Chapter Five
Stephanie
“Why does there have to be a catch?” I grumbled as I pulled a tray of cookies out of the oven.
Andy sat at the island drinking a white chocolate latte she’d let herself into my apartment to make while I’d been in the shower.
Meatball was currently on the couch, rolling back and forth on one of my candy-cane-printed throw blankets, his little grunts bringing a smile to my lips, despite the frustration I felt.
“Sammy’s firm has this weird married culture.”
“Married culture,” I repeated, scraping the cookies off the sheet to set them on the cooling rack so they maintained their softness.
Morale was running a little low at the charity after one of our bigger donors canceled their damn check before we could put it in the bank. Cookies weren’t going to replace that money, but at least they might give everyone a little happiness to get through the day.
“Yeah, it’s weird in this day and age, right? But it’s a thing. Everyone there is married or engaged. And they really look down on single people.”
“Yeah, but you said this was an event between several of the law firms in the city. I’m sure they’re not all stuck in the 1950s.”
“Maybe. But we don’t want you to stand out like a sore thumb if it is all couples. Come on. You’re gorgeous. How hard could it be for you to get a date?”
“To a stuffy lawyer-only event? I’m thinking difficult. Might as well be asking someone to accompany me to an event at the IRS.”
“Hey, the IRS gets a bad rep. They were kind of chill with me when I screwed up my taxes when I was younger.”
“You get my point.”
“I do,” she agreed, reaching for one of the chocolate chip cookies.
It was still too hot so it broke down in the center.
Unbothered, she reached for both parts and shoved them in her mouth.
She let out a moan. “You know, if the narrator thing ever stops working for you, you could sell these cookies.”
Not to toot my own horn, but they were the best damn chocolate chip cookies anyone had ever had. I’d been told dozens of times.
I couldn’t take the credit. They came from a cookie recipe book my mom once checked out of the library.
She’d made them every year since, sometimes shaking it up by putting M&Ms or big chunks of chopped chocolate.
No matter what, they came out perfect. This was my first time making them without her. It was a bittersweet tribute.
But I didn’t dare try one myself, worried I might cry if I did.
“It’s good to have fallback plans. Now back to this event. I need more details.”
“Well, it’s a party full of super-wealthy criminal defense lawyers who will be drinking and feeling charitable.
What else do you need to know?” she asked, reaching for another cookie as I turned to drop more dough onto a sheet.
“You know, Sammy told me that the guy who got that movie star off on murder charges is going to be there. She said he charged over three million, flat fee, for that case. And he got a five-hundred-k bonus for winning.”
Jesus.
I couldn’t even fathom that kind of money.
“It was chump change for the actor, though,” she said.
Andy, my dear old friend, was a little obsessed with celebrity culture.
She knew all the stars, who they were dating, the blind item gossip about them, which reality TV shows they were going to star in, everything.
In contrast, the only reason I knew anything about any celebrities at all was from her telling me.
“I think his net worth was like one hundred fifty million.”
Wow.
I went to three different stores to get the cheapest butter, chocolate chips, and sugar for the cookies.
Everyone at my charity was busting their ass to try to raise a million bucks to give all kids in shelters a gift for Christmas, while that same amount of money could disappear from the star’s bank account and he wouldn’t even notice.
Life could be so monumentally unfair sometimes.
“Bad topic, I guess,” Andy said, always good at reading my moods. Though to be fair, I was not great at hiding whatever was going on in my mind. My mother used to always say that my face needed a filter. But her mouth needed one, so we were both terrible at hiding our true feelings.
“Tell me more, though. Where is it? What’s the dress code? Is there some sort of entrance fee?”
“Entrance fee,” Andy laughed. She carefully picked at her cookie to find a piece without a chocolate chip, then handed it down to a not-so-patiently waiting Meatball.
He scoffed it up and immediately started to let out little grunts of annoyance that another piece wasn’t automatically handed to him.
“It’s not a club. No. The firm partners all paid for the venue.
Which is classy. With an orchestra kind of classy.
So you need a dress. Not just a dress. But the floor-length kind.
Think black tie wedding, but just slightly less restrictive on personal color choice and such. ”
“I don’t own a floor-length dress.”
“Luckily, we live in a city full of stores to find one in.”
“It sounds expensive.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I’ll make a list of places for you.”
“Wouldn’t it be really weird for me to go there and just start begging people for money?”
“Well, yeah. You’re going to need to be casual about it.
When you meet someone, tell them you work for a nonprofit.
Then do a quick spiel about how you’re really trying to make sure all the kids in shelters have a present under the tree this year.
I guarantee you most people are going to open up their checkbooks.
Networking is better than standing outside of stores any day of the week. You want to do this.”
“I’d do just about anything at this point,” I agreed. “But I’m not seeing anyone. I don’t even have any male friends to lean on.”
“What about another volunteer? I know it’s mostly women there, but there have to be a few guys.”
A few being the operative word.
We had four men.
One old enough to be my grandfather.
Another, young enough to be my baby brother.
Then there was Craig. He would jump on it in a heartbeat. But I also didn’t want him to think it was an actual date, that we were going to have more, that it was anything other than what it was: an opportunity to crowdfund for the charity.
That left, well, Venezio.
“I see the gears turning,” Andy said, narrowing her eyes at me. “And I feel like you’ve been keeping something from me.”
“I haven’t.” Well, not much.
“Liar.”
“I’m not lying! I told you we got a new volunteer.”
“And conveniently didn’t say anything else about them. So I’m going to assume it’s a man.”
“It’s a man.”
“And with that flush creeping up your neck, I’m going to assume he’s hot.”
“He’s hot,” I confirmed.
“Well, then you have the perfect date.”
“No. Absolutely not,” I said, cracking the oven to check the cookies. At the first hint of browning around the edges, they had to come out.
“Why not?”
“He’s not… a black-tie kind of guy.”
“Oooh, rough-around-the-edges, is he?”
“He’s the slicked-back hair, leather jacket, tattooed type.”
“Oh, be still my heart,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest.
“That’s totally not your type.” Both she and Sammy were on the feminine side.
“No, but I can appreciate a James Dean type. They have a certain bad boy magnetism that defies sexual preference. So, what’s his name?”
“Venezio.”
“It keeps getting hotter. Didn’t you narrate a book with some hot Italian guy with a V name?”
“Valentino,” I confirmed. And, yes, I’d drawn the parallels. Especially in the tub or in bed alone at night before sleep. Where I would imagine those scenes full of long sessions of oral followed by mind-bending, toe-curling, multiple-orgasm sex… but swap out the hero for Venezio.
Stupid on my part.
The last thing I needed when I came across Venezio at the warehouse was to vividly remember the way I came with his fingers, mouth, and cock on my mind.
“Well, I think a hot tattooed guy would look great in a suit.”
“Isn’t it black-tie? Doesn’t that mean tails?”
“Oh, God. No. Like it’s black-tie-ish. No tails or cravats. Nice suits.”
“I doubt he has a suit.” Let alone a nice one. “He’s a tee and Timbs kind of guy.”
“Doesn’t every man have a suit? Not having one is like not having an all-occasions little black dress.”
“I mean, unless he’s had to go to weddings or funerals, maybe not.”
“Well, you can get him a suit.”
I could.
I had some extra money I was going to put back into the charity. But if going to this event—with a date—would mean tenfold that kind of money, then it made sense to invest my money in getting my date to go with me.
“If I’m going to pay, why not just hire an escort?” I mumbled to myself.
“I mean, I’m all for that too. Lord knows you could use a guy to help give your sheets a workout.”
“Hey!”
“Girl, come on. It’s been two years. Two years. It’s going to close up.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“No, but it’s not healthy not to have good, solid orgasms on the regular.”
“You can have orgasms without a partner.”
“You can,” she agreed. “But we both know it’s better with a partner.”
She had a point there.
“But circling back to Venezio,” she said, savoring his name.
“Can we not?”
“I think you doth protest too much. Did I say that right?” she asked, then charged on without waiting for a reply. “I think you want to get hot and sweaty with the new volunteer. And you’re worried that taking him on a date is going to end up with you two in bed. Or up against a wall in an alley.”
“Listen. Yes, he’s hot. Yes, I’ve had some interesting thoughts about him. Yes, he once yanked a guy out of a seat on a subway so I could sit down—”
“Oh my God. No, he didn’t.”
“He did. Then gave the kid a lecture about giving up his seat to women and the elderly.” I went ahead and left off that weird little bit about being scared of people and the thinly veiled threats that I didn’t quite understand.
“Was it sexy? I bet it was sexy.”
“It was sexy. But I totally could have just stood.”
“Yeah, but he thought you should sit and then made it happen? Hot. Okay. Yeah, you have to ask him to the event.”
“You don’t understand. He’s very… rough.”
“So are lawyers.”
“Yeah, but he’s… he heckled people who didn’t donate.”
“Well, tell him to be on his best behavior. Oh, we have to go,” she said, grabbing her phone (and another cookie) then rushing to the door. “Ask him. Don’t make me drop by and do it for you.”
She would do that, too.
Then I would look like a chickenshit.
Or, worse yet, it might seem to him that I was into him and I needed my friend to set us up.
It would be better if I asked him myself. Make it casual. Make it about the charity. Nothing personal. Just a fundraising event. Nothing more.
Decision made, I pulled out the cookies and moved them onto a cooling rack.
Though I had to admit that there was nothing casual in how I spent the next half an hour. I waited for more cookies to bake while looking at appropriate gowns online, and trying to decide which one Venezio might find the sexiest, while still being classy.
“God, I’m hopeless,” I grumbled as I slipped into my warm clothes while the radio sang a happy song about how the person they loved made them feel like Christmas.
Maybe I did need to rethink the whole male escort thing.
I grabbed the plastic container with the sweet little holiday wreath pattern. The sweets were nestled inside.
As I made my way toward the warehouse, I couldn’t help but wonder what Venezio might think of the cookies.
Dammit.