Page 31 of Just One Fake Date

That was surprising.

Now Shannyn was curious.

“Maybe you do need to hear it.” Tyler was stringing her along, keeping her on the phone, and Shannyn didn’t care. She liked having his voice rumbling in her ear, the sound of the rain against the windows, her apartment in darkness. Fitzwilliam was snoring on the keyboard.

The trouble was that she knew she could get used to this.

The good thing was that Tyler didn’t need to know it.

Shannyn turneddown the lights and spun in her chair. “Okay, I have popcorn now. Let the context flow.”

Tyler laughed then cleared his throat. “Okay. I go on these trips for work, about twice a year. They’re tours arranged for various financial advisors, usually to highlight some industry or region that is seeking more investment. The last one featured all these emerging high tech companies in Bahrain. It was a week long, all expenses paid, all the perks. Five star hotel, all the meals, everything you could imagine.”

Shannyn rolled her eyes. No wonder he was entitled. He lived a harsh life.

“Because if you show a manager for a mutual fund a good time, under guise of educating him or her about your industry, the investment monies will flow into your project?” she said instead.

“Something like that. The senior partner at Fleming doesn’t want to go anymore, so they slide onto my schedule.”

He sounded so indifferent about free trips that Shannyn was intrigued. “Don’t you like going?”

“Yes and no. The industry insight is sometimes really interesting, and travel is hardly ever a bad thing.”

Shannyn guessed the reason. “But you have two jobs, so being away from both of them must leave you a lot to do when you get home.”

“There is that,” he acknowledged easily. “And sometimes, it’s not that great to spend time with a bunch of people who are primarily interested in money.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I like money just fine, but there are other things in life.”

“Like work.” Shannyn had to ask. “Have you ever considered that the other partners at the club might think that you staying at your day job means you think the club isn’t going to work out?”

There was a beat of silence before Tyler answered. “At the beginning, they might have.”

“I mean it is kind of a vote of no-confidence.”

“No, it’s not!”

“They know that you’re risk-averse by nature?”

“I’m not risk-averse...”

“Hmmm.” Shannyn threw him a bone because she actually didn’t want to argue. She wanted him to keep talking in the dark chocolate voice. “You met Giselle in Bahrain?”

“Not quite. At the end of the tour, when I was getting into the limo to go to the airport, the hotel manager rushed out to give us each a complementary bathrobe. This huge fluffy robe was the last thing I needed, but I didn’t want to be rude.”

“I don’t see you as a fluffy bathrobe kind of guy.”

“Thank you for that. Plus I had my suit bag and briefcase and it was another thing to carry. There was no way I could get it into my luggage. But, I took it, thinking I’d forget it somewhere on the way home and make the day of some other traveller. I actually left it in the limo and in the lounge, but both the driver and the attendant ran after me.”

Shannyn laughed. He sounded so rueful.

“By the time I got on the plane, I realized that women loved it. They went out of their way to smile at me because I was carrying it, to admire it, to compliment me on being such a great guy.”

“Because they thought it was a gift.” Shannyn remembered the robe in his bathroom, the one with the hotel logo embroidered on the front, the one wrapped in satin ribbon and sitting on the shelf, pristine.

“Exactly. I still couldn’t get rid of it, though.” He sighed. “We changed flights in Paris and Giselle was one of the stewardesses on the flight home. She went crazy for that robe. She stowed it in with the crew luggage on the flight when I couldn’t find a place for it and was very attentive. She also made it clear that she had two days’ layover in Manhattan. My grandmother’s eightieth birthday was the night after I got home. I’d kind of forgotten about it in Bahrain, but my mom sent me another reminder—and she asked if I was bringing a date. I knew what that meant.”

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