by Julie Kriss
I walked into a midtown watering hole and made my way toward the bar. I was incognito tonight: jeans, dark gray T-shirt, dark brown leather jacket, baseball cap. I often picked up women like this, so they didn’t know they were sleeping with the famous Aidan Winters. Dressed like this, not a single soul would recognize me. When you were known all over town as the Man in Black, people only saw the clothes, which made it easy to wear a disguise. It was the Clark Kent effect. If I’d added glasses, I would probably have been completely unidentifiable, even to my closest friends.
But there was something else to the disguise I wore. Even though I was a success, even though I had a life that most people would envy—sometimes I chafed at being me. I wasn’t born rich or powerful. I’d been a too-thin teenager from a crappy home when I’d run away at fifteen and bunked in with three of my runaway friends. We’d lived on next to nothing for years, barely staying off the streets and making ends meet. I was a different man now, but deep down I was still that teenager. I was still that kid looking for his next meal or looking for a fight. Penthouses and big offices were nice, but sometimes I needed to escape them. Sometimes I needed to be someone else for a while.
It was why I left my schedule blank most evenings and kept it to myself. The life I lived could own most of me, but it would never own all of me.
I stepped up to the bar and ordered a draft. It was mostly an after-work crowd of locals here, west of the tourist spots near Times Square and south of the upper-class bars where people would expect to see someone like me. These were New Yorkers, coming off work and letting off steam before stumbling home to do it all over again.
It was the perfect place to find a stranger to sleep with.
Because the other me, the poor me—he liked sleeping with strangers as much as the rich me did. At least, he always had.
I noticed a woman watching me from the other end of the bar. She was leaning against the bar top with one elbow, waiting for the bartender to fill her order. She had brown hair cut just above her shoulders and lightly curled. A heart-shaped face and nice eyes lined with dark makeup. A light sweater that hugged her curves. She was pretty, sexy in a rather wholesome way, and she had definitely noticed me. In other words, she was exactly what I was looking for.
It should have been perfect, but I looked away, dropping my gaze to the top of the bar. I was still thinking about the woman in Miami, about my day, about the Egertons, about Samantha. I couldn’t get out of my own head.
I glanced at the woman again. She was paying for her drink, but she noticed me looking at her and met my eye. She smiled a little, in a nice way. She was probably like me: someone who didn’t do this all the time, but often enough. Maybe she was getting over a bad relationship or she’d been burned repeatedly by the Manhattan dating scene. Because pretty much everyone had been burned by the Manhattan dating scene.
Did Samantha date? Or did she have a boyfriend? She’d stood in the doorway of her office, watching me as I left today. I knew I’d left her hanging, wondering what had happened with the Egerton brothers. It had happened so quickly after she showed them into the meeting room—she had to at least be curious whether it had anything to do with her. She hadn’t contacted me afterward, as if she knew something was wrong. And since I hadn’t contacted her, she must be wondering if she was in some kind of trouble.
Where was she right now? Pouring out her troubles on a boyfriend’s shoulder? Or was she even thinking about me at all?
The thought came into my mind: If it had been Samantha I’d met at the airport lounge that day, it would have been very, very pleasurable.
Illogical, because I hadn’t met Samantha when it happened.
If it was Samantha at the other end of the bar, we’d already be on our way out of here to fuck.
Egotistical, because it assumed she wanted to have sex with me at all. But the sex-starved mind doesn’t always make sense.
The woman at the other end of the bar was looking at me again, unsure. I was still distracted by my own thoughts, and I wasn’t giving her a strong enough message one way or another. She had finished paying her bill, and as I watched, the couple sitting beside her got up and left, leaving an empty seat.
An invitation if ever there was one. All I had to do was walk over and take it.
It wouldn’t take much—just hello, some small talk, introductions. We’d tell each other things that were possibly true, possibly not. I rarely used my real name in these encounters, because I didn’t want the women Googling me after we parted. If the women I met used fake names or real ones, I never knew, because I never Googled them either. It was better that way—cleaner, both of us a blank slate for a few hours, which made the sex hotter.
Except when it didn’t. If I didn’t like anonymous sex anymore, then what kind of sex did I like?
Samantha. In a first-class airport lounge. Suggesting I come back to her hotel with her.
In real life, she was my employee, and I wasn’t even supposed to think about her like this. I tried to stop, and instead I pictured her in a blue dress—she’d look incredible in blue—and those shoes with the goddamned ankle strap. In another lifetime—one in which we hadn’t met—I’d sit next to her and she’d give me a smile, her gaze going up and down me in that quick, unmistakable way women sometimes had. A once-over. And then I’d—
I blinked and realized I was standing here fantasizing about Samantha while the brunette waited, the empty seat next to her. As I hesitated, another man—brown sweater, shaggy dark-blond hair, affable smile—sat next to her and introduced himself.
She looked at me. I shook my head.
She turned to the other guy, smiled, and said hello.
Good move, Winters. What the hell was that?
I had just turned down sex. Anonymous, no-strings-attached sex—the only kind of sex I ever indulged in. I was going home alone.
All because of Samantha Riley.
I paid for my drink and left the bar. I stood on the Manhattan street, feeling the cool spring night air, scented with the unique New York fragrance of sweat, gasoline fumes, and something deep-fried. I turned in the direction of Central Park, many blocks away, and started walking.
After all, it looked like I had nothing else to do.
Eight
Samantha
* * *
He said his name was Ethan. He was tall, with muscles he was obviously proud of because he wore a T-shirt in the cool May air. He had tattoos on his arms. He wore artfully ripped jeans and a belt with metal studs in it, and I was supposed to sleep with him.
Emma had placed herself at the bar, where she pretended not to know me. This was in case Ethan was a creep and I needed an escape. If I gave her a nod, she’d move in and extract me. If I left with Ethan, she’d leave me be.
“Hey,” he said in greeting as he sat down across the table from me. I was still in my work clothes, so we looked… incompatible. Though of course that could be a turn-on sometimes. Ethan had dark blond hair in a short cut and scruff on his jaw. He was good-looking, I supposed, or at least good-looking enough to get a lot of dates on Tinder.
Damn Emma and her need to fix everything, including my sex life. I hadn’t asked her to get me a date—I’d only wanted to drink some wine and bend a sympathetic ear. But my big sister, who spent her entire career training people to make things happen, had just jumped in and taken over without asking me. Now I had a strange man sitting across from me, and I didn’t know what to do.
No, that was a lie. I knew what I was supposed to do.
And if I was honest with myself, having a good-looking guy waiting for the cue to hook up with me tonight wasn’t the worst problem to have. I was still young, I was healthy, and I was sitting in a nice bar, considering relieving my considerable sexual frustration.
“Hi,” I said to Ethan. I smiled. He smiled back.
“Thanks for inviting me out,” he said. “I know we’ve been messaging for a while. I’m glad you decided to meet me.”
Great.
That was just great. Emma had hooked me up with one of the guys from her own Tinder account, and he thought I was her. I darted a glance toward her at the bar, but she was innocently sipping wine and scrolling through her phone. I was going to kill her.
Still, this guy’s IQ couldn’t be that high, since Emma’s hair was dark red and mine was dark blonde. We looked like sisters, but we weren’t identical. “I’m surprised you recognized me,” I said.
He shrugged. “Your photo is kind of low-res, but I can tell it’s you. Though I’m not surprised you recognized me.” His grin was knowing, which meant one thing: he’d been sending my sister selfies. Probably naked ones. Maybe even dick pics.
I cleared my throat. “I, um…”
“I did send a few of my face. Or weren’t you looking at those?” He grinned again.
Oh, God. “I don’t remember all of the pictures, I guess.”
“You don’t remember?” His eyebrows went up. “It was just last night. You get that many guys sending you pictures?” He waved a hand before I could answer. “Never mind. You’re hot. The hot girls on Tinder always get the most guys. I get plenty of girls, myself. It’s the muscles.”
Yes, he had muscles. I shouldn’t have any objection to those. So why did I think that this guy—who dressed and acted tough—was actually soft compared to my boss in his sleek, expensive suit? Why did I think Aidan Winters could probably break this guy in two? I took a hefty sip of wine. “I’m glad you’re successful,” I managed.
“So am I.” He leaned back in his chair and looked me up and down. “I can see why you didn’t send me any pictures back, even when I asked for them. You’re a classy girl.”
“I’m not a girl, actually.” The word was starting to grate on me.
“Oh, right.” He rolled his eyes, and then he grinned again, as if that made it okay. “It’s fine. I’ll call you whatever you want. Do you want to come to my place? I’m on the Lower East Side.”
Right. We were supposed to be hooking up for sex. I was supposed to be having sex with a real man instead of with my hand for once. That thought wasn’t supposed to annoy me, make me think about my boss yet again. “Do you have roommates?” I asked.
“No, I have my own place, so it’s private. Unless you’d rather go to your place.”
His own place in Manhattan? What did this guy do for a living? It was probably in his Tinder profile, but since I’d never actually seen it, I had no idea. Besides, what did it matter what his job was? This was supposed to be anonymous sex. The hot kind. The less I knew about Ethan, the better.
“So, Emma,” he said, grinning at me. “What do you say?”
There was something about that—him calling me by my sister’s name—that did me in. I could have sex with a stranger. I could even do it if he didn’t know my real name. But I honestly couldn’t fuck a man who thought I was my sister. It was just too weird.
This wasn’t going to work.
“I have to confess something,” I said to Ethan.
His eyebrows went up. “Confess what? You’re into kink? I’m open to anything.”
“I’m not actually Emma,” I said. “I’m her sister, Samantha. Emma is over there.” I pointed at the bar, where Emma was sitting. Ethan looked, too. Emma’s lips parted and she stared back at us, busted.
Ethan still didn’t get it. “You want me to fuck both of you?”
Jesus. “No,” I said. “My sister was trying to set me up, but I don’t think it’s going to work.” I pointed. “She’s the one who has seen your pictures, not me. I think she’s the one you should work on.”
He could have been mad. I wouldn’t have blamed him; he’d been brought here on false pretenses. Instead he stared at Emma without glancing at me again. Emma stared back.
“Okay then,” Ethan said.
I sighed. I was going home alone.
As Ethan stood and walked over to the bar, I put money on the table and gathered my purse. It was a little humiliating, even though the entire situation was absurd. I’d just been dumped for my sister, even though she should have been out with the guy in the first place.
I took one last glance at the bar. Ethan was leaning against it, talking. Emma was her usual cool self, but she was smiling.
Everything was so easy for her. Have a problem? Fix it. Want to start an uber-successful company? Do it. Need to get laid? Message a guy whose dick you’ve already approved and get on with it.
I wouldn’t even be able to hold a grudge against her for tonight, which she knew perfectly well. Despite this annoying stunt, my sister was the one person I counted on in this big, heartless city. Truly, she was my only friend.
As I walked out the door onto the cool, dark street, now lit with lights from signs and traffic, I thought about Aidan Winters. He was my friend too, perhaps. Someone I counted on. He’d probably find that absurd, which it was—he was my boss, and I was self-reliant anyway. I could see him now, giving me one of his wry looks and saying I think I’m flattered, Samantha, but I’m not sure.
I still didn’t know if I was fired for derailing the Egerton deal.
I didn’t know if Aidan was my friend or not.
I didn’t know where he was right now. With a woman, maybe. Talking, laughing. Fucking her. Maybe a woman he saw regularly, maybe one he’d just met. I didn’t know what was in the blank parts of his schedule. It was none of my business.
I turned and walked up the street toward the subway, wondering if he was ever as lonely as I was.
Nine
Aidan
* * *
The next few days kept me busy, and I was rarely in the office. It sounds like a ruse, but it wasn’t; my specialty at Tower VC was real estate deals. Real estate deals require looking at lots and lots of real estate. That’s the job.
In fact, I’d spent more time behind my desk over the past three months than I had in a year. I’d put off plenty of showings and appointments all over town, just so that I could spend more time at the office. The reason was Samantha Riley. She didn’t know that, and it was best if it stayed that way. In the meantime, I had a business to run.
We were in touch constantly, even when I was traveling from appointment to appointment, all over New York. She kept my schedule, sorted my email, filed my paperwork, drafted letters, dealt with HR and the legal team. We texted frequently and talked on the phone several times a day. She was as competent and intelligent as ever, figuring things out before I had to take the time to tell her, anticipating problems and killing them before they could arise. I turned down three deals in three days, but I also closed one. A deal that would make a lot of money. My professional life was made easier, and more profitable, because of my paragon of an executive assistant.
It was hell.
I didn’t see her first thing every morning. I didn’t hear her voice or see her smile. I didn’t get to catalog what she was wearing every day—the dark gray pencil skirt? Or had she moved to lighter spring colors? Was her hair worn up or down? She usually wore it up, but she varied the style. She’d worn it down only a few times since I’d met her, so it wasn’t her usual style. I wondered why that was.
Aside from my selfish desire to look at her, I sensed something else was wrong. Samantha was more reserved than before—she was always professional, but this was different. She was almost stiff, and sometimes when we talked on the phone I felt like she was trying to get rid of me. As if she didn’t want to talk to me at all.
It festered. It had something to do with the meeting with the Egerton brothers, I was almost sure of it. I had walked out without a word to her that day, but I’d never done anything to give her the impression that the problem was with her. I’d simply been too furious to say anything at all. It was my old, teenaged temper rearing up; usually I conquered it, but not that day. I’d been too angry. But I was calm now, and I’d figured that if the topic was never mentioned, Samantha would get the idea that nothing was wrong.
It had backfired somehow. She stopped joking and making sma
ll talk. She was all business.
On Friday afternoon, I figured out why.
I was in the office to meet with two of the lawyers from our legal team to go over contracts. Since they were Tower employees, I didn’t need Samantha to greet them at reception or show them in. Since it was almost the end of the day, I didn’t need her to furnish coffee or food. I let Samantha work in her office, and I met the lawyers in the meeting room myself.
I had forgotten a few papers on my desk, so I left the meeting room to go get them. As the door closed behind me, I heard one of the lawyers say, “That guy scares the shit out of me.”
It was as clear as if he’d said it in my ear. Something about the acoustics sent the sound straight to where I stood instead of muffling it, even though the door was closed.
I blinked in surprise for a second, and then I remembered the Egerton brothers, saying their frat-boy bullshit as Samantha walked away. I hadn’t looked closely enough, watched her body language as she walked. If I had, I probably would have seen her stiffen—because she’d heard.
I walked away from the meeting room and headed straight for her office. I didn’t think twice about what I’d heard—that guy scares the shit out of me. Scaring people wasn’t something I set out to do, but if I had that effect, fine. It could even be useful.
Besides, I didn’t care what the lawyers thought. I cared what Samantha thought.
Her office door was open and she was sitting behind her desk, typing at her laptop. She sensed me coming and looked up as I approached, her eyes wide.
“In my office,” I said. And then, because that sounded harsh, I added, “Please.”
