I sigh. “World peace. I insist. Or a cure for all disease.”
“Nothing for yourself?”
I speed past an SUV. “Hmm, I really can’t decide. You tell me your wish.”
She gazes out her window, her voice soft. “I’d want to know who my parents are. Not that I can go back and change anything—my life turned out being the one meant for me—but to know what happened. Maybe I’d have closure.”
“Do you think they might still be out there?”
She chews her bottom lip. “I have this gut feeling my mom couldn’t take care of me. It’s funny, but when I was in the group home, I had dreams about her. She always looks like me and lives in Manhattan.” She smirks at me. “Okay, your wish. What would it be?”
“My wish is that you’re amazed by what I’m going to show you.”
Her eyes narrow as she studies my profile. “You must have another one besides that?”
My hands tighten on the wheel. Yeah, I have a wish—that my parents had been different—but I can’t say that. We’re having fun, and it would bring the mood down.
“Fine,” she says as she studies my face. “New question. Hypothetically, if we made it to, let’s say, fifty dates, would you agree to get a tattoo of my face somewhere on your body?”
“I hate needles. A lot. Almost as much as clowns. It’s called trypanophobia. I passed out once as a kid when I got a shot, and it messed me up. Even giving blood for my checkups makes me freak. I have to psych myself up and meditate. It’s not a fun experience. Needles suck.”
Her mouth parts. “Seriously? Oh my God, I would do it for you!”
“You love tattoos—and needles! Little, tiny, vicious ones that dig into your skin—ugh, it makes me want to hurl to even think about it.”
She crosses her arms. “Fifty dates! I’ve never had fifty dates. That’s it. We’re over. I’m breaking up with you.”
“Are you going to give back my class ring?”
“Pawn it, of course.”
I clutch my heart. “You’ve killed me. I’ll never date again.”
“You will. She’ll be twenty and tall.”
I chuckle.
She scoffs. “I’ll start dating an artist.”
“Then I’ll run into you at Café Lazzo and beat him up.”
“And I’ll have a girl fight with your model.”
“Then we’ll go back to my penthouse.”
“And I’ll still be angry because you didn’t get a tattoo for me and go straight to my apartment.”
“That wasn’t the direction I was going in.” I’m still chuckling as I park on the street. Around midnight, the neighborhood is quiet, lit with ornate iron lampposts. Just a few streets over are high-end hotels, galleries, and restaurants.
“I love SoHo,” she says, then sighs. “It’s pretty.”
I tell her that I own rental property here and in Tribeca. I don’t mention the real estate I have in the Hamptons, Boston, and Virginia. I lead her down the corner and turn down West Broadway until we reach a cobblestone side street. We walk to a large yellow building with an old royal-blue double door.
I unlock it and show her inside. Even without lights, the white-and-black diamond-tiled floor glows. “The first floor used to be a boutique, and there’s a loft upstairs. There’s another entrance to the loft that bypasses the downstairs, but I wanted you to see the full effect of the door. I’m partial to it.”
“You wanted to impress me.” Her gaze drapes over me. “You don’t need real estate. You had me at the scruff.”
I laugh as we take the side stairs and enter the loft. I turn on the lights, and she looks around, surprise on her face as she takes in the various styles of art, the wooden beams on the ceiling. She sees the clothes I was folding on the couch, the ragged books on the coffee table. “You come here a lot. It’s downright rustic compared to your penthouse.”