“Who’s that?” Nick asked, passing me a drink.
I ignored it quickly and stashed it back in my bag, surfacing with a grateful smile as I took my first bubbling sip. “It’s my mom. I’ll call her back later. Ironing out all the fine details of our arrangement is very important.”
His eyes twinkled as he held up his glass.
“In that case...to us. To wherever this crazy road may lead.”
Wherever indeed...
We clinked glasses and downed the champagne with the speed of two people who had long since numbed themselves to the taste of alcohol for the night. The glasses were refilled, and we leaned back comfortably as the plane took off and lifted through the midnight clouds.
“You should know,” Nick began with just the faintest hint of a slur, “this is already the most committed relationship I’ve ever been in.” He caught my sarcastic look, and shrugged innocently. “I’m serious. Nothing else comes close. Look at the contenders.”
“What about Janelle?” I reasoned.
Janelle Mirach was one of Nick’s only consorts that I had actually ever liked. Unlike the rest of the endless parade, she actually had a good head on her shoulders, and could match him at basically every level of conversation. If it weren’t for the fact that she’d been engaged to a European prince for most of their time together, things might have taken off. I was actually a bit sad to see her go. Sent a personal congratulations card to the wedding.
Nick shook his head slowly. “Janelle was just a friend. She was only ever just a friend.”
My eyebrows shot skeptically into my hair.
“The two of you had an awful lot of sex considering she was just a friend.”
He chuckled and took another swig of champagne.
“I fuck a lot of my friends. How do you think people get to be friends in the first place?”
...Nick always had a rather unique way of seeing the world.
I shook my head and decided to let it go. I’d learned long ago that if I was going to be working with Nick, I was going to have to pick my battles carefully.
You see, when people reach a certain level in the social sphere, certain misconceptions tend to take hold. The persona of a ‘mindless playboy’ seemed to fit, and those who didn’t know him tended to run with that assessment.
But Nick defied the stereotype.
It had only taken a minute of talking to him to realize that the guy had a rather brilliant head on his shoulders. Freakishly brilliant, in fact. Most of the time, it was those same people who underestimated him that were struggling to keep up.
He was beautifully educated, top of his class. Princeton and Harvard undergrad, followed by a stint at Oxford graduate school where he earned not one, but five different degrees.
Granted, he had once told me that all that paled in comparison to an orgasm. He was dripping in champagne at the time, and conspicuously missing his pants.
But like I said...pick my battles.
“Anyway,” I deliberately changed the subject, “we have an awful lot of planning to do if the merger is just three months away. You made some good progress with Ella, but if we’re going to be changing women, then we’re going to have to start from scratch.”
My hands drifted down with something akin to muscle memory and pulled my laptop, phones, and day-planner from my bag. Even a half gallon of tequila couldn’t stop them.
“That means the works. Dinners, galas, award ceremonies, sporting events. In fact,” I raised my laptop frantically in the air above me, trying to get a signal, “when is that one horse race where everyone wears the stupid hats? That could do really nicely—”
“Aaaaaand that’s enough for you.”
With a wide sweep of his arm, Nick confiscated my computer, phones, and champagne all in one fell swoop. Before I could stop him, the top came down, the mobiles vanished, and he had drained the cup—tossing them all on the seat behind him in a careless pile
“Nick!” I screeched, staring after the phones like they were my long-lost children. “What are you doing?! You know better than to touch the—”
“—the what?” he challenged. As usual—he sensed a great deal more than I gave him credit for. A great deal more than I would have wanted. “The kids? They’re phones, Abby.”
I lowered my voice to a furious whisper.