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“Keto,” Heath corrects and sits back, a smirk coming over his face. “She was on keto and wouldn’t eat pasta. I don’t think you’ll have the same trouble feeding Ivy. She is very food focused.”
“Well, I like a young woman with a healthy appetite.” Lydia leans toward me. “Tell me about your family, dear. Where are they from?”
“Hell’s Kitchen.” Crap. We’ve gotten to the interrogative portion of the meal. The one Heath warned me about. “I mean that’s where we’ve lived my whole life. My dad was from Queens, though. He died when I was a kid, so it’s just me and my mom.”
“What about your grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins?” Lydia asks the question like she can’t think of anything worse than not having a large group of nosy relatives hanging around all the time.
Maybe the only thing worse is having one relative who is mostly disinterested. “I don’t have those. Mom and Dad were only children, and I only met my mom’s mom a couple of times. She moved to Boca Raton to retire and didn’t visit much. She died a couple of years back, but she had a great tan.”
Lydia seems to take this information with a steady resolve to dig deeper. “And your mother? What does she do?”
“Mostly complain,” I reply.
Heath snorts and shakes his head. “Her mom is a legal secretary for a big law firm here in the city.”
Well, someone has been listening to me. I would bet Nick couldn’t tell me what my mom did for a living, and we were together for three years. “That’s my mom. She helps people get divorced and screw each other over.”
Lydia nods like I’ve given her important information.
I suddenly feel like a bad guest. I’m being more honest than polite. “This is very delicious. Thank you so much. I’m enjoying it immensely.”
Heath sends me an oddly approving look. “Told you. Highly food motivated. Your kind of girl, Nonna.”
She winks his way. “I knew one day you would bring one home. Well, eat up, my dear, but save some room. I made a cheesecake.”
I close my eyes and thank the universe for bringing me here.
Forty minutes later, I sit on the balcony with Lydia, a tray of tea between us and Heath somewhere in the living room trying to fix the TV because the Netflix has gone out. I offered to delete and reinstall the app—which usually fixes things—but she’d insisted Heath was the only one in the world who knows how to deal with her old television.
It didn’t look that old to me. I’d gotten a tour of the apartment, and it did nothing to change my mind about the family money. The whole place is lovely and I would bet it’s gone through a renovation in the last couple of years because everything is modern.
It makes me wonder why Heath came to me.
Except I know some of it. His grandmother isn’t fully behind the project. She might not want to sink her money into something she doesn’t believe in. Or she might know it’s best for family to stay family and not go into business together.
“So you and Heath met via a mutual friend.” Lydia sips her tea. “Which friend?”
Ah, so my interview is not over. I wonder if she futzed with the TV to buy herself more time. She seems crafty that way. “Harper Ross. One of his cousins works for her construction company.”
She nods. “Yes, the one on his mother’s side. So Harper is a woman and she runs a construction company. That’s very interesting. Such a man’s world.”
“She inherited it from her dad. He built a lot of the buildings here in the city,” I explain. It’s easier to talk about my friends. “She oversees those constructions, but she herself specializes in renovations. I’ve often thought she should have her own home improvement show. It would be better than what Ani’s working on.”
“Ani is your other friend?”
“Yes. Anika. She works in television production. She’s not the money behind it. She helps run the shows. She’s a production assistant, but they’re talking about giving her more responsibility. I don’t know exactly what she does, but she might be doing it for a show called The King Takes a Bride. And saying the name makes me vomit a little in my mouth.”
“Is it one of those Bachelor shows?” Lydia looks properly horrified.
I nod. “Except with the king of a small European country, so some skinny model wannabe is going to be a queen and Anika will likely be getting them all coffee. Or whatever the king drinks. As a professional matchmaker, what is your opinion of a dude dating fifteen women at the same time and slowly dropping them off one by one?”
“That it sounds rather like a murder show,” she muses. “At least it would turn me into a murderer. No. That is not the way to find a life partner. I think the best way is to spend a lot of time with one person, to see how it feels to have that person in your life. If you’re building something at the same time, that’s simply a plus.”
