She narrowed her eyes then, suspicious, as if he’d pulled one over on her even though he’d just agreed to her terms.
“Does this suddenly seem a little, I don’t know, unsavory?”
“You mean like prostitution?”
“God! No! Well…yes.”
“Think of the birdies.” He handed her his phone. “Enter your contact info.”
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, looking at the display on his phone. “Is that the time?”
“You have somewhere to be?” he asked as she entered her info, tossed him the phone, and began shutting down her computer.
“Yes! A date. In five minutes. Damn! I hate being late.”
That would explain the bright lips and heavy eye makeup.
He let his eyes slide down her body. And the aqua sequined top, tight jeans that hugged her curves, and lime green heels. All the bright colors stood in dramatic contrast to the curtain of straight, black hair that hung to the middle of her back and, in the front, Bettie-Page-style curled bangs. “Somehow, I think your boyfriend will be inclined to forgive.”
“Oh, TallDoctor83 isn’t my boyfriend. Yet.”
“Right.” He let his gaze flicker down to the letter, which was still lying on the desk. “TallDoctor83 is tonight’s Mr. Thursday Night. Here’s hoping you don’t incite your date to vomit this time. Do you go out every Thursday night?”
“Yes, I do.” She snatched the letter and shoved it in her purse. “Internet dating is, alas, the way of the modern world.”
“Well, there is always blackmail.” He’d been going for a hint of levity, thinking maybe it was time to stop being so overtly rude now that he’d gotten what he wanted, but she just glared, shooed him out of her office, and locked the door. “I have a car,” he said. “Let me drop you off.”
She shot him a skeptical look. “That would be great, actually. Cabs are impossible this time of day, and I really hate being late.”
They descended the stairs silently, and when his car pulled up to the curb, she planted a hand on her hip. “You have a driver.” When he didn’t answer, she rolled her eyes and added, “Of course you do.”
He held the door open for her and slid into the backseat next to her. “Nate, we’re taking this lovely lady to…”
“The Thompson Hotel,” she said.
“Nice. So, let me take a wild guess. Your date is a doctor. A tall one.”
She didn’t answer, just looked at Nate and inclined her head a little. He forgot sometimes that the trappings of his lifestyle weren’t normal for everyone. “Oh, he’s sworn to secrecy, aren’t you, Nate?”
“Yes indeed,” his longtime driver replied.
“Still,” he said, reaching for the button that raised a tinted glass partition between the front and back seats. “If you want privacy, we can do this.”
“Sorry, Nate!” she called. Then she whirled on him and said, “A chauffeur? Really? You’re, like, the one percent, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. To him, it was a simple cost-benefit analysis. He had clients all over the region, and he spent a lot of time in the car. Given what he billed hourly, if he could use that time to work, Nate’s salary more than paid for itself.
Plus, it was good for impressing women.
Usually.
The one next to him just snorted in what appeared to be disdain. Damn, Rose Verma just said whatever she wanted, reacted however she wanted, context be damned, didn’t she?
He had chosen well.
“So, TallDoctor83,” he said. “If 1983 is his birth year, that makes him, what? A little older than you?”
“I’m ByAnyOtherName86, if you’re fishing for my age.”
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. “Clever,” he said.
“Though no one ever gets the reference. I’ve gone out every Thursday night for the past year, and it’s only been commented on twice. And both times the guys thought Romeo and Juliet was romantic. I was like, dudes, they were teenagers, and they died.”
He leaned in while she was babbling and sniffed the air near her neck—which caused the fuchsia mouth to clamp shut. “You do smell good.” It was true. He couldn’t place the scent, but he liked it. It was bold, almost herbal. A refreshing change from the heavy floral scents the women in his family’s social circle favored.
She burst out laughing at that, which discombobulated him momentarily, as it was not the reaction he expected. “Perhaps your date will be literate as well as tall,” he said.
“I don’t have high hopes, to be honest.” She sighed and fell back theatrically against the back of the seat. “Well, that’s not true. I always have high hopes. It’s just that they’re usually dashed. I can count on one hand the number of second dates I’ve gone on over the past year. I had one guy that lasted three weeks, which is a record.”
Rose Verma definitely came from the other side of the tracks. In addition to smelling different than the women in his social circle, she also possessed a kind of chatty forthrightness that the careful, sophisticated women he knew wouldn’t be caught dead displaying.
“What happened to him?” he couldn’t resist asking, though small talk wasn’t really his thing.
“Oh, what happened to him is that his wife found out about us, and I believe she cut off his balls.”
He whistled.
“Yeah. I’d thought of every possible question you might want to ask a person you met on a dating site, but somehow ‘Are you married?’ slipped my mind.”
“Why do you keep at it?” Internet dating seemed so undignified. “Why not just meet someone in the actual world?” He wasn’t the relationship type, but all the women he casually dated, he met through friends or at parties.
When she didn’t speak right away, he thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer. But then she sighed and said, “I have no idea why I’m telling you this, but years ago, I told my mother that when I turned thirty, if I was still single, I’d let her fix me up. My birthday is in a couple months, and that is not a road I want to go down. So my clock is ticking. Some people have a biological clock. I have a boyfriend clock.”
He almost laughed. Her mother sounded not unlike his father. Of course, Rose’s mother probably wasn’t a sociopath.
“So hope springs eternal.”
She squared her shoulders and smiled. “It does. God knows why, but it does.”
They’d pulled up in front of the hotel. “Do you have a dress? For Saturday, I mean? It’s black tie.”
“Yes, I have a dress,” she shot back. “We can’t all be the one percent, but I’m not a total peasant.”
He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. She was prickly, this one. All the better to stick it to dear old Dad.
“All right, I’ll pick you up at six.”
“Don’t you mean Nate will pick me up at six?” When he didn’t answer, she just shook her head. “Thanks for the ride. This has been…really, really weird.”
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About the Author
Jenny Holiday started writing at age nine when her awesome fourth grade teacher gave her a notebook and told her to start writing some stories. That first batch featured mass murderers on the loose, alien invasions, and hauntings. (Looking back, she’s amazed no one sent her to a kid-shrink.) She’s been writing ever since. After a detour to get a PhD in geography, she worked as a professional writer for many years. Later, her tastes ha
ving evolved from alien invasions to happily-ever-afters, she tried her hand at romance. Today she is a USA Today bestselling author of all sorts of romance novels: contemporary and historical, straight and gay. She lives in London, Ontario.
Other books by Jenny Holiday
New Wave Newsroom
The Fixer
The Gossip
The Pacifist
The 49th Floor Series
Saving the CEO
Sleeping With Her Enemy
The Engagement Game
His Heart’s Revenge
Regency Reformers
The Miss Mirren Mission
The Likelihood of Lucy
Viscountess of Vice
Famous (A Famous novel) Page 27
