The doors opened. She walked out. I stood in the elevator and watched her go and thought about the fact that my seventy-year-old grandmother had just committed me to finding a wife in a building where the only woman I’d spoken to voluntarily inthe past month was a chef who knocked over salt shakers and called mekindon national television.
I responded to Miley’s text that evening. Kept it brief. Told her I appreciated her note, asked if she’d decided about the job offer, then suggested we meet to discuss it in person. I sent her the address of a lounge I knew in Coral Gables.
The lounge was upscale. I arrived early and ordered bourbon. Then I ordered another.
I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t get drunk. But I was sitting in a bar contemplating asking a woman I’d met three times to marry me, and that required a certain amount of alcohol to process.
Marriage. Me. Christopher Vale, who had walked in on the only woman he’d ever loved naked in bed with his brother. Christopher Vale, who hadn’t had a relationship that lasted longer than three months since he was twenty-three. Christopher Vale, who trusted exactly two people on the planet and had built his entire existence around never needing anyone.
I was going to ask a stranger to be my wife.
Trisha was right. I’d lost my mind.
My phone buzzed. Trisha—I ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.
A hand touched my shoulder. Fingernails painted red, perfume aggressive and entirely uninvited.
“Drinking alone?”
Adrianna. Of course.
She slid onto the stool beside me, wearing something low-cut and tight. Her smile was the one she deployed when she wanted something, which was always, because Adrianna had never entered a room without wanting something from it.
“Buy me a drink?” she asked.
“No.”
“Come on. We just wrapped a film together. One drink.”
“I said no.”
She leaned closer. Her voice dropped. “We could go back to your place. Just us. No cameras, no crew. Just… you and me.”
I took a sip of bourbon without looking at her. “Adrianna, I endure your presence on set because the contract requires it. I am not extending that arrangement to my personal life. Not tonight. Not any night. Not if you were the last woman in Miami and the alternative was celibacy until death.”
She went still beside me, the warmth gone out of her posture.
“You’re an asshole,” she said.
“I’ve been told.”
She picked up the glass of water on the table and threw it in my face.
The liquid hit me full force. Cold, tasteless. It ran down my jaw, soaked my collar, dripped onto the bar counter. I didn’t flinch. I probably deserved that one. Not that I regretted it—anything to let her know I wasn’t interested.
Adrianna stood, grabbed her bag, and walked out without looking back.
I sat there, water dripping off my chin, and reached for a napkin.
A flash. Corner of the room—someone with a phone camera.
I was on my feet before the second flash, already calculating the headline.Christopher Vale, Water-Soaked in Miami Bar.Exactly the kind of photo that would end up on Paul Hargrove’s desk by morning.
But before I could cross the room, someone else got there first.
A woman moved from the bar’s interior, fast and focused. She reached the photographer’s table, pinned his wrist flat against the surface, and leaned down close.
“You’re going to delete that photo,” she said. Her voice was fierce and left zero room for negotiation. “Right now. Or I willmake a scene loud enough to get you banned from every bar in this zip code. Your choice.”
