Hearing the raw emotion in his voice, I turn.

Holding my gaze with fierce intensity, he lifts the phone on his desk and dials a number. “We back down,” he says, and then, he hangs up, very slowly. Click.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I admit. “I just wanted to . . .”

“Know that I kept my promise,” he finishes.

“Yes, but . . . no. I wanted to see you, Saint. I always want to see you when I’m happiest, or saddest, or . . . I just always want to see you.”

I watch a dozen emotions skid through his eyes. “I’m here for you, Rachel.”

“I know,” I say. And for the first time I believe it, 100 percent.

Maybe no man has ever been there for me before. No father, brother, boyfriend, and now, I believe Malcolm Saint is here for me because he wants to be. My chest hurts with love.

“So you just backed out?”

“That’s right.” He shrugs dismissively. “There’s a binding agreement running through the auction, legally binding the winner to go through with the purchase. The bragging rights will cost him a fortune.”

My body’s shaking. I didn’t realize, in my haste to come here, that when I dumped my old stuff outside of Edge, I also dumped my sweater. Really Livingston?! The air-conditioning is blasting as high as these top business corporations always keep it. I’m shivering so much the last part of what I say is through clenched teeth.

“I know you said I could work at M4 but—”

“But you’re right, it’s not ideal for us,” he quietly admits, eyes probing me in silence. “I won’t be holding you back, Rachel. Tying you down where you’re not happy.”

My teeth chatter. “You know my reasons are because I want us . . . more. I’m going to start freelancing . . .” I stop talking when he crosses his office to a familiar, pristine white, smooth space on the wall.

With a tap, he opens the hidden closet and takes out a jacket. “Here.”

“I don’t . . .” He puts it over my shoulders and the brush of his fingers on the back of my neck triggers a tremor down my spine. “Saint, don’t,” I say. I’m afraid that his touch is going to make me crumble from the inside out.

His eyes look liquid on me as he touches the R and the M necklace resting at the base of my throat. “What happened to Malcolm?” he teases me.

I can see he’s trying to make me happy and it makes me love him all the more.

“Malcolm,” I then say, with a smile. His eyes go liquid with heated tenderness as he takes my hand. “Come with me now.”

“I’m sorry you had to butt heads with your father for me,” I tell him as we board the elevator.

We stop one floor down, and Saint tells the pair of businessmen about to board, “Take the next one,” and they instantly retreat.

He looks at me once we’re alone again. “You grew up without a father. In your mind, he would’ve cared for you, appreciated you, he would’ve talked to you. I had a father, but every time I threw a ball, he threw it farther just to show me how short my range was. Every time I built something, he smashed it in the simplest way he could, to show me all the flaws in my plans. Not all fathers lift you up. Some stick their foot out to trip you.” He speaks without inflection, as if it’s only a fact of life. “In the beginning, you try harder just to show him that you can. Then, you do it to prove to yourself that you can. Until there comes a day when you simply do things because you can. I’m not doing this for my father. I wasn’t backing Edge.”

He opens a room on the eleventh floor. “I was backing you, Rachel.”

I glance around at a dozen computers, high-tech equipment, the offices in the corners. It looks like a . . . newsroom.

“This is where Interface started. Before we went corporate. When it was just an idea, the start.” He signals around, and as I take in the impressive room, I feel him eyeing me with a gaze that is both achingly gentle and silently contemplative. “So you see, it’s standing here . . . just waiting for another great idea. Another great start.”

As I look at all of the high-tech computers and chrome desks, I have a déjà vu moment of the time he took me to the Interface building and kissed the fuck out of me.

“You can take this floor. Yours,” he emphasizes. “I’ll fund your start. You can build your own team. Your board. You’ll make the choices. And you’ll give yourself the platform you need to write whatever it is you want to write.”