Keith’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it and grinned. “My assistant is out shopping for more gifts for Ava right now. I told her to get something nice. Something that shows I’m paying attention.”
Keith’s assistant was shopping for gifts. Of course she was. Because God forbid Keith actually put in the effort himself. He still didn’t know her name and it made me want to stab him with my fork.
“Is this your move with all the women you go for?” I asked. “You have to trick them into liking you?”
He shook his head. “It’s not a trick. The gifts are real and I’m paying for them. They’re just not chosen by me.”
“Yeah, that’s the part the feels like a trick.”
“Trust me, Ava doesn’t want me choosing her gifts. My assistant is a woman and they know what each other like. Why reinvent the wheel?”
“If you’re interested in going out with her, you should actually take the time to get to know her.”
“What do you think she might like?” he asked.
I stared at Keith, my irritation crystallizing into something sharper. “I think she might like a better gift exchange partner.”
“Don’t be a cockblock, Dane.” He leaned forward with that easy grin that was annoying me today for some reason. “You see her every day. You must have some idea what she likes. Help a friend out.”
I thought about that goddamn stapler.
“No,” I said flatly.
Keith’s smile faltered. “What?”
“Can you seriously not find a woman to date outside of work?” I spread my hands in question.
“Jesus, Dane. I’m just asking for a little help here. It’s not like I’m asking you to give me her hand in marriage. You’re not jumping on that. Someone should.”
“Watch it.”
His phone rang and he glanced at the screen. “I need to take this. Investor call. You good?”
“Yeah, take it. Let me eat in peace.”
He walked off toward the bar with his phone pressed to his ear.
Keith Billings had been in my life since college. He was a blue blood. Born rich. I had been the poor kid, getting by on scholarships.
Columbia had been the great equalizer, the place where the kid from Ireland with the working-class parents could sit in the same classrooms as the kid who summered in the Hamptons and had a trust fund that could buy a small country.
We’d been in the same economics program. Same study groups. Same social circles, eventually. Keith had money and connections. I had drive and intelligence and a chip on my shoulder the size of Manhattan.
My parents had come to New York when I was ten. My mother had worked as a nurse’s aide while going to school at night to be an RN. My father worked for the city—sanitation, then eventually moving up to an administrative role. We were comfortable. Never hungry, never without heat or electricity. But we were also very clearly at the bottom of New York’s social hierarchy.
I’d learned to hide my accent by the time I was fifteen. Learned which clothes to wear, which music to listen to and how to blend in with the American kids at school. By the time I got to Columbia, my accent was long gone. And I could hold my own in conversations about the Hamptons even though I’d never been. I taught myself how to navigate cocktail parties and networking events like I’d been born to it.
Keith had been useful in that transformation. He’d introduced me to the right people, brought me to the right parties, and vouched for me in rooms I never would have accessed on my own. When I started Cupid’s Arrow, he’d been one of my first investors. He put in serious seed money when the company was just an idea.
I owed him for that.
But that didn’t mean I had to like the way he talked about women. The way he reduced them to conquests and transactions. It pissed me off he couldn’t even be bothered to remember Ina’s name but wanted me to “put in a good word” like she was some prize to be won.
Keith came back to the table, still on his phone, and I made a “wrap it up” gesture. He finished his call and I took the opportunity to signal for the check.
“Sorry about that,” Keith said, finally hanging up. “Company business, though. Where were we?”
“You were leaving to handle investor relations. I was going back to the office.”
