Page 34 of If My Wishes Came True
And a gourmet meal prepared by a former sous-chef at one of the best restaurants in the world? That’s pretty hard to say no to. I went to Le Bernardin once, to celebrate Christy and Kyle’s college graduation. It was one of the best meals of my life.
“I love seafood,” I tell him. “I’ll have whatever your specialty is. Surprise me.”
“Done,” he says with a wink.
I’m feeling pretty good about my decision until I walk through the door to my apartment, and see the photo and note from Charlie sitting on my front hall table.
I’d much rather be having dinner with him tonight. Talk about quiet confidence. The fact that Charlie is as gorgeous as any movie star, but doesn’t flaunt it, makes him infinitely sexier than Grady Brooks.
Maybe I should call Grady and tell him I’ll meet him in the morning.
Damnit. Here I go again.
It’s so incredibly hard for me to trust men. After Alex taking that nude picture of me in grad school, and Scott going backand forth about wanting kids, and nearly every guy I meet only wanting me for one damn thing, I can’t help but question most men’s intentions.
But I need to get out of my own way. Doing design work for Grady could change my entire career. The buzz I’ve gotten from Lola Piper’s tweet has been great—but I’m squandering a lot of opportunities if I don’t pick up new clients from it. Especially A-list celebrity clients. I planned to offer my design services to Sunny and Dex as a wedding gift, until I found out Dex’s cousin’s wife is also an interior designer, and she beat me to it. Now she’s the most sought-after designer in Ohio.
No designer in their right mind would waste an opportunity like this. If I give up this chance with Grady, I might as well give up my design business. And as much as I’m questioning my career path these days, I’m still not convinced I want to jump ship just to paint. It would be a terrible waste of my master’s degree.
Wouldn’t it?
At the very least, I should follow through with this dinner before I make any life-altering career decisions.
It probably wouldn’t hurt to call Dex first and ask what he thinks of Grady, though. Just in case.
Unfortunately, my call goes straight to voicemail, so I leave Dex a message saying I have a question for him. Then I call Sunny, but I get her voicemail, too. They must be traveling. I know Dex has some speaking engagements scheduled these next few months, before the baby’s born.
I go about the rest of my day, running errands around the city. But the hours pass, and I’m back home and getting readyto leave for Grady’s, and I still haven’t heard from either Sunny or Dex. I try Dex’s cell one more time before I go, but no luck.
It’s not until the elevator doors open to Grady’s penthouse, and I’m standing face-to-face with him, that my phone vibrates in my hand.
I glance down at the screen and see Dex’s name, of course.
But I can’t very well answer it now. So I toss the phone into my purse instead.
Itell myself that I can always duck into the bathroom and call Dex for advice if I’m feeling unsure about his frenemy’s intentions. But from the moment I step out of the elevator, Grady Brooks—Hollywood’s notorious “bad boy”—is all business, and I immediately feel at ease.
Before we sit for dinner, I ask him to show me some of his favorite things around the penthouse, and he does so eagerly. I have to admit, I was expecting him to boast about his Bang & Olufsen plasma TV, which, I happen to know from working with other wealthy clients, costs over a hundred grand. In fact, his entire living space is peppered with B&O electronics, as if he’d walked into the high-end store on a whim one day and said, “I’ll take one of everything.”
But Grady doesn’t mention any of his expensive tech gadgets. He shows me old photographs instead. Drawers full of faded pictures of his grandparents, who raised him in their tiny Bronx apartment. His mom, who was barely eighteen when she gavebirth, had gotten pregnant by a married man who wanted nothing to do with their baby. “Apparently she didn’t either,” Grady adds. “When I was two months old, she ran off with some Wall Street banker, and never looked back.”
“That’s awful,” I say with a frown. “Has she reached out at all? Since you…”
“Since I became rich and famous?” He shakes his head. “I changed my name a long time ago. I doubt she knows that Grady Brooks is her son. If she does, I guess she doesn’t care.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, my forehead crinkling.
He shrugs. “What can you do, right? My grandparents more than made up for it. My grandma’s the one who taught me how to cook, and my grandpa loved watching his favorite old movies with me. It’s the reason I wanted to become an actor. They made me who I am.”
“Where are they now?” I ask.
“I set them up in the Outer Banks. When I started making a little money as a sous-chef, I took them there on vacation—you know, to thank them for everything. I’d never been, obviously, but a girl I was dating at the time told me about it. Said it was the most perfect place she’d ever visited. My grandparents fell in love with it. So, as soon as I was able to afford it, I bought them a house there. And they still keep a bedroom for me, after all these years. I love it. It feels like home, even though it’s not the room I grew up in.” He smiles wistfully.
“Tell me about it,” I say with a grin to match his.
“It’s…beachy,” he replies. “Everything’s wicker and white linen.”
I nod. “Well, it sounds like we have some inspiration for yourguest room. Of course we’ll keep it modern and tie in elements from the rest of your apartment, so the room won’t look out of place. And we should make a gallery wall with your family photos. We’ll put them in vintage frames.”
