When we’re in the back seat of the car, returning to my house, I respond to emails on my phone, but I can see in my peripheral vision that Olivia keeps turning her head to stare at me in disbelief.
I send one last email, pocket my phone, and give my beautiful date my full attention. “Hi. What?”
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Behave like the perfect boyfriend when we were at the restaurant?”
“Oh. I’ve observed what women respond to in other men. It’s just acting.”
She winces—almost imperceptibly, but I catch it.
“Sorry,” I say. “Should I have sugarcoated that?”
Her brow furrows. “No. Painfully honest I can deal with. I guess I just don’t see why you can’t act like that all the time.”
I can’t help but laugh at that, even though she clearly did not mean it as a joke. It’s a surprisingly naive thing for her to say. “Nobody acts like the perfect boyfriend all the time, Olivia.I like you even when I’m not acting like that. There are plenty of guys who behave like the perfect boyfriend yet are, by definition, terrible boyfriends, in that they lie, cheat, insult their women—all while putting on a pleasant public facade.” Studying her face, I wait for the fire in her eyes. Does she feel insulted? Should this not be a discussion? But I see no anger there. So I add, “And aren’t you the one who said you don’t want a boyfriend?”
“Thatwasme. And I do hear what you’re saying… But why can’t you spend the next month acting like the perfect boyfriend even fifteen percent of the time?”
I smile and take her hand. “Fifteen percent of all time, or fifteen percent of the time I spend with you?” Raising her hand to my lips again, I press a kiss against it. Not because I’ve seen men do this, but because I want to. “It wouldn’t be feasible for me to devote fifteen percent of every waking hour acting like the perfect boyfriend for the entire month, I’m afraid. But it might be possible for me to spend ten percent of my time with you behaving in a way that’s compliant with your expectations for the mythical perfect boyfriend.”
She’s stroking the palm of my hand with her fingertips. It’s such a delicate, subtle movement, but it threatens to unhinge me. I look into her eyes. And here comes the fire I’ve been waiting for.
“What if I’m not negotiating?” she asks. “I’m giving up one hundred percent of my time to be with you for an entire month—you should be able to pretend to be a perfect boyfriend for at least fifteen percent of that time. I deserve that.” Her eyes widen, and she covers her mouth with her free hand, glancing over at Richard. “Sorry!” she whispers to me.
“It’s okay. Richard has signed a nondisclosure agreement too. He overhears a lot of business calls while he’s driving me.”
“Oh.” She pulls her hand from mine and looks out the window.
“What’s wrong? I’ll agree to your demand.”
Looking out the window, Olivia shakes her head and then turns to face me again. “Was Montana Reed an arrangement too?”
She Googled me. That’s not surprising, but it is somewhat disappointing.
“My roommate Googled you and told me you dated a supermodel last year,” she’s quick to explain. “What kind of term sheet did you have with her? I’m assuming it was a similar arrangement.” She lifts her chin defiantly.
“Why would you assume that?”
“Because I’ve met you.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. “Have you met Montana?”
“The state or the model?”
“I happen to know that you’ve never been to Montana the state.”
“Yeah, I haven’t met either of them. But she looks…nice.”
“She is. It’s not the first word I’d use to describe her. But our conversations weren’t stimulating, so I ended it.”
Olivia scoffs at that. “Youended it with her?”
I shift around in the seat. I hadn’t thought of Montana since Monty brought her up. It makes me uncomfortable. “Yes. It wasn’t as easy to end the relationship as I thought it would be. She was…more hung up on me than I’d realized.”
“Right. I’m sure.”
