babies, all they do is lie there and look at you, commanding that you do everything for them. When they’re children, they’re constantly into things they shouldn’t be into—you have to watch them every moment of the day. When they’re adolescents...hell, forget about that. And when they’re adults, they’re completely ungrateful for everything you ever did for them, for every sacrifice you ever made.”
He sipped his drink again before continuing, “Don’t tell me you’re surprised by the way I feel. You don’t exactly seem like the kind of woman who wants to be dragged down by a passel of kids. You seem to enjoy being single.”
“Oh, I love being single. But I also love kids.” She bent beneath the bar and appeared to be searching for something, then rose again with a wallet in her hand. She flipped it open and thumbed through a bulging collection of photographs housed in the plastic sheets contained within. “This is my nephew, Simon,” she said as she opened her wallet on the bar before Chase. “He’s the most wonderful baby in the world. Look at that smile. You can’t tell me you don’t think he’s adorable.”
Chase offered the photo a perfunctory scan, pretended to be interested and replied dryly, “Adorable. Look, I’m starving. What’s good tonight?”
Sylvie sighed and shook her head at him again. She seemed to be doing that a lot this evening, he thought. As if she were considering him for some major project only to find him lacking in some way. Or maybe not lacking, he amended when she continued to study him as she put her wallet away. That look in her eye was distinctly...interested.
He pushed the supposition away. Probably he was working too hard lately. No doubt he was thoroughly misreading the signals Sylvie was sending his way. She had never once offered him any indication that she wanted to get to know him better, and having heard her bemoan the shortcomings of some of the men in her life, he knew he was in no way her type.
And even if he was, even if she ever did come on to him, Chase knew he would never succumb. It was nothing personal, he reflected. If he were to get intimately involved with a woman right now, he supposed Sylvie was a likely enough candidate to fit the bill. But involvements led to entanglements, and entanglements led to relationships. And relationships, he thought, simply commanded too much time to keep them running properly. Time was a precious commodity. He had very little of it to spare. Therefore a relationship with a woman was the last thing he could afford.
Watching Sylvie as she strode to the end of the bar for a menu, he sighed wistfully. But maybe he had gone too long without the intimate aspects of a relationship, he conceded. When was the last time he’d made love to a woman, anyway? he asked himself now. And who was the last woman he’d made love to? He thought back, trying to recall the details.... His eyes widened when he remembered. No, surely it couldn’t have been that long ago, he told himself. Could it? He shook his head in disbelief. Obviously he really didn’t have time for a relationship.
If only he could find a nice woman with whom he could share a brief, one- or two-time interlude and call it quits. Unfortunately, most of the women who could provide such an encounter did it for a living, and that wasn’t exactly the kind of woman Chase had in mind. He couldn’t make love to a stranger, nor to someone who chose sex for her occupation. For his fantasy fling, he wanted a woman he cared for to at least some degree—and who cared for him in return—but who wouldn’t demand all of his attention after it was over.
“Yeah, right,” he muttered to himself. And what self-respecting woman would concede to an arrangement like that? No one of his acquaintance, that was for sure.
He looked up from his drink and saw Sylvie standing before him, holding a menu out for his inspection.
“Sounds wonderful to me,” she said. “Want to give it a try?”
For one wild moment Chase thought she was offering herself up for just the kind of hit-and-run encounter he had just been imagining. Then he realized she must have been talking to him for several moments without his listening, and that he’d only heard the conclusion of her speech.
“What?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else. Could you go over that again?”
She gazed back at him with much interest, and he just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was evaluating him in some way. However, when she spoke, her voice held its usual careless timbre, and the choices she offered him were anything but erotic in nature.
“I was telling you that Cosmo is really pushing the free-range chicken tonight, and having had it for dinner myself, I can tell you it’s delicious. But the shrimp étouffée also sounds wonderful to me. I know you love seafood. You want to give that a try instead?”
Chase gazed at her for a moment before replying, noting for the first time that Sylvie really did have the most beautiful blue eyes he’d ever seen. Not a pale, glassy blue, but a deep, midnight blue that bordered on violet. He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed before.
“Uh, surprise me,” he finally said, not altogether certain he was talking exclusively about his dinner selection. “I’m not really sure what I want.”
“Okay.”
As she turned to ring up his order, he observed with much interest the efficiency of her actions. He liked to watch Sylvie. She moved freely and easily, completely unconscious of her own gestures, utterly comfortable in her surroundings and with herself. That was something Chase had never quite been able to master in himself. There was still a lingering essence of self-consciousness within him, a quiet little voice that would never quite let him forget the meagerness of his beginnings or the fear that he might end up a nobody.
Yet he never tried to completely quell his fears. Because he knew they were what caused him to be so driven. Success and wealth had come to him earlier than he had anticipated, and now that he’d had a taste of how good life could be, he’d be damned if he’d ever do anything to jeopardize his position.
Even if that meant spending the rest of his life alone, he thought. In the long run, he knew he’d be a happier man because of it.
* * *
After ringing in Mr. Buchanan’s order, Sylvie handed it off to one of the waiters headed back to the kitchen, almost hitting her co-worker in the face with it as he passed. She apologized sheepishly as she spun back around. Business at Cosmo’s that evening had been slow, even for a Tuesday night, but her timing had been off completely since coming in to work several hours ago. As she frequently did at times like this, she couldn’t help wondering yet again why she hadn’t put her degree in humanities to better use than tending bar.
Maybe, she decided as she ran a blue grease pencil under the last of the drinks orders at the service bar, it was because no matter how hard she looked, there was never, ever a listing in the classified ads under the heading Humanities.
“Order up, Sylvie.”
She spun around to find one of the waiters scooting a plate of oysters Rockefeller precariously close to the edge of the bar, and she snatched it up just as it was about to go over the side.
“Keith!” she called out to the swiftly departing server after she’d placed the appetizer in front of a well-dressed couple seated at the bar.
Keith turned. “What is it? I’m in the weeds big time.”
She threw him what she knew was her most beguiling smile. “Got a minute?”
He smiled back as he
