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“Then let me catch up.” Theo lifts a finger at a passing server and asks for another round for Dexter and one for himself. “Okay, now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s talk business and women, but not necessarily in that order.”
Dexter runs a hand through his hair and laughs at Theo’s rakish grin; his old friend is an incorrigible flirt and always has been. The men had attended Oxford together fifteen years prior, and Dexter remembers being in awe of how women flocked to Theo, with his handsome male model face and his devilish laugh and sense of humor. It hadn’t surprised him at all when Theo had gotten hired on at the BBC and been made a foreign correspondent, but it had made it more difficult for the old friends to meet up and have a drink.
“I’m afraid my business and my women are overlapping at this point,” Dexter says, rolling up the sleeves of his well-worn denim button-up shirt and pushing them to his elbows. He sits back in the booth and lifts his whiskey glass. “So you go first. Tell me what you got for work, then tell me how many women you’re currently promising to make the future Mrs. Harris.”
Theo makes a face. “I’ve decided that there will never be a Mrs. Harris other than my mum. I’m done with women.” He knocks back his first sip of whiskey and pulls a different face than the one he’d made thinking about marriage. “That’s good,” he says, setting the glass on the table.
“Huh,” Dexter says, trying to stifle his amusement.
Theo holds up a hand. “No, no—I won’t take any cheek off of you, North. Don’t you dare ask me if I’ve sworn off women and decided to try men.”
Dexter shrugs innocently. “Hey, you’ve always had that big, unacknowledged crush on me, so I thought maybe…”
The men laugh like teenage boys at the dumb joke, and the waitress comes back to take their order.
“Two filets, medium rare,” Dexter says, handing over their menus. “And thick-cut fries, please.”
Theo drags his whiskey glass through the condensation on the table as he leans forward on one elbow. “So, yeah, the ladies have given me enough gray hairs for the time being.” He hastily grabs a fistful of his artfully messy hair as proof, then lets go. “So I’m just doing the casual thing while I travel.”
“As in one night stands?” Dexter tips his head at the bar, where two young women on stools are fighting hard not to get caught ogling Theo. It doesn’t matter how many times it’s happened, Dexter still marvels at the magnetic pull Theo’s face and presence has on women he’s never even spoken to.
Theo looks casually in the direction of the women, lifting his left eyebrow half an inch and dismissing the women with one twitch of his eye. “Yes,” he says, “but no,” he adds, glancing at the women again. “Too young. I’ve had my eye on sexymaturewomen of late. In fact, I recently had a fling with a woman of a certain age, and she quite nearly broke my heart.” He puts one hand on his chest and winces for effect. “But that won’t keep me from searching for the right one.”
“The right older woman?” Dexter asks, his lips quirking as he tries not to smile. “Maybe all you need is to head home for a visit and some home-cooking from the original—and apparently the only—Mrs. Harris.”
“Mum?” Theo laughs and throws an arm over the back of the booth while they wait for their steaks. “Yeah, I should visit her, to be honest. But work has kept me on the go. Serbia, Croatia, Puerto Rico, and I just arrived here in New York straight off a trip to Japan.”
“We’re going at this backwards, given that I asked for your work news first, but that’s great, Theo. You’re busy, you look well, and I read your latest piece—“
“The one that ran today about how the Japanese population is aging and putting the country in a perilous position economically?”
“Yes, the one about impending doom, a collapsing economy, and what sounds like our eventual future here in the States.”
The waitress sets the steaks in front of the men, who order another round of drinks.
“Fabulous trip to Japan, that was,” Theo says, cutting into his steak hungrily. “Depressing as all hell. Now tell me about your tangled web of work and women,” he adds waving a fork around with one hand and his knife in the other. He resumes his cutting and puts the first bite of steak into his mouth.
Across the bar, the women who have been watching him openly stare; they look on orgasmically as his lips move and he chews his meat. Dexter averts his gaze so that he doesn’t laugh out loud.
“All of this is off the record and strictly between friends,” Dexter says, lifting his own fork and knife and holding them gingerly. “The book is going well—you know I’m working on the one about Jack Hudson through the eyes of his First Lady—and we’ve covered a lot of ground.”
“We’re talking about that saucy little minx, are we? Ruby Hudson?” Theo’s eyebrow shoots up past the half-inch mark this time and he looks like a fox in a henhouse. “Averysexy and more mature woman. And a widow, if memory serves…” he jokes, because of course the entire world knows Ruby’s story. “Perhaps I could get her number?”
To his surprise, Dexter feels a bit territorial in the face of his old friend’s teasing. “Ruby is amazing,” he says, finally cutting a piece of steak. “And that’s the problem, really.”
Theo chews thoughtfully, realization dawning on his handsome face. “Ohhh, you fancy her, do you? You old goat!”
“I feel…conflicted,” Dexter admits, choosing his words carefully. “She’s smart and funny, and she’s a very devoted mother. When I’m with her, or when we’re having a Zoom call late at night, which is primarily how we work, I forget entirely that we’re on a mission. I forget that I need to be professional and that I’m not a part of her story.”
“But you want to be,” Theo says, jabbing his knife in the air triumphantly. “I see you now, Dexter. Making a move on the former First Lady. Nice work, if you can get it.”
“But I’m not,” Dexter says, leaning across the table, dropping his voice, and glancing behind him over one shoulder to make sure no one is listening. “I’mnotmaking a move on the former First Lady.” The bar is playing jazz, and a saxophone solo rings out as Dexter searches for the right words. “I’m just finding that the more time I spend with her, the more I care about her. In a not very professional way. Which is…”
“Not very professional,” Theo says dismissively, nodding. “Yeah, yeah—I get it. But sometimes the heart wants what it wants, right?”
“But the publishing house also wants what it wants, and what itpaidme is a staggering advance for a book that I need to produce.”
“And if you spend any more time with her you’re not going to be able to resist, right? You’re going to go crazy, like the madman you are, and rip your—“
