“Cheers,” I say, maintaining eye contact this time. I gulp back half of my champagne and set my glass down. Then I rub my hands over my face and try to get my brain back online enough to remember my scrolling to-do list.
“So I need you to, ah, book my flight to Tokyo for a week from Thursday through that Monday. That’s first. Get the car and the, ah, driver lined up. All that. The usual. I liked that suite I stayed in the last time, so get that one again. Talk to them about making sure the cappuccino machine is there when I arrive. Also some of that sake I liked. Then we need to start looking at party planning for the event in the Hamptons. We’re going to have a lot of high rollers there, so we want to make sure…”
I trail off when it dawns on me that she’s not taking notes on her phone the way she always does.
“What’s the problem?” I say, frowning. “You getting all this?”
“Absolutely.” She downs all her champagne, then waves her glass at me for a refill. “I’ve done most of it already, anyway.”
That’s one of the reasons I keep Bellamy around. She’s got a great memory and an uncanny ability to juggle all the plates I’ve got in the air at any one time.
“Great,” I say, topping her off and then watching with vague unease as she kills it. “Have you got an alcohol problem I need to know about, Forest? Because we’ve got a shit-ton of work to do. I don’t have time to send you off to rehab.”
“Nope,” she says tightly, stifling a burp as best she can. “No problems here. None whatsoever. Never. Been. Better.”
“Well, that’s good,” I say. “What was I saying about the Hamptons? Oh, yeah. We need to—”
“Actually, I do have a problem.” She nails me with a look that suggests I’ve been popping balloons beside sleeping babies. “Are you ever going to call me Bellamy? Which is my name? Or maybe Bella, like my friends do?”
“Why?” I say, recoiling because I can’t think when I’ve heard a worse idea. I’m trying to maintain a professional distance between myself and Bellamy and keep frantically trying to throw bricks onto the wall between us. Calling her by her first name would be removing bricks from the wall. Plus, it wouldn’t feel right to say, for example, I want to fuck you, Forest. On the other hand, I want to fuck you, Bellamy rolls right off the tongue. “You call me boss. I call you Forest. Why switch it up?”
“It’s after hours. We’re having drinks.”
Exactly.
“I wouldn’t want to cross any lines,” I say, shaking my head.
“No.” One corner of her luscious mouth pulls back into a crooked smile that perfectly matches the complete lack of humor in her eyes as she waves her empty glass at me again. “The one thing we’d never want to do is cross any lines. Boss.”
A beat or two passes while I try to figure out what the hell is going on here. Why I’m feeling this push–pull from her tonight.
“What’s up, Forest?” Not the sort of question you should ask when you want to keep things professional, but I can’t seem to help myself. “Because I’m getting the feeling you’ve got something on your mind. Something I’m missing.”
Her expression softens until she looks almost wistful. I wait, inexplicably feeling as though a large slice of me is tied up in her answer.
“I doubt you’d understand. Boss.”
I lean closer. “You could try me.”
She opens her mouth. Hesitates.
“Probably a bad idea,” she finally says with an unmistakable tinge of regret.
I feel a tiny stab of disappointment.
Not so tiny. More like a vertical slice through my chest, which is ridiculous.
But you can’t control your feelings, which is one of the reasons I make it my policy never to feel them if possible. I give myself a swift mental kick in the ass and try to keep things in perspective here. I want Bellamy, sure, but I’m not dying without her. Maybe I imagined the chemistry between us tonight. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe she really does feel as attracted to me as I feel to her but has now decided not to act on it. The fine details don’t really matter. Either way, me hooking up with Bellamy—who is still, by the way, my most valued employee, whether we’re attracted to each other or not—is a no-go.
That’s for the best. And I’m grateful one of us is smart enough to see that.
“Okay.” I raise my brows as she evidently decides I’m moving too slow and refills her own glass this time, jamming the bottle back into the bucket with a little more force than necessary, and try to get back to business. “Where was I? Oh, I think I have a dentist appointment for that block when I’m in Tokyo, so make sure you kick that. Also, I feel like somebody’s birthday is coming up…?”
“Your uncle’s.”
“Right,” I say, snapping my fingers. “So we need to get him something. He liked that case of scotch you ordered him last year. Get that again.”
“You got it, boss,” she says dully.
“There’s some light that came on in my car. Get that scheduled for an appointment.”
“Which one?”
“I think it’s the one for maintenance.”
“Which car?”
“Oh. The Maybach.”
“Got it. And what about your flowers for the week?”
“My…flowers?” I ask dumbly, stalling for time. This is the sort of discussion we have all the time. Yet tonight I feel intensely awkward, as though she’s asked me about my masturbation preferences.
“Yes. Your flowers. Who will we be sending them to this week? Brenda again? Allison? Someone new you’ll meet later tonight? What are my marching orders? I like to give the florist a heads-up on orders as large as yours.”
Another confession: I’m a flower sender. Have been for years, ever since I discovered that sending an ostentatious bouquet of flowers (which, while expensive, is cheaper than jewelry) tends to soften the blow of rejection out here in the dangerous world of dating. Not that I ever really date, but you know what I mean. One-night stand with a woman you never plan to see again? Send flowers. In a casual relationship with someone whose birthday you forgot? Send flowers. Looking forward to a special night with a woman you’ve never fucked before but hope to fuck tonight? Send flowers. Trying to untangle yourself from a fuck buddy who now thinks the relationship has growth potential? Send flowers. At any given moment, I tend to have a woman on the field, a woman warming up in the bullpen and a woman I’ve scouted but have yet to recruit to my team. The upshot? A lot of flower sending for Bellamy. Who no doubt thinks I’m a world-class player.
She’s right.
I check my cuffs again, my cheeks and ears burning. I’d planned to hook up with a woman I met at the gym the other day named Candy (Cindy?). She gave me her number and told me to call her anytime, all but removing her panties on the spot and handing them to me as I cooled down on the treadmill.
But now? Candy/Cindy is the last person on my mind. And it suddenly seems crucial to up Bellamy’s low opinion of me and my romantic exploits.
“No flowers this week.”
“Great,” she says crisply. “That’s just cut my workload in half. Anything else? Because I’d like to go join my friends. But first, I’ve had a little bit of news I need to tell you about.”