“Oh. Well.” She rubbed at the back of her neck. “I think we can all be those things.”
“Enough so that you regret saying yes to me?”
“No.” Jay leaned forward and saw a muscle in his jaw tighten. “I would have said no if I didn’t want this. I know you love me. But you also understand that sometimes—” her face flushed as she looked around. “Sometimes it feels good to be disrespected in the dark.”
Nicholas half-smiled. “Your faceless stranger.”
Jay winced. “You can stop bringing that up any time.”
“What kind of wedding do you want? Not one for the society pages, I’m assuming, since you don’t like being looked at. Did you want to get married in a church?”
Jay poked at a chickpea, making it roll across the plate. “I don’t really want a wedding at all.”
“That won’t be a problem,” he said, so easily that she looked up suspiciously. “We can get a license. It will be faster. The sooner you’re mine, the better.”
Her throat tightened. “Can we wait until the interviews are over?”
Nicholas paused with the fork raised to his mouth. “Why?”
“It wouldn’t look good for us. People would accuse me of sleeping my way to the top.” And they wouldn’t be wrong, would they? He had only offered her the position as a sort of sexual bargaining chip, even if it was with the best of intentions. “They already kind of do.”
“Give me names.” His tone was grim.
“No. Please, Nick. It’s very important to me. I want people to take me seriously. Nobody ever has, not until about three years ago. I don’t want to lose all of that. If we’re going to enter this partnership—” she emphasized the word “—I need to be self-sufficient.”
His eyes fell to her hand, where she was worrying the ring with her thumb. A line in his jaw relaxed. “Whatever you need to do,” he said carelessly. “But I’m used to a certain standard of living, and I reserve the right to step in if your self-sufficiency isn’t up to par.”
“Step in to do what?” she asked suspiciously.
“Mostly throw money at all of your problems until they go away.” He gave her a sideways smile. “I may have bought youa new wardrobe that reflects your elevated role at the company. I don’t want to see my new Vice President walking around the office with a broken handbag.”
“I suppose you already bought a scandalous wedding dress, too,” said Jay.
“I actually thought you could wear my mother’s.” He glanced at her. “If you want to.”
“Your father kept it?” Jay asked incredulously. “I didn’t think he was that sentimental.”
“He wasn’t. I think he forgot about it. Otherwise he would have had it destroyed.”
The cowed waiter came back and asked if they wanted dessert while Jay reeled from that bombshell. Nicholas sent him away impatiently. “Just the check.”
“He was a terrible man,” Jay said, recognizing the pain in his face. “You’re not him.”
His eyes went to her, hopeful and uncertain. As he pulled out his black Amex, he said, carefully, “Most people say I’m his spitting image.”
“Your coloring, maybe, but the shape of your face is different,” Jay insisted, though she had believed the same once, when the cruelty on his face had been more apparent. “I always imagined that you must look an awful lot like your mother. She must have been beautiful.”
“She was.” He folded the leather case closed over his card. “I’ll show you a picture.”
“I would love to see it.” She put her hand over his. “And I’d love to wear her dress.”
“Good, because I—”
“Jay-Jay.Nick.” Nicholas went stiff, the expression on his face chilling visibly as Quentin hovered over them, putting his hand on the back of Jay’s side of the booth while the waiter cleared away what remained of their dishes. “How are you both doing tonight? Was everything to your liking? Don’t tell anyone but I sent over a bottle of our best champagne.”
“We noticed.” Nicholas was wearing a knife-sharp smile that was a pale shadow of its former glory. “How’s your sister, Ho?” he asked casually, handing the folder to the waiter.
As Jay watched Quentin react to Nicholas’s obvious contempt, she had a vivid memory of taking Nicholas to the store as a child. They had been doing their holiday shopping and she had wanted to go alone, but Nick, being his usual bratty self, had appeared out of nowhere just as she was halfway out the door. “Yelena’s not here and my dad says that you’re supposed to watch me.”
