and she felt her resolve melting. She was hungry. And they had a lot of work ahead of them. It made sense to fuel up before they got started.
“All right. Dinner. But I’ll pay. And I’ll choose the place.”
“You’ve got a deal,” he said, smiling triumphantly.
“Good. Meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes,” she said.
That gave her time to come up with a game plan for winning the promotion...and keeping her clothes on this weekend.
* * *
Mark paced in front of the glass doors that marked the entrance to SBD, dodging tourists with every turn.
He’d arrived at the designated spot on time. Unfortunately Becky was nowhere in sight. Just like a woman, he found himself thinking. Probably trying to figure out how big his bank account was. Then he caught himself. Where had that come from?
Surely David couldn’t be rubbing off on him already?
Just then Becky burst through the doors. The killer green dress was gone. In its place was a pair of worn-looking jeans and a baggy rust-colored sweater. And damn if she didn’t look just as good.
“There you are,” he said. “Where are we off to, chief?”
She looked up at him and he noticed her face was scrubbed free of makeup. Without it, she looked all of nineteen.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said. “Come on.”
He followed her as she wound her way through the congested city streets, ignoring the pressing crowds as only a seasoned New Yorker could.
“So, are you from here?” he asked.
She seemed to hesitate before answering. “No. But I like to pretend that I am.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of that statement, so he ignored it. “Then where are you from?”
“Detroit,” she said shortly.
“Ah. Where the weak get killed and eaten, huh?”
“Or pushed to the end of the unemployment line,” she said. Then, seeming to realize that she was being rude, she smiled up at him. “How ’bout you? Where’s your magic come from?”
“Oh, here and there,” he said. “I moved around a lot.” From boarding school to summer camp to anywhere else his mother had been able to think of sending him that kept him far from home.
Looking around, he realized they were standing at the corner of Fifty-Third and Sixth. Tourist central.
“Hungry for some overpriced deli sandwiches?” he asked.
“Nope. Just spicy deliciousness,” she said, pointing to a food cart.
“Really?”
“Don’t look so surprised. It’s the best halal cart in town. And it’s cheap.”
A few minutes later, when they were seated on a bench with their plastic containers on their laps, he had to admit that she knew what she was talking about.
“This is good,” he said between bites of lamb and rice. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a street food kind of girl.”
“Really? What do I seem like? A steak and champagne enthusiast?” she said with a sarcastic grin.
“No, more like a vegan foodie.”
She snorted. “We don’t have vegan foodies in the Midwest. Just a bunch of overweight carnivores.”
“So what brought you here? To New York?”
Her expression closed. “The bright lights and big agencies, of course. Just like everybody else.”
She took a big bite of lamb and rice, then abruptly steered the conversation back to him.
“So. In all your moving around you never made it to the Midwest?”
“Nope. I have an aversion to corn fields.”
“Where did you live, then?”
“Well, I lived in New Jersey until I was ten,” he said, hoping that would be enough to satisfy her.
“And then...?”
Man, was she persistent. He sighed.
“And then my mom married a rich man and moved to Connecticut.”
“Didn’t you go with her?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Well, I had a room in her house. But I wasn’t really welcome there. She was too busy with her new family. I spent most of my teen years seeing how many boarding schools I could get thrown out of.”
Her eyes went round. “Why?”
Thanks to the years of therapy his mom had forced him to do, he knew it was because acting out had been the only thing that got his mother’s attention. But he wasn’t going to tell Becky that.
Instead, he shrugged. “Why does a teenage boy do anything? But I saw a lot of the East Coast. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine...everywhere fancy pants rich people live.”
Becky snorted. “I would have hated you when I was a teenager—you know that?”
He looked at her, genuinely surprised. “Why do you say that?”
“I was the kid doing extra credit projects and sucking up to teachers, hoping they’d help me when it was time to apply for college. I thought kids like you were idiots.”
“And what kind of kid was that?”
She looked at him, her eyes flashing with remembered anger.
“Kids who spent all their time screwing around, knowing they could buy their way into college even if their grades sucked. You would have been one of the people making my life miserable because I couldn’t afford to waste my time partying with you.”
He sat silently for a long minute, unsure of what to say. She was probably right. After his mom had married Bill money had lost all real value. No matter how much he’d charged to his stepfather’s accounts, or how outrageous the purchase, no one had blinked an eye. Except...
“Not me. I went to all-boys schools. Girls were rare and always appreciated, no matter how geeky. Besides,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face, “even if you were a nerd, I’m sure you were a gorgeous nerd. I would have been just as desperate to get in your pants then as I am now.”
She rolled her eyes, looking pleased nevertheless.
“Whatever,” she said, looking down at her phone screen. “Whoa. It’s almost seven already. What do you say we go back and get our war room set up? That way we can start fresh in the morning.”
