Page 46 of Surprise Best Man

And that meant no me and Sean time, unfortunately. It sucked, because I sure as hell could’ve gone for his patented brand of taking my mind off things, and I didn’t mean only the incredible, amazing sex. Simply being around him was enough to make me feel better about, well, everything. Even seeing him in the parking lot of the Apple Pan the other morning had chilled me out a little bit.

But I had bigger things to worry about. Right?

I glanced at my phone, which hadn’t buzzed with anything but Huffington Post news updates and Twitter notifications all morning. And I wasn’t complaining—one small upside to the last couple of days was that the weird “secret admirer” had finally stopped blowing up my phone. Gotta take your positives where you can get them.

But as if it knew I was looking at it, the phone rang. The number wasn’t one in my contacts, and my first instinct was to ignore it. If it wasn’t the stalker finally crossing the line from texts to calls, it’d be a telemarketer.

Right as I picked up the phone to hit mute, however, I realized that there was a chance it’d be a callback from one of the massage places I’d applied to. My hand shaking with excitement, I answered.

“Shania Simms speaking,” I said.

“Exactly what I was hoping to hear.”

It took me a second to place the voice.

Fuck. It was James, the last freaking dude I wanted to talk to.

“Yes? How can I help you?”

“No need for the bank-teller tone, Shania. We’re all friends here.”

“Not sure that’s the word I’d use,” I said, half wanting to hang up on him, the other half still wanting to make sure that the wedding was as drama-free as possible.

“Listen, Shania. I know our reunion hasn’t been the best, but I’m interested in making things right.”

I was curious as to what this could possibly mean. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And there’s something I want to talk to you about. Specifically, about your business plans. Can you meet?”

“Are you serious?”

“Trust me,” he said. “I know you have reason not to, but you’ll like what I have to offer. You’re in Silver Lake, right?”

I knew this was a bad idea. But could I really afford to straight-up say “no” to someone with his resources who wanted to talk about my business? What if he’d come to a realization about how he’d acted back in college and wanted to make things right by offering me a lead or something?

“Um, yeah.”

“Great. I was actually in town meeting a client, and we just finished up at Intelligentsia. How about you come by, and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and we can chat?”

“Bad idea, bad idea,” my brain said over and over again.

But fuck, I was desperate. And it had been so long ago.

Not to mention that it wasn’t like he was asking me to meet him in his sex dungeon or something—and he definitely seemed like the type to have a sex dungeon. Intelligentsia was always packed and very public.

“OK. I’ll meet you there.”

“Great. Looking forward to it.”

Still going back and forth about the whole thing, I threw on some more presentable clothes, put my hair into a half-bun, and left. I was only a few minutes away, which didn’t give me much time to do any real thinking about the matter. It wasn’t long before I was pulling into the parking lot of Intelligentsia, and not much longer after that I was heading through the doors.

I spotted James right away—he was dressed in a slick, navy suit that made him instantly stand out from the otherwise hipster clientele. As I made my way over to him, more than a few people took furtive glances in his direction. The man had billions, and billions meant fame.

“Morning,” he said, standing up and greeting me with a warm smile. “Good to see you.”

“Yeah. Morning.”

It wasn’t “good” to see him, more confusing and a little suspicious. But I slid into the chair across from him anyway, and he sat down too.

“OK. You want to talk business.”

“Damn. Even my client was down with BSing about the Rams for a little while before we got right to it.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure your client doesn’t have any reason to be suspicious of why you’re meeting with him.”

“No need for any of that. Like I said, you’ll be interested in what I have to say. And if you’re on board, your life is going to be very, very different than it was when you walked through those doors.” He gestured to the coffee counter. “Something to sip on?”

“I’m fine.” I kept my voice curt.

“Nah,” he said. “A little caffeine makes these things smoother. Plus, the drip here is just so damn good—I get it every time I come to town.”

Before I could say that I really, really didn’t care for any coffee, James had already flagged one of the baristas, pointed to his drink, and then made a “two” with his fingers.

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