Page 43 of Her Age Gap Match

I gave her a look.

“You are,” she said. “Well—tell me about her.”

“This is really none of your business.”

“It becomes my business when you’re running late for meetings and distracted,” she said.

“I’ll try to be less distracted, then.”

The bell over the door chimed and we both turned to see Dean Russo walking in, wearing a perfectly tailored suit, his black hair smoothed back with not even a single strand out of place.

“John,” he said, crossing the room and shaking my hand with a firm grip. “You look well.”

“You too.”

“And Ms. Maitland,” Dean said, reaching out to shake her hand too. She took it with a deeply professional smile and a nod; didn’t show even a little bit that she didn’t like him. It wasn’t a matter of anything personal…she always just said that he was stiff around women, like he didn’t quite know how to be anything but overly courteous.

“We can take a seat by the fireplace if you’d like,” Sloane said. “Talk details, guestlist, et cetera. Would you like a glass of whiskey?”

“Of course,” Dean said. “Thanks.”

I poured him a glass, then brought my own over with his as I joined them in the sitting area by the fireplace. The flames crackled, light glancing off the shiny black leather every so often.

Dean took the glass, settled back in the chair with the ease of a man who'd learned to make himself at home in any room, and did the thing he always did — turned the glass, looked at it, sipped before speaking.

"Changed the finish," he said.

"Six more weeks in the secondary barrel."

"Better." He set the glass down. "The holiday event is confirmed on our end. Eighty guests, private buyout, same format as last year."

"We can do that," Sloane said, already making notes. "I'll send over the updated proposal by end of week—we've made some changes to the tasting flight structure I think you'll like."

Dean nodded at what Sloane said, then turned to me.

"Same setup as last year work for you?"

"Sloane runs the events," I said. "If she says we can do it, we can do it."

"Right." He glanced at Sloane briefly, then back to me. "The guestlist will be similar—mostly private clients, few government contracts. Security-adjacent crowd, they know their whiskey."

"We'll tailor the flight accordingly," Sloane said. "I was thinking we open with the small batch, move into the Reserve, finish on the single barrel. Gives the evening a shape."

Dean considered this, directing his response at me. "That work?"

I kept my expression neutral. "Sloane's call."

A beat. He looked at her, slightly recalibrating, like he'd only just registered that she was the one who'd made the suggestion.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m…being rude.”

Sloane looked up from her tablet. “You’re fine.”

She didn’t deny it.

I watched and didn’t interrupt.

“I keep redirecting to John when you’re the one running the meeting.” He said it plainly. Therapy talk—I could spot it from a mile away. “That’s a habit I’m working on.”