Page 5 of The Holy Grail
“You mean Tom Hagen?” Malcom shook his head. “Technically, he’s not a Corleone. He may have been raised by the Corleones and is often referred to as a ‘brother’, but he was never legally adopted by Vito and Carmela, so I didn’t include him as one of their children.” Then, tilting his head, he asked, “So, did I pass?”
Jules gave him a conceding nod, one which also managed to convey she wasn’t completely impressed.
Taking that to mean he could continue, he did. “Iwasbriefly married several years ago—but am now divorced—and to my knowledge don’t have any children playing in a soccer league anywhere.” He reached up to touch his glasses. “I do wear glasses a lot, partly because contacts make me feel like I have sand in my eyes, but mostly because I’m afraid to have surgery. There’s just something really unappealing about having lasers anywhere near my eyes. Anyway, I don’t wear them during sex and … whatnot. I do take them off for that.”
The reference to sex and …whatnot, which had amused Malcom earlier, now sort of made him feel slightly awkward saying the words out loud to the women, and he had to take a second to get past it.
“So …” he trailed off as he carefully set his business card down on the table and slid it toward Jules, almost exactly like Brent had done. “Speaking of work …”
Jules glanced down at the card and read the front before giving him a less-than-thrilled look. “You’re a lawyer.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “And I know you don’t do lawyers, even if they’re extremely hot—thank you for that, by the way—but I’m hoping you’ll overlook it, though, because I would love to take you to dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes. I don’t want to have a drink with you. I want to havedinnerwith you. Preferably at a restaurant that requires a reservation, with cloth napkins and outrageous prices and really good desserts. A place where we can enjoy an amazing bottle of wine, while we sit and talk for a couple of hours. About anything. Movies, books, the douchebag spectrum … whatever you want.”
“And if I don’t want to do that?”
His throat tightened for a moment. “Then I’ll be disappointed. Truly. So I’m hoping like hell that instead of ripping up my card, you’ll give me a call. Not a text … because if you’re going to accept my invitation for dinner, I want to hear your voice when you do.”
Jules leaned back in her chair and gazed at him for several moments. “All right. I’ll think about it.”
She didn’t appear to be lying to him, nor was her expression fake, as it had been with Brent, so he let himself claim a small victory. “Thank you. Now then, I’m going to leave and let you two finish enjoying your meals,” he said, shifting gears. Angling his head toward Paige, he said, “It was nice to meet you, Paige. And, uh, good luck with David.”
Paige blinked at him, clearly taken aback at his reference to David. “Nice to meet you, too, Malcom,” she returned. “And … thanks, I guess.”
He turned his attention back to Jules, taking the opportunity to get one last, lingering look in before leaving, the pull he felt for this woman off the charts. “It was nice to meet you, Jules,” he told her, thinking he’d never spoken truer words in his life, before adding quietly, “And I really do hope to hear from you soon.”
Chapter 1
A new year begins
The present
“Happy New Year!”
All around Jules, there was mayhem as everyone in Three Amigos celebrated the arrival of a new year. The bar was packed with people, and despite it being her favorite ‘holiday’ and being surrounded by boisterous bar patrons all having a good time (including her best friend, Paige), Jules found herself feeling oddly alone and out of sorts.
Perhaps it was the fact she was one of only a few people not paired up for the evening and wasn’t currently locking lips with anyone, that made it seem like something was missing in her life.
And itdidfeel like something was missing.
Usually she loved the idea of a new year stretching out before her, full of unknown promise, but right now, that unknown promise seemed ... not very promising. It actually seemed a little depressing ... and empty.
She suspected part of it was seeing her best friend so settled and blissfully happy, and while Jules didn’t consider herself to beunhappy, she knew she wasn’t anywhere near Paige’s level of happiness.
And in that moment, her mind drifted to a man she’d met fourteen months ago in a Japanese restaurant, then basically ghosted. In her defense, though, she’d done it mostly for him, because upon meeting Malcom, the Clark Kent ringer, she’d known he wasn’t aone-night stand kind of guy. Or even a two-night stand kind of guy. He was a guy who wanted to take her to dinner at a nice restaurant, with cloth napkins and expensive food, and would have their second date planned by the time their bottle of wine arrived, and the third one planned as a decadent dessert was being served on one plate with two forks.
He was a guy looking for long-term, and she’d never been motivated—for lack of a better word—to do long-term.
That didn’t mean she hadn’t thought of him many times over the past fourteen months, though, because she had. He’d crossed her mind at random moments, like when she was at the grocery store, passing a display of books and sawKilling Kennedy, the one Malcom had been reading at the restaurant—and before Jules knew what she was doing, she’d tossed it in her cart. Even more confounding was when she got it home and actually read the damn thing—the last book she’d read had been about a drummer in a fictional rock band.
She’d also thought about Malcom when she was out with other men, and to her aggravation (and bafflement) it had put a serious damper on more than one evening. When faced with a naked man, she’d actually found herself wondering what Malcom would look like naked, and that unfortunately led to her wondering what he’d be like during sex … which led to the burning question of his glasses. Did he really take them off during sex? And if he really did, what did he look like without them on?
Sexy? Or adorably myopic?
It really shouldn’t matter, one way or the other, because she was never going to find out. And wondering was a waste of time—as was every time she took his business card out of her purse and looked at it.
