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“Maizy?” a muffled voice said. “Maizy, you okay?”
I yanked open the door to Anson.
“God, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t take it. I guess I was nervous, and that set me off.” I stepped out of the bathroom and joined him in the hall, taking several more deep breaths.
“Whew. I’m fine now,” I said, moving back toward the dining room.
But before I could, Anson’s hand grabbed my wrist.
“What are you—?”
His lips brushed over mine, quietly and gently, as if asking permission. I was shocked as hell, but hey, he was a nice-looking guy, and according to Eva, I was the resident floozy anyway.
“Hmmm, mmmm,” came the throat-clearing sound from behind me.
Anson and I snapped back from each other, and I gestured toward his mouth so he could remove the red lipstick I’d smeared on him.
Eva stood there with a smug look on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was disgusted with me or pleased with her matchmaking skills. Maybe it was a bit of both.
“Hey, Eva. We’re heading back to the table,” Anson said. He still had a smudge of red on his upper lip.
“Good,” she said, looking from one of us to the other. “Dessert is being served.”
I smiled brightly at her as we headed back to the table, laughing fits long gone.
“Share a cab home?” Anson asked as the evening ended with everyone heading for the door at once. Geez, it seemed like they couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
“Heading across town?” I asked.
“I am. Let me call at Uber.”
Our ride sped through several red lights on the way to my place. Just another night in Manhattan.
“Would you like to get together again, Maizy?”
Oh, shit. I’d thought that moment might be coming. And I’d not come up with a good response. What the hell. Honesty it would be.
“You
know, Anson, thank you. I’m super flattered—”
“Oooh, that doesn’t sound positive.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I nodded. “I feel a little weird about dating one of my boss’s relatives.”
Perfectly legit reasoning.
“Okay. I get that. I really do. But look at it this way. Neither of us can stand her. I mean, I only tolerate Todd because he’s my brother. But he’s as big an elitist asshole lawyer as she is.”
Oh, god. He was going to wear me down. Not that it was hard to do.
He turned in his seat to face me. “So the way I look at it, Maizy, is that if we don’t stick together, we’ll be eaten alive by these jerks. We need to partner. In solidarity.”
I looked at him to see if he was serious. We burst out laughing.
“I’ll think about it, Anson. Really, thank you. Put your number in my phone, would you?”
He got the Uber driver to wait while he walked me up to the door.
