by K. M. Scott
"Nina, you never like the guys we meet. He must be something pretty damn good."
I screwed my face into a grimace. "I like some of them," I protested half-heartedly, knowing she was probably more right than wrong.
"Uh-huh. Name one."
I couldn't name one. They were all perfectly nice, I guess, but none of them really got me going. It never took long for me to fall out of like with them.
"That's not the point."
"No. The point is that you met someone you actually like. Tell me everything!"
"His name is Tristan. Tristan Stone. He..."
Just as I began to tell my story, Jordan's green eyes grew wide and she leaped out of her chair, nearly knocking over her glass. Marching over to the table by the window, she rifled through the half dozen newspapers she bought every day on her way to work downtown. When she turned around, she held up one in front of her. "You mean him?"
I craned my neck to look at a picture of a couple at some gala event. She walked a few steps closer, and I saw the man in the couple was Tristan. The woman on his arm didn't seem to be any of the women I'd seen surrounding him at the gallery the night before, though.
"What day is this from?"
Searching for the date, Jordan said, "Tuesday. Now tell me what happened with someone so famous that he ends up on Page Six regularly."
Stunned, I sat back in my seat, unsure what to tell her. I didn't know him like that. "What do you know about him?"
"Nina, you're the one who met him. I've only read about him in the gossip page."
God, I felt stupid! He wasn't just some good looking guy with a great car. He was someone famous. Now I was sure last night hadn't meant anything to him.
"I don't know anything about him like that. I saw him at the show and then he showed up at the gallery later on."
Jordan sat down and shook her head. "What do you mean he showed up later on? To buy something? I bet Sheila loved that."
"No, he was waiting outside the gallery in the alley way after I locked up."
"What do you mean? Had you spoken to him during the show?"
I shook my head. "No. He was there with a bevy of hot women and never even spoke to me."
"So what happened? You're killing me here! I swear you tell stories like my students."
To be compared to a group of fourth grade Catholic school kids wasn't helping, no matter how exclusive Jordan's school was. I wrinkled my nose and smirked at her. "Thanks."
"Neen! Give up the details!"
"He was waiting behind the gallery when I was leaving and asked me to go for a ride with him in his Jaguar. He offered to take me home, but instead we ended up driving upstate to see a house he said he was thinking of buying."
"Shut up!" she squealed. "Is he as stunning in person as he is in the papers?"
I reached out my hand to take the newspaper from her. "I don't know. Let me see." She handed me Page Six and there he was, just as gorgeous as he was last night. I secretly wanted to keep this picture so I'd always have him near me.
"So? Is he?"
Tearing my gaze from the newspaper, I nodded. "Yeah. Maybe even more, although I didn't see him dressed in a tux. He wore only a suit to the show."
"Did you sleep with him, Nina?"
"No!"
Jordan knitted her eyebrows. "Stop acting like it's 1952. Sleeping with a hot guy is permissible these days."
"I know all about feminism, Jordan. I just don't choose to jump into bed with every guy I meet."
Pointing to the newspaper I'd stuffed down in between the sofa cushions next to me, she said, "You see the woman in that picture with him? That's the fifth or sixth different one I've seen him with this month. The rumors are that he sleeps with a different woman each night."
I raised my eyebrows more in despair than disgust. "Really? You believe everything you read in the papers?"
"No, but you know how celebrities are. And if the pictures are any indication, he likes tall brunettes who look more like stick figures than humans."
I looked down at my less impressive five foot seven frame and what I liked to call a "healthy" body. I was in pretty good shape, but I was definitely not a stick figure.
"I'm sorry, Nina. I didn't mean to say he wouldn't like someone like you. He'd be damn lucky if he did."
Jordan's sympathetic smile made me feel better and worse at the same time. The reality was that if he was a man who slept with a different woman every night, no matter what type of women he preferred, he hadn't wanted to sleep with me. He hadn't even wanted to kiss me.
"It's okay. I've never had a problem not being a stick figure," I joked.
"So, if you didn't sleep with him, what did you do with Tristan Stone?"
I wasn't sure how to explain it, so I chose to go with the boring truth. "We hung out. Nothing more."
"Nothing?" she asked, her voice sing-song.
"Nothing."
Jordan looked confused. I understood her confusion. I still had no idea why he'd come to find me and then never even really touched me.
"Any plans to see him again?"
I tried to tamp down my disappointment. I didn't want pity now. "Not really. It wasn't much of anything, Jordan, so there's no reason to believe he'd want to hang out again."
"This sounds like a mystery to me. Why would he come find you and then not want to see you again? What was the conversation like while you were heading upstate?"
"Monosyllabic."
"You or him?"
"Him. I spent most of my time worried he was going to kill me and leave me on the side of the road."
Jordan sat back in her seat and chuckled. "Don't be silly, Nina. Wealthy people don't kill people. They hire people to do that."
Rolling my eyes, I mumbled, "Funny. I'll keep that in mind if I ever see anyone who might look like his butler or driver near here."
"Seriously, though. What do you plan to do about him? You obviously like him."
Even though Jordan knew me as well as anyone in the world, I didn't want to admit what I planned to do. It's not like I could coincidentally show up where he spent his time. We lived in two different worlds, and I likely couldn't afford the cover charge to get into that life. What I could do was click around online and find out about him.
Some might call that stalking. She'd likely call it stalking. I liked to think of it as research for my fantasies.
"There's nothing to do about him. We'll stay in our separate areas of the world and that's that."
"Oh, that's so tragic and romantic! It's like that Julie Roberts movie where she's like Cinderella. What's that movie?"
"Holy shit, Jordan! Pretty Woman? I'm not some poor prostitute in fuck-me boots!"
She waved my protests off and walked toward the kitchen with her glass to refill her drink. "You know what I mean. Two people from two different worlds. It's so romantic."
"Like Romeo and Juliet," I yelled toward her.
She peeked her head out of the kitchen doorway. "Now who's being scary? Romeo and Juliet? You do remember from high school that they both die at the end, right?"
Nodding, I chuckled. "Yeah. This is no more like Pretty Woman than Romeo and Juliet. Whatever it was, it isn't anymore."
I ran my fingers over Page Six in the seat next to me. Before Jordan returned, I quickly pulled the newspaper out and stuffed the folded page into my shorts. "I need to get going. Can't spend all Sunday lying around."
Jordan smiled another sympathetic smile as I walked past her. "Okay. Hey, Justin and I are going to be hanging out at The Last Drop Tuesday night. Want to come?"
My spidey senses told me this was a setup. A dating setup in the making. "You and Justin and your third wheel? Or will there be a fourth?"
Her look turned sheepish. "I think you might like him, Nina. Alex is pretty good looking, has a good job, and he doesn't seem like a loser."
"A ringing endorsement if I ever heard one," I joked and continued walking. "I'll think about it."
"At lea
st it'll be a night out. We'll have a few drinks, shoot some pool, and maybe have a few laughs," she yelled as I closed my bedroom door behind me.
I sat down on my bed and opened my laptop, content to spend my afternoon looking up information on Tristan. While my computer turned on, I examined the picture of him with his girl du jour at some gala. His face was expressionless and he seemed more like a statue of himself than the real thing. The woman, however, looked like she was thrilled to be there with him, clinging to his arm and smiling a huge, toothy grin for the camera.
Raising the picture to look at it more closely, I studied it for any sign of the person who'd smiled and laughed as he'd driven to the middle of nowhere the night before. He didn't seem to exist in this person.
Setting the paper aside, I typed my first words into the search bar. "Tristan Stone." I figured I might as well start with the obvious and go from there. It didn't take long to see that Jordan had been right. The pictures I saw showed him with a different woman every time, but he was the same cold figure in each one. The soulful brown eyes that had looked at me were nowhere to be found. Neither was the genuine smile that he'd so freely given, even if it had seemed like he was laughing at me more times than not.
Once I'd looked at enough pictures of him to truly make me feel like a stalker, I began reading and found out the real details on him. He'd inherited his father's luxury hotels along with other businesses that included an internet startup company and some company that had to do with real estate.
I sat transfixed on the words as they stared back at me from the screen. Tristan, the man who'd come to find me just for company, was a millionaire many times over. Maybe even a billionaire. The car was his. The Rolex was his. He was the kind of man women dreamed of, and he'd wanted to spend time with me.
And now I would never see him again.
Closing my laptop, I flopped back on the bed and groaned. I needed to stop thinking about Tristan right now. He was something unattainable, and I needed to accept that. It didn't matter that he had looked happier in the short time with me than he ever looked with all those women at all those fancy parties. None of that meant anything because of the simple fact that even if he'd been happy, he'd made no effort to get my number, kiss me goodnight, or even find out much about me.
I covered my eyes with my arm and tried to push all thoughts of him out of my mind. If I kept this up, I'd end up becoming obsessed over a situation that was doomed never to be. He was where he belonged and I was where I belonged.
Life was as it should be, no matter how disappointing that fact was.
Chapter Three
Tuesday night came, and I chose to accept Jordan's offer to hang out with her, Justin, and Alex at the bar. Monday's work at the gallery had made it difficult to stop thinking about Tristan, but I had done my best to talk myself out of my infatuation. In truth, I probably hadn't really succeeded, but the human mind is an interesting mechanism and very susceptible to delusion. Regardless of whether I was lying to myself or not, I headed out to The Last Drop and promised myself I'd keep an open mind about Alex.
The Last Drop was the one place in Sunset Park that could be picked up and dropped back in my home town in Pennsylvania. It was just a bar, what was traditionally called a "hole-in-the-wall" back home, with a couple pool tables, some dart boards, and a back room with booths and another pool table. Jordan and I had found it soon after moving into our place, and Tuesday night had become our night out each week. It wasn't much, but it was fun.
She'd told me everything she knew about Alex as we waited for him and Justin, and when I say everything, I mean everything. She must have compiled some kind of dossier on him because she knew his height, weight, where he went to school, what he did for a living, how much money he earned, in addition to dozens of other details I probably could have done without. I mean, should a woman really know about a potential boyfriend's favorite sexual position—cowgirl—before she even meets the guy?
As I hadn't heard anything to necessarily turn me off, I figured staying wouldn't do any harm. Worst came to worst, at least I'd occupy my mind with some friends, a few beers, and a few games of pool while I crossed another male off my list of potential boyfriends.
"Nina, I hope you like him," Jordan said as she leaned across the table to talk over the blaring of the music from the jukebox. "We could all go out if you do."
I nodded and smiled my agreement. By the time the song had ended, Justin and Alex had arrived and I got my first good look at the man Jordan had chosen for me. Tall, with dirty blond hair and blue eyes, he was certainly attractive. My suspicious mind immediately went to the question of why he'd be single, but I told myself to give this a chance. I was single and there wasn't anything profoundly wrong with me.
"Hi, Nina. I'm Alex. Nice to meet you."
Good masculine voice, nice looks, seemed intelligent. Maybe Jordan hadn't been wrong.
A few beers and two games of pool later, I had impressed him with the few things that made me stand out amongst the millions of women in New York—my down-to-earth way and ability to shoot a mean game of pool. Why this was so intriguing to men had always baffled me, but I'd learned over the years to make it an asset. I wasn't supermodel gorgeous and I wasn't heiress rich, but I could wield a stick like nobody's business and oddly enough, it was one of the few games men didn't seem to mind losing at.
Crouching down to collect the balls for another game, I looked up to see Jordan's eyes grow as wide as saucers as she looked my way. I hadn't had too much to drink yet, so I figured she wasn't giving me the "Holy Fuck!" look because of something I'd said. Standing up, I gathered all the balls into the wooden rack and positioned the top ball on the break spot. I looked up to see if Alex was ready and saw Jordan still with the wide eyes and pointing slyly in my direction, urging me to look.
I turned around and there was Tristan standing behind me near the entrance of the bar and sticking out like a sore thumb in a suit and tie. Tristan looked around as if he'd never seen the inside of a bar, his expression a mix of curiosity and focus. I watched as he scanned the bar area and then turned his attention toward the back room where I stood stunned to see him.
His gaze met my surprised stare and he smiled that same smile he'd given me nights before as I'd tried to get him to give me a straight answer. Jordan said something behind me about pool or something, but the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears drowned much of it out. I stood as if my feet were nailed to the ground and unable to move as I watched him walk toward me in a way that made him look like he was gliding across the floor.
By the time he reached me, I had forgotten there were even other people in the room. He was that mesmerizing.
"Nina."
True to form, he said little but his eyes spoke volumes. As I struggled to form a coherent sentence in my mind, I looked into those gorgeous brown eyes of his and saw a flicker of apprehension. Everything else about him appeared calm and confident, but his eyes hinted at some kind of fear.
Was he afraid I wouldn't talk to him? Why?
"Tristan. What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to see you."
I couldn't help but chuckle. "I figured that. I can't imagine you're acquainted with anyone else in this bar."
His gaze never wavered from me, and he asked quietly, "Can we talk somewhere?"
He wanted to talk more. Okay. Smiling, I found the ability to move my legs again and guided him toward one of the wooden booths on the far side of the room. We sat down across from one another, and I realized I hadn't even said anything to Jordan or Alex. No matter. She'd understand, and I'd apologize to her later.
"How did you know I'd be here?"
He settled his gaze on me. "Do you come here a lot?"
"Every Tuesday. But that doesn't answer the question of how you knew I'd be here."
"There's a billiards tournament in Las Vegas every year that I sometimes play in. You should come with me next time. It's late summer. We could make a week of it."
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With every word he spoke, I grew more confused. Why was he talking like we were a couple? Now we were taking trips together? Shouldn't we at least have dinner first? Or maybe sex? God, just the thought of it made me squeeze my thighs together in sweet agony.
"Tristan, what do you want?"
"You."
My stomach dropped and a rush of excitement hit me between my legs. He wanted me.
"You want me for...?"
"You were an art major in college. You'd know a lot about what pieces I should buy, wouldn't you?"
My excitement fizzled back to confusion. "Yes, I majored in art history. I minored in painting. What do you want me for that has to do with that?"
"Why don't you come for a walk with me?" he asked, more as a command than a question as he stood from the booth.
My curiosity was piqued, even if my ego was dinged. I would have likely said yes to anything he asked, so I walked over to where Jordan was standing and quickly whispered, "I'll be back. He wants to go for a walk."
Pulling me aside, she leaned in and asked, "Is everything okay? What does he want?"
"I don't know. I'm thinking maybe he wants someone to help him pick out paintings, maybe for his office or something. Maybe for that house he's buying. I don't know. I have my phone on me, so if anything goes wrong, I'll call."
Jordan hugged me and in my ear whispered, "Be careful. Remember, wealthy people hire people to do their work. I doubt he's here for a decorator."
"I will. And don't worry. I'll tell you all the details when I get home," I teased.
Squeezing my arm as I moved away from her, she said, "You better!"
Jordan and I were breaking the best friend code's first rule: Never let your friend leave with a strange man. He wasn't a strange man, per se, but she couldn't have stopped me even if she thought he was. With each step I took toward Tristan, an excitement began building in me. I hoped he wanted me like I wanted him, but if all he wanted was someone to help him pick out art, maybe he'd pay me enough so I could begin to build up my savings. Whatever it was, at least I'd be spending time doing something with art.
