Chapter 5
5
William
I pride myself on smelling like every woman’s fantasy and the ideal all men aspire to, but right now, I’m turning heads and noses left and right for all the wrong reasons.
I should walk away from this woman and get myself to a place where I can ditch the suit jacket and whatever the hell this putrid green slime is. Opal Waverly bravely pushed most of it off my sleeve, but the remnants are rapidly seeping into the expensive fabric of this custom-made jacket. I might as well burn it in my fireplace.
“What time do you want to meet for coffee tomorrow?” I’m the one who asks that.
That’s because I’m in some sort of trance. Call it charmed by beauty or mesmerized by a smile, but Opal Waverly is undoubtedly the most captivating woman I’ve ever seen.
“Um,” she says, but her gaze is doing this hopscotch thing all over my face. It’s bouncing from my forehead to my eyes and then my lips before it shoots to my jawline. “I’m not sure.”
Is she trying to get out of our coffee date? Meeting. It’s a meeting, not a date, because Percy Haines hired me to help him grab her interest and her heart.
I look down at the front of the black T-shirt she’s wearing. It’s a great match for her faded, ripped jeans and black boots.
What the fuck am I doing?
Rule number one in my business is do not check out any woman a client is interested in.
“The contractor is coming super early.” She points at a door not more than two feet from where we’re standing. “I have to be here to meet him because I refuse to hand over another set of keys to a contractor. The last one I did that with lost the keys.”
That would all make a hell of a lot more sense if I had some context beyond the fact that a contractor is coming to this location to check on whatever is hidden behind that door.
My team of three back at the office are geniuses when it comes to digging up every small detail about the men who hire me and the women they’re interested in. I haven’t looked at Miss Waverly’s file yet, so I have no background information to draw from other than the fact that Percy pointed me in this direction when he told me she’s about to open a business on this block in Murray Hill.
Since I was passing through this neighborhood on my way back to the office, I thought I’d check it out. I didn’t expect to run into Miss Waverly.
“I’m opening a bar here.” Opal sweeps her hand in the air in front of a shop. Dark blinds block the windows, so it’s impossible to see anything inside. “It’s called Turquoise Crown.”
“Like the board game?” I ask because I kicked ass when I played it with my brother, Bauer, when we were kids. I went head-to-head against him more times than I can count. I always pulled out the win.
“You know it?” Opal asks with a glimmer in her brown eyes.
“I’m the reigning champ,” I boast, not bothering to mention that’s in the Knight household and only against my brother. I wouldn’t dare play any game with my younger sister as my opponent because Scout is not only smart but she’s strategic as hell.
“I am,” Opal says, her hands dropping to her hips.
“Are you challenging me to a game?” I ask, hope dripping from every goddamn syllable.
“I said leave me alone!” A woman’s frantic voice breaks through my Opal-induced trance. “We’re done, Dougie.”
Opal’s gaze flies to my left at the exact moment mine does. We both catch a glimpse of a guy down on one bended knee with a small gift-wrapped box in his palm. Standing in front of him is a woman with long red hair and a look on her face that screams leave-me-the-fuck-alone .
“Anna, you’re my one and only banana,” Dougie drops that gem as he pushes the box closer to the woman whose name I assume is Anna. “Please peel back the paper to reveal a big surprise. Peel, get it? You peel a banana, so peel the gift wrapping.”
“That’s bad,” Opal whispers. “Like, so bad.”
“I don’t like being called a banana,” Anna explains to the guy still down on one knee. “I broke up with you three months ago because I hated the nickname. You were also the worst boyfriend in the world.”
I highly doubt that. I’ve met some of the worst boyfriends in the world in my quest to educate them on how to get their rank up to the best boyfriends category. Some had the potential to make that happen, and they did. Others were too far gone for saving, so I turned down the big payday and sent them on their way with a primer on how to be a fucking decent man.
“Stop it,” Anna insists. “You’re embarrassing both of us.”
“I bought you a goddamn car!” Dougie yells as he pops back up to his feet. “What about that new phone and the computer I dropped two grand on?”
The spite in his tone hits me like a freight train because I’ve heard it before. I know this fool. We met years ago. The woman he loved at that time was named Mary. That’s it . Mary the Cherry, he called her.
“What the fuck, Doug?” I mutter.
“Are you all right?” Opal reaches for my forearm but stops herself when she remembers the green slime is still seeping into the fabric of my suit jacket, marring it for eternity. The window to drop this off at my dry cleaner has officially closed. I won’t subject Roberto to this putrid mess. I value him too much.
“I need to take care of something.” I smile at Opal. “How does nine tomorrow morning at the coffee shop around the corner sound?”
“Okay,” she says hesitantly. “I can do nine.”
Technically, I can’t since I have a meeting, but I’ll push it back a few hours. My clients are always flexible. How could they not be? I’m the best chance they have at obtaining the life they crave.
I toss Opal one last smile before I head toward the disaster playing out for all on this sidewalk to see. Phones are now out, and their cameras are capturing this epic proposal fail. It will most likely be trending on social media by the time I’m back at my office since far too many people love the misery of others.
“Doug!” I call out the name of the man who has a fondness for fruit-based nicknames for his lovers. “What the hell are you doing?”
The look on his face when he spots me says it all. Everything I taught him about how to treat a woman flashes before his eyes. He knows he fucked up. The slap of his palm against his forehead is evidence of that. “William? Shit. I’m sorry, man.”
I get why he’s apologizing to me. I made him vow to never be a raging jerk to a woman, and he just broke that promise. Something tells me this isn’t the first time he’s dropped that particular ball.
“You owe Anna an apology,” I point out.
“I love her,” he whines in the same nasally tone he used when he proclaimed he loved Mary four years ago. “We belong together. She just can’t see it right now.”
Anna’s hands fist at her side. “You’re wrong.”
“She’s right,” I add my voice to back her up. “Whether or not Anna wants anything to do with you is her decision. Not yours, so tell her you’re sorry and that you’ll never bother her again.”
“William!” Doug shrieks like someone just kicked his shin.
I’m not a violent man by any measure, but it’s tempting to knock some sense into him with a well-placed smack against the back of his head. “Apologize.”
My tone conveys the gravity of my message.
He turns to Anna. “I’m sorry, banana.”
“Jesus.” I sigh. “Enough with that. Her name is Anna. She fucking hates that nickname, so knock it off. Respect her enough to call her by her name.”
“Thank you.” Anna flashes me a smile. “I appreciate that.”
The next woman Doug meets will appreciate that, too, if he finally follows at least some of the advice I gave him.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I won’t bother you again.”
“Good,” she snaps back. “Or I’ll get a restraining order. By the way, Dougie, you stink. You smell like the dumpster behind my office building.”
I swing my left arm behind my back because I have a reputation to protect. I’ll let Doug take the fall for this, even though I have no doubt the Dicey Dip is the culprit.
Doug takes it in stride, shrugging as he whispers something unintelligible in response.
Anna turns and walks away as the people gathered around us set off to go on with their days. I glance to the right to see Opal doing the same. She’s getting into a taxi stopped next to the curb.
“I’ll pay you a king’s ransom to help me get her back,” Doug whispers. “Name your price, Knight.”
No amount of money in the world will ever persuade me to help a man gain the attention or affection of a woman who wants absolutely nothing to do with him.
“Leave her alone,” I say sternly. “She wasn’t joking, Doug. She’ll get a restraining order against you. How the hell will you explain that to your mother?”
As with most men, Doug has a weakness. His is his mother who happens to control his finances. He’s been living high off her dime for his entire life. Considering he’s nearing forty-five, I don’t see him rocking that money boat anytime soon.
“My mom would never know if that happened,” he says, securing my assumption that Doug is no smarter now than he was the day we met.
“I’ll tell her.”
I mean it, and he can hear that in my voice because his eyes widen. “No shit?”
“No shit,” I repeat while staring into his beady eyes. “Forget about Anna, and for the sake of all the women in this city, take a break from love, Doug. Find a hobby.”
He rubs his forehead. “I’ll return the ring and buy a sailboat. Maybe I’ll cruise the great unknown for a few months.”
“Buy a lifejacket while you’re at it,” I tell him because safety is always first.
“Will do.” He nods. “Maybe a break from women is just what I need.”
Maybe it is, but I know for a fact the women of this city could use a break from him. “The fruit nickname thing is ridiculous. Don’t ever use that approach again.”
He laughs that off. “If the urge strikes.”
I step closer. “You won’t do it again. Understood?”
His gaze locks on mine. “Understood, William. I won’t do it again.”