Demand (Careless Whispers #2)(80)

David being her hot doctor boyfriend. What David wanted from Ella, he got. Now, I know just how true that is. I study Ella a moment. With her dewy youthful skin, and dressed in faded jeans and a purple tee, she looks like one of my students rather than a twenty-five-year-old teacher herself. “I was tired anyway,” I assure her, but I’m worried she’s over her head with this man ten years her senior. “I needed to get to bed to be ready for today’s classes.”

“Well, they’re over now and yay for that.” She indicates the journal. “And I’m so glad to get this back before my date with David tonight.” She wiggles an eyebrow. “Foreplay. David is going to love this. This thing is scorching hot.”

I gape in utter disbelief. “You read him your journal?” I’d never have the courage to read a man such intimate personal thoughts—especially not about him. “And it’s foreplay?”

Ella frowns. “This isn’t my journal. Remember? I told you last night. It’s from the storage units I bought at that auction at the beginning of summer.”

“Oh,” I say, though I don’t remember Ella saying anything about the journal. In fact, had she, I’m 100 percent sure I’d remember. “That’s right. The storage auctions you’ve been attending since you got obsessed with that Storage Wars show. I still can’t believe people store their things and then default and let it go to the highest bidder.”

“And yet they do,” Ella says. “And I’m not obsessed.”

I arch a brow. “Okay, maybe I am,” she concedes, “but I’m going to make more than double what I would have teaching summer school. You should really consider going to the next auction with me. I’ve already turned around two of the three units I bought for big money.” She holds up the journal. “This came from the last unit I bought, and it’s the best yet. It has artwork I know is going to sell for big bucks. And so far I’ve found three journals that are absolutely spellbinding. My gosh, I can’t seem to stop reading them. This woman started out like you and me, and somehow got pulled into this dark passionate place that is terrifyingly exciting.”

She’s right, and I can feel that burn in my belly as I If I Were You 9

recall the words on those pages. I can almost imagine the soft, seductive voice of the woman whispering her story to me. I try to focus on what Ella is saying, but I’m wondering about that woman instead, wondering where she is, who she is.

“Oh my!” Ella exclaims. “You’re blushing. You read the journal, didn’t you?”

I blanch. “What? I . . .” Suddenly, I can’t talk. I am so not myself right now, and I sink helplessly into an overstuffed brown chair across from Ella, stuck in the trap of my earlier lie. “I . . . yes. I read it.”

Ella claims a couch cushion, narrowing her green eyes on me. “Did you think I wrote that stuff?”

I cast her a tentative look. “Well . . .” “Whoa,” she says, clearly taking my reply, or rather lack of reply, as confirmation. “You thought . . .” She shakes her head. “I’m speechless. You couldn’t have read the good parts or there’s no way you would think she was me. But you’re sure blushing like you read the good parts.”

“I read some parts that were, ah, pretty detailed.” She snorts. “And you assumed I wrote them.” She shakes her head again. “And here I thought you knew me. But heck, I so wish I could live up to that assessment for just one hot night. There is a mysterious eroticism to that woman’s life that’s just . . .” She shivers. “Haunting. It, she, affects me.”

In some small way it comforts me to know she is as affected by the words on those pages as I am, and I don’t know why. What in the world do I need comfort for? It isn’t logical. Nothing about my reaction to this unknown woman is logical.

“Once David and I finish with the journal,” Ella continues, drawing me back into the conversation, “he’s going to take pictures of a few intimate pages for potential buyers and we’re listing the journals on eBay. They’re going to bring in big money. I just know it.”

I gape, appalled at this idea. “You can’t seriously intend to sell this woman’s personal thoughts on eBay?”

“Heck yeah, I do,” she says. “Making money is the name of the game. Besides, for all we know, it’s fiction.”

Her words are cold, and she surprises me. This is not the Ella I know. “We are talking about a woman’s private thoughts, Ella. Surely, you don’t want to profit off her pain.”

Her brows dip. “What pain? It sounds like all pleasure to me.”

“She lost everything she owns at auction. That isn’t pleasure.”

“I’m guessing her rich man flew her off to some exotic location and she is living life in a grand way.” Her voice turns somber. “I have to think like that to do this, Sara. Please don’t make me feel guilty. This is money I need, and if I didn’t do this, some other buyer would have.”

I open my mouth to argue but relent. Ella is alone in this world, with no family aside from an alcoholic father who doesn’t know his own name most of the time, let alone hers. I know she feels she has to have money for emergencies. I know that feeling myself all too well. I, too, am alone. Mostly, but I don’t want to think about that right now.