“Far be it from me to ever say my wife’s advice is iffy,” Dino said, then nodded toward Stone. “But I would proceed cautiously with this one.”
“And why is that?” Tamlyn asked.
“Soon you’ll find yourself eating at the best restaurants, drinking the best wine, and flying off on his private jet to one of his many homes for the weekend.”
“How many homes do you have?” Tamlyn asked Stone.
“Six, I believe,” Stone said.
“Eight,” Dino corrected him.
Stone looked at him, brow furrowed.
“You’re forgetting the one in Malibu and the townhouse in D.C.”
“I’ve been thinking about putting the townhouse on the market,” Stone said. “And I don’t consider the Malibu house mine, so I don’t actually use it.”
“You have a house you don’t use?” Tamlyn asked.
“He’s promised it to a friend,” Viv said.
“How generous.” She looked at Dino. “Everything you said sounds wonderful.”
“Oh, it is,” Dino said. “The problem occurs when you eventually move on from him, and those things are no longer readily available to you.”
“Say I did fall for his charms. Why would I move on from him?”
Dino shrugged. “I don’t know, but history—”
“Dino, I think you’ve said quite enough,” Stone said.
“Have I?”
“You have, trust me.”
“Sorry, pal.”
Changing the subject, Stone asked Tamlyn, “Where in England are you from?”
“I’m not,” she said. “My father is. From Burnley. It’s a smaller city just north of—”
“Manchester,” Stone said.
“You know it?”
“I know someone from there. Up the Clarets!”
She looked at him, surprised. “Up the Clarets. Are you a football fan? Or I guess you call it soccer over here.”
The Clarets were Burnley’s pro club.
“I’ve watched a match or two. Did you know the wordsoccerwas invented by the British?”
“Is that true?”
“It is. It was a nickname given to the sport in its early days that made its way to the States. While the name stuck here, the Brits stopped using it altogether. Now they make fun of us for calling it by a name they gave it.”
“I had no idea.”
