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I chuckled. “Sure. Where exactly are you going?”
“I’m meeting English at The Plaza.”
“Dressed like that?”
“What do you have against my outfit, King?”
Not a damn thing. In fact, my first thought was,How long would it take me to get it off?But I couldn’t exactly say that.
“It’s great.”
She gestured up the street. “Can we walk and talk?”
“Yeah. Sure,” I said, falling into step beside her. “I have to get back to work but—”
“Aren’t you the boss?” she teased.
I was heir to the Texas fortune, Dorset & King. My cousins ran the main branch of the oil corporation back home in Midland, where they could handle the day-to-day operations in the field. But I ran the New York division, which meant meeting with investors and business executives and handling the northeast refineries. Since I’d graduated from Harvard and I was friends with Upper East Side business types, I had volunteered. Anything to keep me out of Texas.
“I’m the boss,” I agreed with a grin. This teasing behavior was way easier to handle than anything serious that was threatening to come out of my mouth. We’d always worked like this. Flirting was ninety percent of our personalities. “Now talk, Bowen.”
She pushed her shoulders back. “I’m back.”
“Back?”
“Back, back,” she confirmed. “My old boss, Kevin Varma, poached me from my LA position. He put me up in Percy Tower until I can find a place in the city.”
“You’re moving back.”
She laughed at my flabbergasted expression. “Yeah. I didn’t think I’d ever do it. My clients were pissed when I told them that I’d be leaving, but the money was too good to turn down. Not to mention, Kevin is bringing me on as a partner.”
“Really?” I asked after schooling my features. “You’re going to run the place?”
“Well, Kevin’s in his late seventies. He has three daughters. None of them followed in his footsteps, and he wants to see his practice, which he brought up from literally nothing, continue. For some reason, he sees me as surrogate family. You’d think I just annoyed him.”
“That’s probably why he thinks you’re family.”
She snorted. “Classic, King. Thanks.”
When she smiled up at me, it felt all strangely normal. Like she hadn’t left for three years and put thousands of miles between us.
Then, her smile dimmed, and she faced forward again. We passed Bergdorf on our left and stepped into the square, where The Plaza resided just off of Central Park. It was a trademark location with an enormous fountain at the center of the square, tourists galore, and even a few horse-drawn carriages.
Our close friends, English and Court, would be married here this fall. It was going to be the wedding of the year. Court’s mother, Leslie Kensington, was the current mayor of New York and determined to have the blowout wedding she had been denied by her younger son. I wouldn’t have blamed English and Court if they’d also eloped in Paris, like Penn and Natalie.
Whitley’s outfit suddenly made sense if she was here to deal with wedding plans. She didn’t care about anyone’s approval and could take the heat off of English.
“Are you here for the wedding?”
Whitley nodded as we crossed the street, narrowly avoiding a gaggle of tourists. “English is frustrated with the wedding planner.”
“And her soon-to-be mother-in-law, I assume.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You have no idea.”
“I think I do. I went to the engagement party.”
Whitley’s cheeks colored. She’d still been in California when that little catastrophe took place.
