“As tempting as that is, I think we can focus on the friend part of our situation for a couple of hours, can’t we?” Shay tapped her watch. “It’s early, and I don’t have to be at the garage tomorrow. Do you have to work?”
Rosie smiled, strangely pleased that Shay hadn’t taken her offer, and now she got to have the best of both worlds. “That depends on whether or not you convinced your friends that your garage would be the perfect place to launch a brand-new tool company. If the answer is no, I have to spend my Sunday scouring the planet for another all-women run garage, preferably with a rainbow flavor.”
“About that: I neglected to negotiate my personal fee forbrokering that deal with my team.” Shay ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass and arched her eyebrow. “What’s in it for me?”
“Are you looking for preferential treatment?” Rosie asked.
“I’m looking forspecialtreatment, something just for me.”
Rosie ran her nails along Shay’s forearm. She liked that Shay wanted something extra from her, and it was a good sign that her friends had agreed to talk about the marketing opportunity. “Something you don’t want to share with your team?”
Shay shuddered and wrinkled her nose. “Definitelynosharing, although you’ve made it clear that myboisaren’t your type. Even if all of them would crawl over broken glass to get to a woman like you.”
Heat rushed through Rosie’s body. “Really?”
“Really.”
“So that makes you their kind of woman too, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but no.”
Rosie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Yes, I’m their type, but no, I’ve never hooked up with any of them, because that was bound to be your next question.”
“You got me.” Rosie sipped her wine as relief coursed through her, grateful she didn’t have any of Shay’s butch friends to compete with. That might’ve made Lori’s late summer party at the Sanctuary a little awkward, although if she’d imagined Shay with any of them, it would’ve been Gabe, and she was happily engrossed with Lori now. “Circling back to your original question of whether I’m working tomorrow, did you manage to convince your team that they’d be perfect for my marketing campaign?”
“I did, but maybe we could hold off on the work talk until Monday, and you can tell me all about the family drama of your mom missing in Mexico instead.”
“Fine…but thank you. It means a lot to me.”
“You’re welcome.” Shay gave her a wicked smile. “I’ve always thought I’d make a great calendar model.”
Rosie chuckled. “You could modelanything,” she said and then told Shay the sketchy details she’d gathered from her mom, aunt, and the internet.
“You’ve never met this Keith guy that she’s with?”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “I can never keep up with all the men. I see her on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and she always has someone different the next year. Sometimes, there’s even a new guy between the two holidays.”
Shay tilted her head slightly. “Sounds like she swaps guys out like I change the oil on my car. Has she always been that way?” she asked gently.
Rosie narrowed her eyes. “You want to talk family history and not just the here and now?”
Shay leaned back in her chair looking contemplative and didn’t respond for a second or two. “It’ll help provide context, won’t it?”
“Sure, but it might also send you running out of the bar screaming for simple.”
Shay shook her head. “Our lives being complicated doesn’t mean thatwehave to be complicated, does it?”
“Only if you don’t hold it against me,” Rosie said. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had run for the hills when they realized what they were getting into. “I promise you I’m nothing like my mom.”
Shay’s smile disappeared, and a sadness briefly blanketed her eyes. “I won’t. It’s why I keep my personal life so separate from my family life, and never the twain shall meet.”
Rosie laughed. “‘Never the twain?’”
“Rudyard Kipling. I took an English Lit class at Yale.”
“You went to Yale?” Her opinion of Shay ratcheted up a couple more notches.
