7. Natasha
7
NATASHA
A s soon as this dinner was over, I was going to kill Stacy. Actually, I wanted to drag her away to the bathroom and do it there before the appetizers turned up. I’d already had to endure that godawful play. Was getting me roped into eating dinner with my grumpy boss and his friends really necessary?
It was bad enough that I had to pretend to be his girlfriend whenever Dee was around—despite how much I liked and admired her. I didn’t need to be sharing meals with Trent during my downtime too!
“Ooo, love this place,” Stacy said as we walked through the doors of Temple Gardens, a pricey open-air bar and restaurant just down the street from the racquet club. I’d eaten here once before, and though the food was delicious, the menu prices made it a special-occasions-only choice. But I’d just started a new job that paid me more than I’d ever made before, so perhaps tonight counted as a special occasion, even if I was spending it with my nemesis.
“Have you tried their spicy mozza sticks?” Dominic asked. He had a warm smile, but still carried an air of confidence and authority. With sandy hair greying at the temples, slicked back away from his chiseled face, he was giving silver fox vibes. Actually, all of Trent’s friends were ridiculously good looking. Vincent gave off retired rockstar vibes, and with Aiden’s blond curls and tall, well-built frame, he could have stepped out of some Norse myth. Come to think of it, I was pretty sure I’d seen his face on some magazine covers. What did Trent do? Troll for friends on models.com?
“Yes! So good. I would sell my soul for some of those,” Stacy said.
Dominic grinned. “You and me both.”
“Are we eating inside or outside?” Trent asked, sounding a little irritated as he approached the hostess. Well, I could assure him of one thing—I was even more irritated.
“Outside,” Vincent said. “It’s a nice evening.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. It was warm, even for mid-September, all the guys still in their shorts and t-shirts from their squash game. I tried not to stare at the way Trent’s shirt pulled against his broad chest. He was just sweaty enough for his shirt to cling to his well-defined biceps in a very distracting way. Bosses should not be allowed to look like that.
Especially grumpy jerks.
“If you follow me,” the hostess said, leading us across the restaurant and past the bar decorated with so much plant life it looked like it had sprung up in the middle of a rainforest.
“Cora would love this,” Dominic said, elbowing Aiden.
He nodded. “I’ll have to bring her back here.”
The hostess stopped in front of a large table. I sat down with Stacy to my right. Dominic sat next to her, and the rest of the guys sat on the other side of the table. Trent ended up in the chair directly across from mine.
I picked up my menu so I wouldn’t stare at his undeniably beautiful face. It was too tempting, though, and I snuck a couple glances as the waitress appeared for our drink order. Except for Dominic, who got a mocktail, the guys all ordered alcohol. Then Aiden and Dominic started asking questions about the drink menu, inquiring as to the types of alcohol used. I didn’t know if they were trying to show off or if they were genuinely interested, but I tried not to roll my eyes.
I did think that eating with four guys, three of whom I’d never met before and one of whom I couldn’t stand, was going to be horrendous. I shot Stacy a look that hopefully said next time listen to me . But she merely beamed in my direction before ordering a flowery-sounding cocktail Dominic talked her into trying.
Ugh . This was about to be the longest dinner of my life. I was tempted to down my meal as quickly as possible so we could get out of here, but I knew it would be a wasted effort. Stacy had never finished a meal quickly in her life because she liked to talk too damn much.
I sighed. If I was going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future, I might as well make the best of it. “I’ll take a Whiskey Sour, please.”
“Nice choice,” Aiden said. “You a big whiskey connoisseur?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “I’ve just never been a fan of beer. I sort of picked my poison in college and stuck with it. But I can’t say I’ve ever been in the position to be picky about the brand.”
“Don’t get this guy started on alcohol,” Vincent said, smirking. “He and Dominic will talk your ear off.”
“Oh?” I asked. Were they the kind of assholes who liked mansplaining every topic under the sun, whether they knew anything about it or not?
“I’m the co-founder and CEO of Elixir,” Aiden said.
“Like…the entire alcohol brand?” Stacy asked. “Like with the big office in midtown? That Elixir?”
Aiden chuckled. “Yeah. Dom’s the other co-founder, not to mention our chief marketing officer.”
I flushed, a little embarrassed by my assumption. Okay, in this case, maybe they did know what they were talking about. At least them interrogating the waitress about the drink menu made more sense now. “Guess we’re talking to the drink experts, then?”
“If you want a real drink connoisseur, you should talk to my other half, Cora…She’s got quite a following for her mixology videos on social media.”
“She’s definitely what I’d call an expert,” Dominic said.
“Really?” Stacy said excitedly. “I follow a couple of mixologists on Instagram. I wonder if she’s one of them.”
“You ever heard of the Masked Mixer?”
“Shut up! Seriously?”
Aiden grinned, glancing at me. “She has a video with her take on a Whiskey Sour. If you like to experiment with your drinks a little, she could blow your mind.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the way he talked about her.
“Okay, I can practically see their eyes glazing over,” Trent muttered. “We know you think Cora’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
“She is!” Aiden nudged him playfully as our drinks showed up. The waitress took our food orders. When she’d disappeared, Aiden clinked his Old Fashioned against my glass.
“Besides, who wants to talk about alcohol?” Vincent said. He nudged Aiden. “ Boring ! The ladies like talking about fragrances.”
“Oh, here we go,” Aiden said, rolling his eyes.
“Dare I ask what you know about fragrances?” I laughed.
“I’m the CEO of Summit Fragrances. It’s a family business—like Trent’s, but mine’s been around a bit longer,” he said. “We’re getting ready to launch our latest perfume. I’m calling it Violet after my daughter.”
“Oh, you have kids?” Stacy beamed. She’d always loved children.
Vincent pulled out his phone, bringing up photos. “Just the one so far, but she’s amazing.” He scrolled through images of a beautiful baby girl, and my heart melted a little at the adoring look on his face.
“She’s adorable,” Stacy gushed.
“How old?” I asked.
“Almost six months. We think she’s just about to start crawling.” He beamed proudly as he flipped to another photo. “Oh, this is Violet with Hailey. Dominic’s daughter.” The little girl in the picture looked to be around five years old.
“Looks like you’ve got a little built-in babysitter,” I said.
“She’s convinced Violet’s her doll,” Dominic replied. “I can hardly get her to leave when we visit.”
“That’s too cute,” Stacy said.
I glanced over at Trent as Stacy started talking to Dominic. Trent wasn’t saying much, mostly just rolling his eyes at his friends, but there was something more open and relaxed about him here. I never would have guessed he was capable of relaxing. It looked good on him because, damn it, everything looked good on him. The way his dark hair hung across his forehead, it took everything inside me not to reach across the table and brush it out of the way so I could see his eyes better. Even out of his suits, he was sexy as hell.
He caught my eye, his eyebrow arching, almost in challenge, lips tilting up in a hint of a smirk.
I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. It would only fuel the blush hovering beneath my skin.
“What?” he grumbled.
“Nothing.”
“Why are you looking at me?”
“I’m not. You’re looking at me .”
He huffed, narrowing his eyes almost playfully.
My heart lurched. I needed to stop having these thoughts.
This was my boss . Not to mention the grouchy, yelling jerk who had gotten me fired.
But he was also the devoted grandson who’d given me the job of my dreams and who seemed to have a genuinely nice circle of close friends. This was all so confusing. Couldn’t I just go back to hating him? That had been so simple.
“I’ve got the parma chicken club,” the waitress said, returning with our food. Thank god.
“That’s mine!” Dominic said, raising his hand.
The waitress divvied up the meals, and we settled in. I stuffed my face with my chicken burger. I was hungrier than I’d realized, and it was easier to focus on my burger instead of Trent.
“So, is business how you all met?” Stacy asked. “Is there like a club for CEOs or something?”
Dominic laughed. “There are a couple, actually. But no, that’s not how we met. We went to college together—Cornell University. The four of us linked up in a brand management class.”
“And I brought along my roommate, Paul,” Vincent said. “He’s part of the group, even if he couldn’t make it tonight.”
“It’s great that you stuck together after college,” I said. “I feel like so many friend groups fall off when everyone goes their separate ways.”
“Well, we had plenty of reasons to come together since we always spend the holidays and special occasions with Trent and his grandmother,” Aiden explained. He then went on to spin a tale of winter break their freshman year when family dramas and a baggage handlers’ strike had left Aiden and Vincent with nowhere to go for Christmas, leading them to all come with Trent to Dee’s house in Jamesport.
“She eventually met Paul and Dominic too,” Vincent added, “and from that point on, she basically adopted us. She calls us her Lost Boys.”
“That sounds lovely,” Stacy said.
“We have some good times,” Aiden agreed.
A strange ache filled my chest. The way the guys talked about Nana Dee, I could tell she was important to them. The news of her illness must have been hard on all of them.
Conversation flowed easily as we ate. They asked me how I liked working at Saunders Furniture and about some of my furniture designs. I didn’t miss the look they shot Trent when I talked about the company. As soon as I could, I shifted the conversation over to Stacy, who was more than happy to talk about costume design and the truly terrible show we’d just been to.
Once the spotlight was off me, I was able to relax even more and marvel at how this meal had turned out much better than I’d expected. It was worlds away from the macho, chauvinist bullshit I expected from a group of guys that played squash at a douchey racquet club. Not to mention, it was actually nice to see this side of Trent. Of course, I’d seen him with Dee, so I knew there was more to him than the Coffeezilla I’d first met, but Dee very obviously adored him and doted on him, and I couldn’t imagine her ever pissing him off. But here were a bunch of guys who seemed to thrive on teasing him and giving him shit, and rather than snap at them, he just needled them right back.
For a brief moment, I found myself thinking about my ex. He’d been so insecure that he would have reacted horribly to being teased like this. He’d lash out at the slightest criticism, and I always found myself overthinking my words, just to make sure I wasn’t inadvertently saying something that might be taken the wrong way. I hadn’t dated much since we’d split, but I’d had a front-row seat to a lot of Stacy’s relationship dramas, mostly with actors she met through the shows she worked on, and a lot of them had been just as hypersensitive, to the point where I’d started thinking all guys were that way.
But Trent wasn’t. In fact, he seemed—in some ways, at least—to be a good guy.
How strange.
“That would be great!” Dominic said.
I turned, coming back to reality and realizing, to my surprise, that Dominic and Stacy had hardly stopped speaking the entire meal.
“You’re sure it’s not too much trouble?” Dominic asked.
“A princess costume will be such a nice break from my last batch of costumes,” Stacy assured him.
“Do you think you can have it done before Hailey’s birthday party?”
“Definitely.”
“So…I’m gonna say something,” Stacy said as we boarded the train for Queens. The subway wasn’t too packed at this hour, so we scooted into a pair of free seats. “Try not to bite my head off, okay?”
“What?”
“Trent’s…not that bad?”
I rolled my eyes. “You caught him on a good day. Maybe he was on his best behavior because his friends were there. Trust me, he’s capable of being a real asshole.”
“I mean…aren’t all of us capable of that sometimes?” Stacy pointed out gently. “Maybe that first time you met him was the outlier, and on your average day, he’s actually a decent guy.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” I said, sneering a little as I remembered him yelling at his dad on the phone. What kind of guy would do that? Surely not a good one.
Stacy snorted. “Well, he’s definitely not the ogre you described. You made him sound super uptight and obnoxious.”
“He is !”
“But he really isn’t. Come on, you had a nice time. Admit it. I saw the way you were looking at him.”
“I wasn’t looking at him any type of way,” I blustered, lying through my teeth. “But if it makes you happy, I’ll admit that there might be more to him than I realized.”
“And?”
“No and ,” I said. “That’s it. He’s not just the Coffeezilla that got me fired. But the jury is still out on whether he’s more Jekyll or Hyde.”
“At least now I understand why he gets you going so much,” Stacy said.
I snapped my head in her direction. The corner of her mouth curled. “What are you talking about?”
“Please tell me you’ve noticed the sparks between the two of you.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not interested in a relationship. Especially with him. But if we want to talk sparks, what about you and Dominic? You two seemed to be hitting it off tonight.”
“We were, weren’t we?” She laughed. “Though it’s a little weird for me to be talking to a guy who’s not into theater. He totally missed the Midsummer Night’s Dream reference I dropped into the conversation.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I pointed out. “At least you know this means he won’t go quoting Shakespeare to try and justify cheating on you like the last guy.”
“Ugh,” Stacy groaned. “You’re right. ‘To thine own self be true.’ Like actually, that guy can kiss my ass.”
I threw my head back and laughed at the look on her face. When the laughter died away, I considered what she’d said about Trent. Stacy might have terrible taste in theater guys, but she was right about one thing—the sparks between Trent and me were heating up. But even though the thought of having to fake this relationship with him was mildly less repellant, the last thing I wanted to do was screw up this work opportunity by complicating us.
Relationships and the workplace didn’t mix.
I knew better.
I’d been burned by that before.