Hard Sell (21 Wall Street #2)(24)

Truth be told, I love chess. And I’m damn good at it. But I don’t get off on the dignity of the game or whatever, like Kennedy does.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” she says thoughtfully. “If nothing else, Kennedy would probably go crazy for the Feinsteins’ first-edition Dickens collection.”

Snore.

“Also, he just left.”

“Who?”

“Adam.”

“Thank God,” I say, exhaling. “I feel like I’ve been on display. The Sams didn’t leave with him?”

She shakes her head, glancing over my shoulder toward their table. “No, it’s just the two of them.”

“Probably trying to figure out which one has to fire me.”

“I don’t think so,” Sabrina murmurs, still watching the older couple. “They seem sort of . . . romantic. She’s feeding him a bite of something chocolate, and he just wiped a bit of powdered sugar from her lip.”

“Blech.”

“I think it’s sort of sweet.”

I give her a sharp look, surprised to see a wistful expression on her face. “Wait.” I lean forward. “I thought you didn’t believe in the whole romance thing.”

She shrugs. “I don’t, not really. Not in the sense that I think there’s one person who completes each of us or that romantic love is reliable.”

“Right,” I say with a nod. “Marriage is crap.”

“No, I don’t think so,” she says.

“Right, and—Wait. What?”

“I don’t think marriage is crap,” she repeats.

“You just said—”

“I said I think fairy-tale versions of marriage are crap,” she clarifies. “But with the right mind-set, I think marriage can be . . . nice. In its way.”

“You want to get married?” I say, jarred to my core.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Someday. Yeah, I think so,” she says, seeming to warm to the idea. “With someone who was on the same page as me about it.”

“What page is that?”

She bites her lip and thinks it over. “Well, I don’t want a big white wedding, with the whole to love and to cherish bit. But I don’t necessarily want to spend the rest of my life alone, either. It’d be nice to have someone to share my life with. A companion.”

“You have Juno.”

The soft expression on Sabrina’s face fades at my glib tone. “Never mind.”

“Sorry,” I say, meaning it. “That was a dick thing to say. I’m just surprised. I thought . . .”

“Thought you and I were both cynics?” she says with a small smile. “We are. I’m just saying, in theory, I could see the appeal of having a partner. Someone to come home to, someone to talk to about my day. Someone to have dinner with.”

“Someone to go to brunch with,” I supply.

“Right. Exactly.”

Our gazes lock and hold, and something strange passes between us.

“But you don’t like brunch,” she says on a rush.

“Right. No. Definitely not.”

“Good,” she says.

“Great.”

We resume our meal in silence, and though she turns the conversation back to my “reputation rehab” and her suggested plan for the upcoming week, I have a hard time keeping my attention on the topic at hand.

All I can think about is Sabrina and her idea of marriage as a partnership of sorts. And how if and when she finds that partner, it’ll mean the end of meals like this one.

The end of us. Whatever we are.





11

MATT

Monday Afternoon, September 25

It’s been a day for distractions. Alarm didn’t go off. Spilled coffee on my shirt. Couldn’t get a cab. Lost another client. Worked through lunch.

It’s not even five o’clock yet, and the day’s not done with me. The distraction currently headed my way is perhaps the worst yet. Or at least the most annoying.

Unfortunately, it’s also unavoidable.

I pick up my phone. “Hey, Mom.”

“Hi, honey!”

My mom’s always pretty cheerful, but the borderline manic happiness in her tone confirms she’s calling for the reason I’d suspected.

She’s heard the news.

“How are you?” she asks, her voice too casual.

I sigh and lean back in my chair, rubbing my forehead. “Well, shitty, actually. The whole Vegas thing isn’t dying down as readily as I hoped it would.”

“Oh, it will,” she says breezily.

I clench my teeth against irritation. My parents had called, separately, the day the Wall Street Journal news broke last week. And though there’d been the token concern and sympathy, my mom hadn’t wanted to discuss the topic for longer than two minutes.

She’s a nice enough woman, but she tends to determinedly ignore anything she deems unpleasant that doesn’t impact her directly. So I know she’s not calling to check up on that bit of news. She’s calling about the other news.

“How was brunch yesterday?” she asks in a gleeful, teasing tone.

Yeah. There it is.

Besides getting the face time I’d hoped for with my bosses, Sabrina predicted our see-and-be-seen brunch date yesterday would result in plenty of press. Not quite Wall Street Journal–level press, but it had gotten picked up on enough society blogs that I figured my mom would have heard about it through her vast gossip circuit. My parents live in Connecticut, but my dad was a Wall Street guy, so they’re still pretty plugged into the scene. My scene. Lucky me.