by Lila Monroe
I gripped the card tight enough to crumple it in my fist, and swore to myself that even if the address was in goddamn Narnia, I wasn’t going to let him distract me from what I knew was right. This was one fight that I was going to win.
For the sake of my dream, I had to.
FOUR
The address was a dock.
A business office, a swanky restaurant, a workhouse for bankrupt former businessmen and businesswoman—I don’t know where exactly I had expected Asher’s address to lead me.
A dock was definitely not it, though.
“Huh,” I said out loud. It was hard to sustain my anger in the face of such weirdness. Was that Asher’s strategy? Gaining the upper hand through sheer confusion?
…considering how wrong-footed I was at the moment, it was probably actually a pretty sound strategy.
“Somebody looks like they took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.” Asher voice’s drifted on down, and I looked up and to the right, trying to find him.
“Over here.”
His voice seemed to be coming from one of the largest yachts, all gleaming fiberglass and polished wood, its hull bearing the name ‘Leela of the Sevateem’ in flowing golden script. I circled it, and spotted Asher with a martini in his hand, relaxed into a red deck chair as he watched the waves come in.
Well, hellooooooo, sailor! Asher wore tight khaki pants, a loose linen shirt, and a sexy smirk that sent dangerous thoughts tumbling through my brain. Thoughts in particular about how transparent those trousers might become if he were to, say, accidentally tumble over the side; thoughts as well about what he might or might not be wearing underneath. I licked my lips unconsciously.
“Well, you look ship-shape,” he said.
I shifted awkwardly in my blue dress and heels, aware of how bargain-basement they looked next to this floating castle. “Did you call me here to finish our discussion, or to make puns at me?”
“The first,” he said. “But only after you’ve joined me up here for a drink. All aboard!”
“That’s for trains,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “This is definitely not a train. What the hell is this?”
“A boat?” Asher asked innocently.
“You know what I mean,” I said in a warning tone. “What, is this the part where you put me in concrete overshoes and toss me overboard before I sink your billions into a failed venture? ‘Cause I gotta say, that is making the point way more forcefully than I thought you had it in you to make.”
“That would be a complete waste of the drink I’m offering you,” Asher said, coming to the edge of the deck and leaning over to hand me his martini. His deep green eyes were wide and imploring. “Not to mention a waste of a beautiful, brilliant lady.”
“I like this version of you, the one that compliments me,” I told him. I tossed back the martini, savoring the dryness of the gin. Mmm, just the way I liked it. “Do you think you could bring him in on a permanent basis, to replace the jackass who yells at me?”
“Maybe,” Asher said, eyes dancing. “I’m certainly open to negotiations, if you’ll come aboard.”
I considered it. “Fine. But only because that martini was damn near perfect.”
“I bartended on the side during college,” Asher said, helping me aboard so that I didn’t trip in my heels. “Care to chase that down with a mimosa?”
“It’s like you read my mind.”
He linked his arm in mine, and I didn’t protest—but only because we were on a boat, my heels were four inches high, and the deck was slippery. I just needed him to help me keep my balance.
The fact that his arm was warm, and he smelled like mint and vermouth and sweet clean sweat had nothing to do with it.
As we strolled around the side of the yacht, a grizzled older man came stomping out onto the deck. He took a look at us, grunted something that might have been a greeting, a threat, or an opinion on the writing in the latest issue of Vogue, and went back to looking at the sky like someone had written on it in a secret code.
“It’s so nice of you to employ the homeless,” I snarked quietly at Asher.
Asher raised an eyebrow. “That’s Captain Ernetti. He’s sailed a raft around the world three times, and Prince Harry has him on retainer. He discovered an island.”
Asher continued to lead me around the yacht and eventually to a table. It was graced with a sky blue tablecloth, fresh mimosas with beads of condensation just starting to drip down the glass, and a platter with carefully arranged slices of tropical fruit and wedges of exotic cheese.
“Damn,” I said, impressed in spite of myself. “Are we supposed to eat it, or take pictures and write a thesis about its symbolism?”
“If you’re planning on writing a thesis, do it quickly,” Asher said, popping a slice of mango into his mouth and grinning wickedly. “Or your research material will have disappeared.”
After that, there was nothing to do but take a seat and follow his lead. The mango, papaya, oranges, and star fruit tasted as if they had been freshly picked, and they paired exquisitely with the Brie, Stilton, and St. Agur blue—there were more cheeses than those three, but those names had basically exhausted my cheese repertoire, and so I settled for mentally referring to them as ‘delicious fancy things whose real names I can’t pronounce and that probably cost more than a year’s supply of Kobe beef.’ There was no need for verbally referring to them as anything, since both Asher and I were far too busy chewing, swallowing, and making almost obscene noises of enjoyment as we devoured the food.
Damn, I guess I really have been skipping a lot of meals. Him too, by the look of it.
We had just washed it all down with the last of our sweet and bubbly mimosas when the hum of the boat’s engine kicked in, and we began to glide out of the bay.
“So…quest for Treasure Island?” I asked, licking my fingers.
Asher’s eyes tracked the movement of my tongue for a satisfyingly long second before he snapped back to attention. “What? No. No. You’ll see.”
The captain hugged the coast of the bay, and I watched the water crash against rocks and lap against beaches as the skyscrapers of downtown slid lower and lower, greenery spreading out over the landscape as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge glittered in the distance, the electric lights already on though the sun hadn’t set. It glowed in the not yet dim light like a strangely industrial fairy tale castle.
I remembered now that first time Lacey and I had come to town together—Lacey bursting with equal parts hope and desperation for a post-Stanford job where she’d get the chance to make a difference, me trying to play it cool and claiming that I’d just come along for the ride and not because I was too scared to pursue my lingerie line dream in the rabid shark tank that was L.A. Lacey had done all the work: finding us apartments, getting us both jobs at Devlin Media Corp. I’d just sat back and cracked wise and tried my hardest not to care, or at least to seem like I didn’t care.
But then I fell in love. Not with a guy, though for awhile I thought Stevie had been the real thing, but with the city. With its flamboyance and its brashness and its quiet heartbreak and its strange secret crumbly edges.
Lacey had her fairy tale ending now, but Lacey had always had a plan. Lacey had always had confidence in her skills. I never had either of those things. I just pretended to, and spent half my time hoping no one would look behind my mask of confidence and discover that I was an imposter, and the other half hoping that someone would finally care enough to tear that mask away and see and accept me for the scared, confused, messed-up person I was.
No wonder Lacey had her dream and her man. No wonder I was still so far away from both, sitting on a boat with a man I couldn’t have, who was probably about to cut the strings to the one thing I cared about more than anything else in the world.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Asher asked.
I shook myself out of my mental funk and quirked an eyebrow sideways at him, pasting on a nonchalant smile. “Still sure you want to make this i
nvestment?”
Asher chuckled. “I probably deserved that.”
I snorted in a way that absolutely no one could ever have called ladylike. “No ‘probably’ about it.”
We sat in silence awhile longer, and after a few minutes I glanced over at him, studying his face as he took in the scenery. His expression was strangely unguarded and open, making me suddenly realize how tensely he had been holding himself before. He was relaxed now, his eyes tracking along the coastline, then dipping down to the water to follow the roll of the waves.
His eyes flicked towards me, and my breath caught in my throat for a second, but he didn’t seem at all irritated to have caught me staring at him. He simply leaned further back in the deck chair, still relaxed, still trusting. He said nothing, only watched me.
I felt oddly breathless, as if he had handed me an incredibly fragile vase to hold, trusting me not to break it.
“Where are we going?” I asked, realizing as the words left my mouth that for some reason, I was whispering.
He shrugged languidly. “Nowhere. Just circling around the bay. Taking in the sights the way you only can with a yacht of this caliber.”
“But…why?” I didn’t want to push him, didn’t want to shatter this moment. But I did want to understand it. “What’s the point?” And then I did what I always do when threatened with the possible spotting of genuine human emotion in myself or others: I tried to be funny. “Is this to show me that if I follow your advice, I’ll be filthy rich enough to buy one of these babies?”
Something frighteningly like disappointment fluttered across Asher’s face for a second, and he gave a little sigh before offering a smile that, while perfectly pleasant, seemed somehow more closed off than before.
“No, this is to explain about business.” He gestured at the yacht. “This yacht cost more than a hundred thousand dollars. It was painstakingly crafted by an old family shipbuilding company that has adapted to modern technologies—but the heart of their business is still the care and time they take with each individual piece of material, whether that be traditional wood and steel, or carbon fiber. Each piece they create is a work of art.”
“But that’s the kind of stuff I want to do,” I began to say excitedly, hope blooming in my chest. He did understand after all.
Asher raised a hand to forestall me. “Because they take so much time with each component, and because each material must be of the highest quality, their production is severely limited. In a good year? They manage to sell a dozen.”
I multiplied twelve by a hundred thousand dollars in my head and tried not to faint overboard into the wind-chopped water.
“Your heart’s in the right place,” Asher said gently, covering my hand with his. His fingers were gentle as they caressed the skin there, warming it from the sea breeze’s chill. “Wanting to make each item of lingerie a piece of art for each woman to treasure? That’s a noble goal. But you can’t leap straight there from obscurity. You have to take it step by step.”
I swallowed, looking up at the bridge’s lights as we passed beneath it. His words rang true, for all that I didn’t want them to.
Asher continued, his voice painfully gentle and kind. “You’re selling lingerie to real women. The models and celebrities, they’re a nice touch, but they can’t form the bulk of your target demographic, not right away. Before that, you need to concentrate on the ordinary people who want to buy into the fantasy of being like models and celebrities, who want just a little taste of that life.”
Asher’s thumb stroked soothingly in figure eights around my knuckles, and I wished I were here with him under other circumstances, wished I were hearing him say something else, wished the things he was saying didn’t make so much sense to me.
“High-end is fine, but if you price yourself out of the market paying for expensive fabrics and décor and trims, nobody will be able to afford your product. You’ll go out of business, and then you’ll be helping no one.”
I bit my lip and stared out to sea, wondering what to do. The sun was dipping low in the sky, the lights of the city reflecting off the low clouds and turning everything a soft grey-blue except where the horizon painted the sky a soft pink. “Asher…I—I hear what you’re saying. I do. But it’s hard. When I think about how long I spent dreaming of—”
I cut myself off before tears could make me choke on the words. I don’t cry. Not in front of other people, and definitely not in front of hot guys.
“I’m not asking you to give up that dream,” Asher promised. “But there has to be a compromise.” He squeezed my hand. “Maybe you could produce a more accessible line that’s still beautiful, but more streamlined and made of less expensive materials,” he suggested. “And then supplement those with a few ultra-luxury limited collections every year for high-end clients. You’d get a steady income stream, and the kind of exposure you need to move up in the market. It’s the best of both worlds.”
“Best of Both Worlds? Wasn’t that the name of the SyFy Channel Original Movie last night?” But the snark was half-hearted; I could already feel myself getting ready to give in. After all, Asher had made billions when he was still in college, and what had I accomplished then? Not much more than a reputation for throwing back margaritas at the local bar. And what did I have now, years later? Barely my foot in the door.
“All right,” I said grudgingly. “I’m not going to admit that I was wrong, because I’m never wrong. But I guess I can admit that I’m still learning. The business side of this is new; I still need help.”
“I don’t know about ‘need.’ I think if you really had to, you could do this on your own. I just want to make it easier for you.”
Asher brought my hand to his lips and pressed them against it; I inhaled sharply at the sensations that flooded my body at his touch. He kept speaking, apparently unaware of the desire racing through me.
“I don’t mean to be tearing you down all the time. You’ve got a tremendous amount of willpower and can-do spirit, and your talent is amazing—I look at the work you do with just bits of cloth and thread, transforming them into art—and I’m in awe.” He looked deep into my eyes. “I’ve built business empires, Kate, but I’ve never made anything beautiful. You do that every day.”
There was a feeling uncomfortably like grateful tears gathering in the corners of my eyes. “I think you missed your calling as a door-to-door salesman,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear how the suppressed tears were making my voice shake. “You could unload an entire factory’s worth of refrigerators to an Inuit tribe.”
Asher laughed, and leaned back in his chair, dropping my hand casually. I tried not to let on how much I wanted to take his back. “Yeah, but only good refrigerators. No business can succeed without a great product.”
He smiled at me, and I quickly looked away so he couldn’t see me blush, and thanked heaven were out in the middle of nowhere, where no one could witness me breaking my strict no-blushing rule.
I felt the deck below me cease its vibration as the yacht slowed to a stop. I quirked an eyebrow at Asher, who just looked back towards the main cabin.
Captain Ernetti rapidly emerged, stomping towards us as if the deck of the boat had caused him some sort of personal injury. He grumbled something in our general direction before wheeling away and trudging back to his post as if spending anytime outside on a lovely cool evening was the worst imaginable torture after being put on the rack.
“Care to translate?” I asked Asher.
Asher was already standing, and retrieving a cooler that had been carefully lashed in place. “The good captain was just letting us know that we’ve reached our destination, and we can have our picnic now.”
I hadn’t lowered my eyebrow since I first raised it, but at this news I hoisted it further. “Picnic? Didn’t we already eat?”
“That was just an appetizer. We’ve got a lot of skipped meals to make up for.” Asher popped the cooler lid. “Besides, we need to celebrate our new understanding.”
“I’m confident in all things,” Asher said. “Plus, if we hadn’t come to an agreement, there’s no reason the picnic would have had to go to waste. I could have drowned my sorrows in champagne and summer pudding.”
“You have summer pudding?” I said, trying and probably failing not to squeal. I had had it once on a family trip to England, and never forgotten it. “What the hell are we still talking for, then?”
#
Asher insisted on setting the scene first, spreading out the tablecloth and setting out the silverware, resting the champagne in a bucket of ice, and arranging all the food—not only was there summer pudding with heaps of whipped cream, but also crusty French bread, olives, prosciutto and venison sausage, hand-dipped chocolate strawberries, and fresh blueberry tarts with custard.
Once we set to eating, I tried not to think too much about the pleasant little shiver that shot through me each time our hands brushed reaching for the same little delicacy. I focused on the sunset instead, the way it painted everything in purples and pinks and slowly lengthening shadows. The night was cool but I hardly noticed because of the fire simmering slowly and teasingly inside me. Asher’s leg had somehow come to rest next to mine, not quite touching; I swore I could feel that millimeter of space between us.
“Pass the strawberries?”
Asher plucked a white-chocolate-dipped strawberry and dangled it above my lips. “What’s the magic word?”
“Abracadabra,” I said, and stretched up to take the berry in my mouth, accidentally-on-purpose flicking out my tongue to lick those long, elegant fingers. Asher started, and I couldn’t resist adding a moan as I sucked the sweet fruit into my mouth, savoring both the taste of the chocolate and the storm I saw brewing in Asher’s eyes.