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“Are you nervous?” Eden asks me as I hold the door open for her as we enter the restaurant for lunch.
We’re going to grab something to eat, go over some notes for our meeting one last time, and then it will be time to head over to Grainer’s office building to finalize this deal.
“Why would I be nervous? I’ve closed a hundred deals. This one is no different.”
Eden just rolls her eyes, smiling slightly as we wait at the hostess stand to be seated.
“Table for two?” the girl asks and I let Eden answer for us.
“Yes. Can we get a booth, please?”
I follow after them, trying my hardest not to check Eden out, but she’s wearing the tight red dress that I love with the bright red heels she somehow convinced me to buy for her last year at Christmas. They cost two grand but they sure were worth it.
We’re seated by a window toward the back of the restaurant and I reach over, taking some of the papers and envelopes out of Eden’s hands.
“Thanks,” she says as I drop down across from her.
I don’t respond to that, setting my own notes down next to me as the waitress comes over to take our drink orders.
“Just a water for me. Coke with no ice for her,” I rattle off, doing my best to ignore the sultry look the waitress is trying to give me.
I don’t want to encourage her. She doesn’t hold a candle to Eden and I’m not one to settle for second best.
“I’ll give you a few minutes to look over the menu,” she says, her fingers trailing lightly up my arm as she turns to leave.
I jerk away from her, giving her a dark look as she walks away from our table. Eden is laughing at me when I turn back around and I give her a dirty look, which only makes her laugh harder.
“You don’t scare me,” she taunts and I pass her a menu, opening my own and blocking my view of her.
“What looks good?” she asks me as I set my menu aside.
I don’t know why she does this. Every single time we eat out together, she spends twenty minutes staring at the menu, making me wait to place my own order, before she orders the same thing as every other time.
Our waitress comes back to the table, setting down our drinks. I grit my teeth when I see the ice in Eden’s Coke. Our waitress makes goo-goo eyes at me, but I ignore her, picking up my menu and rattling off our orders.
“I’ll take the Wagyu steak, rare, with a side of broccoli and mashed potatoes. She’ll have the Wagyu burger with bacon added. And I asked for no ice in the Coke,” I say, passing her the Coke glass and sliding Eden’s menu out of her hand.
I hand the waitress our menus, careful not to touch her in the process, and then go back to ignoring her as she turns and stomps off. Eden doesn’t say anything about me ordering for her. I’m not sure that she even noticed because she’s too busy emailing someone on her phone.
Her new Coke, sans ice, is set down in front of her and I nudge it away from her laptop a bit. I pull my own notes out, trying to concentrate on them, but I can’t seem to focus. I’m not worried, though. I know this deal forward and backward.
My salad and her soup are put down in front of us and I grab my fork, spearing a piece of lettuce. I eat a few bites before I notice that Eden hasn’t looked up from her laptop. I nudge her with my foot under the table, handing her a spoon when she finally looks up.
“Oh, thanks,” she says distractedly.
It’s going to be one of those lunches, then.
Eden might complain about my long hours and me being a workaholic, but the fact is that she works just as hard as I do.
I finish off my salad and keep nudging Eden, reminding her to eat every few minutes. She’s probably replied to two dozen emails by the time our first course is done.
“Did you want to look at some more properties while we’re here? I can set that up if you do,” she says, setting her empty soup bowl aside.
“No, I’m going to see how the Grainer’s property does first before I come back to Las Vegas.”
Eden nods, making a note on her laptop.
“D.R.’s assistant is still giving me trouble. Can we never do business with them again?” she pleads as our soup and salad bowls are cleared away and our entrees are set down.
