“So Eth and I have been brainstorming,” Lance said on the video call Xander had just answered through his laptop.
“Brainstorming what?” he asked, sinking into his chair.
All day he’d been trying to set up his system and get to grips with the new apartment. So far, it hadn’t been as easy as he’d hoped.
“Qualities the woman you’re looking for needs to have,” Ethan said.
They were at three different points on the globe, but it didn’t matter. Technology allowed each of them a window into the others’ environments. They may as well have been in the same room.
“She has to be smart,” Lance said, waving something at the camera that might have been a pen.
Ethan got closer to his. “Yeah, because you’ll want to be able to have a conversation. And you don’t usually pick Mensa members when left to your own devices.”
“Not that she has to be in Mensa,” Lance said. “‘Cause you’re not exactly Mr. Brainbox yourself.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, enjoying Lance’s jibe. “We don’t want her to get bored explaining herself to you.”
“You’re wasting your time,” he said, linking his fingers at the back of his head as he pushed back in his chair to recline. “I already met her.”
“The woman you’re committing yourself to for the next ninety days?”
Surprise shaded both his friends. Not only did Ethan’s tone give it away, but Lance dropped whatever he’d been waving.
“Ninety days, ninety years,” he said, swinging side to side. “Whatever.”
“Jesus, for a second, I thought you were serious,” Ethan said, clutching his chest.
“Yeah,” Lance said, “you’ve never met a woman you wanted to marry in your life.”
He stopped swinging to lunge forward, flattening his hands on the desk. “I love innovation, right? New, unique ways of doing things, thinking outside the box?”
Ethan was suspicious. “Yeah.”
“This woman is as far outside the box as you can imagine. You were right. No more cookie cutter for me. All I want is Rainie.”
“You’ve had her?” Lance asked. “Geez, did you break the deal and buy her diamonds already?”
“Where is she?” Ethan asked, his face coming up close to the camera like maybe he could manipulate the space and look around the room just by getting nearer the lens. “I want to see her. Is she sleeping? How late is it there?”
“No diamonds and she’s not here… yet. She will be. We’re just friends right now.”
Because he hadn’t told her he planned to show up at lunch the following day for another date. And the next day, and the day after that.
“Friends?”
“Yeah, the deal was I commit myself to her,” he said. “And I am committed. Totally faithful. Nowhere said she had to commit herself to me.”
“I think this is fucked up.”
“He’s not wrong,” Ethan said, ever the epitome of fairness and impartiality. “We can’t ask that he waits ‘til they get to a point where they’re talking exclusivity on both their parts. That could take ninety days by itself.”
And as much as he didn’t mind spending that time with Rainie, he couldn’t wait that long to be honest with her.
“Okay,” Lance said. “How did you meet?”
“In a coffee shop.”
His friend and colleague scoffed. “You were on the phone telling me you didn’t know how to pick up a woman—”
Ethan laughed.
“That’s not what I was saying,” he said.
“You wanted instructions. I told you she wouldn’t just crash into you and introduce herself. You’ve gotta put the work in with women.”
“So is she hot?” Ethan asked. “Did you just walk up and say hello…? What were you wearing?”
How was that relevant?
In contrast, Lance got it in a heartbeat. “Yeah, ‘cause if you went strolling up in a hand-tailored fifty-thousand-dollar suit…”
“Women notice that shit,” Ethan said.
“You think I snuck clothes out of the hotel?” he asked, amazed they’d believe him to be so conniving. “You were in the suite when I left.”
“Didn’t raid your luggage though,” Lance said. “And you have a whole goddamn wardrobe on the jet.”
“You really don’t think a woman could just be interested in me?”
“She could, but coffee shop meetings aren’t as common as you’d think,” Ethan said. “Usually if you try talking to a woman there, she thinks you’re a creep with one thing on your mind.”
When Rainie was around, it was difficult to think of anything else. Especially when she kept talking about it. Sex. He’d never considered talking about it before. Once in a while, he’d be with a woman who appreciated a suggestive phone call, but he rarely had time to fully commit. And when Rainie talked about it, she wasn’t doing it to arouse him. She was just that honest. Just that open.
“It didn’t happen like that.”
“So how did it happen?” Lance asked.
He’d been looking forward to telling that truth. “She crashed into me and introduced herself.” Silence. “Honestly.”
Ethan laughed while Lance was just dumbfounded, searching for something to say in the face of such an unlikely scenario.
Clarity struck Lance. “Wait, did you buy her coffee?”
“Did I—yeah, why?”
The slow smile that crept onto Lance’s face was a prelude to his exhaled laugh. “Did she ask if you were involved?”
“No,” he said. “We were just two people talking.”
Though he had worked the question into conversation. A boyfriend wasn’t prohibitive, just meant he’d have to work harder and maybe longer. Whatever it took, he wanted a fair shake with Rainie. For the first time in his life, he was anticipating a meeting that wasn’t professional.
“Want us to do some digging?” Ethan asked. “Put our people on it? Find out what we can about her?”
“No,” he said, scowling in disgust. “I’ll learn about her as she tells me. Why should we suspect her of anything?”
“Just don’t start sending her pics until we’ve vetted her,” Ethan said, suddenly serious. “Just because you don’t recognize her, doesn’t mean she hasn’t recognized you.”
“I’m not famous.”
Ordinarily, he understood the need for discretion. The women he’d been intimate with had their own careers and reputations to be concerned about.
“No, but you’re rich,” Ethan said. “Come on, man, I don’t have to talk to you about blackmail or extortion.”
“It would’ve been impossible for Rainie to be in the exact right place at the exact right time to run into me,” he said. “I didn’t even know there was a coffee place there, let alone know I’d go into it.”
“Still, just humor me,” Ethan said. “Maybe she’s an opportunist.”
Rich didn’t mean instant recognition. The companies he owned, and yes, there were scores of them, weren’t the type of companies that put him in front of the camera lens. Not in the mainstream media anyway. Sometimes he might do an interview for a college or some blog online, but they were niche markets. Once in a while, a request came up for him to go on television, but he much preferred his team sending a statement on his behalf than commenting on whatever current situation the media wanted his take on.
Someone on the street was more likely to know his name than his face. He’d never had a problem walking around. People didn’t hound him. Sure, okay, so most of the time he was driving or being driven rather than wandering around. But if he had to get from A to B on foot, he wouldn’t be chased down like some others who came to mind.
A few of his friends were notorious. Not Lance and Ethan. Zairn? Roxie? Yeah, being chased down was routine for them. Maybe Knox and Jane too. He didn’t envy either couple that attention.
“You have to meet Rainie to know there’s just no way,” he said, smiling at the memory of her.
Even though she was clumsy, he couldn’t imagine Rainie had a single bad or manipulative bone in her body. Maybe that was why he was so enraptured. Every other woman he’d dated had an agenda. They were driven in their careers or their personal aspirations. Of course he had the means to fund any kind of lifestyle a girlfriend or wife desired, and he’d have no problem doing that. But there had to be something more between him and a partner for him to consider tying the knot. Until he met Rainie, he hadn’t known what that was. With her, everything just clicked.
A big believer in instinct, his gut had made him a very rich man when it came to figures on paper. His intuition had never reacted to a woman the way it reacted to Rainie. Sure, it could be his libido screaming at him, but it was more than that. He’d wanted women before. Been mad with lust, eager to the point of desperate to sink himself into a date. He knew lust. Recognized it. Whatever was going on with Rainie was something else. Something new.
“I’d love to meet her,” Ethan said. “We’ll make space in the schedule. Lance?”
“Yeah,” Lance replied. “I need about ten days here, maybe twelve, and then we’re good.”
“I wasn’t inviting you to meet her,” he said, struck by something he’d never had to consider before. “I don’t have anywhere to put you.”
Both of his friends enjoyed that truth. “Topher made sure the couch pulled out,” Lance said. “Worst comes to worst, we’ll buy the building.”
He shook his head at his amused friends. “Real estate? Our latest venture?”
“There’s a lot of money in property development.”
“A lot of red tape too.”
“Zairn has a place in Chicago, doesn’t he?”
Yes, he did. Though he didn’t know where exactly.
His friends would have to meet Rainie eventually. Ten days might not be enough time to get their relationship to the point of her meeting the people in his life. He’d also have to find a way to explain why Lance, Ethan, and every other friend of his, were in an affluent, and arrogant, sphere. He didn’t want to lie to her anymore than was absolutely necessary.
“Leave it with me,” he said. “I have to get my bearings first.”
“I can’t believe you’re really seeing this through,” Ethan said.
“Our guy can’t yield in the face of a challenge,” Lance said. “Have you ever seen him blink first?”
No, no one had seen it because it had never happened. He set his sights on something and did everything in his power to achieve his goal. In business, it was so routine, it was almost rote. Rainie, his personal, she was no routine, and he doubted she ever would be.