“Do you smoke?” I ask as he leads me to an enormous oak door that opens suddenly, a concierge standing there in full tux.
“No. That’s Dad’s pipe you smell. We were working late at the office.”
It’s cardamon and Bengal tea spicy yumminess. I want to brew him in hot water and drink him.
We enter a room with an arched ceiling so high I expect to look up and see God with his finger outstretched. The dusky night shines through rounded windows at the peak. Dark mahogany covers the walls and muted lighting gives the restaurant a womblike feel. I can see past the front desk into the main dining room, where thick burgundy curtains frame each table.
This is a place designed for privacy.
“Ms. Jacoby.” The maître d’ appears, a man who looks to be about my father’s age, with gray hair and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He’s shorter than Declan, but lean, like a triathlete. Dressed in a tuxedo slightly different from the man at the door, he exudes luxury and service.
In his hand is a small white box with a bow and a gold paper medallion on it. He holds it out to me.
Puzzled, I look at Declan, who just smiles. I slide my fingernail along the gold seal and open the box.
It’s a corsage.
“What?” A sentimental laugh fills me, and suddenly I’m at ease.
“You missed your prom, so I thought…” Declan has been calm, cool, and collected until this moment. Right now, he looks like a nervous seventeen year old, though he covers it quickly, eyes going back to a hooded, careless look quite fast.
I pull it out of the box and pin it to my blazer. It’s a tasteful set of small red and white roses with a sprig of baby’s breath around it. Simple. Elegant.
Special.
I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. My lips graze his jaw as I step down. He’s clean-shaven, but the rasp of my skin against his makes my entire body fill with instant lust.
“This is the nicest gesture anyone has ever done for me at a business meeting. Normally I’m lucky to have my own laptop outlet.” I can’t say what I really want to say, a mixture of gushing gratitude and joy that my babbling adolescent self is screeching inside. The words Thank you and He likes me! echo a thousand times a second through my mind and heart.
The box disappears as if the maître d’ were Dumbledore with a wand, and he leads us back to a table for four, shrouded on three sides by thick velvet curtains, a dim chandelier above us.
Declan pulls my chair out and I sit, scooching in, the press of cool leather a surprise on my upper thighs. Damn. My skirt’s split that high?
I’m unnerved again. A corsage? The heady scent of roses and caring fills the air around me. Declan’s looking at me with eyes that say this is not a business meeting, and my body responds to him like it has to no other man. Ever. Not even Steve made me feel like this.
“I didn’t go to my prom either,” he says as we settle in. A waiter fills our water glasses and a bottle of wine appears. Before I’m asked, a glass of red is poured for me.
I hate red wine.
“I would have thought that you were prom king,” I say.
He shakes his head, eyebrows furrowed. Then he waves a hand as if dispersing a bad memory.
“What?” I ask. I feel bolder now, as if I have the right to make him tell me whatever it is he was about to dismiss.
“I…I missed it because of my mother,” he says, reluctant, as if the confession is against his nature.
“Your mother?”
“She was in the hospital.”
My mind races to recall all the details Amanda and I learned when we researched Anterdec after our meeting. I know the name is the amalgam of the three sons’ names: Andrew, Terrance, and Declan. An Ter Dec. But Mrs. McCormick…I don’t remember anything about her.
“She died the day after my prom,” Declan says softly. Our eyes meet, and mine must be horrified, because he reaches out for my hand to comfort me. He’s the one whose mother died.
“You lost your mother that young?” I can’t help it. My throat fills with sympathetic tears. My mom may be a pain in the ass, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.
“It’s been ten years,” he says thickly. “But thank you.”
“For what?”
“For reacting like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you care. Most people don’t let themselves have genuine reactions to anything emotional.”
“I’m not most people.” The words come out wrong. What I want to say is I wear my heart on my sleeve, but that seems too vulnerable. This is just a business dinner, right?
Right.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling my hand away with great reluctance. He squeezes it and begins to run his thumb along the soft skin of my wrist.
He’s not going to let me retreat.
“So tell me why you need more convincing to give this account to Consolidated,” I say, trying to change the tenor of this encounter.
I fail.
“Tell me why you’re so afraid of me.”
I reach for the red wine with my open hand and twirl the glass. The last time I drank red wine was with Steve, at our final work outing for him. He dragged me along to a big dinner with his firm and I choked down a glass and a half as he sent me a million nonverbal signals throughout the entire dinner.
Most of which involved scowls and eye rolls, because I did everything wrong.
Declan takes a sip of his wine and returns his attention to me.
“I’m not afraid of you.” I really want white wine. A battle inside emerges. Let it go, one part says. Speak up and assert yourself says another. Billionaire grandchildren says my mother’s voice.
I take a big sip of the red wine and choke it down.
“Maybe you’re afraid of yourself,” he says.
“Maybe I’m afraid you think I’m just being whored out by my boss so I’ll land this account.”
“Maybe I don’t need sex so badly I trade accounts for it.”
“Maybe that was never an option.”
“Maybe I’m more interested in knowing why you were perched on that toilet. You still haven’t answered my question from earlier.”
That makes me laugh. “Why do you think? I was finishing the last mystery shop of the day. Who do you think reports on the cleanliness of the bathrooms?”
That makes him pause and take another sip of wine. “Never thought about it.” He’s still holding my hand, but his thumb stops moving.
“Of course not. That’s my job. Not yours.” I lean in, lowering my voice. “And thank you for not asking me to count the pubic hairs on the urinal cake.”