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Brodie
I’ll be damned. Nara, my auction date, wasn’t a desperate, lonely cat lady after all.
She was a freaking tech CEO. And she didn’t even bid on me—her damn redheaded assistant did.
There I was, bracing myself for another charity date, and I was met with this gorgeous woman in clothes possibly more expensive than mine, who was not the least bit impressed with me or anything about me.
Why did I feel like the joke was on me?
At least she liked my hotel. And I totally dug how she blurted out her true feelings about the auction. That was worth the price of admission.
She pulled her phone out and typed a quick message, then slipped it back into her bag.
“Sorry ’bout that. My assistant’s just checking in.”
She turned her barstool toward me and crossed her long legs. I wished she’d go to the ladies’ room or something so I could really check her out. At such close range, my gaze could scarcely leave her face.
And what a face it was. Jesus. Bright blue eyes, black hair, and lips that curled into the most adorable, lopsided smile. A long-ish face that on anyone else might not have worked. But on her, it did. Beautifully.
If only all the women at those auctions were like her, I’d sign up for every damn one in town.
And she wanted to know more about my business. Not in an I want to know how much money you’re worth way, but an I’minterested in business sort of way.
It got my dick hard. Smart girls did that for me, no doubt. And it wasn’t that Manhattan wasn’t full of brilliant women—it absolutely was. It was just that I rarely met one who…I don’t know—didn’t give a shit about me or my assets.
“Since you took over the hotel from your dad, how have you changed it?” she asked.
I’d given her the Cliffs Notes version—I couldn’t tell her the whole story. It was too ugly, too complicated, and too personal.
“Well I got the investors to agree to remodel. Then we hired an agency that not only got us advertising in all the high-end, luxury magazines and blogs, but also got celebrities to stay with us. Once you get a few celebs, the rest flock to the hotel like flies, followed by the general public.”
“That’s cool. Maybe I should get some celebrity moms using my software app,” she said
“Or celebrity dads.” That made her laugh, which was awesome, because I got to see that off-kilter smile again. I was tempted to tell her how much I liked it. But I wanted to play it cool.
“Oh yeah. Dads change diapers, too.” She held her hands up as if in surrender.
I might like her to surrender to me…
My phone buzzed. I grabbed for it and explained I needed to check in with my admin Trudy. Just like she’d done with her assistant.
Wait a minute. Was she beating me at my own game? Did she have her admin queued up to rescue her, in case I was a dud?
Nah. I was the shithead, not her. I texted Trudy back.
not ready to head out yet. give me 15
“So Nara, where are you from? Wait, my first question is, what kind of name is Nara?”
Damn, that smile was back. Crooked but wide with perfect straight teeth, and red lipstick. A real contrast to her pale skin.
“Nara is Irish for happy.”
Nice.
She scooted closer to hear me. The restaurant was getting noisy with the dinner rush. Forty-five minutes had clearly come and gone. “And I’m from nowheresville, Indiana.”
“I like that. Nowheresville.” Boy, did she smell good.
“Yup. Got out of town on a college scholarship and never looked back.”
“You still have family there? Friends?” I downed the last of my scotch. I was contemplating another, but once I got past two, I was committed to a night out. Possibly a very long night out. Maybe Miss Happy and her awesome smile would join me…
She shrugged. “Sort of. My mom is still there. My old friends are, too. I don’t really keep up with them.”
She looked down the length of the bar, clearly somewhere else for a moment. I didn’t know where, but definitely not in a noisy restaurant in the busiest of American cities.
She continued, “My high school reunion is coming up. My mom’s bugging me to go.”
“And? Are you going?”
She shook her head. “Probably not. I mean, what am I going to do? Walk in there among all the people who never got to leave town and sit there and brag about having started a tech firm in New York City? I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She was modest. I liked that.
“Okay. I can see that. If you don’t want to go, you shouldn’t.”
She gazed directly at me and seemed relieved I agreed with her. It was clear the pressure to return home was all over her. I never understood why women got all riled up about things like that. Why didn’t they just say no and be done with it? Seemed easy enough to me.
But then, I was an asshole.
She waved at the bartender for another round. Guess I wasn’t going back to work.
“So what about you?” she asked. “Where’d you grow up?”
“Right here in New York City.”
“No kidding! You have no accent,” she said.
