Page 12 of A Billion Dollar Romance
“Are you going to try for it?” Flora asked, spearing a piece of chicken on her plastic fork.
“What do you mean?”
“You write. You read as many romance novels as I do. Well, almost.”
I rolled my eyes.
“No one can read as many romance novels as you, Flora.”
“And you love me for it.Youknow where all the good recommendations come from.” She brushed an imaginary piece of lint off her shoulder.
“I do. But… No. I’m not a ghostwriter, for one. And two, I’m not interested. I don’t want to write romance. I don’t want be deconstructing it in my head as I read for the rest of my life. It’s my only pleasure reading genre.”
“Pleasurereading?” Flora winked, and I shoved her with my foot. “I know what you mean. A literature degree is guaranteed to squelch all the fun from reading anything even remotely serious. All I think about now is…poststructuralism.” She made an exaggerated shiver.
“Thank goodness they don’t teach anything written by women,” I smirked. “Our romance novels are safe from the dreaded literary criticism…for now.”
“They’ll never find us,” she said, and held up her fork in cheers. I tapped mine against it with a plastickyclack.
CHAPTER7
James
“Another round?”Charlie asked, looking around the table with raised eyebrows, and signalled to the passing waiter.
I nodded.
Saturday was for drinks and dinner dates. Sunday was for family, for those of us lucky enough to have it. But today was Friday, and thus we–my younger brother Charlie, best friends Ryan and Barrett, and I–were at the Bankworth Club, a members-only club that occupied all floors of an unassuming old brick building in the city. It wasn’t really called Bankworth–the sign outside had Bancroft stamped in aged brass–but that was what everyone called it, members with an ironic smirk and non-members with varying combinations of disdain and jealousy. We’d been coming here for years, not always all four of us, but some permutation, sinking into the deep, leather-upholstered club chairs, ordering steaks the size of softballs, and drinking together like we always had.
I needed it tonight. This had been a long workweek–I’d arrived late at the office on Monday and I felt like I still hadn’t caught up.
Probably because my mind had stalled out sometime Sunday night.After the second round, but before the shower sex the next morning,I calculated quickly. It didn’t help.
“You’re distracted tonight,” Charlie said as the waiter deposited our drinks on the table. Two beers, a whiskey on the rocks, and a scotch, neat. I grabbed the last and took a deep breath of the smoky, nose-stinging scent. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the woman you took home last Sunday, would it?”
“Ha,” Ryan scoffed. “I doubt it. James? When was the last time he let a woman distract him from anything, let alone the sacred Bankworth night tradition? That’s usually my job.” He smiled, and so did I. The “woman” in question was Ryan’s nine-year-old daughter, Maddie, who was constantly quashing any hope of him holding onto a regular Friday-night babysitter. She wasspirited. Like him, and he knew it.
“Work, then?” Barrett asked, and I grimaced.
“You know the rules, Barrett,” Charlie said. “No complaining about work after the second round, and this,” he said, lifting his glass, “is the second, is it not?”
“I don’t see anyone drinking it,” he said, “I get off on a technicality.” He took a sip of his beer. “There.”
“It’s not work,” I said, rolling my shoulders back, leaning into the leather. “Or, it is, but–”
“Spit it out, Martin,” Ryan said, grinning. “I have to be home by midnight, remember, or I turn into a pumpkin.”
“The woman I took home with me Sunday… She showed up at the office Monday morning.” Ryan’s eyes widened.
“What, for… money?”
“No,” I said, taking a sip of scotch, letting it burn on the back of my tongue. “For a job. Her job. That we hired her for, that she started on Monday.”
Barrett let out a low whistle. “Not in your department, though.”
“Mydepartment,” I said. I didn’t have a department. I was the boss. “No, we didn’t hire a twenty-six-year-old to be the CFO.”
“CTO, maybe?” he said, smiling. “The CTO we just hired for the restaurant is about twelve. Those young whippersnappers are good at the computer, aren’t they?”
