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“Not on the phone. I need to see you in person.” He needed to look in Colin’s eyes and make himself very, very clear.
“Come on, man, I’m about to take the woman out to brunch. She’s been hounding me about it for days.”
The fact that Colin had a woman surprised Mitchell. That Colin called her “the woman” did not.
Mitchell checked his watch. “No decent brunch place is even open before eleven. Give me fifteen minutes.”
Colin let out a petulant sigh, and
Mitchell knew curiosity was warring with inconvenience.
“Please,” Mitchell said finally.
“Okay, fine, but you come to me.”
“Done,” Mitchell said, “You live on Park, right? That’s close to my place.”
“I’m not at home.”
Mitchell slumped back again. “Where are you?”
“My woman’s place. She’s down in the Village.”
Shit. Mitchell had just left the Village. “Can you turn around, please?” Mitchell murmured to his cab driver. “Change of plans.”
The cabbie looked annoyed, but he made the first left-hand turn to head back south. Mitchell recited the address that Colin rattled off to him.
“Thanks, Colin,” he said.
“Just make it quick,” Colin said quietly. “She’s pissy until she gets her mimosa.”
“She sounds lovely,” Mitchell muttered, hanging up.
He needed to put this bullshit with the bet behind him so that he could move forward with Julie. For the first time he understood that relationships had nothing to do with compatibility or mutual goals or shared interests in movies. And love wasn’t measured in days spent together or in conversations talking about love.
Love simply was. Love was Julie.
And not just for today, or tomorrow, or the near future. For keeps, as crazy as that sounded.
But if years of working on Wall Street had taught him anything, it was that gut feelings mattered. Because even when common sense told him that there was risk, even when his practicality told him that he’d only known someone for a month, well, sometimes his gut just knew better.
And his gut was definitely telling him that he wanted to spend a lifetime with the happy yet fragile woman who’d turned his life upside down with her sunny smiles.
He’d be damned if he’d risk losing her for the sake of some ball game tickets.
Mitchell knocked on the door of the address Colin had indicated and was relieved that it was Colin himself who opened the door and not the put-out prima donna.
He whistled as he stepped inside. From the outside, it had looked like an average brownstone, but inside, it definitely smelled like money. By New York standards, the place was huge, and everything from the hardwood floors to the modern thermostat on the wall screamed recent renovation.
“Family money,” Colin said by way of explanation. “Her mom is the maven of one of those massive cosmetic corporations or something.”
Mitchell couldn’t stop looking around. Surely that wasn’t a real Picasso. “Where is the little heiress?” he asked quietly.
“Primping,” Colin said with a jerk toward what Mitchell assumed was a bathroom. “She’ll be in there for hours. There’s an office space back this way where we can talk.”
Mitchell noticed Colin was doing something fidgety with his hands. He’d tap one fist against his palm and then switch and do the same thing on the other side. Over and over and over.
He’d seen Colin do that before when something big was going down on the exchange. Colin was nervous about something. Either Mitchell’s phone call had scared the hell out of him or his girlfriend was even more of an uptight bitch than he was letting on.
