A promotion like that would be a boon for Grace, and well-deserved. She worked as hard as Ashley, maybe even harder.
The guilt wasn’t merely crushing, it was suffocating. Ashley couldn’t take money out of someone else’s mouth, let alone the mouth of a good friend. “I don’t know how I can convince him to say yes.”
Grace crossed her legs, pulling on her long auburn locks, seeming deep in thought. “You both have to eat, don’t you? Just go out to dinner with the man. Remind him how much good it’ll do for Chambers Gin.”
Ashley sighed, slumping back in her chair. “One dinner?” Why did the task seem so Herculean? Oh, right. Because Marcus had made it clear last night. He couldn’t be around her.
“After that, it’s your call. We’ll just let all the world wonder what you two are doing up in that lovely high-rise apartment building. You do live across the hall from each other, after all. The proximity is nothing but sheer temptation.”
Given Ashley’s current level of sexual frustration, she couldn’t argue, even though she was certain Marcus didn’t see it that way at all. “Fine. I’ll ask him. But I’m not promising anything.”
Grace stood up and clutched the stack of newspapers to her chest, smiling wide, victorious. “Where are you watching the premiere tonight? Do you want to come over?”
Ashley shook her head. “Are you kidding me? The last thing I want to do is watch myself on television.”
* * *
Marcus couldn’t stand to look at the newspapers. Except that he couldn’t stand not to look at them, either. He’d removed all copies from his personal office, save one tucked away in the bottom-right desk drawer. There’d been more than one moment during the day when he had to see it. See her. See them. Last night had really happened. He’d kissed Ashley. He’d touched her. He’d kissed her and touched her and the entire world had shifted, exactly as he’d feared.
Marcus stepped into Joanna’s office just as she hung up the phone. He had to catch up with her. They’d both been working nonstop all day. He nearly collapsed in the chair opposite her desk. The ripple effect of kissing Ashley was rife with bizarre good fortune. New orders and inquiries had left everyone in the office scrambling to keep up.
“That was Dad,” Joanna said. “He’s right chuffed, Marcus. I haven’t heard him so excited in I don’t know how long.”
He’d had rumblings of this, but only Joanna had spoken directly to their father. It seemed that the kiss heard round the world had taken no time reaching across the pond. “More orders?”
“They’ve gone through the roof. And it’s not just for No. 9. Orders for the original are more than triple what they were for April of last year. All from one day. We’re bumping up UK production, and I think we need to take a long, hard look at doing the same in the US.”
He would indeed need to speak to their production manager about bringing the new distillery up to peak production. It was a scary proposition, seeing as it hadn’t been tested at full capacity.
“Dad asked whether there will be any signage linking Chambers and Manhattan Matchmaker. I guess several of the distributors are wondering about it.”
Bloody hell. A vision of a cardboard cutout of Ashley holding a bottle of Chambers gin materialized in his head. He could see Joanna wanting to put one out in the reception area. As if it wasn’t difficult enough to live across the hall from Ashley, he’d have to walk past that every day. Plus, that was not the image of Chambers Gin his family had worked at cultivating for more than a century. He and Joanna had been working their fingers to the bone to make the US venture a success, but even a big break like the publicity of last night needed to be contained. This would get out of hand in little time if he didn’t put a stop to it. “There’s not going to be any signage. Last night was a one-time thing, and that was that. There is no link between us and her show.”
A cheeky smile crossed Joanna’s face. She held up one of that morning’s newspapers. “We could always just laminate this. From the look of this photograph, I’d say that Chambers gin and Manhattan Matchmaker are about as linked as can be.”
A familiarly unsettling mix of embarrassment and excitement returned. “That kiss was for the cameras. And that’s all it was. It will not be happening again.” Except that the cameras were a convenient excuse. Something else was behind it, and he knew it. Something else was behind kissing her in her apartment, taking off her dress. If he thought about the look on her face as he’d sent her into oblivion, he felt drunk. If he thought about what had happened afterward—his sheer panic—he felt hungover. There was no getting around it. He absolutely had to stay away from Ashley. He simply wasn’t his normal, sensible self around her.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Last night was huge for us. And hey, at least you kissed someone.” She giggled, her eyebrows bouncing.
“Please, Joanna. I beg you. I’m a grown man. Can we stop talking like a bunch of teenagers?” He brushed away a piece of lint on his pants. “Last night was a one-time thing and that’s it. End of discussion.”
Joanna twisted her lips. “Uh, yeah. About that...”
“What?”
“Dad really wants you to take out Ashley again.”
“He said that?” Marcus bolted forward in his seat. “He explicitly said that?”
She nodded. “And I have to agree with him. You should at least take her out for a nice meal to thank her for last night. It’s great for business and don’t forget that it was your idea to expand into the US.” Joanna tapped away on her laptop. “I think the fact that you met Ashley and had the chance to take her out is wonderful. You can’t argue it’s not the best thing that’s happened to us since we came to New York.” She patted the stack of new orders and wholesale inquiries sitting on her desk. “If you play your cards right, it could be the best thing that’s happened in your personal life.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Joanna closed her laptop and folded her arms across it. “She’s lovely, Marcus. And granted, I haven’t met her or anything, but she seems like quite a nice woman.”
“I know where you’re going with this, and you can stop right now. You know my situation, Jo. Better than anyone.”
She rose from her seat and rounded to the front of her desk. “What is your situation, Marcus? Working impossible hours to measure up to some imagined standard you set for yourself, then going home and reading a book to Lila? Spending the weekends taking her to the park, but not interacting with another soul in this enormous city? There are thousands of single women in Manhattan, Marcus. Tens of thousands. One of them could make a wonderful wife and mother, but you’ll never find her if you don’t look.”
He crossed his arms in front of him. “I’ve looked. I’ve dated three women in the six months since we’ve been here. That seems like a respectable number to me.”
“Including Ashley. And none of them went beyond the first date.”
“None of them was right. There’s no point in wasting my time with a woman when I know she isn’t right.” It made perfect sense to him, but he and Joanna had argued about this before. “And you know that dating is a complicated situation for me. I refuse to introduce any
