Afternoon Delight - By Mia Zachary Page 0,43

say.”

He kept his arms folded and still wore a disgruntled expression, but he was listening.

“I’ll have to think about whether I want to go out with my lover or have sex with my friend. But either way, I’m not only willing but looking forward to spending more time with you.”

His frown lifted to a smirk and the smirk quickly turned into the charmingly boyish smile she adored. Chris uncrossed his arms and pulled her toward him for a quick kiss. His appetite apparently restored, he dug into his hamburger with gusto.

Rei wished she were half as enthusiastic about her lunch. Pushing the salted fish, duck liver, fried fruit and bivalves aside, she caught the attention of their server. “Could you please take this away and bring me a garden salad with vinaigrette dressing? Thanks.”

PajamaPartyGirl is now online

PajamaPartyGirl is instant messaging you

PajamaPartyGirl: How’s it going with the Lunch guy?

JadeBlossom: Good. I mean, we’ve struck up this weird kind of friendship.

PajamaPartyGirl: I can’t invest in the company based on weird friendships. How about the other guys who e-mailed you?

JadeBlossom: Several of them seemed really nice, but I didn’t want to lead them on. I think I’ve found a match and you’ll never guess who it is.

PajamaPartyGirl: The guy who kept asking about your shoes. He sounded hot.

JadeBlossom: Ew. Not him. It’s the guy I’ve been seeing.

PajamaPartyGirl: You mean the boy toy is the one you’ve been e-mailing? How the hell did that happen? I’m confused.

JadeBlossom: So was I. Do you believe in fate?

PajamaPartyGirl: No, and I’m not big on coincidence either. Who is this guy?

JadeBlossom: Chris London. It turns out he owns Lunch Meetings.

PajamaPartyGirl: Oh really. And this doesn’t set off any alarms for you?!? By any chance was he there the day we signed up?

JadeBlossom: Yeah, he recognized me, but he was with a client and couldn’t break away.

PajamaPartyGirl: I’ll bet you’re not the only one he recognized. Think about it, Rei. He’s trying to get money to expand and you walk in with the heir to Hollinger/Hansen, the folks he’s been pitching for funds. I’ll admit it could have been a fluke that you met him at Divas, but how do you know the rest of this wasn’t a setup from the very beginning?

JadeBlossom: I don’t think so, Peej. I’m a good judge of character.

9

MARVIN CARRINGTON LOOKED like a new man. Sort of.

He’d had his hair cut and styled. He wore new glasses and he looked good in a pale blue monochromatic shirt and tie. But the look in his puppy-brown eyes and his body language were the same. He still came across as insecure and slightly desperate.

“I don’t know what went wrong, Chris.”

“Well, tell me how your date started and we’ll figure it out from there.”

Marvin shrugged. “Tina asked when I wanted to meet. I said whenever it fit into her schedule. She asked where did I want to go? I told her anyplace she liked. When we got to the coffee shop, I ordered the same thing she did.”

Chris kept himself from wincing and instead nodded for Marvin to continue. “How did the conversation go?”

Marvin shrugged again. “I thought I was using open communication. I told her how long it had been since my last date and what went wrong in that relationship. I touched her a lot so she’d know I was sensitive and just tried to show her the real me. She didn’t talk much about herself and when I asked if anything was wrong she said nothing, but she kept sighing.”

“Okay, Marvin. I think I’ve heard enough. When a woman says “nothing,” it always means “something.” That’s great that you let her see the real you, but you might have shown her too much you all at once. There are twelve steps to intimacy and you jumped right to step four or five.”

He spent the next twenty minutes coaching Marvin and building his self-esteem and then practically held his hand while he called Tina to ask her for another date. When he left Chris’s office and headed for the front door, he was walking with a more confident stride and a spring in his step.

“You’re in a great mood today, considering all the activity around here today.” Lara paused by the bar on her way past.

Chris looked up from getting a can of his favorite energy drink and shrugged. A team of Hollinger/Hansen auditors and risk assessment specialists had been combing through his files all morning, checking the account books and reading client contracts. “Hey,