“I take it personally because that night was the first night I’d been intimate with any woman other than my wife in over ten years. That may seem rather bourgeois to you, but I’m afraid I’m terribly bourgeois when it comes to matters of infidelity—”

“She’s moved on.”

Zach ignored the comment.

“Not to mention taking advantage of a woman I have some modicum of power over.”

“Power? You think you have power over me? You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you had power over me. You are helping me make my book publishable. You work for me as much as I work for you.”

“I have the power to decide if your book gets published. I alone have the final say.”

Nora stood up and walked around the desk. She sat on the top and crossed her legs. Her knees and thighs were at Zach’s eye level. Zach refused to look at her legs, her sheer stockings and short red skirt and the boots that went up to her knees. He met her eyes and waited.

“If I gagged you right now and put you flat on your back and fucked you seven ways till Sunday right here on this fine mahogany desk…would you sign my contract?” she asked.

“Absolutely not. And that’s not going to happen.” Zach forced back the flood of images her words conjured in his mind.

Nora slid off the desk and onto her knees next to his chair.

“What if I just gave you my best Oscar Wilde again every day for the next three weeks? Would you sign my contract then?”

“Nora, you can’t buy your contract with sexual favors.” Zach reached down and pulled Nora up off the floor. “I told you I wouldn’t sign it until I’d read the very last page and I meant it.”

“I know you meant it. That’s my point. I probably could buy off a lesser man with sex, a lesser editor. But you and I both know that even if we’d had sex ten times Saturday night, you still wouldn’t sign my contract until the book was perfect. You might think less of me, or yourself more likely, but you’d read the book with the same eyes that see every flaw and the same mind that knows how to fix it. You’re just afraid to be mean to my face because you think I’ll think it was about Saturday night. Be as mean to me as you want, Zach. Trust me.” She leaned forward and met him eye to eye. “I like mean.”

Zach looked into her eyes and saw they burned black as night. In them writhed the shades and shadows of the things she’d seen and done; things that he couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine.

Nodding, Zach glanced away.