BENT OVER BY THE INTERN

Chapter 10

Rachel puts the photographs on the study desk and slides them across at Oliver.

"Look at these and tell me it wasn't you."

Oliver looks. He picks up the one of her outside the office and studies the timestamp.

"Who sent them?"

"That's my question."

"You think I'd do this?" He sets it down. "After the phone, after the printouts. You think I'd hire a photographer and send them to myself?"

"Yes."

"Rachel."

"Just tell me it wasn't you."

"It wasn't me." He says it flat, no defense in it. Then he leans back. "And here's how you know. If I wanted to play the photo game, I'd use what I already have. I have your texts. I have the hotel. I printed the damn things and threw them at you on the coffee table like a lawyer." He taps the photo. "This is patient. This is somebody with a plan. I'm not patient, Rachel. You know that better than anyone."

She hates it, but it lands.

She sits down across from him.

"Then who."

"I don't know." He rubs his eyes. "But somebody's been doing their homework on you for six weeks. And you've been doing yours on me. So either it's your boyfriend, or your ex, or somebody neither of us has thought of."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Which one."

Rachel doesn't answer. That's an answer.

Oliver laughs, short and ugly. "Jesus. Both."

"I'm seeing one. Marcus is a situation."

"Marcus is a married man in Chicago and you flew out on a company card."

"Your point."

"My point is you're not running a tight ship either." He stands and walks to the window. "Six weeks, Rachel. Six weeks of somebody watching the both of us."

The room goes quiet.

Then Oliver says it, low, to the glass.

"Maybe it's not about you. Maybe it's about the trust."

Rachel's head comes up.

"The trust," she repeats.

"The dinner's in twelve days. The anniversary. Your five years." He turns. "And there's a clause about fault that you found and sat on for three days. So somebody's been counting the same days we have."

She opens her mouth and doesn't have an answer.

"Twelve days," Oliver says again. "Everybody in this family knows that number. And somebody's spent six weeks collecting proof that you're not the innocent one either."

The truce was supposed to be cold. It's been cold for three weeks. Two bodies, eight inches of air, both of them awake every night pretending to sleep.

It stops being cold tonight.

She doesn't know who moves first. She thinks it's him, but she's also on her feet and the folder's on the floor and his mouth is on her neck, hard, and she makes a sound she hasn't made in this house in five years.

He walks her backward into the desk. Papers scatter. Her shirt comes off over her head and he doesn't fumble the bra, which is new, which means he's been paying attention.

"Don't," she breathes. "Don't be gentle."

He isn't.

He bends her over the desk the way Jake did, but it's different. Heavier. Slower. Angrier. He drags her skirt up, pulls her panties down, and pushes into her in one long stroke and she gasps against the wood.

He f***s her like he has a point to make.

Rachel claws the edge of the desk and the lamp rattles and she hates every second of how good it is. She hates that he knows her body. She hates that his hips have a rhythm they never had before, that when he reaches around and finds her c**t with two fingers he is right, right on the first try.

"Where'd you learn this," she pants.

"Gym." He's breathless. "And Mia."

"Don't say her name while you're inside me."

He laughs into her shoulder and doesn't slow down.

She comes hard against the desk, legs shaking, and he holds her through it. Then he pulls out, turns her, and lifts her onto the wood and goes down on her. His mouth, hot and flat and relentless, until she's gripping his hair and coming a second time with her heel hooked in the drawer handle.

Then he stands, unzips, and pushes back inside her, and she wraps her legs around his waist and lets him take her weight.

He comes with his face buried in her throat and both hands gripping her ass and a sound like a man letting go of something.

They stay like that. Sweat cooling. The clock ticking.

"Twelve days," Oliver says into her neck.

"Twelve days."

He pulls back and looks at her. "So who's watching you, Rachel."

She starts to answer.

And out in the hallway, muffled by her robe on the floor, the burner buzzes.

Oliver's head turns toward the sound.

"What's that."

Rachel looks at the hallway. Then at her husband. The buzz comes again.

The second phone in a five-year marriage.

"Nothing," she says.

The buzz comes a third time, and she is already getting off the desk, and Oliver is watching her the way he watches a position in the market, and she reaches the hallway, and the buzzing stops, and---