Manwhore Read online

  I’m not impressed by what I read.

  “His rep wouldn’t give me an appointment—she wrote me down on a list. I wonder if I’ll have better luck reaching out on social media.”

  “Let’s look for a smexy profile pic in case Saint himself sees it.”

  “Not happening,” I say.

  “Come on, Rachel, you have to make yourself as appealing as possible. This one.” She points at a picture in one of my old social media albums where I’m wearing a secretarial skirt and blouse, but the three buttons between my breasts are about to burst.

  “I hate that shirt.”

  “Because it shows off what you’ve got. Come on, let’s do it.”

  I change my profile picture, then send him a message.

  Mr. Saint, this is Rachel Livingston with Edge. I’d love it if you granted me the opportunity for a personal interview in regard to your rising new star, Interface. I’ve put in the request through your office as well. I’m available anytime. . . .

  I include all my details and shoot it off.

  “Okay, fingers crossed,” I murmur with butterflies in my stomach.

  “And toes.”

  Later, after Wynn goes home and Gina goes to sleep, I head to my bed. I settle on my pillow, my laptop on my lap, sucking on a Fruit Roll-Up. “Interesting reading,” I say to an online picture of the man. I stay up until midnight, reading more and more. I’ve already dug up quite the dirt on him.

  Malcolm Kyle Preston Logan Saint. Twenty-seven years old. His family is such old money in Chicago, he got a headline the day he was born. At age five, he was in the hospital with meningitis, and the world was on pins and needles to see if he’d make it.

  At age six, he’d already earned a black belt in karate, and on the weekends he flew with his socialite mother from one state to the next on one of his father’s jets. At thirteen, he’d already kissed most girls in school. At fifteen, he’d been the world’s biggest player and smoothest liar. At eighteen, he was the perfect bastard, and rich to boot. At twenty, he’d lost his mother but was too busy skiing at a Swiss alpine village to reach the funeral on time.

  By twenty-one, he and his two best friends, Callan Carmichael and Tahoe Roth, had become the most notorious trust-fund babies of our generation.

  He’s the owner of four Bugattis: license plates BUG 1, BUG 2, BUG 3, and BUG 4. He has houses all over the world. Luxury cars. Dozens of gold watches, including a rose gold perpetual calendar he bought at auction for $2.3 million. He’s a collector, you could say. Of companies, toys, and, apparently, women.

  Malcolm is an only child, and after inheriting his mother’s millions and displaying an uncanny flair for business during the following years, he became not only a billionaire but an absolute symbol of power as well. Not political power, but the good, old-fashioned power that comes with having money. Saint isn’t linked to the shady dealings of the Chicago political machine, but he can press that machine’s buttons if he wants to. Every politician knows this—which is why being on the playboy’s good side is in their best interest.

  Saint doesn’t back just anyone. The public, somehow, trusts that Saint doesn’t give a shit about what they think—he won’t back anyone he doesn’t plan to own, so, indirectly, anyone backed by Saint can’t be owned by anyone else. He’s the champion of the underdog. Using his substantial inheritance, Saint became a venture capitalist at a very young age, funding the tech projects of many of his Ivy League school buddies, many of which soared to success, making Saint a few hundred million wealthier than his own father. He still manages venture capital investments from within the offices of M4. Named for his initial and his favorite number, M4 is a company he created in those early years when several of his investments ended up listing on Nasdaq—one for a few billion, to boot.

  Latest cover of the Enquirer—

  Malcolm Saint: Our Favorite Bad Boy, Revealed

  How many women has he slept with?

  Why isn’t he interested in marriage?

  How he became America’s hottest manwhore bachelor

  And more!

  Twitter:

  @MalcolmSaint I wish I’d never laid eyes on you! #eatshitanddie

  YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD! @MalcolmSaint you fucked my girlfriend you’re so fucking DEAD

  Free drinks anyone? @MalcolmSaint paying at Blue Bar downtown!

  Facebook wall:

  Hey Mal, remember me? I gave you my number last week. Call or message me!

  Saint—drinks next weekend, I’m in town with the wife. (Not that I’d bring her. She’s fawned over you enough.) PM me to set a place.

  Looking good in the yacht pics, Saint. Have room for a few more? My friends and I would love to party with you again! :) XOXO

  Wow. “You’re a real gem, aren’t you?” I whisper, slamming my laptop shut around midnight. I bet half the things on the internet are completely overblown and untrue, which is why, of course, I need more reliable research—firsthand research. I grin and check the time, realizing it’s too late to tell my mother that I’ve finally got my story.

  2

  NEW RESEARCH

  Twitter:

  @MalcolmSaint please follow me on Twitter!

  @MalcolmSaint to throw the first ball at Cubs game

  My personal inbox:

  EMPTY.

  I’ve already got a two-inch-thick file on Malcolm Saint, but no call from his PR contact.

  Today’s plans with my mother are a no-go too.

  I was supposed to meet her to show our support for our community’s End the Violence campaign, but she calls to say that she’s not going to make it. Her boss asked her to cover for someone. “I’m sorry, darling. Why don’t you ask one of the girls to go with you?”

  “Don’t worry, Mother, I will. Take your insulin, okay?”

  I know she takes it, but I can’t help mentioning it every time we call. I obsess about her like that.

  In fact, I worry about my mom so much, Gina and Wynn worry I’m going to make myself sick over it. I want to get a big cushion of savings so I know I can take care of her insurance and be sure she has a good home and good healthy food, and good care, too. I want to give my mom everything she’s given me so she can retire and finally do what she loves. Everybody deserves to do what they love. Her love for me and her desire to provide for me as much as she could have held her back. I want to do well enough that now she gets to follow her dreams.

  This exposé could lead to so many more opportunities, that one door opening to a plethora of new ones.

  I’m clicking Malcolm Saint links like crazy when Gina finally pads out of her bedroom in her comfiest outfit.

  “I told you it needs to be something you won’t mind getting paint on,” I remind her. “Aren’t those your favorite jeans?”

  “Oh fuck, I heard that! Why did I forget when I went into my closet and saw these?” She thumps back into her room.

  An hour before noon, at a corner of the park near the basketball courts, Gina and I—along with what looks to be several dozen people—finally gather in anticipation of slapping our paint-covered hands onto a mural-size canvas.

  “We’ve all lost someone to this fight. Our loved ones, our grocer, a friend . . .” one of the organizers is saying.

  I was two months old when I lost my dad.

  All I know is from my mother’s account: that he was an ambitious man, hardworking, and full of big dreams. He swore to her that I would never have to work . . . he was obsessed with giving us the ideal life. We didn’t ask for it, but it didn’t matter to my dad.

  All it took was one gun, and none of it happened.

  I didn’t get to have a memory of his eyes, gray, supposedly like mine. Never heard his voice. Never knew if, in the mornings, he’d be grumpy like Gina’s dad or sweet like Wynn’s. I remember the neighbors bringing pie for years as I grew up. Their daughters coming over to play with me. I remember playing with other people’s kids too, my mother taking me over to play with other children who had lost s
omeone to violence.

  Now, twenty-three years after my father died, every time something bad happens I wish we could make it stop, and I never want to forget how it feels, this wanting to make it stop.

  We’ve been criticized over our methods of pleading for a safer city—some say we’re too passive, others that it’s pointless—but I think that even the quietest of voices deserve to be heard.

  Per one of the organizers’ instructions, I pour a half an inch of red paint into my oversize plastic tray, and then I plant my hand on the surface. Thick red paint spreads to my fingertips.

  “We’re putting our hands on this huge mural as a symbol to stop the violence in the streets, in our communities, in our city, in our neighborhoods,” the organizer continues.

  My phone buzzes in my left butt-cheek pocket.

  “All right, now,” the woman hollers.

  On the count of three—one, two, three!—I press my hand to the wall, while Gina does the same, her hand red like mine and a little bit bigger.

  Once we’ve all left our prints, we hurry to the water fountains to clean up. Gina leans over my shoulder and I yelp and try to ease away.

  “Dude, you’re getting paint all over me!” I cry, laughing as I dry my hands and step aside to let her wash. While she scrubs off her paint, I pluck my phone out.

  And my stomach takes a dive because I’ve got a reply.

  3

  MESSAGE

  Malcolm Saint—

  Ms. Livingston, this is Dean, Mr. Saint’s press coordinator. We have a ten-minute opening today at 12 p.m.

  So I get that notification right now, Saturday, at like 11:18 a.m.

  “Shit, I got it!” I tell Gina as I show her the message. But instead of high-fiving me because I freaking landed this and I rock, she glances pointedly at my coveralls.

  “Oh no,” I groan. “I can’t see him like this!”

  “Okay, take my belt.”

  “OMG, really? I look ridiculous!”

  She ties it around my waist and cinches it. “Rachel, focus. There’s no store around, you don’t have time to go change.”

  We share panicked looks, then we both survey my clothes. I’m now wearing a jean coverall with a tank top beneath and a red belt, with paint splats here and there. “I look like an absolute slut on a washing day!”

  “You have paint on your cheek,” says Gina, wincing on my behalf.

  I groan and whisper to the universe: Next time you make one of my dreams come true, can I please be dressed for the occasion?

  As if reading my mind, Gina tries to pep me up. “Come on, clothes don’t make the girl. Hey, at least you’re not naked.”

  I’ve tried to twist my hair this way and that, and no, my appearance hardly improves. I’m passionately hating on this entire situation while riding in the back of the cab, sitting sideways because I suspect that, when Gina washed her hands after me, she got some paint on my back. Just seconds ago I felt it sticking to the cab vinyl, and now I’m hating on this situation so bad, my stomach hurts. I ask the driver to drop the passenger mirror, and I stare at my face.

  “Ohmigod,” I say.

  And there I am. My long blonde hair twisted into messy pigtails, a slash of paint on the side of my neck, stark like blood against my pale skin. “Ohmigod,” I moan.

  This is the woman the renowned Malcolm Saint is going to see?

  And, if I thought in the back of the cab that I really loathed this situation, I had no idea how much more I would hate it when I got to the M4 corporate building.

  The building itself looms with its fancy mirrored windows piled up almost as high as the Sears—supposedly-called-Willis-now-but-screw-that-name—Tower. Inside the lobby, from one end to the other, marble and granite floors spread out beneath my feet. Steel structures hold glass staircases leading to a second lobby floor, while see-through elevators zoom up and down.

  M4 is about as edgy as a nightclub but as quiet as a museum. I feel like a balloon delivery girl who forgot the balloons as I walk past the revolving doors and deeper toward reception. Oh fuck me, this is so not optimal right now. Everybody in the lobby is looking at me.

  I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.

  Livingston! Focus. YES. You can.

  I thrust my chin out and proudly walk up to the receptionist. “Rachel Livingston for Malcolm Saint.”

  She eyes me quietly. Inspects my ID card. Frowns a little.

  At five foot seven, I’m not short by any means. But I feel smaller and smaller. I am shrinking, right here, as I wait. Humiliated quietly.

  “Top floor,” she says, eyeing me down to my Converse sneakers.

  Fuck. Me.

  I head to the elevator with as much pride as I can muster.

  The elevator zips up to the top floor, dropping my companions—all of them in sharp black-and-white exec suits—along the way until it’s just me. And a knot of nerves tightening more and more. I bet Victoria wouldn’t be caught dead wearing this. Not even if she were paid to do it.

  But Victoria isn’t here, Rachel. You are.

  The elevator tings, and I step out.

  There are four desks, two to the right, two to the left, and huge frosted-glass doors leading to . . . his lair. I know it’s his because of how the frosted doors give the impression of a glass fortress that is both bold and strangely understated. It signals accessibility while being completely out of reach from the world.

  A woman comes around a desk and gestures for me to take a seat in a section to the left.

  Thanking her under my breath, I perch on the edge of a chair for a few minutes, watching all four of his assistants—all of them sharp and attractive in different ways—take continual calls. They work in absolute perfect synchronicity.

  An elevator opens and a glimpse of a tall, striking man hits me with a jolt of pure feminine awareness as he steps out with a trail of businessmen behind him. Shoulders a mile wide, jet-black hair, crisp designer suit, snowy white shirt, and a stride to eat up the universe. He’s taking the folder that one of the other men extends and, after issuing some sort of command that sends his followers dispersing out with bullet speed, he charges forward. He passes me with the simmering force of a hurricane and disappears into the glass cave, leaving me dizzy and frantically absorbing my last sight of the dark hair, broad back, and the hottest male ass I’ve ever seen walking Chicago.

  For a second I feel like the world moved faster, that somehow ten seconds were all crammed into the space of one—the one where this man went past me. Like a lightning bolt.

  One of the assistants leaps to her feet and goes into the glass office where he vanished, while the other three stare at the door as if they wish the lightning bolt had hit a little bit closer to home.

  Then it hits me.

  That the storm was Malcolm Saint.

  Yes, the hurricane was Saint.

  I feel a prick of dread.

  I glance at my sneakers. And yep. They’re still sneakers. Urgh.

  I notice the assistant left the door slightly ajar, and I can’t help but lean forward, straining to hear her whispers.

  “Your twelve o’clock is here. You have ten minutes.”

  I can’t hear the reply through the nervous pounding of my heart.

  “Oh, and Mr. Saint, this . . . reporter . . . she’s dressed a little bit unconventionally.”

  God, I still can’t hear.

  “From Edge, a low-circulation magazine. Dean thought it important we use whatever outlets we could to push the new Facebook.”

  My skin pebbles when I hear a low, excruciatingly deep male voice murmur something unintelligible.

  “Rachel Livingston,” the assistant answers.

  I feel shivers when the indiscernible but deep sound of his voice reaches me again. The shivers race from the top of my spine down to my tailbone.

  I’ve never shivered like this before, not even when I’ve been freezing my ass outside. Is this from nerves?

  “Yes, Mr. Saint
. . .” the assistant finally says.

  She comes out and can’t quite manage to conceal the fact that she’s flustered. Shit, and I’m the one going in next. Looking like I was just tossed into a blender with a can of paint and I’m the result of that fun little expedition.

  She calls me over to the door. “Mr. Saint is truly pressed for time today. Enjoy your ten minutes,” she says as she pushes it open.

  I try to reply, but I’m so nervous only a little croak of a “thank you” comes out as I step inside. Stock tickers scroll on one wall on dozens of different screens. There are no live plants, nothing but technology and natural stone floors, and a lot of space, as if this man needs it.

  The windows have an open view of the city of Chicago, but I can’t absorb it for long because I see him—quiet, storm-like intensity in Armani—walk toward me in that hurricane force that is almost otherworldly.

  Wow. Wow on every part of him. His face, his presence, his shoulders, his eyes. His eyes are glowing, alive—green and deep, like moving rivers, but there’s no missing the little shards of ice glinting inside, almost screaming for me to warm them.

  “Miss Livingston.”

  He extends his hand, and it’s when I slide my fingers into his warm grip that I notice that I can’t breathe.

  Nodding and swallowing and pasting a stupid smile on my face as I pry my hand free, I watch him with mounting awe.

  Once in his chair and leaning back comfortably, he sits there, the pose deceptively casual, but I can feel the energy humming from his being.

  “Mr. Saint,” I mumble at last, never more aware of my attire and how out of place I must seem amid such polished luxury.

  He’s staring too, in a slightly puzzled, quiet way. I bet I’m the only woman he’s ever seen in coveralls. In sneakers. I bet everyone wears their best when they’re going to see him.

  Shit.

  He glances at his watch, startling me when he speaks. “Clock is ticking, Miss Livingston, so you might as well shoot.” He signals to a chair across from his desk, and . . . can I just say that his voice is really quite an experience?