“Sorry, sorry.” She smiled when she saw the salmon salad bowl and matcha latte in front of her. “Thanks for ordering.”
Meera eyed the green drink like it was filled with deadly poison. “I don’t know how you drink that stuff.”
“It’s better for me and it’s more effective than coffee at keeping me alert.”
“Well, clearly it’s working. I hear you nailed the presentation at the investor meeting this morning.”
Olivia felt a bump of pride. “Yeah? Who told you that?”
“Sally, who heard it from none other than Simon himself.” Sally was Simon’s PA and a vital source of gossip. “That’s the second time I’ve heard glowing reports about one of your presentations since you came back from Nantucket. Told you a holiday would do you good.” Her gaze skimmed over Olivia’s face, curious, assessing. “Or maybe it was the sex?”
Olivia had known her friend would ask at some point. A few days after Olivia had come back, Meera had gone on holiday, and ever since she’d returned, work had been so full on, Olivia had been able to duck the conversation:I’ll tell you when we’ve time to sit and talk.
Well, now they were both sitting.
Meera looked at her watch, then back at her. “You promised me thirty minutes. By my reckoning, I’ve still got twenty-six to go. Plenty of time for you to update me on your holiday fling with Mr. Eleven Out of Ten.”
Crap, had she really boasted about him? She wouldn’t have changed her rating, but she would’ve changed her decision to tell Meera about him if she could, because now she’d have to take those memories out of the box she’d so carefully stuffed them in.
And she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to do that quite yet.
“It was a month ago,” Olivia protested. “Old news.”
Meera stared at her. “You’ve not been with a guy since Jeremy, and that was how many years ago?”
“Four,” she mumbled, taking a bite of salad.
Meera gave her a triumphant smile. “Exactly. So you having a fling is major news, and as your best friend, I deserve to hear about it.”
Meera was every bit as smart and tenacious as she was. “Fine.” Olivia sighed, bowing to the inevitable. “His name was Connor. He’s a chef. We had a nice week together after my family left.”
“Justnice?”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Yes. Nice. That’s about all there is to say.”
“Uh-huh.” Meera studied her for a beat, then dropped her gaze to the multicolored bracelet on Olivia’s wrist. “That’s pretty. Not your usual choice of jewelry.”
Bollocks. She wasn’t going to blush, she wasn’t. “Thought I’d have a change.” Meera said nothing. “Okay, okay, he bought it for me.”
“You must like it a lot to still be wearing it. And every day, from what I’ve seen.” Meera’s brown eyes locked on hers. “Or maybe it was Connor you liked a lot.”
Why hadn’t she taken it off? She wasn’t sentimental, so it made no sense that she was still wearing a bracelet that didn’t match anything she owned. “I did like him.” She took a sip of her matcha and hoped it would ease the fluttering in her stomach. “He was very attentive and a lot of fun.”
Meera huffed. “Come on, this is me. Stop with the banal statements and tell me what he was really like because an eleven out of ten tells me he was way more than a kind bloke with a good sense of humor.”
“He was both of those.” Olivia pushed away her half-eaten salad. “He was ten years younger than me, and my niece’s friends all fancied him. The wordsexyis overused but I can’t think of a better way to describe a guy who can make hormones spike with just a look.” She took another sip of her matcha to try and loosen her throat. “The sex was off the scale, but he also made picnics for me, challenged me to do stuff like parasailing and windsurfing. Then he’d take me to a beach and we’d watch the sunset together.”
Meera’s mouth fell open, “Oh my God, Olivia. Please tell me you have his number.”
“I don’t.” Did she regret not getting it? Only every evening when she was alone with her thoughts. “I told you, it was a holiday fling. It was... pleasant. But now it’s over.” Her stomach twisted as she remembered how devastated Connor had looked when she’d used that totally inadequate word. She’d been trying to hold it together, trying not to give in to the immense temptation to see him again in England, because she knew herself. However much she enjoyed him, there was no place in her life for a boyfriend. She’d wobbled, though—by God, she’d wobbled in that taxi ride to the airport.
Meera scoffed. “Pleasantis a walk by the sea, a pastry with your coffee. Not off-the-scale sex with a guy you seem to really like.”
Olivia waved her hand in surrender. “Fine, it was a bloody great week and I’m so grateful you pressured me into taking it. But I’ll be even more grateful if you’d forget about it now and help me get this damn promotion.” She fixed her friend with a look she’d used in countless meetings to get her way. “I’d be the first female CIO in Techtonic Capital Management, and though gender shouldn’t matter, it would mean something. Send a signal to the group that we’re just as capable as men. More than that, it would be a promotion based on merit, not on some chummy male-bonding shit. I’ve been working toward it for fifteen years, Meera. I don’t want a relationship, don’t want to be responsible for someone else’s happiness, to have my dreams crushed as I try to accommodate his. I want this.”
Meera sighed and slumped back in her chair. “You know I can’t argue when you go all Boudicca on me. But I want to state it for the record that I’ve never seen you look as positive, as glowing, asI can take on the worldas you did when you first came back to the office. That fling, as you call it, did you a world of good, and I think it’s a real shame you’re not going to see what it could have grown into. And before you drag out your exes, Jeremy and the super-sweet Charles, as excuses, I know you felt bad about them, but they were never right for you. They were weaker versions of you when what you need is the yang to your yin.”
“You’re making me sound like a panda.”
