Authors: Ellen Lane,Taylor Young
She turned away from the door and collected her breath, not wanting the temptation of watching him get into his expensive car. She felt herself relaxing a bit, each deep breath helping to calm her.
When the digital bell over the door sounded out three seconds later, she let out a little yelp of surprise. She turned to greet the late customer and this time, when she saw Riley standing there, she wasn’t able to unfreeze herself.
“Sorry for startling you,” he said with that same charming smile. “But I had a question.”
“What?” she said, the word coming out of her like nothing more than a puff of wind.”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“No. It’s my day off.” Why are you offering up this information? she asked herself. Lash into the bastard. Show him how angry you are.
“Good,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d have lunch with me.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. For a dizzying moment, she wondered if Brittany or Shelly had snuck into the store and was standing behind her. Surely he was asking one of them out to lunch…
But she was there by herself. This is a trick, she thought. He’s just trying to use you to get to Mr. Farr.
But he thought of what it might be like…even if she was being used, in the long run, it could be fun. She couldn’t even imagine the looks of shock she’d get from Brittany and Shelly if she actually went out to lunch with Riley Thomas.
“Lauren?”
She snapped out of her daze, realizing that he was saying her name. “Yeah?” she said, embarrassed.
He smiles at her again and this time, there was no condensation in it. It was a genuine smile and it made her want to melt.
“Can I take your silence to mean no?”
She shook her head and when the next words came out of her mouth, she nearly fainted. “Sure. We can do lunch tomorrow.”
“Great,” he said. “Do you know where the Pear Tree is?”
She only nodded, knowing that the look of shock on her face had to be comical. But there was no way that she could remove it. It was hard to breathe, hard to think. Was this really happening?
“Can you meet me there at one o’ clock.”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice sounded like a robot and she hated everything about herself as she stood there like a fool with this gorgeous man speaking to her.
“Great,” Riley said. “I’ll see you then.”
“Yes,” she said again. Inside, she thought: You idiot! This is some messed up game he’s playing!
Not that she would have been able to say much of anything anyway, he was back out of the door before she could muster the courage. All Lauren could do was stare out of the display windows as night started to fall, wondering what in the hell had just happened.
***
It wasn’t until she had gotten home and half-collapsed into her recliner that Lauren realized that Riley had asked her to meet him at the Pear Tree. She knew where the place was but had never stepped foot inside of it. She had heard plenty of people rave about it but had also heard about the rigidity of the menu as well. It was the sort of place where a simple dinner would cost nearly an entire day’s worth of wages from the shoe store. And it was Lauren’s opinion that a lunch at Taco Bell was as good as a lunch at an overpriced fine dining establishment.
That might have something to do with all of this extra weight you keep beating yourself up about, she thought to herself.
She tried to get lost in an episode of The Gilmore Girls but wasn’t so lucky. She still tried to get her head around the fact that Riley Thomson had asked her to dinner. When she reached the point where this fact felt as if it would make her head explode, Lauren got up from the recliner, cut off the TV, and headed for her laptop.
She ran a Google search with the terms Riley Thomson, dating, and romance. The results that popped up told her everything she had expected. After about half an hour of reading, she discovered that Riley had dated three different women over the last eight years or so, and that didn’t include the one night stands that she was sure he’d had in between. She was able to find articles with pictures featuring two of the women he had dated and it was just as she had expected. They were slim, gorgeous, and looked as if they had been born to do nothing more than date billionaires. One of them had actually appeared in a rock video and after the breakup, had posed for Playboy.
Surely she had imagined that moment in the store when he had been looking her over. If he had, he would have been disgusted, not interested. It was further proof that he had only asked her so that he could try to further persuade her to give Mr. Farr a nudge in the direction of selling the store.
It made her feel used; that was easy to identify and made sense. But at the same time, there was something exciting about it. While she didn’t know where that excitement came from, she felt pretty sure that it was selfish.
As she looked at the picture of Riley and the Playboy model one last time, she then opened another browser and found the website for the Pear Tree. She found an images page and looked it over, trying to gauge the dress code that was expected. She was relieved to see most people dressed in business casual attire and—
A knock at her door interrupted her. She turned towards the door and was overcome with the certainty that it would be Riley. Of course, that was dumb. He didn’t know where she lived although she felt certain he was the kind of man that could get that information rather easily, she didn’t see him making such a bold move…no matter how cocky and handsome he was.
She answered the door and saw that it was Scott. He was dressed in what she assumed was his night attire—not necessarily pajamas, but what Lauren had always referred to as bedtime clothes. He looked embarrassed and, as always, a little awkward.
“Hey, Scott,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Well, I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I was wondering if I could borrow some ice? My stupid ice maker is jammed again and it’s been a margarita kind of day. I’ve got everything but the ice.”
“Of course, Scott. Come on in.”
He did as she asked, looking all the more awkward as he did so. Lauren had always assumed that he wasn’t very successful with the ladies but also knew that he wasn’t gay because she had been in his apartment and see the Maxim magazines lying around. He also sometimes talked about a woman he had dated just out of college, but nothing deep.
“Margaritas, huh?” she asked as she got a bowl from her cupboard and walked to the fridge. She ran the ice from her ice maker into the bowl and the cubes clinked together as they fell.
“Yeah,” Scott said. “I’m not much a drinker, but I’ve always liked margaritas.”
“I’ve always been fond of martinis,” she said. “But the fruity-tasting ones…not the hard stuff.”
She handed him the bowl and he gave her a smile that made him look a little younger than he actually was. He actually managed to look her in the eye and she found that he was sort of cute in a very innocent and unexpected way.
“Thanks,” he said. He studied the ice for a moment and then looked up at her again. “I’ve got a lot of tequila,” he said. “Plenty of margaritas to go around if you want to come have one with me.”
She felt bad for him because she knew how he felt. Living alone and having no one to love or even to spend much time with was depressing. She knew that asking her such a thing was a huge step for Scott, even if it was an innocent and friendly invitation. If she didn’t have such a big day ahead of her, she thought she might accept the invitation and even allow herself to get a little tipsy.
But that would be bad, given the importance and unpredictability of the next sixteen hours or so of her life.
“Any other time, I really would,” she said. “But I need to turn in soon. I’ve got a lot on my plate tomorrow and I need to rest up. But look… don’t let that detour you. The next time you serve up a batch, let me know. I’ll be there.”
The disappointment on his face was only slight, replaced by what she thought was a genuine smile. “You’ve got it,” he said. “And thanks for the ice.”
She walked him to the door and waved him goodnight. When she closed the door behind him, she chuckled. Two men asking her for her company in a single day. There might have been a time in high school when that had happened, but certainly not since then. It felt surreal.
She took her own advice and decided to shut down for the night. She brushed her teeth and stripped down for bed. As she did so, she looked at her naked body in the mirror. There were a few glimpses of the well-built woman she had once been when she had started college. But it had only taken three years to lose that girl. Studying, a borderline abusive relationship and overall terrible self-esteem had caused her to put on a little over forty pounds in those three years. In the years that followed and led her to the shoe store and a hopeless future, a few more pounds and bene added on and she found herself staring at a reflection that was knocking on the door of two hundred and thirty pounds.
She’d tried the gym, tried eating right, and it had all been temporary. She had dropped down to two hundred and seven pounds at one point, only to hit a valley that she could not get beyond. She had gained the weight back quickly and had adopted a fairly stern fuck-it attitude when it came to her weight.
She shrugged at her naked reflection and then retired to bed. Her thoughts instantly went to the lunch she was scheduled for tomorrow. It made absolutely no sense that she was going to be having lunch with Riley Thomson and part of her feared that it was all part of some elaborate joke. Hell, maybe Brittany and Shelly were behind it.
But she doubted it. And the only way to find out for sure was to just summon up all of her bravery and do it.
With that fragile thought in her head, her worries were momentarily stopped and she was able to get to sleep.
***
The next day, she spent an hour in front of the mirror. She stopped when she felt that she was as pretty as she was going to get. She looked tons better than she did any day at the shoe store and that almost made her take all of the make-up off. Did she really want Riley to see that she had gone to great lengths to look good for him?
She shrugged that concern off as she left her apartment. The Peach Tree was twenty minutes from her building and when she reached her car, it was 11:45. She had decided that she would be just a little late, wanting to make sure she didn’t seem over anxious.
She sat in her car for a moment, the engine running as she remained in the parking space. Do you really want to do this?
The question flashed through her head as if it were in big neon letters, like those in the windows of tacky bars. She knew that there was a very good chance that this was all just a ploy and she had to prepare herself for that. But at the same time, she also knew that her acceptance of his invitation was more of a step towards her own personal development. Showing up at the Peach Tree to have lunch with a billionaire that looked like he had just stepped out of a GQ magazine was something that she had never dreamed she’d do—especially not over the last eight years of her life.
She was doing this for her more than anything else. She wanted to prove to herself that she had the courage to do something like this. She wanted to look past the intimidation that seemed to come off of Riley in waves. If she could do this and come out of it not being a nervous wreck, she imagined that she could do damn near anything.
She smiled warmly, wondering what she might do if she came out of this smelling like roses and Scott invited her over for margarita again. She hadn’t had sex in nearly two years and that had been a brief weekend fling with a guy that had never bothered to call her back and ignored her texts and e-mails. She wondered if Scott had that same cute awkwardness going for him in the bedroom, too.
She shook that thought away, not wanting sex to be on her mind when she sat down face to face with Riley. With a deep sigh, she put her car into Drive and headed out of the parking garage. She had just missed the lunch traffic that usually crawled through her neighborhood Monday through Friday and toyed with the idea of stopping by the shoe store. She wanted to see how Mr. Farr was holding up under the weight of his decision but more than that, she’d love for Brittany and Shelly to see her like this. She’d also love to tell them where she was headed and who she was going to be meeting.
But there was no time for that and the thought of Brittany seeing her so spruced up was just as anxiety-inducing as the thought of sitting at a table with Riley to share a meal.
She looked longingly at the store as she passed it, headed for the Pear Tree. It was 12:02 when she turned onto the street the restaurant was located on and 12:08 when she parked. She got out of the car quickly not allowing herself the time to talk herself out of this. She realized that her knees were trembling, but she tried to will them to stop. By the time she reached the doors of the Pear Tree, she had gotten them under control but then felt like she might have a heart attack.
She walked inside and was impressed that it wasn’t as pretentious of a place as she had assumed. It was easily one of the nicest restaurants she’d been in, but it wasn’t so nice that it was off-putting. A cheerful hostess stood at the podium that separated the entrance from the dining room. She greeted Lauren warmly and the plastic sort of smile she wore reminded her slightly of Shelly.