Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(55)

When he was too busy to come to Salon One for a haircut, he'd summon Zenko to his mansion. Sometimes he would drop by for a neck and eyebrow trim, or a manicure from me. Churchill was always a little sheepish about the manicures. But after the first time I filed.

trimmed, scraped, and moisturized his hands, and buffed his nails to a subtle sheen, he liked the look and feel of them so much that he said he guessed he'd just added a new time-waster to his routine. And he admitted, after some goading from me, that his lady friends appreciated the results of his manicures too.

Churchill's friendship, the chats we had across the manicure table, made me the target of both envy and admiration at the salon. I understood the nature of the speculation about our friendship, the general consensus being that he certainly wasn't seeking out my company to ask my opinions about the stock market. I think everyone assumed something had happened between us, or happened every so often, or was inevitably going to happen. Zenko certainly assumed so, and treated me with a courtesy he showed to no other employees of my level. I guess he figured even if I weren't the exclusive reason Churchill came to Salon One. my presence certainly didn't hurt.

Finally one day I asked, "Are you planning to make a move on me sometime. Churchill?"

He looked startled. "Hell. no. You're too young for me. I like my women seasoned." A pause, and then an almost comical expression of dismay. "You don't want me to. do you?"

"No."

Had he ever tried, I'm not sure what I would have done. I had no idea how to define my feelings toward Churchill—I hadn't had enough relationships with men to put this one in context. "But I don't understand why you've been paying attention to me," I continued, "if you're not planning to.. .you know."

"Someday I'll let you know why," he said. "But not now."

I admired Churchill more than anyone I had ever met. He wasn't always easy to deal with, of course. His mood could turn ornery in a flash. He was not a restful man. I don't think there were many moments in Churchill's life when he was a hundred percent happy. A lot of that had to do with his having lost two wives, the first, Joanna, right after the birth of their son.. .and Ava. his wife of twenty-six years. Churchill was not one to accept the whims of fate passively, and the losses of people he loved had hit him hard. I understood about that.

It was almost two years before I could bring myself to talk to Churchill about my mother, or anything but the barest facts about my past. Somehow Churchill had found out when my birthday was. and he had one of his secretaries call in the morning to tell me we were going out to lunch. I wore a neat black knee-length skirt and a white top, and my silver armadillo necklace. Churchill arrived at noon in an elegant British-made suit, looking like a prosperous old European hit man. He escorted me to a white Bentley waiting curbside, with a driver who opened the back door.

We went to the fanciest restaurant I had ever seen, with French decor and white tablecloths and beautiful paintings on the walls. The menus were written in calligraphy on textured cream-colored paper, and the food was described in such intricate terms—roulades

and rissoles and complex sauces—I had no idea what to order. The prices nearly gave me a heart attack. The cheapest item on the menu was a ten-dollar appetizer, and it consisted of a single shrimp prepared in ways I couldn't begin to pronounce. Near the bottom of the menu I saw a description of a hamburger served with sweet potato fries, and nearly spewed a mouthful of diet Coke when I saw the price.

"Churchill," I said in disbelief, "there's a hundred-dollar hamburger on the menu."

He frowned, not out of shared incredulity but because my menu had prices on it. One twitch of his finger summoned a waiter, who apologized profusely. The menu was whipped out of my hands and replaced by another, almost identical one. except this one had no dollar amounts.

"Why shouldn't mine have prices on it?" I asked.

"Because you're the woman," Churchill said, still annoyed by the waiter's mistake. "I'm taking you to lunch, and you're not supposed to think about how much it costs."

"That hamburger was one hundred dollars." I couldn't stop obsessing over it. "What could they possibly do to that hamburger to make it worth a hundred dollars?"

My expression seemed to amuse him. "Let's ask."

A waiter was enlisted to answer questions about the menu. When asked how the hamburger was prepared and what made it so special, he explained the ingredients were all organic, including those in the homemade parmesan bun, and it contained smoked buffalo mozzarella, hydroponic butterhead lettuce, vine-ripened tomato, and chile compote layered atop a burger made of organic beef and ground emu.

The word "emu" set me off.

I felt a laugh break from my lips, and then another, and then there was no stopping the helpless giggles that made my eyes water and my shoulders tremble. I clamped a hand over my mouth to hold them back, but that only made it worse. I began to seriously worry if I could stop. I was making a spectacle of myself in the fanciest restaurant I'd ever been in.

The waiter tactfully disappeared. I tried to gasp out an apology to Churchill, who watched me with concern and shook his head slightly, as if to say No, don 't apologize. He put his hand on my wrist in a reassuring grip. Somehow the pressure on my wrist quieted the wild laughter. I was able to take a long breath, and my chest relaxed.