“Apparently not.”Among other things.“Maybe he heard we lost our VP.”
Arthur shook his head. “How would they hear about that? They’re multinational.”
“I guess he knows how to Google.” Nicholas grimaced. “I looked him up—he’s on his third wife. So unless she started out as his secretary, their business is about as family-owned as the mob.” He felt his face heat as it belatedly occurred to him that his words could just as easily apply to himself and his own “family business.”
“I’m assuming you turned him down then.”
“I said if he couldn’t afford our rates, perhaps he was right and we weren’t a good fit for him.”
Arthur smiled into his doogh. “I’m sure he loved that.”
“Yeah.” Nicholas looked around the Afghan diner, taking in the empty seats. It was the same one he had taken Jay to after their first night together, and then again just before he’d proposed. He’d seen the owner’s eyes widen with recognition as he came in before scanning the rest of the room—searching for Jay. He eyed his picked radish salad, feeling as if dozens of tiny bristles were sticking him in his spine. “He’ll be back, though. They always are.”
“They do say hindsight is twenty-twenty.” Arthur picked up a chicken skewer so heavily dusted with paprika that it looked red. “How’s Jay doing, by the way?”
“Jay?”
“She put in about a week of PTO to go back to San Francisco.” Arthur paused with the skewer halfway to his mouth. Nicholas saw the man’s eyes flick over his face. “I figured you knew. She mentioned a rent hike. Is everything all right?”
“She’s just settling up her old life before she moves here permanently,” he said guardedly.
“I’m glad to hear it. Between you and me, she needs the break. She stays later than I do. As late as you, I think.” Arthur paused again and Nicholas felt himself tense in anticipation.
“Jay works hard.”
“And seamlessly. Doing my own scheduling is turning out to be quite the novelty. It’s been years since I touched some of that software she uses. She makes it look so easy.”
“You can borrow Annica while she’s gone. I’m used to running my own schedule.”
The other man chuckled. “As kind as that is, Annica’s no Jay.”
“I thought you liked her. You hired you, didn’t you?”
“I did, and she does good work, but she’s not particularly . . . personable.” Arthur coughed into his napkin. “She has a group chat with some of her friends at the company. I’ve seen some of the messages that were flagged by our monitoring software. They weren’t always kind.”
The robot has friends? Interesting.
“By the way,” Arthur said. “Out of curiosity, did you limit Annica’s lunch hour?”
“Hmm? No. Why?”
“She just seemed a little rushed during her paid lunch with Jay the other day. The two of them came back very early.”
“If she did, that was all her. It makes no difference to me how long she takes as long as she does her job.” Something else to file away for later, he thought distractedly. “How’s your wife?”
“Leah’s great. Thinks I work too hard. We’re overdue for another vacation, although the problem with a vacation is that then you need another vacation to recover from your vacation.” He went back for more of his yogurt drink, face pink from the spices. “That offer for dinner is still open, by the way. Bring your sister. Leah would get on with Jay like a house on fire.”
Your sistergave him pause. “Everyone does. In high school, she was everyone’s little darling.”
“Leah was the same way,” Arthur said, a note of pride in his voice. “Women like that—they just shine.”
“How did you end up with someone like that?”
It came out sounding like an insult but Arthur, gazing inward at the happy memories only he could see, didn’t appear to notice. “I ask myself the same question, to be honest. I like to think it’s because I swept her off her feet. But she says it’s because I make her laugh.”
Is that so.
The owner was manning the cash register as Nicholas walked up to settle the bill. “Where’s your pretty girlfriend?” he asked, smiling in a way that he probably thought was friendly. “I have been saving my best baklava for her.”
