Why didn’t Georgina see that about me?
And why wasn’t I that way around her?
I almost hadn’t helped carry her boxes across the office.
“You really do deserve your name in that article.”
I’d learned early on that to move up, I had to play a part. I’d blown my first few real paychecks on a custom suit, had networked at every university event I could, and had been with women where dates had felt like a status exchange. My confidence had been hard-earned along with things like an enviable apartment, my playboy image, and exotic travel. I let my peer group and the media believe I was the kind of man who took a new woman home each night, hosted decadent parties in the Hamptons, and didn’t mind blowing money on expensive things, but at the core of it, I’d thought I was still clutching to the values with which I was raised. I hadn’t had a one-night stand in over a year, I always managed the events I hosted sober, and though I splurged on expensive things, I did mind. I only spent what I could expense or personally afford.
But was the exposé true? Was Georgina right? With the way I’d treated her, at some point, had I started to become the image I’d cultivated for myself—and was that the reason for what my mom had asked of me in our last conversation?
Justin burst into the bathroom. “Admiring the view, you narcissistic asshole?” he asked when he caught me staring at myself.
“What do you want?” I grumbled.
“You guys make a real cute couple, you know. I was enjoying the show until your accent surfaced. Then I knew she was in trouble.”
I snorted. A classmate at Harvard had once told me he could tell which part of Boston I was from by my accent, and within weeks, I’d neutralized it. It only came out now when I was pissed. “She pushes my buttons, and I’m pretty sure she does it on purpose.”
“What reason could she have?”
I pushed off the counter and leaned back against it, crossing my arms. “She’s the one who called me an asshole at the coffee shop this morning.”
“I figured that out. I think it was because earlier, you said she called you an asshole at the coffee shop this morning . . .”
I shook my head. “It’s only been a few hours. How the hell am I supposed to work with her for eight weeks?”
“You’re telling me you didn’t even get the tiniest bit excited when she unbuttoned her blazer in the meeting?”
“No.”
“Just a little? Like the first time a girl tries to finger your asshole? You’re grossed out and confused, but you’re also a little curious . . .”
“You’re a sick fuck, you know that?”
“But I make a good point.”
“I was too disgusted by her presentation to be turned on,” I lied. Admitting even remote interest in her would be a huge mistake. Justin would run with it.
“All right.” Justin scratched the base of his neck, his expression easing. The bastard rarely even wore a tie to the office. “But did she really deserve the hellfire you just unleashed?”
I hadn’t moved past the childish stage of wanting to be mad at her. She’d given me plenty of reasons. “Yeah.”
“This about your mom?”
I blinked, ready to give Justin a piece of my mind. But I didn’t. Justin knew me too well. “Probably,” I admitted.
“I figured. A year, man. I know it’s been tough.”
Tough wasn’t even the half of it. If I’d had more time to prepare for Mom’s death, would it have been different? Easier? Would I have handled it better instead of dropping the ball these past few quarters, landing myself in this position? I doubted it, because I couldn’t imagine any of this being easier.
Justin sighed when I didn’t respond. “Give Georgina a chance, dude. Once she gets to know you, she’ll see you’re not the guy that exposé painted you out to be.”
“She came in with preconceived notions.”
“And for some reason, you’re playing right into them.” Justin frowned. “You’re not that guy, are you?”
I hesitated. “No.”
“Show her that. Take a minute. Cool off. I think you’ll decide she’s not as bad as you think.”
Justin left the bathroom, which meant I was now alone with his words hanging in the air. This was about my mom. It didn’t take a pro to figure that out. Adina Quintanilla was the best woman I’d ever known. For my sister Libby and I to live full, successful lives, she’d taken a lifetime of shit.
She’d worked the kinds of jobs I couldn’t even wrap my head around. As a child, I hadn’t liked it, but as an adult with money and an understanding of the nasty side of human behavior, envisioning my mom that way sometimes got to be too much.
Even though she would’ve preferred to shelter me from it, I’d often witnessed it firsthand. Her bussing diners’ meals while Libby and I did homework at a nearby table. We’d been too young to stay home alone and too poor for a sitter.
What had I learned at that diner aside from multiplication tables? That some people cared more about their burgers than about being decent human beings. When I’d asked my mom why people spoke to her that way, she’d shrugged it off and tried to hide the fact that it hurt her. Mom had never had much of a poker face, though. Especially not with Libby and me.
Libby. Fuck. I’d been avoiding her calls today so I wouldn’t have to shoulder her pain along with my own. On the one-year anniversary of our mom’s death, it wasn’t any easier to be without her. Maybe even harder. Libby and I had not only survived despite our beginnings, we’d thrived. But while money could make my mom comfortable in her home at the end, it couldn’t stop cancer.
Mom had known it, and she’d still smiled until the end. Smiled, held my hand, and told me in her thick Mexican accent, “Stop dating girls you know you’ll never end up with, Sebastián. Find a nice woman who loves you and treats you well. Treat her well. Love her. Be nice to her. Please, just find someone kind.”
Wendy, who I’d been dating at the time, hadn’t been that different from the ones who’d come before her. To say Libby and Mom hadn’t liked her was putting it mildly. Wendy had been mean to Libby, my mom, Justin, waitresses and valets, and she’d been mean to me. She’d also been smoking hot and adventurous in bed. That’d been enough for me back then. Not anymore. Now, I’d have given anything to go back in time and introduce my mom to a “kind” woman—someone she and Libby would like. And to be able to assure her that I wasn’t alone in this world.
It appeared I wasn’t going to find that with the social life I led now—bars, clubs, events, weekend getaways. In one day, Georgina alone had proven that even coffee shops were dangerous. Nowhere was safe, not even happy hour with the guys. She’d be infiltrating that too.
That was assuming, of course, that Georgina and I even made it to the end of the week.
6
GEORGINA
I paced the sidewalk in front of Cantina Santino, willing myself to stay calm. As much as Justin had insisted that happy hour wasn’t a work event, I needed to believe it was—or else transform Georgina into a completely different person in the next few minutes.
They were just my coworkers. Nothing more. I’d been working alongside them without incident so far. Of course, it helped that the workplace had clear boundaries, whereas happy hour had none.
And that Sebastian and I had been doing a decent job staying out of each other’s ways.
My phone lit up with a call, and I answered on the first ring. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
“Unless the objective is avoiding death or taxes, it can be done,” my boss replied.
I checked the screen. I’d texted Luciano to call and talk me off the ledge, but instead, I saw Dionne’s name. “Sorry,” I said. “I thought you were Luciano.”
“I just got back from Italy and wanted to check in. How’s the assignment?”
“The men have been resistant,” I said, double-checking that I was alone on the sidewalk, “but I anticipated that. I think some of them are coming around.
The rest are waiting for someone to tell them I’m not there to burn the place down.”
“Let me guess—that someone is Sebastian Quinn?” she asked. She and I had been e-mailing the last few days, and I’d briefly filled her in on what I was dealing with.
“Yep. Sebastian and I share an office, which makes it hard for him to ignore me completely,” I said, “but we’ve mostly been working around each other. At some point before the next issue goes to press, he and I will have to collaborate.”
“I have faith in you. That’s why I put you on this assignment. So, what is it you don’t think you can do?”
I glanced at the door to the cantina the men had just walked into. “Happy hour.”
“You’ve been to plenty of those in your life.”
“Not like this. It’s not a work thing. More like hanging with the guys. Or, I’m afraid, initiation.”
“Ah.” After having spent enough time with me around Neal, Dionne was familiar with my insecurities outside working hours.
“I’m afraid if I don’t bond with them, I’ll make this whole assignment harder on myself. I’m not sure I’ll ever get Sebastian on board, but at least his team is receptive.”
“Your team,” she said. “Don’t let Sebastian push you around. Not at the office, and not outside of it. He’ll get on board, because he has no choice.”
“It’s just that he . . . well, you know his reputation. He’s not used to taking orders, especially from women.”
“There’s more to someone than their rap, Georgina. I don’t let others walk all over me and that has earned me the bitch label, but anyone who knows me understands I’m not that.”
Was Sebastian more than the image he projected, or was he an actual bad boy to handle with caution? I’d seen glimpses of both. Then again, he’d witnessed different sides of me as well. “At work, he’s intimidating,” I said. “Outside of the office . . . forget about it.”
“Fight that feeling,” she said. “Remember, he’s not Neal. He’s just a regular colleague.”
She’d obviously never seen him in a suit. Or up close. Or at all. Regular guys didn’t leave a trail of longing sighs in their wakes.
My phone beeped with an incoming call. “I’ll come by the office tomorrow to debrief,” I told Dionne.
“Good luck,” she said and hung up.
I switched lines, but this time I answered with, “Can you teach me to be a bitch in sixty seconds?”
“I’ve been trying for years,” Luciano replied, “but unfortunately it won’t take.”
“I don’t know how to act in there. They think I’m someone I’m not—someone cool and confident with actual game.”
Luciano didn’t bother to mute his laugh. “Wait. Slow down,” he said. “Where are you, and who thinks that?”
“My new boss wanted me to go to happy hour with the guys, so I’m here. I believe he said I could ‘teach them a thing or two.’”
“Why does he think that?”
“I was critiquing their current methods by pointing out better ways to pick up women. My ideas make sense in theory, but I never thought I’d have to test them with everyone watching.”
“Relax,” Lu said. “Buy them a few rounds of drinks, and they’ll forget all about that. And if they don’t, just approach a man the way George would—like he’s a situation to be handled.”
“I can’t be George in there, Luciano. I’m supposed to show them I can hang outside the office, but I can’t. I don’t want to turn into a wallflower and lose the shreds of respect I’ve started to earn the past few days.”
“So Sebastián is coming around?”
“No, I meant with the other guys. Things haven’t progressed with Sebastian.”
“Well . . . for tonight, just try to look past the fact that he’s drop-dead gorgeous.”
“Is the drop-dead really necessary?” I asked. Why couldn’t Sebastian just be decent-looking, or even just attractive?
“You’re trying to work with him,” he continued, “not sleep with him. Unless—”
“Don’t go down that path.”
“Why not, G? It’s been like a year. I think you’re officially revirginized.”
“Luciano,” I hissed, turning my back to the bar as if someone might hear. “It’s barely been four months. Rude much?”
“Oh, yeah. I blocked out the part where you let your spineless ex sweet talk you into a ‘closure’ fuck. He’s such a piece of shit.”
“Totally,” I agreed. During the months I’d been incapacitated by the breakup and prone to making excuses for Neal’s behavior, I’d found it helpful to just agree with Luciano.
“You need to erase that experience with someone new,” Luciano said. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you blushing in the café the morning you met Sebastián.”
“Don’t think I don’t notice you’re saying his name with an accent because it sounds sexier.”
“I’ve been trying to get you to go Latin for years, mi amor.”
“For your information, he’s from Boston,” I said. “And his last name is actually Irish. Like mine.”
“He’s Latin, believe me. If you’d like, I can teach you some Spanish words that’ll blow his mind.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dionne wouldn’t take kindly to me fraternizing with a client. Besides, being ‘on’ all the time is taking it out of me. I can’t wait to go home and curl up with a pint of Mocha Chocolate—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. You do not get to choose ice cream over men this often in one lifetime.”
“I can’t stay long anyway.” I checked the time on my phone. “The sitter is about to leave.”
“Oh, come on. Bruno’ll be fine for a few hours.”
“You’re probably right. There’s a ninety-nine percent chance he’ll be sprawled out on the couch and dreaming of tennis balls until I walk in the door, but that one percent . . .”
“How long are you going to keep making excuses to be alone?”
“He’s not an excuse—he needs me.”
“Then I’ll go hang with Bruno until you get home,” he said. “There’s a Project Runway marathon on anyway.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not. I’m volunteering for the good of your sex life. Go get a stiff drink and an even stiffer cock.”
“Oh my god. I told you, that’s so not happening—”
He hung up before I could make a case for a life with just Bruno, a gay best friend, and documentaries about the reign of Catherine the Great.
I almost jumped when Sebastian spoke behind me. “You have a kid?”
I turned. He stood at his full height just outside the door to the bar, jingling change in his pockets, his tie loosened around his neck. He’d still been at the office after I’d left late the night before, yet he didn’t even have bags under his eyes. “I’m sorry?” I asked.
“You mentioned a sitter.” He tilted his head as if I’d just posed a complex riddle. “Are you a mom?”
I took a quick mental inventory of my conversation with Lu once I’d turned my back on the bar. Had I said anything compromising? Anything Sebastian could use against me? Had he heard the part about how sexy his name sounded with a Latin accent? “Were you eavesdropping?”
“Just making sure we hadn’t run you off already.”
If he was teasing me, there was no hint of a smile on his face. “Give me more credit than that. I had a call to take.”
He squinted down the street. With the onset of fall, days were getting shorter, but the sun was still setting. “So the kid,” he said, turning back to me. Today’s tie, the color of a cloudless sky, almost made his piercing eyes look blue. “Are you a single parent?”
“No.” I had yet to see Sebastian this interested in me, and his focused gaze made my heart flutter. I tucked my hair behind my ear, almost wishing he’d let up, despite the fact that I’d been hoping for some kind of breakthrough with him. “Well, sort of.”
&nbs
p; “How is someone sort of a mom?”
“My dog.” I smiled. “Bruno.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You have a babysitter for your dog?”
I’d shored up this defense before. My ex hadn’t understood my devotion to Bruno, or why I’d willingly take on the responsibility of a terminally sick dog. Not even Luciano got it all the time, and he knew all the shitty details of my situation.
“How long are you going to keep making excuses to be alone?”
I could easily truncate this conversation with the truth, but Bruno’s condition wasn’t something I liked to talk about. Or think about. Or live through. I certainly wasn’t about to open up about it to someone who couldn’t care less about my personal life, so I went with another perfectly valid, totally truthful, but possibly less convincing argument.
“For your information, he’s a big dog that needs a lot of attention,” I said. “Not just exercise but mental and emotional stimulation.”
“Emotional . . . stimulation.”
“Smart dogs—and people for that matter, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand that—need to occupy their brains or they get into trouble. When Bruno gets bored or tired, he chews up stuff or figures out ways to get into things he shouldn’t, like the pantry.”
“Is this an actual dog or a human?”
Ah. And that was the fundamental reason Sebastian and I would never get along. The issue wasn’t our opposing management styles, rival sports teams, or clear personality differences. Sebastian was clearly not a dog person, while I would take a bullet for mine.
“There’s no human I’d rather spend time with,” I said, “so he might as well be one.”
“I should’ve guessed by your unfortunate people skills that you’d be prone to anthropomorphizing, and now misanthropy too.”
“And I should’ve known you’d hate animals,” I snapped back.
Suppressing a smile, he held my stare and didn’t deny the accusation. He dropped his eyes to my mouth. My neck. My chest, hips, and ankles. And still, didn’t deny it. He just stood there, inspecting, studying, charting me like a map, or whatever he was doing.
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