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I turned back to him with a polite smile. “Nice to see you.”
I kept looking around for G. Normally I would have been happy to chat with one of my father’s clients. But now was not the time.
“What are you drinking there?” Varden asked.
“Um. It’s a negroni.”
“You look distracted,” he said.
I glanced toward the door again, but the man entering was too old and short to be G.
“I’m sorry to be rude,” I said to him. “But I’m expecting a friend. I do hope you have a good evening.”
His expression changed. Was that amusement?
“I’ll tell my dad you said hi,” I added, hoping he’d take the hint. I felt kind of bad—he did seem nice and was damn good-looking.
I was on the edge of my seat waiting, but Varden just stood there. He seemed to have no intention of leaving.
God, why doesn’t he take the hint?
Where was G? I reached for my phone and sent a text.
ur late. still coming?
I looked up from my phone.
Still Varden.
Shit.
“Varden, I’m really sorry but I have other plans tonight.”
“I know you do, Saffi.”
Huh?
“I know, because you made them with me,” he said.
“What? What are you talking about?” I craned my neck toward the door. G could rescue me from an unwanted conversation like this.
“Saffi, I am G. From the club.”
What. The. Fuck.
“How do you know about the club?” I was confused, but my stomach sank as if it knew something I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.
He slid onto the barstool next to mine.
“We need to talk. I wear a mask at the club to protect my privacy,” he said, looking at me intently.
Just like G would.
“But I wanted you to know who I really was, so I asked you to meet me here. We have something important to talk about.”
He ordered bourbon. G always ordered bourbon.
A slow realization washed over me. My hand shook so much, my drink sloshed out of its glass.
“I…I don’t believe you. Who put you up to this?” I swallowed hard to hide my shaking voice.
“I can prove to you that we’ve been at the club together.”
No, no, no, no, no.
“I really don’t think this is funny.” Tears threatened to fill my eyes.
Get it together, girl.
The bartender brought Varden’s bourbon. “Last time we were there, you wore a slinky dress with no bra and high heels. Your hair was partially pulled back. Miss M tried really hard to get you to her office, but I intervened.”
G was also my father’s client, Varden, and the man I’d met at dinner? I’d been intimate with an associate of my father’s?
Please. It can’t be so.
Tears distorted my vision, followed by spots of white light, and my heart pounded in panic.
“We got, uh…intimate on the second floor on one of the sofas. It was amazing—”
“Shut up!” I screamed.
The bartender’s gaze snapped my way, and he headed over.
Confusion had me seconds away from vomiting right then. I reached for my cocktail, not sure why, because the last thing I felt like doing was consuming more alcohol. But my fingers slipped on the wet glass, causing it to tip and release my sticky drink all over the bar.
Varden put his hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry you’re upset. When I first saw you at the club, I thought we’d do a little harmless messing around, but…I don’t know…I found myself wanting to see more of you. And not just at the club.”
He looked around as the bartender arrived. He leaned next to my ear. “I want to see you outside the club, here in the real world. In my real world. And yours.”
“Miss, are you okay?” the bartender asked.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll be fine.”
I slid off my barstool, stepping away from Varden, but he only moved toward me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The disappointment washed over me like acid, causing searing pain.
“How could you?” I mumbled. My eyes filled with tears despite my effort to deny them. The disappointment—the goddamn disappointment—that someone I’d begun to fall for had taken me for such a fool.
I was a fool. A huge fucking fool. To think I could write a superstar story for the Post, and attract some mysterious and sexy man at the same time.
Fucking idiot. That’s me.
I hightailed it out of the Four Seasons. God I hoped I never saw G, or Varden, or whatever the hell his name was, again.
