“At least it wasn’t bro-tato chip?” He snorted, shook his head. “Did you ghost him?”
I nodded, laughing. “I texted my friend group our escape code, and she called me. I told him I had to take the call, and I left.”
“You have escape codes with your friends?”
“Hell yeah. If we’re on a date that’s going bad, we text the phrase ‘escape clause’ to the group thread, and whoever is free calls. You then say you have to take the call, and you leave.”
“You gonna use it on me?”
I grinned and shrugged. “So far, no. But if I tell you I have to take a phone call, the date’s over.”
“What if it’s a real phone call?”
“I don’t answer real phone calls on dates. If my phone rings, I let it go to voicemail, and then I excuse myself to the restroom and check it there.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I might steal that. Usually I just tell whoever I’m with that I gotta go check my phone.”
“The bathroom excuse is more polite. Makes them feel less like you’re choosing your phone over them.”
“Nice.” He flipped open his menu as the server approached with a glass of wine. “You know what you want?”
“Nah, but if you go first, I’ll know by the time you’ve ordered.”
“Ma’am. Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon, from 2015. One of my personal favorites.” He set it in front of me and hesitated nearby, clearly expecting me to taste it and let him know it was good.
I took a sip, and nodded at him. “Perfect, thank you.”
“Of course, madam. Sir, would you like to hear the specials for the evening?”
“Nah, just tell Chef Ricardo to surprise me. He knows my dietary restrictions and preferences.”
“Very well, sir. And for you, ma’am?”
“You can tell me the specials, if you want. Everything on the menu sounds good, so far.”
The server rattled off three specials: a seafood presentation, a steak presentation, and something that I thought was pasta.
I sighed when he was done. “That doesn’t help. I’m ravenous and it all sounds amazing.” I considered a moment. “I’ll have the steak special. Medium. No potatoes, extra vegetables of the day.” When the server was gone, I sipped my wine and regarded Seven. “So, dietary restrictions, huh?”
He nodded, shrugged. “Yeah. I may not be a professional fighter and athlete anymore, but I’m not about to let myself go. I’m in almost as good condition now as I was at my peak as a fighter. I wouldn’t want to step into the ring without sharpening up a bit, but I’m still dangerous, you know? And that means proper nutrition. Mostly meat and eggs. So Chef Ricardo knows I like my plate full of meat, nice and medium-rare but not quite mooing, no sauce, no fuckin’ veggies or any of that shit.”
“So you basically eat like a lion.”
He grinned, and it was indeed predatory and leonine. “You got it, baby—I’m all lion.” He leaned forward, his big paw covering the rim of the glass. “So, Autumn Scott. Tell me things about you.”
“Like what?”
He used the tiny stupid little black straw to stir his drink, shoving the limes down further. “Why luxury real estate? How’d you get into that?”
“Well, my sister and I were in college and going nowhere fast, partying more than studying and all that. And neither of us had a damn clue what to do with our lives. We were both in the liberal arts program, but only because it was something to declare. We were clueless.”
“Kids.”
“Exactly.”
“College is a fuckin’ racket, if you ask me. What fuckin’ eighteen-year-old kid has any damn clue how to live alone? These idiots send their precious little doves off to a mega university a billion miles away, and they’re alone for the first time ever and have never had to even wipe their own asses, just about, let alone work on their own initiative, budget money and time, tell themselves no, all of that adult shit. Literally everyone around them is partying like alcohol is going out of style, there’s no supervision, no consequences except failing their classes, which they don’t wanna go to in the first fuckin’ place and aren’t paying for anyway. Fuckin’ stupid.”
I bite my lip over a smirk. “I take it you didn’t go to a university.”
“Hell no. I didn’t even graduate high school.” He sighed. “Anyway. Sorry, back to you.”
“Well, you’re not wrong, and that describes us, mostly. My sister is Zoe, just F-Y-I. We met our friend Laurel in college, and she was our entree into real estate. We weren’t super close with her at first, just sort of…drinking buddies, I guess. We went to a lot of the same parties and we’d hang out, eventually on our own outside of parties. She was friends with a girl named Lizzy who worked for a brokerage owned by her uncle, and she was banking, man. Like, she was our age, a year or two older maybe, and she was just killing it. One of the top real estate sellers in the whole area, in her twenties. Mid-range, at that point, from the three hundreds into a million or so, but her turnover rate was crazy. She’d get a listing, show it a few times, and bam, sold. And Zoe and I were like, shit, we want some of that. It was just the money, at first.”
He nodded. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“We grew up poor as church mice, so seeing a girl our age driving a nice car, living in a nice apartment, working full time, being good at what she did and enjoying it? Yeah, it appealed.”
The server came by, then, with two plates. He set one in front of me. “The filet mignon, medium, no potatoes and extra vegetable du jour, for the lady. And for you, Mr. St. John, a tomahawk done medium rare.”
I boggled at the cut of meat on Seven’s plate. It was the size of three normal steaks, with a huge bone creating a handle. It was alone on the plate; I wondered how any one person could eat that much meat in one sitting.
“Great, James, thank you. Tell Ricardo he should just keep these tomahawks on the menu just for me.”
The server, James, grinned. “He does keep them on hand just for you, but Mr. Lyons doesn’t want to put them on the menu. He says the margin on them isn’t in his favor.”
“Cheap ass,” Seven muttered. He jutted his chin at me. “Look good to you?”
I cut into the steak and peeked at the middle. “Looks great.”
“Shall I bring more beverages?”
“I’m in no hurry,” Seven said.
“Me either.”
“Very well,” James said, and backed away. “Enjoy.”
I eyed the steak on Seven’s plate. “Okay, Fred Flintstone, let’s see you eat that whole thing.”
“You don’t think I can?”
I shrugged. “I mean, looking at you, I feel like you probably can, but…damn, that’s a lot of meat.” And that statement both sounded and felt like a rather direct innuendo.
“Watch me,” he said, smirking. “So, Lizzy, your successful friend.”
“We both decided to change tracks, and started working for our realtor licenses, got jobs at a big LA firm, did the drudge work for a few years, the shitty listings for little baby commissions, but over time we got better and started earning enough to get out of the crappy loft and into a decent apartment. Maybe not in the Hills, but a step up. For poor as church mice girls from the wrong side of the tracks, it felt like winning.”