imagine it fits into that beat-up little knapsack you carry,” he said, looking at her Old Navy shoulder bag with disdain.
“I have everything I need in this bag, thank you very much.”
“I hope that includes the book.”
She adjusted the bag on her shoulder, and admitted, “No—it doesn’t.”
“Go get it,” he said.
“Excuse me?” The nerve of this guy!
“You’re looking at me like I’m saying something outrageous. Didn’t my note say ‘homework’? That means, ‘Take the book home.’ Right?”
“Yeah . . . except I don’t know why you should be giving me homework.”
He smiled, revealing a dimple in his right cheek. “I guess I’d like to be your teacher.” And then his face grew serious, his eyes still unnervingly focused on her. “You’d be amazed at what you might learn.”
She swallowed hard.
“Come on . . . humor me,” he said.
With a sigh, Regina decided to play along. For now.
She headed back up the stairs.
“And make it snappy,” he called after her. She turned around and gave him a dirty look; he laughed—a hearty, loud laugh that made it impossible for her not to smile.
Okay, so he was charming. But this is insane, she told herself. Why was she letting this guy boss her around? She didn’t know if it was curiosity about what he was up to, or her tendency to want to please people, or, most pathetic of all, her embarrassing attraction to him.
Regardless, she hurried into the library and made her way quickly to her desk. She retrieved the book and clutched it to her chest with one arm, surprised by the weight of it. And then she had a disturbing thought: What if she went back outside and he was gone?
She didn’t know why this should make her so nervous. So what if he left? She would write the whole thing off as just a crazy New York moment.
But walking back outside, she spotted him immediately. Waiting for her.
She again took in his impeccable appearance, from his perfectly tailored suit to his scuff-free shoes. In contrast, she felt self-conscious in her loose skirt and the plain short-sleeved blouse she’d had since her freshman year of college.
“I can carry that for you,” he said. She handed him the book.
“After you,” he said, gesturing toward Fifth Avenue. She walked gingerly down the stairs, and he followed slightly behind her.
A gleaming black Mercedes waited for them at the corner of Forty-first Street. Sebastian opened the back door for her.
“Where are we going?” she asked, hesitating.
“Dinner. Didn’t you get my note?”
She slowly slid into the backseat, and Sebastian followed her.
A driver wearing a suit was behind the wheel. He pulled away from the curb, clearly already aware of their destination.
“I got the other books,” Regina said. “The novels.”
Sebastian nodded. “Maybe you’ll uncover the next Tom Perrotta.”
She glanced at him warily. “Are you mocking me?”
“No,” he said, smiling and shaking his head. “Why would I be mocking you? Someone is going to discover the next great writer. Why couldn’t it be you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, still not convinced he was being serious.
The car headed uptown, slowed by traffic.
“Let me ask you something,” Sebastian said. “Why did you move to New York?”
“To work at the library,” she said with conviction.
“Is that the only reason?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, suddenly second-guessing her response. “I mean, isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t know,” he said. There was a challenge in his dark eyes. “Is it?”
She felt put on the spot, and reflexively turned it back on him. “Well, what did you move here to do?”
“I didn’t move here. I grew up here. But if I hadn’t, I would have moved here, for sure. And most people I
know who didn’t grow up here don’t so much move here as run here—to make their mark.”
“Or maybe they’re running away from something,” she said, thinking about her mother. She immediately regretted the comment, but mercifully he didn’t press her on it.
“So you never thought about becoming an actress or a model or something?”
She crossed her arms, certain now that he was mocking her. “No,” she said coolly.
“Interesting,” he said. “Most women with your looks would have. I can’t believe how unaware of your beauty you are.”
She felt herself blush. It’s not that she had never been complimented before; people told her she had pretty eyes, or nice hair. She had been called “cute,” and she had never worried about her complexion or her weight like a lot of her friends. But she was of just average height, her nose was too wide, and her upper lip was too thin ever to command the seductive beauty of a Scarlett Johansson or Kim Kardashian or Angelina Jolie. Certainly, she had never felt as if she was the object of true desire, and maybe this was partly her fault for feeling somehow unworthy of it.
The traffic eased up, and Park Avenue passed by in a blur. When they reached a block in the mid-Fifties, the driver turned back toward Fifth. He pulled up in front of a building she recognized—the fifty-two-story Four Seasons Hotel, designed by I. M. Pei. She knew many of the I. M. Pei buildings. He was one of her father’s favorite architects.
A doorman from the hotel opened the car door. Sebastian exited first, then held out his hand to help her. She was hesitant to give him her hand, but even in her instinctive reluctance, she couldn’t have anticipated how his touch would send a tremor through her like an electric current.
He led her into the pale limestone lobby, Art Deco–inspired, with ceilings that had to be over thirty feet high.
“I’ll wait for you here,” he said, handing her a key card. “This is for Room 2020.”
She looked at the card but didn’t take it. “I don’t understand.”
“You didn’t think you could go to dinner wearing that, did you?” he asked. She felt blood rush to her face, and she didn’t know if she was more embarrassed or offended.
