by Sherie Keys
“No, I don’t think so, at least when we hang out you’re not. Maybe you get nervous when you’re one on one with a woman and you don’t show your real self,” I said and he nodded.
“You’re right, so how do I ask her to give me a second chance?” he asked and I shrugged.
“Promise not to be boring I guess…” I said and Rob snorted.
“Yeah, okay, easier said than done.” We both packed up our stuff and made to leave the gym. “What about you, have you met anyone new?” he asked and I shrugged.
“Not really…” I said, but then the thought of Melanie popped into my head and I remembered the brief encounter I had with the beautiful brunette. “Actually, yeah, I met this girl named Melanie at the investor’s gala my firm threw last weekend. She was crashing the party and only went to check it out, it seemed like,” I said and Rob looked at me expectantly as if he was waiting for the rest of the story.
“So…? Did you get her number, what happened?” he asked and I sighed.
“No, she had these ‘rules’ about her crashing parties and she wouldn’t even take my card. I never even got her last name, I just know that her name is Melanie and she paints pictures for children’s books,” I said and Rob nodded.
“Do you like her?” he asked and I almost laughed.
“What? It’s a valid question, do you like her?” he asked me again and I shrugged.
“What does it matter, I mean with how huge this city is, what are the odds of my bumping into her again?” I asked and Rob pointed to his chest.
“Your odds are right here, I’m still pencil pushing next week, I could break the rules a little and look her up for you if you want,” he offered and I glanced at him wondering if he was really offering me that option. “Don’t even ask, I wouldn’t get your hopes up and then tell you no,” Rob said and I smiled.
“Could you really? With just a name?” I asked and he nodded confidently.
“You’d be surprised what the FBI can dig up on a person,” Rob said and I chuckled.
“Please, don’t tell me,” I said jokingly and he grinned.
We talked some more until we stepped outside the gym and parted ways. Rob promised to call me if he found anything on Melanie and I wondered if I was a complete stalker for practically hiring an FBI agent to look for a girl I met over the weekend.
I had to admit though, those aquamarine eyes were unique, as was Melanie. She was gorgeous and perfectly alluring in a non-cliché way. I had thought about her a lot since I met her and it would be great if I could see her again and ask her out.
I went to the gym’s parking garage to head to my car and drive home for a shower before going over to my parent’s house for Sunday dinner. It was a tradition ever since I could remember that the entire family get together for Sunday dinner. Even when all five of my parent’s kids were off in college, we had to either call or Skype home on Sundays if we couldn’t make it for dinner.
Now that we were all grown and living in the city again, Sunday dinners picked up as normal and we’d never hear the end of it if we missed even one Sunday. My mom had guilt trips down to a science; I was pretty sure all moms did. I drove home quickly so that I wouldn’t be late and got to my townhouse with ten minutes to shower and change.
I barely had time to stop and greet my dog Ajax, but I remembered to put some dinner into his bowl before I gave the chocolate lab a pat on the head and then hurried out to my mom’s across town in Greenwich Village.
“Caleb, you’re late,” was the first thing I heard as I walked through the door into my parents’ house. My mom, who was about four foot eleven, a hundred and twenty pounds, gorgeous for her age with her long blonde hair and light brown eyes, came storming into the front room with her hands on her hips.
“I’m right on time, Ma, I had to speed so I would make it on time,” I said and then bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek. “And is that any way to greet your favorite son?” I asked and she smiled at me and then rolled her eyes, but with good humor.
“Don’t you go starting that again, you are all my favorites,” she emphasized loud enough so that everyone else in the kitchen would hear her. I followed Mom into the kitchen where all three of my brothers and my sister were gathered around the kitchen island talking. My dad was out back just past the eat-in area of the kitchen grilling with the dogs who were just trying to get a morsel.
“There’s Mom’s favorite son,” my brother Jeremy said loudly as usual and mom glared at him. I went over to greet everyone, Jeremy was the oldest, then came Joshua, Clary, me, and Seth. All of the guys looked like versions of my dad, who was tall, broad shouldered, square jawed, and ‘handsome as they came’, according to my mom.
We all had my mom’s brown eyes though, except for Clary who was a gorgeous mixture of both my mom and dad and inherited his hazel eyes. She was a model and was trying to transition from that and get into the fashion world. She wanted to eventually work at a big name designer company.
All of us were successful on some level, Clary was in a lot of big name designer ads, Jeremy was partner and chief architect at a firm in the city, Josh was an executive at a Fortune 500 company and Seth took after our dad as a civil engineer.
“How are the stocks doing, bro?” Josh asked me and Clary groaned.
“Every time we see Caleb all you want to do is ask him about your stocks,” Clary complained and Josh looked at her as if he was innocent. “Oh don’t give me that look,” she said and threw a cherry tomato at him. I hadn’t noticed that Clary had been making the salad.
“Hey! No throwing food, the dogs will have a field day,” my mom scolded Clary from the stove and I snickered at the both of them.
“The stocks are how they always are, bro, you just have to watch them and look out for news about the companies you invested in. But you’re doing fine now, if you wanted to sell you’d get a pretty nice chunk of change to stick into a foreign account,” I said and Josh smiled.
“That’s why you’re paid the big bucks,” he said and Clary simply rolled her eyes.
“Hey, so how’s the family doing, where are they?” I asked Josh and then glanced at Jeremy, who also had a wife and kid with another on the way.
“They’re great, they’re spending time with Lisa’s folks tonight so they couldn’t be here,” Josh said and I looked at Jeremy again, who sighed.
“Cass is having a bad week with the pregnancy so I told her to rest, her sister came over to take care of her and Chris,” he said.
That’s when my mom decided to interject and she poked her head into our little gathering around the island.
“And what about you three; my youngest? When are you going to settle down and give me more grandchildren,” Seth laughed and Clary simply sighed.
“Mom, you want more grandkids? Do you know how expensive Christmases will be? Not to mention the never ending birthdays,” he said and I chuckled.
“You know, he’s right, Mom,” I said and she rolled her eyes at us both.
“You know, I just want to see all my children happy and content with families of their own before I die.”
We all groaned then; cue the guilt trip.
“Steaks are done! Hey everyone’s here! How are ya, Caleb?” My dad came inside carrying a huge tray of skirt steak that smelled absolutely mouthwatering.
“Good, Dad, as always, but I’ll be even better when I eat that whole tray of steak.”
My comment started up a good natured argument between me and my brothers, and my dad had to literally guard the tray until Mom declared it was time to sit at the table.
We all went into the dining room to eat and dinner went as it normally did, every one caught each other up on their weeks and we talked business, sports, and just about anything else my mom could think of to talk about. Sometimes I wondered if it weren’t for her our family wouldn’t be as close as we are.
After dinner, Clary and I took a walk around the block, as we both ate too much, and we mostly talked about silly
stuff. It was how we were when we got together, just the two of us.
“Oh hey, I’ve been invited to a party this weekend, it’s kind of like a gala, but it’s a cocktail party pretty much. A lot of notable people will be there and I want to have my most good looking brother there with me,” Clary said and she looked up at me pleadingly. “Who is also my richest brother and a notable figure on Wall Street who can help me in trying to get noticed for a job,” she said with a wide and pleading smile.
“Your flattery is much appreciated, but how does fashion equate to Wall Street?” I asked and Clary looked at me as if the answer should be obvious.
“Hello, do you know how many people in fashion invest their money? It’s almost guaranteed that your firm helped someone buy a really great stock that’s making them lots of money,” she said and I laughed.
“Alright, alright, I’ll go with you…but you have to dress me because I’d have no idea what’s in style,” I said and Clary laughed.
“Great! It’s a date then, I’ll send you the details this week,” she said and we continued walking back where I said my goodbyes to Mom, Dad, my brothers and Clary, and then drove back home.
* * *
Come Monday morning, I was anxious to hear from Rob; I found it thrilling that he was helping me track someone down, but then I also kind of felt like some billionaire douche who uses his connections to do such things. I could hardly focus at work and I had a whole list of people to call to meet my quota for the day. My motto was that we always had to keep the stocks selling or sold, never left alone.
I was most definitely leaving them alone, though.
I pushed away from my glass desk and walked over to the huge window that afforded me a great view of the city. Just as I was pulling out my phone to make the call to Rob, it started to buzz in my hand and I saw it was him calling me.
“Rob, I was just about to call you, how you doing?” I asked out of habit rather than politeness, really I wanted to skip the small talk and get to the point.
“Hey Caleb, everything is same old same old. Oh, actually I used your vague advice to be less boring and I got another date with the girl I told you about,” Rob said with a smile to his voice.
“That’s great buddy, so have you found anything on Melanie yet?” I asked.
“I have, it’s a good lead, but I’ll need some more info before I can say anything definitive,” he said and I sighed.
“You’re speaking like a cop, Rob, just tell me what you have so far,” I said and he laughed on the other line.
“I only have the names of a few publishing companies she’s on contract for, so I’d need to either get someone to hack into their filing system to get a home address, phone number, or something…or get clearance from my boss to walk into one of those places with a warrant so I can get the info the legit way. And seeing as this is something I’m not supposed to be doing on official time, I have to find a hacker,” he said and my eyes popped out of my head as I started to get nervous about this whole thing.
“Rob, this was supposed to be a simple thing, now you have to find a hacker?” I asked in disbelief and he simply chuckled on the other line -- he was chuckling!
“Relax, Caleb, it’s nothing to enlist the help of someone from the IT department. All I have to do is hook one of them up with a date or something. Don’t worry no one is going to jail over looking someone up. Just think of me as your private investigator,” Rob said with humor in his voice and I was perplexed as to how he was taking it all, as if it were no big deal.
“Look, after all you’ve done for me, this is the least I can do to help you find a girl you like so you can have a proper shot at getting to know her,” Rob continued and I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax.
“Alright, man, you know what you’re doing. Just don’t get into trouble over this,” I said and Rob assured me that everything would be fine and that I’d be meeting up with Melanie real soon.
We ended the call and I paced around the large office for a while thinking about the girl with the blue green eyes that I admittedly couldn’t stop thinking about anymore.
Chapter3
Melanie
I used to hate Mondays and Tuesdays when I was younger and had a set time to wake up for either school, or classes, or a part-time job, or what have you.
Now I loved the starting to the week because I had my own schedule, I’d wake up a couple of hours before noon, paint a little, and then head out to get some lunch at my favorite deli. Which was almost always my brunch since I only had a cup of coffee in the mornings.
On my way to the deli on Wall Street my brother called me to set up dinner with Peter so that we could meet his girlfriend. It was a conference call and Peter and I wasted a large amount of Joe’s time teasing him.
“For Christ’s sake, will you two just pick a day?”
Both Peter and I cracked up on the line and I paid the cab driver then got out to walk a block to the deli.
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry, Joe, Wednesday night sounds fine,” I said and Joe sighed heavily on his end.
“Now the question is, where will we eat to meet the girl who could possibly be the one?” Peter was still teasing and I grinned, I knew Joe was about another comment away from cursing him out.
“Peter, he’s at his boiling point, you’ll have to sleep with one eye open if you keep it up,” I warned and Joe simply grumbled in annoyance.
“How about we eat at that really great surf and turf place on Madison that I keep telling you guys about, but never get to bring you,” Peter suggested and we finally agreed on a date, time, and place to meet Joe’s girlfriend.
I hung up with them as I stepped into the crowded deli. It was lunch time on Wall Street so the place was packed, but I had nowhere to be in a hurry so I pulled a number and waited along the back wall to be called.
“Melanie, Melanie, the party crasher,” a familiar voice came from my left and I glanced up to see Hunter standing right next to me. He was holding a sub in his hand and smiling at me as if he had caught me red handed. “I found you,” he said and I forced a smile once my heart slowed down from the rush you get when unexpectedly bumping into someone.
“You did…” I said and Hunter chuckled.
“Call it fate I guess. Do you always come to this deli?” he asked and I nodded.
Hunter was dressed in a smart blue pinstriped business suit and he was as handsome as ever, looking down at me.
“I do, usually for lunch…I’m guessing you work on Wall Street?” I asked him and he nodded.
“Did my suit give me away?” he asked.
I smiled because he was still subtly sarcastic, especially as he smirked at me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Yeah, I guess it did,” I said and Hunter checked his watch.
“So since we aren’t at a party you crashed…how about I ask you out?”
Hunter gave me a sexy confident smile and I glanced around, hoping for someone to pop up and give me an excuse to make an exit, but did I really want one? Hunter was gorgeous and obviously interested in me, he was right, we weren’t at a party I was crashing, and this seemed like a complete meeting by chance…why not go on a date with him?
“Sure,” I said and Hunter pulled out his cell phone and handed it to me. I programmed my number and handed it back to him.
“I’ll give you a call a little later then and we’ll set something up,” he said with a confident smile and then left the deli. I watched him go and then focused on collecting my nerves. I had hardly run into the people I met at those parties out in the “real world.” It was enough of a rush if I simply got a glimpse of them somewhere on Fifth Avenue or Broadway or at a high end restaurant whenever my brother wanted to treat me.
But to have one spot me, come up to me, and ask me out? That never happened. I was kind of glad it did though, because Hunter was…well, gorgeous. Yes, he seemed to have a sarcasm issue, but we had a good conversation at the gala.
M
y mind was a wreck as I tried to regain my equilibrium, it’s not every day that a gorgeous guy walks up to you and asks you out on the spot. Once I got my sandwich and stepped out into the cool autumn air I felt a little better.
I decided to take a walk to Zuccotti Park and sat down on one of the benches to enjoy my sandwich. I had just unwrapped a part of it to take my first bite when my cell phone went off. When I pulled it out I saw that it was an unsaved number with a New York area code. Was Hunter calling me already?
“Hello?” I answered tentatively and then my heart sort of skipped a beat when his smooth voice came across the line.
“So you did give me the right number, I had to make sure.” Hunter chuckled and I rolled my eyes.