“Oh my God.” I cover my face. “This is like high school.”
“No, it is like eighteenth-century England, where your married friends take control of your love life and you communicate with suitors by flipping your fan. But my point is that right now, at this very moment, he is waiting in the courtyard for you, and you are going to take a turn around the garden with him while I watch from an appropriate distance as chaperone.”
“Chaperone? I have four tattoos.”
“Really?” Her eyes scan my shoulder to where a small Japanese dragon tattoo peeks out from under my dress. "I only know of three. Please tell me the other one is a tramp stamp of an Eagles quote.”
“It’s Tweety Bird holding a bong.”
She snorts as she takes my arm. “He’s waiting.” She gives me a little shove.
I step out of the conservatory and into the breezy open-air courtyard, my heels wobbling on the uneven paving stones. Sure enough, Ollie stands all alone near a tinkling fountain, his hair glowing redder than usual in the last touches of sunset, his eyes staring into his drink like there’s a goldfish swimming in it. He has dressed down from his usual three-piece suit and is in a crisp white shirt and blazer and he looks…not sexy, exactly—he’s a little too buttoned-up for that—but deeply appealing.
I take a breath and walk forward. He catches my eye and then takes in my dress, and his eyes widen a little.
“Hello,” he says with a half-smile.
“Hi.” I hope my cheerful tone acknowledges how weird this all is. “I’m Laura.” I thrust out my hand. “I’m one of the accountants. And you are…”
“Ollie. Tax law.”
“Hot,” I say, jokingly imitating a gum-snapping teen on TikTok, and then I immediately regret it. What if he thinks I actually talk like that? But he’s smiling.
“Yeah, I always tell people it’s a very sexy field,” he says, “but I’m not sure they buy it.” He smiles a little more. His eyes catch my tattoo, widening slightly.
“So what are you?—”
“So how are you?—”
We both stop talking.
“So,” I say.
“So,” he says. This really is like high school. Neither of us seems to remember how to talk. He continues after a moment. “I guess we’ll be serving on that committee together. I read the list of invitees and saw you on there.”
“Oh, that’s exciting,” I say, like I hadn’t noticed it myself. Exciting?
“Nothing like committee work to make you feel alive.”
“Get enough accountants in a room and it’s basically an orgy.”
He coughs on a laugh, and I panic.
“Sorry, I just meant?—”
“I’ll try to prepare myself for that,” he says.
“Were you away for a while?” I try desperately to switch topics. “Someone said that you were in the Toronto office?”
“London, then Toronto.” An emotion crosses his eyes and then is gone.
“Are you from there? I thought you might have an accent.”
“Australia. My family moved here when I was sixteen. And you have a daughter, right?”
I’m touched that he remembers after two years. “Hannah,” I say, nodding. “She’s eight. I’m divorced, and my ex-husband is…he’s not in the picture… I mean he’s watching her today, but only because he managed to finally show up halfway into her school vacation after promising he’d watch her the whole time. He lives in Atlanta.”
Ollie nods, taking this in. Wrong topic, I sense.
