He raised a brow and shook his head without commenting, then turned and opened the refrigerator. “What do you want to drink? I’m guessing wine or other alcohol isn’t very appealing right now.”
“Definitely not. I’ll just take some water, please.”
He busied himself in the kitchen and then brought everything over to the dining room table and peeled back the lids of the tins. A delicious aroma wafted through the air. “I have chicken Milanese and cacio e pepe. You want some of both?”
“Mmmm... I wasn’t even that hungry until I smelled it. But yeah, I’ll try a little of both.”
Jagger prepared two plates and sat across from me. The poor guy must’ve been starving because he dug right in.
“So…” I said. “How many nieces do you have?”
“Two, Olivia and Amelia. They’re four and five, and I had to buy that box of dress-up clothes because they were invading my closet and wearing my stuff for fun.”
I smiled. “It’s sweet that you keep a trunk of stuff for them here.”
“They lived with me for a while. They’re in Ohio now—or at least they were when I spoke tothem a week ago.”
“Wow. Really? Did just your nieces live with you or your sister, too?”
“Just the girls. My sister has some issues. Like my mom, she’s in and out of mental-health facilities a lot.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “I’m sorry.”
“I only told you half the story earlier when I said the company keeps an apartment in the building for corporate visitors. That’s what we use it for now, but I originally had it for my sister and the girls. I was hoping they’d stay here so I could keep an eye on them.”
“Your sister didn’t want to live in New York?”
“She never stays in one place for long. Catherine is schizophrenic and struggles with paranoia. It makes her move around a lot, especially when she’s not taking her meds like she’s supposed to.”
That didn’t sound good. “But she’s okay taking care of her daughters?”
“She is.” Jagger met my eyes. “Until she isn’t.”
“That must be hard on the girls, and your entire family.”
“It could be worse. There’re a lot of people out there who struggle with mental health but have no support system. I had the Emersons growing up, and my sister has me. The hard part is navigating when I need to step in with the girls. Usually Cat will come to me when things are getting bad and let me help. But the last time, my five-year-old niece had to call me because my sister had spiraled to such a bad place. I wound up having to fight her in court to get temporary custody, and now I’ve become part of her paranoia. Some days she thanks me for helping and always being there for her, and other days she thinks I want to take her kids away from her because I don’t have my own.”
Ever since I walked into the Copa bar that first night, I’d felt a strange pull to this man. It was an attraction I’d never experienced before, and in this moment, the pull was so much more than physical. I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to smooth out the little creases that marred his forehead when he spoke about his family and kiss the tension from his perfectly shaped lips. Ridiculous, I know, considering he was my boss, or more aptly, he was myboss’s boss’sboss. Not to mention my stepfather’s boss, too. So instead, I opted to share something I rarely discussed.
“I was your nieces’ age when I lost my dad, so I know how difficult it is to have a parent there one minute and gone the next.”
He nodded. “I knew Edmund was your stepfather. I remember when I first opened Apex seven years ago and interviewed him. He said he had just gotten married two weeks before. But I didn’t realize your father had passed away. Was he sick?”
I shook my head. “Car accident. My parents were already divorced at the time. He fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from his second job.”
“Damn. I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “Like you said, it could be worse. I could not have my mom.” I smiled. “I’m glad the girls have you to rely on.”
He shook his head. “How the hell did we go down such a dark path in conversation?”
“I believe it was my fault, when I uncovered what I thought was your sex toy box.”
He smiled and twirled his fork in his pasta. “Tell me how your firstweek went.”
“It was good. I’ve learned a lot about the company. They showed us the simulator the analysts use to run models to optimize stock predictions, but next week I get to see pieces of the proprietary software that runs the algorithms. Ellie said she’s going to see if we can watch the testing of the upgrade they’re working on.”
“I think they’re at the end phase where they manually test the results. It’s not too exciting—the team spends a week locked in a room with whiteboards doing math problems that take hours to compute and checkoneoutput on the new software. Probably boring to watch.”
