12. We Sell It
12
We Sell It
ANDREW
Oliver: OMG that trig video got 100k views!
Me: Seriously?
Oliver: Still climbing!
Me: That’s amazing!
Oliver: Our next video will get 150k. We’re never ever going to change anything
Me: I still think you should be on camera
Oliver: Not a chance. Never. Changing. Anything.
Me: But you’re so pretty
Oliver: middle finger emoji
I was the first to show at the restaurant, my smartwatch squealing about my elevated heart rate. Would Carly show, or would she have second thoughts again? I was picturing myself bluffing my way through this couples’ dinner solo when Vic and his wife arrived.
He shook my hand. “Where’s your mystery date? Ed and I have a bet that she’s fictional.”
The CEO and the CFO had a bet that I’d lied to them? It was a good thing I hadn’t told anyone in my family about the promotion. I could imagine Mother’s disappointed expression when she heard I didn’t get it.
Surreptitiously, I wiped a bead of sweat from my hairline and opened my mouth to assure Vic my date would show when a familiar voice soothed my jangled nerves.
“Fictional? I’ve been called a lot of things but never that.” Carly appeared at my side and something loosened in my chest, letting hope flutter out. Maybe I could get this promotion after all. Maybe then she’d think I was worth staying for.
She slipped her arm through mine and lifted on her toes to kiss my cheek. “Hi,” she said, her voice husky.
She wore a simple, fitted black V-neck dress with a gold belt. And she wore the hell out of it. It hugged her body the way I wished I had the right to do. I settled my hand on the soft fabric covering the irresistible curve of her back.
I blinked. Rule one. She was my fake date. The kiss that still burned on my cheek and my hand on her back—her upper back—was the limit of our agreement as far as touching was concerned, per rule two.
I cleared my throat, but my voice came out as a rumble. “Carly, let me introduce you to Vic and…” What was Vic’s wife’s name?
“No need. I already know Yelena and Vic.” She stepped forward to kiss Yelena’s cheek, then Vic’s. “You didn’t tell me we’d be having dinner with old friends.” Her tight control slipped a bit, her eyes flashing.
Vic’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re dating Jones?”
“Yes, it’s…new,” she said.
“It’s serious,” I said at the same time.
“New and serious?” Yelena said, clutching Carly’s hand. “This tea sounds hot.”
“Well…” I looked at Carly, helpless. Why hadn’t we made up a backstory? They always did that in spy movies. But we weren’t spies. We were only lying to my boss. My breath hitched.
She tossed me a flirty smile. “When you know, you know, right?” She shrugged, which made Yelena cackle.
Vic frowned. Circling around Carly and Yelena as they crowed over each other’s outfits, he crowded next to me. “You’re dating Carly Winner?” he growled low enough that only I’d hear.
“Yeah. For a…for a while now.” A while was vague enough. We’d straighten out our story later.
“She’s almost my age,” he said, his voice tight.
“And your wife is my age,” I said. “What’s the big deal? Like Carly said, when you know, you know. Also, her name is Carly Rose now.”
“The big deal is that this could get complicated.”
“Complicated how?” I bristled. Fuck him if he thought Carly wasn’t a suitable date for a prospective vice president. “You know what? I don’t care. She’s incredible, and I like her. A lot.” I wished I had a better vocabulary to make this fake dating thing seem more real. But my relationships had never made it to the point of introducing people I dated to my friends and colleagues.
I was much better at talking about math.
“Because the client—” Vic began.
“No,” Yelena said, clutching his arm. “No talking about work until I have a cocktail in my hand. Come on, let’s sit.”
My heart pounded as we followed the hostess to a rectangular table for six. I wished I had something to hold on to like a graphing calculator, a sextant, or, god, Carly’s hand would’ve been great, but we were already pushing the PDA limits of our agreement with that kiss on the cheek. Vic pointed me to one end, and he took the other. The women sat on one side, discussing some designer I’d never heard of.
The server was taking my drink order when I heard a voice I wished I didn’t recognize.
“Carly? It’s been a minute.”
Brad Winner stood at the empty side of our table. His twenty-something fiancée stood at his side. Brad smiled, but it looked pained. The fiancée positively beamed.
Vic stood, extending his hand.
“Brad Winner is our client?” What the fuck?
“Brad, so glad you could make it.” Vic’s voice sounded anything but glad. “I think you know our associate, Andrew Jones, and his…um…date, Carly.”
Slowly, I stood and held out my hand, steeling myself.
Brad gripped it. Hard. Like when I arm-wrestled my brother, I didn’t flinch. I squeezed right back to say, She’s my date. You blew your chance.
“Andrew Jones? Are you Jasper’s son?”
“That’s me.”
A cool calculation tightening his eyes, Brad released my throbbing hand. “This is my fiancée, Hayley.”
“Hayley Darling.” She pumped my hand enthusiastically but much more gently. “Remember me?”
I caught Vic’s scowl from the corner of my eye. Did he think she was a past girlfriend of mine? That was all we needed, another incestuous connection on this episode of Game of Thrones .
“Um…?” Her face looked a little familiar.
“St. Sulpicius Academy? I was a couple years behind Natalie.” When I said nothing, she grinned. “S-U-L, P-I-C, I-Yoooou-S! Gooooo Church Mice!”
From the deepest recesses of my memory, I pulled an image of a gangly middle-schooler in a cheerleader uniform with a set of thin pompoms. The varsity squad only cheered for the soccer team when we were in the finals, so we usually got the junior squad. “Oh. Right. Nice to see you again, Hayley. Do you know my date”—I had to clear my throat—“Carly Rose?”
“Of course.” She squeezed Carly’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re coming to the wedding. Andrew’s your date? That’s dank! Isn’t it, babe?” She clutched Brad’s arm.
He narrowed his eyes at Carly like she’d somehow engineered this disaster.
Carly’s voice wavered when she said, “Brad.”
Before I knew it, my arm was around her shoulders. “Excuse us a minute.”
I led her to the front of the restaurant. “God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Are you okay?”
Her face was pale, making her orangey-red lipstick stand out. “I’m fine. It was bound to happen. In fact, since we’re going to his wedding together, it’s good to get this first meeting out of the way.”
She straightened and shook off my arm. I could tell how unnerved she was by the slight tremor in her hand as she flicked her hair off her shoulder, but when she lifted her chin, a new challenge gleamed in her eye. She was a goddess.
I wished it were real. I wished I could hold her hand until it stopped trembling, kiss her plush lips until she forgot all about Brad and remembered how sexy, how worthy she was.
But all I could do was catch her eye and give her words she didn’t need, at least not from me. She had to know she was exceptional, and Brad was nothing but an ordinary asshole, discarding what he didn’t understand or appreciate. “You’re spectacular. So much more precious than he knows.”
She met my gaze. “You’re sweet.”
Sweet . The word was a stone in my belly. Sweet was a word for a kid, not someone you felt anything for. She felt nothing for me. She’d proved it when she left my hotel room as I slept.
I reminded my foolish heart it felt nothing for her. Because this was fake, and she’d leave me again on February first.
“Ready?” I asked.
She nodded.
We stopped at the bar for shots, whiskey for me and vodka for her, before we returned to the table. Brad and Hayley sat at Vic’s end of the table. Separating us was a smart move on Vic’s part. Not that I’d do anything with my promotion on the line, but I was feeling less than rational at the moment.
Immediately, Vic turned the conversation to business. Apparently, Brad was looking into some new investment vehicles, and Vic wanted me to share the analysis I’d done on comparative risk. Easy peasy. Explaining complex financial models to Brad was simple after I’d somehow gotten Vic to understand them last week.
Meanwhile, Carly steered the women’s conversation like a professional. After all those years with Brad and his constant networking, it was probably second nature.
The trouble came when we crossed the streams.
“Darling.” Yelena speared a morsel of her Dungeness crab and held out her fork, “Try this.”
Vic leaned forward and took the bite from her fork. He smiled indulgently. “That’s delicious. Good choice.”
“I’ll ask our chef if he could make it. I wouldn’t know what to do with shellfish.” She turned back to Carly. “I’m trying to have more meals at home so Vic can spend time with the kids. It’s hard when he works so much. Do you have children, Carly?”
“No, no, we never—” She rolled her lips between her teeth. “No.”
“Carly didn’t want kids. She thought she’d get back to modeling one day.” Brad guffawed. “Guess you’ve aged out of the biz now, Carl.”
“Oh, no, babe.” Hayley scooted Brad’s wine farther away from him. “There’s so much more diversity in modeling now. There’s a call for mature models.” I was sure she meant her smile to be reassuring, but Carly seemed anything but reassured.
“You said you didn’t want more kids,” Carly said. “Your two boys were enough.”
“Did I?” Brad shrugged, catching Vic’s gaze, then mine. Women, that shrug said.
Carly opened her mouth, then closed it. When she grabbed her wineglass, it sloshed a bit. She gulped it, then mumbled, “Doesn’t matter.”
But Brad wasn’t ready to let it go. “Carly’s not what you’d call domestic. She tried to cook me dinner a few weeks after we got married. She wanted to impress me. It was Southern food, fried chicken, grits, and some disgusting kale or something. She set off the smoke alarm when she got grease on the stove. The chicken was okay, but the rest of it was inedible.”
Carly’s cheeks reddened.
“After that, we hired a chef. But Carly can plan a good party, can’t you, Carl?”
She smiled, thin and brittle as one of my mother’s crystal wine globes. Then she turned to Yelena. “Speaking of parties, tell me about that dress you wore to your ten-year anniversary party last year.”
“Brad, let’s talk about risk modeling,” I said. I smiled gratefully at the server, who took away my plate without asking if I wanted to take home my mostly uneaten steak. I wanted no reminders of this meal.
By the time they removed our dessert plates, Vic had invited Brad to the bank’s charity golf scramble and asked me to join their foursome. Yelena had asked Carly to style her for the bank’s New Year’s Eve party, and Carly had advised Hayley on the upcoming styles for spring.
As Brad shook my hand, less crushingly this time, he said, “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, kid, like your dad. Vic, I like how you manage risk. I’ll call you later this week.”
Vic’s grin and clap on my shoulder were worth every painful moment we’d endured that evening.
I felt the euphoria of a well-executed soccer play, like the time I’d flicked the ball backward past the defender and my teammate raced past to chip it into the corner of the net. My career would follow the same well-planned trajectory. First this promotion, then another, then CFO when Vic retired or took a job at one of the big national banks. All because of Carly.
As I walked her to her car, her clingy dress hypnotized me. She took mincing steps in the narrow skirt, and with her heels, her calves flexed seductively, reminding me of how smooth they’d been when I kissed them.
It’d been a privilege to see her bare body. I knew the feel of her silky skin. I’d memorized the scent of her where her neck joined her shoulder, in the valley between her breasts, and the intoxicating spot between her legs that I’d never wanted to leave.
I shook it off. She didn’t want that from me. She’d made it clear with her no-sex rule. We had a business arrangement, nothing more. She excelled at her part of it.
“You were captivating tonight,” I said. “Thank you. And I’m really sorry. Vic didn’t tell me who the client was. I guess he thought it didn’t matter.”
“I’ll be prepared next time.” She stopped at an older Benz and clicked the lock.
“We’ve got to nail down our backstory. What did you tell Yelena about us?”
Her eyes sparkled wickedly. “That I seduced you at one of your mother’s parties.”
“Really?” I chuckled. “Mother would die.”
“No, I stuck close to the truth. I said we’d met up by chance, and you wooed me.”
Too bad my wooing hadn’t stuck. I should be used to it. People didn’t stick around for me.
I moved to open her car door, but her words stopped me. “I think they’re watching us,” she whispered.
“Who?”
She tipped her chin at the next row of cars, where Vic and Yelena lingered next to their Land Rover.
“Why are they watching us?”
In the yellow pool of the security light, the tops of her cheeks darkened. “I think they expect us to say goodnight.”
“Goodnight?” I finally caught her meaning. “Oh. You mean…” I stepped closer and carefully set my hand on her waist, above her teasing belt. My voice came out as a rumble. “Goodnight.”
She tipped her chin up. “You’d better kiss me to sell this.”
We needed only a cursory kiss. Vic and Yelena expected us to drive our separate cars back to my place or hers and go to bed. Together. But the second my lips grazed hers, our arrangement was the last thing on my mind.
Her lips tasted like wine, like that night in Monterey. My tongue followed a familiar track, licking inside her wet warmth, her flavor more intoxicating than any alcohol.
She melted against me, allowing me to support her with my hands at the curve of her waist. I pressed forward, crushing her breasts against my chest as our kiss turned ravenous. I remembered how she looked in my hotel room bed, naked and spread out, as I’d kissed from her plush lips all the way down her body. Excitement pooled in my belly.
When she tunneled her fingers into my hair, tingles spread from my scalp to my toes. If Vic and Yelena were watching us, surely, they could see my skin glowing from the fire Carly ignited inside me.
Her car chirped, startling us apart.
She’d looked perfect all night, but now she was perfectly wrecked. Her lipstick had smeared at the edges. Her eyes were huge and glossy, the pupils blown to the very edges of her brown irises, and her breaths came fast, gusting out between her lips.
I did that to her, some caveman part of me crowed. She likes me, gloated that pubescent boy who’d fallen for her at that party on her yacht.
She blinked, and her gaze flicked to the next row of cars. “I think we sold it. They’re gone.”
The caveman shuffled back into his cave. Thirteen-year-old me slouched into his room, probably to jack off to some porn on his laptop.
Business arrangement . I should have the words tattooed on my palm so I could remind myself every time I slipped.
“I guess we did. Thanks again.”
“Next stop, Brad’s wedding,” she said shakily. “Text me your measurements, and I’ll pick up some things for you.”
“You don’t want me to go with you and try stuff on?”
“No. I’ll have them sent to your place. You can set aside anything you don’t like, and I’ll pick them up and return them.”
She’d practically screamed, business arrangement. I could take the hint.
“Goodnight, Carly. Thanks again.”
“Goodnight.” She got into her car, and I waited while she started it and drove away.
It was a good reminder. Carly wouldn’t stay either. On February first, she’d peel out of my life, tires squealing.