Melissa is looking at me expectantly and I give her points for not filling the silence with more chatter. I nod. “Is it true you stayed with Cousin Deb when you first came to Manhattan?” Earlier on, I got Ben to text me a few details that Deb Westing down in Accounting provided for me. Like my father, I know every single person who walks through the revolving doors at the Bridges Building, but when I need personal info or gossip, I like to go straight to the source. The truth is that I want to tune out Melissa’s voice again and go back to listening in on the conversation going on behind me.
“Rutherfords is the best placement agency in the city, Mom,” the husky feminine voice emphasizes. “I’ve told them to push the marketing side of my degree and not focus too much on the fashion and design aspect of it. Once I get a job, I’ll start chipping away at my student loan. It’ll be easier with Charlie and me sharing the rent over in Washington Heights.”
A man’s voice, “You’re twenty-four, Tess. You should be set up in your own place by now, not sharing a one-bedroom apartment with your old school friend. Why don’t you come back to Jersey?”
That must be the Dad. I can see his reasoning, but young girls and their obsession with Manhattan are a rite of passage here on the East Coast.
The sweet, husky voice replies kindly, “It’s okay, Dad. Charlie sleeps in the living area with a sheet pulled across the room. We doddle along just fine.”
I turn my attention back to Melissa. I want to close the deal with her before we get to dessert. “Do you want a third course or would you prefer to go back to my place for a drink?” She looks at me innocently, but we both know why we’re here. I can see the barely contained lust lurking beneath those long, dark eyelashes of hers. Melissa’s eyes dart over my tailored suit, crisp white shirt, and the Ulysse Narden watch strapped around my tanned wrist, and then sweep up to my face. I watch her pupils dilate as blood rushes to her cheeks. She is imagining what it would feel like to have my hands run over her body, and for my mouth to kiss her a bit more than just that brief greeting I gave her when she came to sit down at the table, holding her upper arm and gently brushing my mouth against the side of her face. But I also see something else there. Is that hesitance? Uncertainty? Could she be having second thoughts about this?
“Th-that sounds nice,” she says. “Do you have bathroom accessories for women there? I have an early morning shoot tomorrow.”
“Sorry, I have something on even earlier, Melissa, remember I told you? You can’t spend the night.”
One heartbeat, then she pushes her misgivings away. “Okay. I’ll just pop into the restroom here…” The server is at our table when he sees my date preparing to stand up, and he pulls the chair out for her. “Check, Rob, please,” I tell him before he goes back to his corner. Bridges Wealth and Asset Management has an account here, but I choose to leave it for business only. It’s one of the ways I can hide my private life from my father’s inquisitive eyes.
That voice. I hear it again, only this time it’s coming from in front of me and it’s talking to Melissa. I whip my head to the right and see a girl. Young, blonde, medium height, slim, but that’s all I can see because she has her back to me. She’s waylaid Melissa on her way to the restrooms.
“Are you really going to leave with that man? I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhearing parts of your conversation, at leasthispart of the conversation because his voice is pitched so much deeper than yours…anyway, I think the way he’s treated you this evening has been appalling! And you deserve better.”
Melissa doesn’t ignore the young woman like I thought she might. I can’t believe she’s giving what the woman is saying to her any credence. “What do you mean?” Melissa asks. And at this point, I can’t tell if she is amused, annoyed, or genuinely interested.
The blonde shakes her head. She doesn’t care that I can hear what they are saying. She doesn’t even bother looking over her shoulder at me. At least Melissa is dividing her attention between the blonde woman and staring at me to watch my reaction. Thank God the tables at Sergio’s are spaced far away from one another and no one else but me can hear, because the woman is going for it. “Look, I know this might sound rude of me to say, but my parents eat more than they talk so that’s why I could hear that he makes no effort at keeping up his end of the conversation. He interrogates you about your life, but offers no information about his own. He asks you to his place for ‘a drink’, but then doesn’t even do you the courtesy of letting you decide if you want to spend the night or not. You are a gorgeous woman and can do better for yourself. Maybe not as far as his looks go, but definitely as far as his behavior does! What guarantee do you have that he’s all that, anyway? He doesn’t seem to have much of a personality. What if that is proportional to hisbedroomperformance? What are you going to do if he’s one of those three-second wonders? Or even worse…he can’t get it up?”
I’m the outsider now. These two women on their way to the restrooms have suddenly become the girls I hated at boarding school. The ones who formed unassailable friendships and cliques, and had their own conversational codes and way of rating the boys. Now I can feel what it is like being on the wrong side of their attention, wondering what I ever did to them.
Having said her piece, the young woman allows Melissa to head off to the restrooms. Then she turns around and my breath wooshes from me. Ms. Husky Voice is stunningly beautiful. We lock eyes, and strangely enough, it’s not an awkward moment. She’s satisfied her job is done and I am bowled over. Her eyes sparkle with intelligence and just a tiny bit of defiance. This woman looks like the last person in the world someone would want to cross swords with when it comes to a challenge.
She’s not five feet, ten inches tall like Melissa, perhaps three or four inches under, and she’s a little too large in the chest to be a model, but the woman has one of those faces that makes a man give her a double and then a triple take when he checks her out. I can’t stop this pull her eyes have on me. And then her mouth tips into a small smile. That smile tells me everything I need to know. What name did her father call her again? Ah, yes. Tess. Tess has a naughty side.
CHAPTER2
TESS
I can’t get him out of my mind!
When I first saw his face from the front, my mind had to do some adjusting. From the little I heard him saying to the beautiful Melissa Makings, the way he had drawled the few words he injected into the conversation in his deep voice had me picturing him as lazy and over-indulged, but nothing could be further from the truth. The man gave off a restless, breathless energy. As if he was forcing himself to be still. His eyes were laser-sharp and a riveting clear green color; I understood immediately why the supermodel had not hesitated more than a beat before agreeing to go home with him. I would have been tempted too, if he had not been such a jerk.
Whenever I think about his behavior at the restaurant, I want to propel myself back in time and give him a real tongue-lashing. If my parents hadn’t been there, blissfully unaware of what I was doing, I might have been tempted to do it right there and then.
Last night, I gave his date something to think about before she went to the restroom. I had my fingers crossed that she would come out and tell him to call her a driving service. I felt so good, I couldn’t stop myself from giving him a little grin; he overheard the whole thing, but my words did not seem to have an effect on him. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this intrigued me…a lot. So, when he beckoned me over to his table, I went. I was curious to know what he could possibly want to say to a woman who had just dissed him to the point where he might have to go home alone.
“Are you in politics?” he asked me when I came closer to his table. When the man smiled, it awoke an answering smile in me, as if he was compelling me to like him. “No. It doesn’t take a believer in Machiavellian techniques to know thatifyou were planning on having a long-term relationship with Ms. Makings, you would have put on a better show at a charm offensive.” I was still smiling, but I really needed him to understand why he didn’t deserve to bed any woman until he underwent a major attitude adjustment.
"And what makes you so sure she wants one with me?”Well, um…My brain froze for a second.
He was still smiling when he turned to one side, slightly, sliding a hand into the left inside of his jacket, and brought a wallet out of his pocket. He withdrew a one-hundred-dollar bill and placed it on the table. “Regardless, I bet you one hundred dollars that she comes home with me.” What? This is not what I was expecting. At all. “Come on; put your money where your mouth is. If Melissa comes home with me, leave me your number and I’ll text you my bank details if you don’t have one hundred on you right now. If she kicks me to the curb, I’ll leave this note right here and you can pick it up once she’s left. Maybe help you pay off those student loans of yours.”
That woke my brain right up. Slick. Yet, I knew he had no interest in getting my number for any other reason. I may be attractive, but I’m no Melissa Makings. Guys have called me pretty all my life, but it hasn’t helped me get my happy ever after, so what’s the use? My life is in tatters and my heart is trying to mend itself at the same time as my wounded pride. So, yes, I do have student loans to pay, because I have gone to college to follow my dream, only to have the rug pulled from under my feet. Now I have to find my footing, learn from my mistakes, and find out what my life is supposed to be from now on. Because the past is the past and I need to move forward. Always.
However, the problem with having a childhood dream taken from you is the fact that you find yourself with no goals, no drive. No dreams. So, until a new one shows, I might as well find a way to pay my student loans, and until I get a job, those hundred dollars would come really handy.
“If I lose, I’ll leave my number at the desk on the way out. But I don’t think I’m going to be losing, so keep that bill where I can see it.” Head held high, I went to sit back down at my parents’ table, feeling ever so slightly exhilarated for some reason.
I would never be able to afford Sergio’s on my own. I’m what they call ‘in-between jobs’ at the moment. Long story. But my mother loves to eat her way through all the top restaurants every time they visit New York, and once a year, my Dad takes her to one of the Top Fifty Restaurants in the world of her choice. I vicariously get to eat the finest food on Earth if I think about it: Spain, Portugal, France, Chile. It was sweet of them to include me this time, even if it was only so they could interrogate me about my plans for the future. Last year was a bit of a disaster for me, both emotionally and creatively.
My parents didn’t even notice when I stopped off at the table to the left on my way back from the what was supposed to be a trip to the restrooms, because they were too engrossed in their date; they are still as in love with one another as the first time they met. It made me feel a bit on the sidelines, and strengthened my resolve not to go back to living at home. I had wanted to head to the restrooms to splash some water on my face. My mind was a maelstrom of existential questions. The biggest of which, how could I possibly get back on track after these horrible last few months? But Melissa had got up as I was passing and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to tell her she was making a mistake.