A spoonful of cake and ice cream stopped midway into my mouth. I placed it back down on my plate, my appetite for it sufficiently culled. “I’m sure I did not hear you correctly. I would expect Grandmother to be sitting in front of me telling me this, but not you.”
My grandfather actually looked ashamed of himself. I took a small comfort in it.
“I’m sorry Alex. I told her it was nonsense and not to meddle but you know how she is. She’s had these ideas in her head ever since your mother was about your age.” The light in his eyes dimmed at the mention of my mother. “You know how that fared. I know nothing will come of it. I know you Alex, and the two of you would never make a good match. But indulge your grandmother just one time and go to dinner with him.”
“I won’t for her, but I will for you. There’s no sense in her badgering the both of us. If I say no, she will only keep hounding you to get me to say yes.”
“Thanks. Name your price,” he leaned over the table and whispered to me conspiratorially.
A smile spread across my face at the memory of him doing the exact same thing with me as a kid when my grandmother and I disagreed about something and he played peacemaker. “Anything?” I used the same wide-eyed tone I used to ask that question in as a child.
He reached across the table and tussled my hair. Leaving it sticking up at different angles on my head. “Anything, sweetheart.”
I couldn’t hold back the laughter at the hilarity of our reenactment a moment longer. I laughed and he laughed with me.
As a kid I would have had a list a mile wide. A new bike, a new pair of skates, sold out concert tickets, once I’d even asked for a trip to Europe. I’d gotten all of it. As an adult, there was nothing I wanted that I couldn’t get for myself.
Except….
“Can you get me out of going to the Met Gala?”
He winked at me across the table. “Consider it done.”
Benjamin Monahan called later that evening but not too late. Anytime past ten would have been improper. He asked me to dinner the next night and I cordially agreed.
He picked me up from my apartment in Midtown on Friday at seven pm sharp. I chose to wear a black pencil skirt that stopped about mid-thigh, a peach colored chiffon blouse and black stiletto heels. I might not be too particularly keen on going on this date my grandmother had used my grandfather to rope me into, but I was just conceited enough to want to look good when a past classmate saw me for the first time since high school and my tomboy years.
Ben wore dark slacks, leather loafers, and a teal polo shirt. Just as I remembered, he kept his sandy brown hair cut low and brushed neatly out of a face that boasted a lean aquiline nose and a slightly butted yet elegant chin. He presented at my door with a bouquet of long stemmed red roses then walked me to his black Mercedes sedan parked in one of the spaces marked “Visitor” outside of my apartment building. He opened the passenger door for me, closed it after I slid into the car, then primly walked to the driver side.
The drive to the Sun Dial, a five star restaurant situated on top of the Westin in downtown Atlanta, was short and uneventful. Ben drove with his hands gripping the wheel at the ten and two positions. His eyes never left the road, he always used a turned signal and our speed did not once accelerate above the posted limit.
We left the car with the valet and the luxury hotel’s concierge tipped his head to us as we entered through the large glass revolving door. We rode the elevator in silence to the top floor of the hotel. A chiming noise indicated its doors were about to open. Ben stepped forward as they did and held one arm out for me to pass in front of him.
The hostess politely greeted us.
She located our reservation for two under “Monahan” then led us to an exclusive table nestled by a glass window that provided the best view of the city the restaurant had to offer. A waitress immediately appeared behind her, dutifully waited for us to place our food and drink orders, then promised to return quickly with our meal.
“So how’s Harvard?” I attempted to make conversation.
The waitress reappeared with a glass of water for him and a sweet tea for me. He waited for her to sit the crystal glass on the table in front of him then took a sip out of it.
“Harvard is great. The classes are challenging, but that is to be expected. I have to return from Spring Break a day early for Lacrosse practice and to prepare for the office elections for my Fraternity. I am running for President.”
Of course he was. Benjamin Monahan was
the
All-American wonder boy hailing from one of Atlanta’s old money families who could trace their lineage through Harvard since its inception. He was classically handsome with impeccable manners and flawless etiquette. His father had been grooming him since birth to take over the family’s fortune five hundred corporation, eventually run for Governor and live in the Governor’s mansion like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him, then accomplish a feat the Monahan family had been gunning for for generations but could never quite clinch— run for President and make a home in the nation’s capital.
“First President of your college Fraternity then President of the greatest nation in the world,” I teasingly smiled at him across the table.
It was no secret that Ben was the Monahan family’s golden boy. He had four other brothers and two sisters, but their grandfather, the patriarch of the family, had hand picked him to be its crowning jewel. If you asked me, it was a hell of a lot of pressure to live up to. Bur Ben seemed comfortable, even at home, in the role. Since we were kids he always had to be the best at everything and the one recognized above all others for his excellence. He wasn’t haughty or annoyingly arrogant about it. He simply owned the mark of greatness that had been placed on him at birth, inherited simply by virtue of being born a Monahan.
“That is the idea. Though I am sure there will be great strides that need to be taken between one and the other,” he smiled back over the table at me.
His smile was brilliant and charming and I could absolutely see why page 6 of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was calling him “Atlanta’s most eligible young bachelor.” Apparently my grandmother agreed with the AJC editors because she was the mastermind behind this little “dinner date” of ours.
In my grandmother’s eyes my father had been a regular middle class Joe-Shmoe. He’d grown up in Douglasville, a suburb of Atlanta, and had attended Yale on an academic scholarship where his and my mother’s paths had crossed. My mother on the other hand had been a very non-regular, very above average, high society southern belle. Like the Monahan’s, the Sinclair family hailed from old money. Though my mother’s family was less concerned with political glory and more concerned with building a real estate empire. Sinclair Enterprises owned or at least had a hand in more than two-thirds of the prime real estate development projects in downtown Atlanta and the surrounding, equally high-valued neighborhoods of Buckhead, Midtown, and Perimeter.
The Sinclair and the Monahan families were close bosom buddies and had been for generations. They each had multiple hands in the other’s financial ventures. My grandmother had conspired to make the families even closer, merging them as one with the union of my mother to Ben’s father. My mother thwarted that carefully laid out plan when she fell for my father and married someone with the lowly aspirations of practicing medicine.
Only in my grandmother’s shallowly fucked up, pretentious world would an M.D not be a good enough occupation. Setting me up to have dinner with Benjamin Monahan while he was home for Spring Break was my grandmother’s woefully transparent attempt to rekindle her efforts to merge our families. I knew it. She knew it. My grandfather knew it. And Ben knew it too. I’d only agreed because she’d vetted the request through my grandfather, knowing I never say no to him.
“How are you liking Emory?” Ben asked me.
“It’s not
Harvard
but I love it.”
“I was surprised when I heard that is where you ended up. I know how much Mrs. Sinclair was pushing for Yale. You’re got to be the first Sinclair not to attend in decades.”
During our exchange the waitress returned with our food. She quietly sat out plates in front of us, asked us if there was anything else we needed, and left us to our dinner when we replied there was not.
We ate in silence. As we did so, my gaze wandered to the enormous window to my left. I stared out of it at the lit up city below us. I loved downtown Atlanta’s skyline. The way it sparkled with the brilliance of a million precious jewels against the backdrop of the night sky was one of my favorite things about the city. The Sun Dial was famous for the breathtaking panoramic view it provided of the city. It sat atop one of the tallest skyscrapers in downtown and literally rotated three hundred and sixty degrees in the sky.
Halfway through our meal, the last person I expected to see, the same person I’d been pointedly avoiding, walked through the door. I spotted Chase the minute he entered the restaurant and approached the hostess. He said something to her that made a look of hesitation cross her face. He gave her one of his signature charm-the-panties-off-of-any-girl-within-a-five-mile-radius smiles and she didn’t hesitate to point him in the direction of our table. She also didn’t hesitate to press a folded slip of paper into the palm of his hand which I was sure contained her phone number.
Hmm!
I thought followed by:
Good. Maybe if someone else caught his attention he would pay less of it to me.
My heart beat in my chest a mile a minute as Chase approached our table.
Why was he here? Did he come looking for me? How did he know where to find me?
The left corner of his mouth curved up in response to my bewildered look.
“Alex,” he said pulling up a chair from a nearby table and straddling the back of it. “I thought you were sick?”
“Chase,” I said by way of greeting trying not to give away that I’d been caught in a lie. I had to concentrate really hard not to sound breathless. “I am. I mean I was. I feel better now.”
Ben cleared his throat and Chase didn’t bother to spare him a glance. It was a bastard move. It was a Bennett-type move.
Okay
.
This is a new side of him I haven’t seen before.
“Ben, this is Chase. We work together. Chase, Ben. We went to high school together. Our families are close.”
His jaw ticked at my introduction. “Charming,” he drawled. He spared Ben a glance over his shoulder then turned his attention back to me.
“Alex,” Ben interjected. “Is there going to be a problem here? I would rather not be a part of a scene.”
I looked around the restaurant. The snooty diners sitting around us were looking at our table, at Chase in particular, with ghastly expressions of varying degrees. He wore relaxed fitting, dark denim jeans that sat low on his hips and were much to casual for a five star restaurant. But that wasn’t what caused them to stare. It was the black combat boots and leather jacket coupled with his slightly wild, tousled hair and the shadows that moved within his stare darkening his sapphire eyes to midnight that made them gape. He looked dark and dangerous and…
sexy as all hell.
I ignored that last part.
Chase looked at Ben in a slow and intimidating perusal. “You’re free to leave then.”
I looked from Chase to Ben and then back to Chase again. “What the hell are you doing here? No, don’t answer that. Not now anyway. You should go and we can talk later. I’m in the middle of something right now.”
He leaned over the back of the chair, relaxing into it and making himself comfortable. “First, I don’t think I’m going anywhere. And second, you are most definitely in the middle of something. But we both know it’s not with him.”
“I think I will be going now,” Ben cut in. “I’ll take care of the bill on my way out.” He gave me a tight-lipped smile then wasted no time standing from the table and leaving.
“What the fuck?” I hissed at Chase.
“Ditto, Alex. What the fuck? You’ve purposely been avoiding me.”
The waitress reappeared at the table and collected the half-eaten plates.
I reached into my clutch and held a twenty out to her. “This should cover the tip.”
She waved it off. “My tip was taken care of when the meal was paid for. It was more than generous.”
I continued to hold it out. “Take it anyway.” She looked like she was about my age. She wore a necklace bearing Georgia Tech’s logo. She was probably working to help put herself through college.
“Thanks,” she said grinning and taking the money. When she looked at Chase the grin spread even wider. “For what it’s worth this one seems way more interesting than the other one.”
Chase chuckled. “Of course I am. I’m way hotter too.” He said the words to her but winked at me.
The waitress walked away from the table literally fanning herself.
I took a deep, calming breath before speaking to him. Raising my voice would only cause the people around us to stare more. No doubt my grandmother would hear about this not two minutes after she stepped into her country club in the morning. If Mrs. Monahan didn’t tell her, I was sure I’d spotted Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick at a table when we’d walked in. They would tell her. I closed my eyes against the coming storm that would stir up. When I opened them again, Chase was looking at me curiously.
“What?” I snapped and for all my efforts my voice still came out louder than I intended it to.
“You’re cute when you’re annoyed.” He gave me another one of those panty-melting grins of his.
“I am not
cute
,” I spat at him. “Puppies are cute, kittens are cute, five year old girls with pig-tails and missing teeth are cute.”