What He Explores (What He Wants, Book Twenty-One) Read Online Free

newspaper and when I tried to come back to his apartment, the door was locked.”
    I closed my eyes and sighed. “And your shoes and purse were inside?”
    “Yes.” She twisted the wrapper tighter. “What I can’t understand is just… why would he do that?” Her head snapped up and her eyes got wide. “You don’t think something happened to him, do you?”
    “Like what?” I asked.
    “Like a heart attack,” she said, her face starting to go pale.
    “No,” Noah said. “He did not have a heart attack, Pamela.”
    “Of course he didn’t have a heart attack!” I said, my blood pressure beginning to skyrocket again. “He got what he wanted out of you, Mom, and then he tossed you away.”
    “What he wanted out of me?” she asked, and now her face was draining white.
     “Yes! Sex, ever heard of it?”
    “Charlotte!” Noah said sharply.
    “Oh. Right.” My mother was shredding the pretzel wrapper in her hands now, ripping it into long ribbons which fell to the sidewalk, catching the wind and flying away. She bit her lip. “The thing is, Don might have wanted something more from me than sex.”
    “Like money?” I asked. I found it hard to believe some man would go out of his way to sleep with mother, to wine and dine her just to steal whatever money she had in her purse. It seemed a bit over the top and convoluted. Unless he was a certain kind of man, the kind who was young and hot and preyed on older women and took the couple hundred dollars they kept in their purses because it seemed like a lot of money to them. “How old was this man?” I demanded. “Was he younger than you?”
    “No, Charlotte, he wasn’t younger than me. I’m not some kind of cougar.” She looked offended that I would imply such a thing, like the fact that she’d had a clandestine affair that had left her shoeless on the streets of New York City wasn’t bad enough.
    “What did he want from you, Pamela?” Noah asked. I caught the very faintest into of irritation in his voice, as if my mother’s act was finally starting to wear thin.
    Welcome to my world, I thought.
    “You have to promise not to get mad.” She was looking at Noah, not at me.
    “I won’t get mad,” Noah said, sighing.
    I stayed quiet, just waiting for her to drop whatever bomb she was about to drop.
    “I think…” She took in a deep breath. “I think Don wanted a story from me.”
    “What kind of story?” I asked, frowning. I glanced up at Noah and I saw a flash of anger in his eyes as a vein in his neck began to throb.
    “What was the man’s name, Pamela?” Noah asked.
    “Don.”
    “Don what?” Noah demanded.
    “Don Pearlman.” My mother’s eyes were wide with fear now. “Please don’t be upset,” she whispered, still looking at Noah. But why would Noah have been upset with her?
    Don Pearlman.
    The name sounded familiar.
    “Don Pearlman…” I started. “Why do I know that name?”
    “Don Pearlman is a columnist for the New York Standard,” Noah said, his voice hard and raw.
    My heart caught in my chest. The New York Standard. The trashiest paper in the city. There was no way that Don Pearlman could have wanted anything from my mother except for a story. A story about me.
    “What did you tell him?” I asked. I was surprised at how calm I sounded, how completely in control, while the anger inside of me was so white hot I was afraid it would burn me from the inside out.
    “Nothing!” she said. “Just… he was concerned about you, Charlotte.”
    “He wasn’t concerned about me!” I yelled. “He doesn’t even know me. What the hell did you tell him?” The rage inside of me began to boil over as I started to lose control of my emotions. I was afraid I might slap her again.
    A woman walked by holding a bag filled with oranges, glancing at us curiously. But someone raising their voice at the farmer’s market was nothing compared to the scandalous things that took place on a daily basis in New York City, and my little outburst