“So when do you want me to start?”
“I’ll skip the blasé act because I’m desperate. Would tomorrow be too soon?”
A smile curved into place. “Tomorrow would be perfect.” The sooner I got in there and figured out how to weed out Miss Competition, the sooner I could make sure it was my bed Henry would dive into.
“Excellent. I’ll have my receptionist get the paperwork started, and you can finish the rest with her tomorrow morning.”
Not so fast. “Paperwork? Come on, Henry, you want me to fill out an encyclopedia of paperwork? I was practically Mrs. Callahan for Christ’s sake.” My goal had been to dodge the paperwork-with-the-competition bullet, not bring up our prior almost-nuptials. I didn’t know who was more thrown, me or him. Judging by the continued silence, we were pretty even.
“Even if you did become Mrs. Callahan, you would still be required to fill out paperwork if you wanted to sharpen pencils here. Company policy,” Henry replied, but his voice was quiet. Removed.
I gave an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. But if I have to be single-handedly responsible for killing a tree, I’m not trudging through it with some over-smiley, sweater-set wearing receptionist. If you want me on board, you’re suffering through it with me, Chief Executive Officer.”
Was I bluffing? Sure. Most of my job entailed bluffing of some sort. If Henry said he didn’t have the time, desire, or energy to walk me through mind-numbing stacks of paperwork, I wouldn’t have walked away from the job. It meant too much to the outcome of the Errand. However, Henry didn’t know that.
A second went by, then another.
“You drive a hard bargain, Eve, but I need you.”
He’ll need more than my nine-to-five skills when I’m through with him.
“We’ll suffer through a murdered tree of paperwork together. I’ve got meetings in the morning, but how about you meet me for lunch and we’ll get after it?”
All of the pieces were falling into position. A smile moved into place. “Okay. Let’s get after it.”
After agreeing on a time and a place, Henry said he had to hop onto a conference call. “Thanks, Eve. I’m thrilled to have you on board.”
I couldn’t manage a simple
you’re welcome
because Henry’s words bled with sincerity, and even though mine should, I knew they wouldn’t. I should have felt more than welcome to do what I was going to do to Henry after everything he’d put me through. Every piece of me accepted that.
But my damn heart called bullshit.
HENRY HAD SUGGESTED a hole-in-the-wall Irish pub for lunch, which was surprising and yet not surprising. He was one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country. Holding a business lunch at a place that specialized in bangers and mash and pints of beer didn’t exactly equate. But he was still Henry Callahan, the unpretentious, liked-what-he-liked-and-not-because-it-was-popular man.
I made sure I wasn’t the first to arrive. That was another insider trick we Eves had, and more women could benefit from learning, in my opinion. Men were hunters. They liked the chase almost as much as they loved the . . .
rewards
of winning the chase. If a woman wanted to be chased, she sure didn’t get there by showing up to a lunch or dinner date first. No, she got there late—late enough he started to wonder if she’d stood him up. Then, when he was squirming in his chair, she arrived with a small smile, a killer outfit, and the chase was on. If it wasn’t on already. With Henry, I knew he was in some stage of the chase. I just had yet to determine if he was warming up or had already caught his stride.
When I meandered into the Irish pub that smelled as old as the outside looked, I realized I was way overdressed . . . which meant I couldn’t care less. I hadn’t picked out my curve-hugging pencil skirt or sheer blouse to blend in. Nope, my objective was the opposite, and as I glided through that joint, every head that turned proved I’d nailed it.
Every head except for one. Of course it was the one I really needed to give me the once-over, all-over, times-two. But no, he was flipping through a stack of papers and seemed positively riveted. I cursed under my breath. Just when I thought I knew everything there was to know in Henry’s file, he became totally oblivious to the one woman with heels and lipstick in the whole place. Actually, I might have been the
only
woman in the place, but the killer heels and lipstick should have been more attention-grabbing than a big zero. Only when I slid into my seat did Henry notice me.
“Eve, whoa, you kind of snuck up on me.” He dropped the paperwork on the table. “Can I order you something to drink?”
“From how focused you were on that paperwork, I’m certain a herd of stampeding elephants could have snuck up on you just as easily.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ll take a glass of wine. If they serve those here—glasses or wine.”
I gave him a hint of a smile before glancing at his half empty beer. It was lunch hour on a work day, he was halfway into a beer, and he hadn’t ordered lunch yet. I couldn’t say with certainty, but I hoped that had something to do with him needing alcohol to help deal with his feelings for me. Of course, not knowing for sure pissed me off big time, because usually I could tell when I was close to luring a Target into my web. I’d never been so unsure on any Errand.
Of course the uncertainty would be thick when I had the biggest Errand of my career sitting a few feet away of me. Why the hell not?
Finally, Henry checked out my blouse. It wasn’t so sheer he could read what size my bra was if the tag was showing, but it was sheer enough he could make out the subtle outline of my bra . . . and it looked as though Henry was slowly doing that.
It might have been delayed, but the victory was mine nonetheless.
Clearing his throat, he pried his eyes away. “I was so focused on this stack of paperwork because it’s the first time I’ve seen it.” He lifted the first page of an application. “I’m not exactly up-and-up on the administrative tasks in my company.”
I let myself smile. He wouldn’t be getting “up-and-up” on his administrative assistant either because I’d just slipped past the front gates and was days away from usurping her throne.
“And this place does have wine
and
glasses”—he flicked his pint
glass
—“so which kind would you like?”
I leaned forward and looked at him. “You pick.”
Yet another tool in our Eve belt: let the Target order a drink for me, especially if he still seemed on the fence about our anything-but-platonic relationship. Ordering for me made him think about me. It made him wonder if I was a hard alcohol, beer, or wine girl. Once he’d made it that far—and if Henry didn’t arrive at the conclusion that I was a wine girl pretty easily, then I sucked at my job—then he had to consider if I liked white or red. From there, if I liked it sweeter or dryer . . . if I liked a full-bodied red rolling around in my mouth or a smooth, sweet white when I swallowed . . .
Everything can be turned into a game of sexual innuendoes by a woman who knows what she’s doing. Anything. Something as every day as ordering a drink included.
As I let Henry contemplate what wine to order me, he motioned at the bartender, who looked to be the only employee in the place. Hopefully someone was back in the kitchen too. Otherwise we might be waiting a while for our food.
“What the hell is a girl this pretty doing with a guy this ugly?” the aging bartender asked in a thick Irish accent as he approached us.
Henry returned his smile. “That’s classified information, Tom.”
“Eh? About as classified as . . .” Tom stopped at our table and glanced down at the stack of papers. The top sheet had the Callahan Industries name and logo, followed by the words
Employment Application
. “I don’t know whether to applaud you or give you a swift shake for stooping to the terrible cliché of getting a beautiful woman beneath you.”
Henry’s eyes widened as Tom’s did. Mine stayed the same . . . I’d heard and done far worse.
“And by beneath you, I meant strictly in an employment capacity. Not the . . . er . . . the other way.” Tom’s face went a few shades red, then he shot me an apologetic look.
“And here I was thinking I was the only smooth operator out there. Good to know I’ve got company.” Henry winked at Tom before lifting his hand in my direction. “Now that we’re all feeling properly awkward . . . Eve, what would you like to drink? I don’t want to order you the wrong thing and have you turn down the job as my punishment.”
I could have looked for a wine menu—if an Irish pub actually had one—or I could have asked Tom what they served, but that defeated the whole point, right? “I don’t know what they have, and I promise I won’t quit if you order the wrong thing. At least not this time.” I gave him a sly smile. “Besides, you know what I like.” I kept my eyes on Henry’s as he worked out what to order. As he went through the red versus white, sweet versus dry, heavy versus light maze . . . and then . . .
“The lady will have a Guinness,” Henry said confidently, which made me feel less confident.
I’d mentioned wine. I’d been giving the wine vibe. I’d been manipulating the situation so one thought would lead him to the next to the next to thinking about me beneath or on top or sideways in bed with him. I’d done it a hundred times. It wasn’t my first rodeo.
. . . And Henry ordered me a Guinness.
Apparently, it was my first rodeo. Of course Henry would prove to be the one exception to every trick in my book. Why go and make my life easy?
“A beautiful woman who drinks Guinness at lunch.” Tom covered his heart with his hands and glanced at my hand. My
left
hand. “And is single? There’s still hope for me after all.” Wagging his brows at Henry, he winked at me before going back to the bar.
“Yeah, and if I thought you had half a chance with her and were a tenth deserving of her, I might actually introduce you,” Henry called after him.
“Charming guy. Good friend?” I guessed.
Henry raised a shoulder. “Good friend and business partner.”
The not-quite-ancient “charming” man I’d just met couldn’t even get his buttons in the right holes—as I’d just noticed. How he could be anyone’s business partner—Henry’s especially—had to be some kind of joke. I did a mental calendar check. Nope, it wasn’t April first.
“Business partner?
Your
business partner?” My expression mirrored my doubtful tone. “Okay, what are you smoking and can I have some?”
Henry chuckled before taking a sip of his beer. He was drinking a Guinness too, which made me want one that much less. “I miss your sense of humor. The people I work with every day, you’d think they’d never heard of the concept. Certainly none have learned it, let alone mastered it like you have.”
That’s sweet, you’ve missed my sense of humor. Evidently not enough to stay out of another woman’s bed and go on to marry a gem of a woman.
“I’m still waiting for the explanation of that business partner thing you just mentioned.”
Henry motioned at the room around us. “I decided to expand Callahan Industries into the service industry, and you’re looking at the first and sole restaurant under the C.I. umbrella.”
My mouth wanted to, but I didn’t let it fall open. Henry had good business sense, and he could pay experts for their invaluable business sense. Had the entire department been on vacation the day that pub slipped under the C.I. “umbrella”?
“That’s a joke, right?” That was the only reasonable explanation.
“No joke.”
My forehead creased in confusion, which was not an attractive look. I couldn’t afford unattractive looks—even one of them—when I was sitting across from the most difficult, high profile Errand of my career. “You own”—as I scanned the restaurant, I tried not to curl my nose because two unattractive looks in a row was like committing high treason in the Eve world—“this
place
?”
“I
co
-own it. Tom is the other co-owner, but he runs the place. All I do is come in and eat the food and drink the beer.” As proof, Henry lifted his beer and took a drink.
I knew Henry. As much as I hated to admit it, and hated even more that after his betrayal and our years of separation, I still felt like I knew him. It was easy to tell that he’d given me half of the story, but not the important half.
“Are you going to make me pry it out of you, or should I go ask single, lonely Tom, who’d probably sign his
co
-ownership of this place over to me if I batted my eyelashes at him?” To prove my point, I fluttered my eyelashes a few times at Henry.
He smiled. “You got something in your eyes?”
Could I cut a break with my Target? And no, Universe, that was not a rhetorical question. Give me a fucking break already.
I moved to slide out of the seat because it looked like I’d be getting my answers from Tom, but Henry grabbed my arm.
“I used to come to this place a lot when I moved up here after college, when I was in the process of putting my company together,” Henry said as I settled back into my seat. “I can’t count the number of nights he let me camp out at whatever booth I was in, scratching away pages of notes, cranking out code like a mad scientist, after he’d closed and gone to bed in his apartment upstairs. He just told me to help myself to whatever I wanted and to be sure to lock the door on my way out.” Henry smiled as his eyes went to some other time and place. “I conceptualized most of what Callahan Industries started out as in these booths with a few pints of this stuff.” He flicked his Guinness. “A couple years back, Tom had a stroke. Nothing that left him too permanently incapacitated, but he wasn’t able to work for a couple of months. Since he’s pretty much the only person who runs this place, day and night, he had to close it until he could come back.”
I already knew where his story was going. That’s how well I knew Henry. That’s how well I wished with whatever was left of my heart that I
didn’t
know Henry.
“Bills piled up, from the restaurant and the hospital, and no money was coming in. Tom was going to have to close the place. A business he’d opened forty years ago, all because of one terrible, unforeseeable curve life threw him. His whole life was going to be pulled out from beneath him all because of one moment, one instant.” Henry’s eyes were still in that far off place, but I couldn’t help wonder if the story had shifted from Tom to someone else whose life had changed in one moment from one accident.