8. Stephanie
STEPHANIE
Oh, he definitely wanted to come in last night.
Stephanie was usually an early riser, but the morning after the date she lay in bed for a long time, pondering everything that had happened the night before.
The date should have been a chore, but it hadn’t been like that.
In fact, she had kind of enjoyed herself.
The basketball game had been an objectively good time—she’d never have been able to sit courtside on her own, and to see the game up close like that had been a great experience.
And then, afterward, going to that steakhouse, getting to dine on expensive food and having it all paid for…
Which I don’t need to feel guilty about. Yes, I’m using him, but he has plenty of money. More than anyone needs. If that wasn’t true, he would have a job, at the very least.
And besides, the fact that he kept trying to get her to take him home was proof enough, in her eyes, that he wasn’t boyfriend material. A gentleman would wait until he was invited.
I mean, it isn’t like he tried to force his way into the house or anything. He was just clearly hoping for it. That wasn’t so bad…
She sighed and sat up in bed, anxious to stop thinking about all this.
After she had returned home last night, she had fired off a quick email to Oliver Norcross letting him know what had happened on the date.
No doubt there would be a response this morning, and she was eager for validation, for him to tell her that she was doing the job well and that he was going to follow through on his end of the bargain.
She also wanted a firm timeline on exactly how long she could expect this arrangement to last—he hadn’t told her that.
She needed to know the release date of the app he was working on, because once that came out, she would be able to cut things off with Elijah.
She made her way into the kitchen where she greeted Bruno and started the coffee brewing before turning to her computer to see what her email had to say.
Sure enough, there was a message from Oliver. It had come over last night, about fifteen minutes after the one she had sent. She clicked it open.
Ms. Vincent,
This all sounds great. A very respectable first date. Keep up the good work, and keep me informed. See him at least one more time this week, please. I want to make sure he stays interested in this.
Let me know if you have any questions. If not, we’ll regroup at the beginning of next week as previously discussed.
So he approved of what she had done, and everything was going well. She was about to close the computer when she heard the ping of an incoming message. Glancing down, she saw that this message was also from Oliver Norcross.
Stephanie frowned. What did he have to add? He’d said they weren’t going to talk anymore until next week, but maybe he had forgotten something—something like the timeline on all this. She definitely needed that.
She clicked open the newest email.
Ms. Vincent,
Have you seen this yet? Job remarkably well done! Keep up the great work!
There was a link following the text of the email, and she clicked it.
The website of a local tabloid popped up. She frowned at it, wondering why Oliver Norcross would send her this—and then the relevant words caught her eye.
Son of Business Mogul Oliver Norcross Steps Out with Local Woman.
Stephanie’s heart raced. She clicked open the article. Right there at the top, under the headline, was a photo of herself and Elijah at the basketball game.
She recognized the moment. It was when he had been leaning in to explain to her what a jump ball was.
But you couldn’t tell that just from looking at the picture.
All you could see was that he was whispering in her ear, and though she didn’t recall feeling any joy or amusement in that moment, the expression on her face looked suspiciously like a smile.
Was I smiling? I suppose it was funny that he thought he had to explain something like that to me.
But in the picture, it didn’t look like she was laughing at him. Her expression was softer than that. Her face was relaxed, her eyes merry. It was the gentle amusement of a joke between two people who really liked one another.
It was a good picture. It really looked like the two of them were on a date—and she hadn’t even been trying to accomplish that. She hadn’t dreamed they were being photographed. This was completely candid, unposed.
She scrolled down to the article.
Elijah Norcross, perennial playboy and son of financier and banking developer Oliver Norcross, was spotted with local business owner Stephanie Vincent, founder of SilkSoft Skincare.
Stephanie was jarred. They had gotten her name? But how? Someone must have used the image to do a search and found her company’s website. If she had known that was going to happen, would she have gone on this date?
A nervous fluttering kicked to life in the pit of her stomach. I didn’t think at all about how this was going to impact my reputation. What if it makes me look bad and my brand equity is tanked?
Nervously, she read on—but there wasn’t much else about her or her company.
They’d stopped at the name. In fact, there wasn’t much else said about yesterday’s date.
The tabloid reporter had noted that the two of them seemed close, that they had celebrated together when the Vipers had won the game, and that they had left arm in arm.
She could see why Oliver Norcross was excited about this article—it was exactly the kind of thing he had hoped they would show in their time together.
She scrolled back up to the picture and looked at it.
There was something very odd about that picture.
She wasn’t used to seeing herself look so happy and at ease when she was photographed.
Stephanie was very aware of her appearance at all times—it was an important part of her brand—and though she was happy with her well-tended skin thanks to the products she’d helped develop, she had other insecurities.
Most of them had to do with the fact that she couldn’t relax when there was a camera on her, so her smiles were always stretched and awkward, not quite reaching her eyes.
How long had it been since she had seen a picture of herself like this one? A picture in which she looked perfectly relaxed?
I was relaxed with Elijah. As strange as it seems to think that I could have been that way on a date with someone I hardly knew… I really was.
Maybe it had been in part because the stakes were simply so low, because she hadn’t needed to worry about whether the date was going to go well or not. She hadn’t cared about that. It had been enough for her to know that she was living up to the expectations of her agreement with Oliver.
But in that moment, the moment the camera had captured, she hadn’t been thinking about Oliver. She’d been thinking about the game, yes, but also about the man next to her and the good time she was having with him.
What a strange realization.
She closed the tab on her computer before she could fall into the trap of spending the rest of the morning pondering this.
It wasn’t that deep. So someone had taken a good picture of her, a picture in which she looked happy.
She had been happy. She’d been courtside at a good ball game.
Anyone in her position would have been having a good time in this picture.
It wasn’t indicative of some larger point.
She opened the computer again and pulled up her email.
Mr. Norcross,
Would it be possible to get a clearer timeline regarding your app launch? I’ll make plans to go out with Elijah again, but in the meantime I’d like to know how long we can expect this setup to continue.
I read the article—looks like things are going the way we wanted them to. She paused, then added, I had a really good time at the basketball game, so it’s kind of win-win.
She hit send before she could think too hard about what she had written. The reply came back almost immediately—Oliver must have been sitting at his computer.
It’s looking like the app might be ready sooner than we expected!
We’ll be ready to launch on Monday morning, if nothing goes wrong.
I’d like you to be there, if you’re open to it.
You’ve been kind of a good luck charm to me in all of this, so I’d feel a sense of fate being on our side if you were there for the launch.
Elijah will be coming. Maybe I’ll talk to him and tell him to bring you with him, if you’re open to that.
Let me know if you have any conflicts. If I don’t hear from you about it, I’ll go ahead and offer up the idea to Elijah.
Stephanie leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh, closing the computer again. So the app was going to launch next week.
Did that mean that her time with Elijah would already be over?
She was surprised by the sense of disappointment she felt at the notion.
It can’t be true that I want our time to go on longer, can it? This was all just an arrangement to get what I wanted, and the fact that it’s ending means I’m one step closer to the payout.
And yet, she had had a good time with Elijah. Maybe it would be tough letting go of what they had experienced together. At least she would always have that tabloid picture, the one in which she was smiling so readily, as a reminder.
Even the papers know him for what he is. He’s a playboy, famously. It was never going to be serious between the two of us, so it’s for the best that it’s coming to an end before I get in too deep.
And besides, money would be coming in soon, and she would be able to focus on taking SilkSoft to the next level… and that was what all of this had been for in the first place. She had to remember that.
The coffee was ready. Stephanie got up and poured herself a cup, thinking about what she would do with the rest of her day.
One thing was clear—she was going to have to reach out to Elijah.
She would need to arrange a second date with him so that he would have the impression things were going well between them.
That way, when his father asked him to bring her along to the product launch, he would agree readily.
She couldn’t help wondering, though, whether or not she was doing something she was going to regret somewhere down the road.
Something she was going to look back on and wish she had handled differently.
If this was the way business was done, if this was the way people got ahead in life, then Stephanie was going to have to play the game—but it was certainly not the way she had pictured her own career moving to the next level.
Just get through it. After the product launch, you’ll break things off with Elijah, and then there won’t be anything left to feel uncomfortable about.
She hoped that would be true. Right now, it was hard to feel much faith in it. Glancing back at her computer, she felt the strange urge to open it up and look at that picture one more time. To see herself smiling as Elijah had leaned in and whispered in her ear.
They had looked like a happy couple.
That was going to be a hard thing to forget.