Page 60 of Speak of the Devil (New Hope 3)

“Something like that.”

“And is it working?”

“So far, so good.”

“Is that him you’re texting?”

She looks over at me then. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

“Only when I’m curious.”

“Curiosity is foreplay.”

“Really?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Who? My husband?”

“Yes.” I want to know how she thinks.

“No, not really.”

“That’s too bad,” I say, and I feel sorry for her. Because if a woman can’t trust the man who said he’d love her forever—if she can’t trust him to protect her and keep her safe—who in this world can you trust?

No one, is the correct answer.

“Aren’t you going to ask about me? About my wife?”

“No one reveals the truth about themselves straight away.”

“Wow.” It’s like she reads my mind.

“I figure if you wanted to tell me then you would have.”

“Emily is amazing in every way.”

“That’s the thing about the good ones, isn’t it? They always leave in the end.”

“We’re working it out,” I sigh. “We just needed a little breather.”

She doesn’t say anything, which forces me to take the sting out of the silence. “I think you’d like her.”

We arrive in the middle of the night. I don’t tell her why I agreed to come here. That would ruin the surprise. If I’ve learned anything in the lab, it’s that falling in love works best when it looks like it happens organically, even if it doesn’t.

And I don’t even hate the next forty-eight hours. We visit plantations outside the city, and I take pictures. I snap photos of her at dinner and breakfast, in the pool, reading in bed. All of which I upload to Instalook while she sleeps. I know Emily will see them, and she will wonder.

I like that she likes sex, and she’s good at it. I don’t know what changed, but she’s stopped holding back even when I can see she wants to. The first time was in the shower, shortly after our arrival. I was tired, quite frankly, and I told her we should wait until morning. But she had other plans. "Sex is just a conversation between two people,” she said, reading my mind.

I smiled. “Speak to me slowly, softly. Speak to me any way you want to. Just don't let me say no.”

“How’s your decision coming?” she asks late on our second afternoon.

“It’s not,” I admit, furiously typing away at my laptop.

“I guess I’m not as much help as you thought.”