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“Hey! At least I try. I go on dates every week,” she answered with a snarl, and I couldn’t hide my shock. “And I think I might really like the girl I met last weekend.”
“How the hell do you meet so many girls anyway, Sanderson?”
Sometimes, I called Kayla by her last name. She always pretended to hate it, but I knew she loved it. I’d overheard her on the phone one time, telling someone that it made her feel like she was part of a team.
Groaning, she said, “It’s called dating apps, genius. You should try one.”
“Not gonna happen.” I wasn’t opposed to dating apps for other people, but there was something about them that didn’t appeal to me. They were the very last thing I could ever see myself doing.
“Well, how did you find the women you sleep with now?” she asked.
I realized that I’d never really talked about this with Kayla before. While she knew far more about my life than anyone else, that always felt like crossing the line. I hesitated before she prodded.
“Just tell me. I know everything else about you.”
I huffed out and said it all in rapid-fire before I could second-guess and stop myself. “One lives in my building, and the other one is an old business associate.”
“How convenient.” She sounded a little annoyed while I sat there, surprised that she could even understand what I’d said in the first place. I chalked it up to another one of her female superpowers. “Well, for the rest of us, we have to use dating apps. Do you know how hard it is to meet someone?”
“No,” I answered honestly because it was the truth. “Because I’m not trying to meet anyone, remember?”
“Ugh! See, you’re not even open to the possibility of love. This is why your mom is never going to leave and live her life. Ever. She’s going to sit here and babysit you until she dies. And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
She was baiting me, pushing my buttons, hoping I’d snap. But my assistant knew me better than that.
“I’m not open to loveright now.” I emphasized the timing. “I’m still earning our clients’ trust and trying to expand our company internationally. You know that. My mother knows that. I don’t have time for a relationship. It wouldn’t be fair to expect anyone to try to be with me right now.”
My dad had built an empire with Martin Staffing and Management in New York, but it was my dream to take it abroad. The majority of our clients had multiple offices located across the globe, and it was a missed opportunity to only focus on their stateside ones. It’d become my goal to expand our company to Europe—London specifically—and I didn’t have time for distractions. Not until I made this a reality.
“I know, but your mom needs to think that you’re trying to have a life outside of this building.”
“So, what do we do?” I acquiesced because I knew I had no choice.
“Let me go back to my desk and think about this for a second. You have a meeting in five minutes anyway. We’ll reconvene after it ends,” she said.
Before I could respond, she was out the door, and I was alone.
PAYING FOR DATES
JOSEPH
When my meeting ended, Kayla popped back into my office, uninvited, and sat back down.
I glanced at her. “You thought of something?”
“Yeah. But you’re not going to like it.” She shook her head and made a face that told me I definitely wasn’t going to like what she suggested.
“What is it?”
“There are some firms that specialize in this kind of thing.” She said the words so quietly that my brain almost didn’t pick up exactly what she was saying.
But when it clicked into place, I mentally took back my previous thought about dating apps and decided thatthiswas the very last thing I would do to meet a woman.
“I know you’re about to freak out, but just listen.” She put one hand in the air toward my face to get me to stop talking before I even started, but it didn’t work.
“No. I can’t do that. I can’t go to some firm to find a date!”
“But it’s not real. You’d just be paying her to be your fake date.” She couldn’t even get the words out without giggling.
