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There was another reason I was glad, one I tried not to think about too much. Amber Moltisanti was fuckinghot. It was a fact that was impossible to ignore. Her heart-shaped face and full lips that pursed together when she glared at me. Eyelashes that were long and natural. The curve of her hips, and the ass that was just the right amount of plump in her jeans. Phat, with a P-H. Squeezable. I found my gaze lingering on her whenever I walked by her office. One time, she didn’t notice me because she was too engrossed in her code. She was biting her lip and frowning in concentration.
She’s even sexier when she’s frowning,I thought as I returned to my office.
No matter what she claimed, there was absolutely a flirty edge to the pranks we had made. The way she looked at me on the bench after hacking my condo made me certain of that. Yeah, she was pissed off at me for everything with her sister’s birthday. But there was more to it than that.
And after she ogled me in the gym, and the curious way she had looked at me since then? I was absolutely certain of it. There was something there. And it was growing with every passing day.
I may have acted on it if not for how busy I was right now. I was in conference calls with the lawyers eight hours a day, ironing out the details of the contract and renegotiating specific parts. Mr. Rossi may have inherited his wealth from his family, but he also seemed to know his way around this industry. Or at least, the lawyers working for him did.
The looming investor contract wasn’t the only thing on my plate. That night, I was meeting with the owner of a San Jose company who wanted to integrate her software with our platform. Wining and dining her in a private room atMarcello’s.
I walked into my restaurant and smiled. When I first moved to San Francisco,Marcello’swas my favorite place to get lunch. The owner—whose name was Gio, not Marcello—was a wrinkled old man who greeted everyone with warm smiles and kisses on the cheeks as if they were long lost family. After one visit, Gio remembered who I was and what my previous order had been. The restaurant and bar became a place that felt like home in the city, far more than my cramped apartment did.
After Jude and I made our money from PayScale, I bought the place. I paid three times what it was worth, but after what Gio had given me? I was happy to do it. That allowed Gio to retire and spend more time with his grandkids (he had at least eighteen of them!) although he still came in three times a week to say hi to the kitchen staff, and to taste the pasta sauce, and to make sure the guests were being treated with the same love and warmth he thought they deserved.
On paper, the restaurant wasn’t very profitable. That’s just how things went in the hospitality industry. But I didn’t care about that. The difference between three grand and eight grand of profit a month meant nothing to me. What mattered was that I had a place that felt likemine. Nobody could ever take that away from me.
The bartenders and servers smiled and greeted me when I walked in. I spent a few moments chatting with each of them, being friendly and personable, before heading upstairs. The rooftop deck had a good crowd; it was a gorgeous night in the city, without the bay’s usual biting cold. I turned away from the rooftop deck and went inside to a private room next to the stairwell.
“Jocelyn!” I said, spreading my arms wide. “You made it up from San Jose. Any problems on the CalTrain?”
She snickered at my joke. “Please. I wouldn’t ride that if Leonardo DiCaprio was my escort. There’s a reason I have a private car.”
As Jocelyn and I embraced and kissed each other on the cheek, I was keenly aware of how attractive she was. She wore her black Armani professional dress like a second skin, and the keyhole front gave me averyhealthy view of the tops of her breasts. Her hand lingered on my cheek for a second too long while she smiled at me.
“Been a while since San Diego State, huh?” she said with more than a hint in her voice.
Jocelyn and I lived in the same co-ed dorm Freshman year of college. We weren’t particularly close at the time—we hung out in different circles of friends—but therewasone night during finals week where we got trashed in her room and hooked up. It was sloppy, and fuzzy, and neither of us knew what we were doing back then.
But I still remember it being very,verygood. And the decade since then had only made her more beautiful.
“We’ve both come a long way,” I said, sitting down in the booth with her.
She raised her wine glass to her lips and took a long sip. “If you had told me back then that we would both be running our own tech companies, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
I nodded to the server as he brought me my drink, a gin and tonic. “Cheers, to us,” I said, touching my glass to hers.
“Us, individually?” she cooed. “Or us, working together?”
“I meant it individually,” I replied smoothly. “If you want your software to integrate with the ACS exchange, then it can be a toast to our joined efforts.”
“Owen, Owen,” she said, leaning a little closer in the booth. “We don’t need to get right to business. A girl likes to be pursued a bit before she jumps in bed with someone.” Her smile implied that the bed wasn’t metaphorical.
When I set this meeting two weeks ago, I had been thrilled to reconnect with Jocelyn. She was my type of woman: driven, charismatic, and stunningly beautiful. Secretly, I had hoped we would hit it off in more than just a business regard.
But now that I was here, sitting with her, I didn’t find myself feeling the same spark of excitement. It wasn’t that she didn’t live up to my expectations; if anything, she exceeded them. She was hotter than I remembered. My cock should have been twitching with the urge to close the door to the private room and get her out of that dress.
No, something had changed since I scheduled the meeting. And after two drinks with Jocelyn and at least a dozen flirty innuendos, I realized what it was.
Amber.
Subconsciously, I kept comparing Jocelyn to the coder girl who was working for me. Jocelyn was a little too slender, whereas Amber had more voluptuous curves. Jocelyn was charming and charismatic the way any business leader was, but it was shallow. She lacked the biting wit and sharp tongue of Amber.
Why am I doing this?I wondered as the server brought us plates of appetizers to nibble on.Jocelyn is amazing. I don’t need to compare her to anyone.
Yet try as I might, I couldn’t get the other girl out of my head.
“I don’t understand how Curry only won two MVP awards,” Jocelyn said, gesturing at the TV on the wall. The Warriors were playing the Knicks. “The league still has an east coast bias.”
