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Laszlo continues to stare at me like a total freak but does not say anything. I see no obvious signs of anger, although he does seem stiff and his jaw twitches a little. No other telling signs, though. Who would be this calm at receiving news that their fiancée had sex with another guy? No matter that our situation is a bit different, it's disturbing. The kettle whistles behind him and he switches it off.

"I know," he says.

"You had someone fo⁠—"

"No." He turns around to face me again. "You didn't wash yourself and I can smell him on you even from here."

CHAPTER 11

Manon

He crosses the kitchen and stops close enough that I have to tip my head back. He doesn't touch me. He breathes in, once, slowly, like I'm a fine French wine he's about to taste.

My face goes hot so fast it hurts. I really should have showered. The shame I feel is not normal. It's not like Laszlo and I have a real relationship.

"I know what a body's been doing. It's my job." He steps back. "So don't stand there working out where the camera or anybody I employ was. There wasn't anything or anyone. There didn't need to be."

"Don't patronize me."

"You asked."

He takes a cloth off the rack by my sink. Runs the hot tap over the back of his hand until it's right, wrings it out, folds it in half.

"Take your coat off."

"No." I shake my head.

"Manon, you look like a woman waiting to be seen in the ER. Take the coat off."

I sigh, and I must be out of my mind, because I take the coat off. It's the semi-joke that does it, which is typical of him, and I hate that too.

"Now sit on the counter," he says.

"I can do that myself." Is this lame answer the most I can do? Apparently, because somehow, unbelievably, I just got wetter. “You’re not doing this. Absolutely not.”

"I know you can." He waits, cloth in hand, perfectly patient. "But I absolutely am. Sit on the counter."

I obey him again and it's maddening because … why?

I'd like to think that he made me do this, but that would be kidding myself. He watches me silently while I lift myself onto my granite countertop and follow instructions like a patient asked to open her mouth and say 'aah'.

He steps between my knees before I've finished settling and pushes my skirt up—knees, thighs, all the way, no ceremony in it at all. Then he stops.

I look down at myself. I dressed in a hurry, then sat in the car for a while. My panties are very thin, cream cotton. I'm soaked through. Laszlo sees straight through them, and there is nothing about the state of me that isn't perfectly obvious from where he's standing.

His hand tightens for the merest moment on my thigh, hard enough that I feel each finger. Then he breathes in sharply through his nose, and lets it out slowly. That calm he's projecting … I can see it's all an act now.

"Well," he says. "That's not helping either of us."

"Don't."

"I'm not doing anything." He hooks a finger in the waistband of my panties. "Lift."

I do what he asks and he takes them off leisurely, down one leg and then the other until I'm sitting bare on the cool counter. I put my hand over my mouth because I'm about to scream and I don't want to.

He folds them in half and sets them beside my hip like a man putting down a napkin. Then he crouches, and the first touch of the warm cloth makes my whole body jump.

"Sit still," he says gruffly.