Page 10 of Mr. North
“What for?”
“On winning the game.” He nods towards the chessboard. “You have me in check mate in three moves. See?”
I look down at the remaining pieces, running through the remaining plays, and I see that he’s right. My bishop to his king. I always, always play three or four moves ahead if I can, trying to analyze and anticipate where my opponent is going to go next. This time, however, I’ve been on the back foot, strategizing on the fly. His moves have been unpredictable, his game strong. And, let’s face it, I’ve been pretty damn distracted. Raphael gets to his feet and offers out his hand.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Dreymon. I have some pressing work I must attend to now, though. I trust you can see yourself out?”
“Yes. I know the way.” I stand and shake his hand, my stomach twisting itself into knots. Damn. This has not gone well. This has not gone well at all.
Raphael doesn’t speak again. He inclines his head, a deferential gesture completely at odds with how he’s behaved the last forty minutes, and then he turns and walks away. He exits through a door at the other end of the room, and the silence he leaves behind is deafening.
It’s a straight shoot back down the hallway to the anteroom. When I leave through the glass door, Nate is already standing there, waiting for me. “You haven’t been crying,” he says with a grin. “That’s impressive.”
Crying? What the hell? How many other women has he had come here to play chess with him? And how many of them have fled his penthouse in floods of tears? “I’m not that easy to intimidate. I don’t make a habit of allowing assholes to get under my skin.”
Nate’s head rocks back, and he roars with laughter. “Perfect,” he says between gasped breaths. “You’re just…that’s fucking perfect. Come on. I’ll drive you home.”
He opens a small closest inside the actual elevator and gives me back my shoes. On the way home, Nate chats to me about the weather, about sports, about his past. He talks to me about everything I was warned not to discuss with Raphael North. My mind is only half on the conversation. As we pass through the familiar streets of New York, I wonder just what Raphael North really wanted when he answered that ad on Craigslist. Yes, we were playing a game from the moment our eyes met through that door in his apartment, but it wasn’t fucking chess. And the thing that vexes me the most about that? The thing that has my fists clenching by my sides the entire ride home?
I can’t for the life of me tell who really won.
