Carrie Blake - The Woman Before You - An intense, addictive love story with an unexpected twist...

I looked up Matthew’s order on the store computer. There was no name, just an address in Brooklyn Heights, a charge to an Amex card listed to the Prairie Foundation and a note (in Steve’s writing) that said, Contact assistant.

The next day the phone rang. I knew it was for me before Steve said, ‘Isabel?’ He put his hand over the receiver. ‘It’s your rich boyfriend.’

Somehow, I’d known who it was. My friends never called on the store phone. None of them had that number. My mom would have called on my cell.

‘Isabel, it’s me.’

I didn’t have to ask who me was. I couldn’t speak. Or breathe.

He said, ‘The mattress is set up. I’m wondering if you would be willing to come over to check out the feng shui . I would hate for it to face in the wrong direction.’ He laughed, meaning it was a joke and not a joke. The feng shui line was a joke. But my going to his place wasn’t. After all, we had a history. We were more than friends.

‘I could do that,’ I said.

‘Isabel?’ he said. I loved the way he said my name. ‘Excuse me. I think we may have a bad connection.’

‘I could do that,’ I repeated. Maybe I’d been whispering, or maybe he wanted to make me say it again. Our connection was fine.

I felt something warm and moist and unpleasant on the back of my neck. Only then did I realize how close Steve was standing.

‘When?’ I said. ‘Where?’

‘Is tomorrow evening too soon?’

I should have said, yes, way too soon. I should have invented dates I couldn’t break. A boyfriend I was seeing. But what if this was my last chance? I wasn’t busy tomorrow evening. If I were, I would have cancelled, no matter what it was.

‘Tomorrow evening would be fine,’ I said.

‘What time do you get off work?’

‘Six?’ Why did it come out as a question? Why was I asking him ? I could probably leave any time I wanted if I told Steve where I was going. But the following day, Steve might try to make me tell him everything we did.

‘Perfect. Come straight here,’ Matthew said. ‘We can watch the sunset.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Can you text me the address? On my cell.’

‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘It’s in the system at your store.’

Suddenly, it was as if I heard Mom’s voice. Put the phone down. Don’t talk to this man again. Don’t go there tomorrow night.

Sorry, Mom, I thought. I have no choice. After my dad’s death, my mom never remarried or even (as far as I knew) dated. So there was a lot my mother didn’t know about the modern world. Anyway, I wouldn’t have listened if she had been standing beside me. The desire made everyone else disappear.

When I hung up the phone, Steve said, ‘You’re not supposed to get personal calls on the store phone.’

I said, ‘This was business, Steve.’

I’d never felt that I had the power to make Steve step back. Yet now something—some new note—in my voice made him take a big step backward. Something in me had changed just from talking to Matthew.

I should have taken that as a warning, a hint of changes to come.

I couldn’t sleep all night. I obsessed over what to wear. Sexy but not so sexy that it would look weird in the store—and send the wrong message, first to Steve and then to Matthew. But what message was too sexy after what I did on the mattress?

I bought new underwear, black lace with a slim red ribbon threaded through the bra and panties. I wore a short denim skirt and a black T-shirt. I carried a jacket, just in case. The weather seemed changeable, low clouds, wind. Stormy weather. I went light on the make-up. At the end of the day, I could put on more in the broom closet that Steve called ‘the staff lounge.’

‘You look nice,’ said Steve, when I got to work. ‘Nicer than usual. Going somewhere?’

I didn’t answer. He knew.

Maybe I should have dressed up every day. Business was booming, for a change. There had been a bedbug scare in the NYU dorms, and the place was jammed with kids using their parents’ credit cards to (they hoped, ha ha) fix the problem. They bought the cheapest mattresses, but so what? In Steve’s words, we were ‘moving product.’ I liked the college kids, mostly. Their needs were simple. Their purchasing decisions were all about price. Not one of them wanted to act like a jerk trying out a mattress while a stranger (me) watched. Fine, they said. I’ll take it.

Steve felt good about the day, and when I asked if I could leave early, he said sure, if I was willing to come in early a couple of mornings next week and open up. That sounded fair to me. I would have agreed to anything.

I redid my makeup. And when Steve was in the toilet, I put on high heels and skittered out of the store.

I spent a big chunk of that week’s paycheck on the cab fare to Matthew’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Google Maps said that it was blocks from the station, and my heels were too high to walk that far. Besides, I was eager to get there.

I had four condoms in my purse, just in case. I was a nice Midwestern girl, but not that nice. Hey, this was New York, 2016.

From all the way down the block I knew which building was his: the luxury high-rise designed by a famous architect. There had been a battle between the Landmarks Commission vs. the architect and the developers. The outcome—who was going to win—was never in doubt. The structure was a twenty-four story middle finger raised to the city.

That was where Matthew lived. The house of the neighborhood destroyers. Though (to be honest) I knew that I would live there too if someone offered me an apartment.

The lobby reception desk was raised, like a throne. Seeing it from below added to the height and size and heft of the two enormous doormen, both in olive green uniforms. What if they asked me for Matthew’s last name? I didn’t even know it.

I gave them the apartment number. Could they ring Penthouse Three, please? I was asking them to ring someone whose name I didn’t know.

‘And you are?’

‘Isabel,’ I said. ‘Isabel Archer.’ I hardly recognized my own name. It sounded like two nonsense words. What did it even mean? Part of me had left my body. The nice Isabel, the cautious one, was trying to understand why this reckless new Isabel was here—doing this.

The doorman hung up the house phone. ‘Go on up,’ he said. ‘This elevator goes as far as the tenth floor, where there’s another desk for our premier floors. They’ll tell you what to do from there.’

A double layer of doormen.

The elevator whisked me through a column of air and let me off ten floors up, where a second pair of doormen directed me toward another elevator. I pressed PH3. This elevator was glass on all sides, so I could watch the rooftops of Brooklyn fall away beneath me.

There was only one apartment on the floor. I rang the bell.

A middle-aged housekeeper opened the door and took my jacket.

She said, ‘The Señor is out on the terrace.’ Did I want a cocktail? Absolutely. Bueno . Already poured. A young man, also Hispanic, also friendly, brought me a martini glass on a tray. Balancing the glass—filled to the brim with orange-golden liquid—I followed the maid through a huge living room that looked like a modern art museum, with white couches, white marble floors, walls whose perfect whiteness was defiled only by the violent splashy energy of the large abstract paintings. Was that a real de Kooning?

The glass wall to the terrace was open. The Customer stood with his back to us, looking out over the edge. I gulped down half my drink.

‘Thank you, Maria,’ he told the maid, without turning around.

The maid—Maria—asked me, ‘Are you all right, Señora?’ I wondered how many girls she’d watched stop dead in their tracks, barely able to move.