She chuckles. “You were that voice when we were teens, so I have to pay back the favor.”
“But it was so much easier when it was underage drinking or bleaching your hair.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” There’s faint wailing in the background. “Shoot, Mia’s woken up.”
“Give her a kiss from me.”
“Will do,” she says. “And don’t forget what I think about the whole thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you’re my badass big sister,” Rose says, “and you can do anything you put your mind to, man or no man, New York or no New York.”
A tear runs down my cheek. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” she says. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I return to the couch with my big mug of tea. Milo opens one slitted eye, suspicion rife in the look.
“I’ll sit for a good long while now,” I say, and snuggle up beside the pillow he’s using as a bed. I run my fingers over his striped fur and listen as his warm body begins to purr. I do have a life in New York. I have a job I love and co-workers that make every day fun. I’ll just have to make sure I stay far away from the men who take more than they give.
“Good thing I have you,” I murmur to Milo, and rub my thumb over the soft fur between his ears. “You’re all the man I need.”
* * *
I ignore Isaac’s first call.
It comes two days after the fateful party, and I wasn’t interested in talking or hearing another excuse. The next call came two days later, accompanied by a text.Let’s clear the air. Please, Sophia.
That’s something I see a begrudging amount of common sense in doing. We will be working together, even if I’ll talk to his second-in-command and not him.
Let’s go for a walk,I text back. My hands shake as I type the words. In my mind I see her, I see Beverly, I see her standing next to her husband. And I hear the words Isaac had spoken.Sophia, I’m sorry.Because he’d known just how much damage that realization would do.
Maybe that’s why he’d kept quiet about it.
A chilling suspicion races down my spine. Isaac had been single for a long time. Before that, he had been engaged to a woman who he, admittedly, had dated partly for strategic reasons.
To further the hotel and to further the family.
So he’s already proven he’s in the market for a wife. Maybe he wants someone like his mother or his grandmother, who served as the social limb of their husbands. Someone who can help further their place in the social circle and produce the next generation.
Isaac had seen me work first, challenged me on my thoughts about the hotel. He’d introduced me to his family and seen how I acted in society under the guise of our fake dates.
All before anything genuinely happened between us.
The man is a brilliant strategist. He deftly course-corrects, evaluates things five steps ahead, and has used that skill to grow the company to unprecedented heights.
And he’s never hidden his single-minded goal of expanding the company. The strength of his family and that of the company are one and the same in his mind.
Maybe I’ve been evaluated from the start. Evaluated as a potential partner, judged based on my performance and my strengths.
Maybe,I think,I’ve been pitching for another project entirely, and I didn’t even know it.
In the end, we meet by the river. There’s a great length of sidewalk to pace and I don’t want to walk in Central Park. I don’t want to be close to the hotel, or the Upper East Side, or the familiar paths I once walked every day.
Isaac is already there when I arrive. He’s standing with his back to the water, his dark hair tousled by the wind. I wrap my own coat tighter around my body. Seeing him is a relief, like a balm to an open wound, and then it hurts. Because there’s no more relief to be had with him.