for a man to find the clitoris since he didn’t have one. The day she’d broken up with him, she’d helpfully printed out a diagram for him, coloring the area in question in with a highlighter.
She snorted at the memory.
“You’ve earned this.” Checking the clock, she saw that her countdown was now four hours, and a small shudder of anticipation ran through her.
Something told her she wasn’t going to have to print out a diagram for John. Hell, she’d been on edge last night, just from having him between her thighs as they talked about what they were going to do.
She’d have been lying, too, if she said she wasn’t feeling a little bit smug to be the one he was focusing on right now. She’d seen how other women reacted to him, but he’d chosen her.
Of course, the sheer number of women who noticed him was why Theo had been warning her in the first place. But ultimately...did it matter? They’d set limits. One week and done. Of course, he’d move on to someone else after. She would, too—she’d make sure of it.
She liked John—really, truly liked him as a person. But that didn’t mean she planned to join the ranks of women mooning around after he’d left them. Yes, she would move on after.
Move on with a clearer understanding of what she wanted. She was the good girl, the good daughter, and she bet that Theo would never have been able to imagine what she had planned for tonight. Not that she’d want him to, because ew. But still. It felt good to have a dirty little secret even if she could hardly believe it herself.
Her phone rang. It was routed through the Bluetooth on the dashboard, and she should have been used to the noise, but it made her jump all the same.
“Hello? I mean, A Moveable Feast Catering.” She still wasn’t used to the fact that the company was hers.
“Please hold for Gavin Aronson.” A woman trying to suppress the Southie in her voice and not succeeding burst through the van’s speakers, followed by a beep sharp enough to make Meg wince. She quickly turned the volume down, but the next voice that came over the line was pitched so low that she had to turn it back up.
“Is this Meg Marchande?” No Southie in this voice. No, unless she was very much mistaken, the man now on the line had the nasal sound that came from someone raised in the Long Island area. “The Meg Marchande who catered the art show at Fifth Central Gallery last week?”
“That’s me.” She immediately felt herself sitting up straighter, as though she were about to be interviewed. In her line of work, a phone call often was the interview, two minutes in which to convince a potential customer why they should trust their event to her and not the competition.
“Well, Meg, my name is Gavin. I’m the director of a little company called Hyde Park Entertainment. You’ve heard of us?”
She hadn’t, but she certainly wasn’t about to say that, so she simply hummed, noncommittal.
“Hyde Park produces all kinds of ventures—concerts, festivals, films, award shows.” He paused, as though waiting for applause, so Meg hummed again encouragingly. “I was intrigued by the food at the gallery show. Those things are usually cheap wine and grocery-store cheese. Your offerings added a bit of flair.”
A bolt of excitement made Meg’s blood sizzle. Concerts? Festivals? She was so on board.
“People who simply do what is expected of them rarely get ahead,” she commented mildly, trying to keep the elation out of her voice.
“Interesting.” His voice was thoughtful. “We have several events coming up that I think you’d be a good match for.”
“Really?” Her voice squeaked, and she coughed to cover it. “I mean, that sounds very interesting.”
“We’re hosting a banquet for the mayor’s office this Friday,” he continued, and she sucked in a deep breath. “Our caterer dropped out at the last minute, and I’d like to hire you. Why don’t I arrange a brief for you? You can read it and see the scale of one of these events. Is that something you might be interested in?”
Meg’s hands clenched on the wheel as she did a little butt wiggle in her seat. She confirmed the address of her rental kitchen, and he said he’d have a briefing document couriered over the next day.
As Gavin ended the call, Meg finally let out an excited screech. A car beside her honked; she looked over to find a woman watching her with a startled expression—both of their windows were down, and she’d heard Meg’s scream. Mouthing an apology, Meg sped up, eager to get home and tell her sisters before she took the time to get ready for her evening with John.
This was a huge coup for her little business. And more than that, it would provide a welcome distraction from John after he left. See? No way was she going to be one his former flings, wishing desperately for something more.
She was going to make that something more for herself—but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t enjoy him along the way.
“HI, JOHN.”
Startled, John tore his gaze away from his phone as a woman got onto the elevator behind him. Smiling back automatically, he racked his mind for a reason behind the redhead’s knowing smirk...and her name.
“Hi... Madison.” He wrestled the name from the folds of his brain, along with the history behind his knowing it. Madison was a paralegal, working on the floor above Crossing Lines. She was friends with Theo’s assistant, Ava. They’d all gone out for drinks once, and the woman had let him know that she was available for a good time.
“Having a good week?” She batted her eyes at him, and he was momentarily distracted. Not because he was attracted to the come-hither gesture, but because he was wondering if her eyelashes could be real. They looked like Muppet fur glued to her lids.
It wasn’t hot.
Belatedly, he realized that she’d asked him a question.
“Yes, thanks. You?” He knew what she was going to say—the gist of it, at least—before she spoke.
“It could be better,” she pouted, pursing her shiny lips. Her gloss was so thick it made a slight smacking sound when she spoke, putting him in mind of the slightly tacky consistency of drying paint. It, too, wasn’t hot.
Even a month ago, the woman’s thick layer of makeup wouldn’t have bothered him, if he’d even noticed it at all. He would have enjoyed the attention, let her admiration fill up the void inside him, the one he’d been trying to fill his entire life.
It might even have worked, at least for the hours he spent skin to skin with another human. Ultimately, though, that warmth would have evaporated like mist, slipping through his fingers because of its lack of substance. And yet he’d always been scared to pursue to anything more solid, afraid that it, too, might disappear.
And those were some deep thoughts to be having with a gorgeous woman making it clear that she was interested.
His problem? She might be interested,
