A shiver of unease ran through me. Women didn’t just like what men liked, especially what we did. Plus, it was so random, the way we had hooked up.
I guessed that’s what serendipity was all about. Meant to be together and all that – at least in the bedroom. Though I had to admit, I didn’t mind spending time with her at breakfast, after work, or any other time of the day.
With an oh-so-domestic kiss on the cheek, I left her place and swung by my own to change. Already thoughts were forming about leaving a change of clothes at her place. Maybe swapping keys. I hadn’t even brought her over to my place yet. I could rectify that, though really I didn’t mind spending my time at her place, at her table, in her bed…
Don’t screw this up, I told myself sternly.
If I moved too fast, I could spook her. Hell, I was spooking myself.
Had my divorce taught me nothing? The magic wore off, that’s what it should have taught me, leaving me with only bitterness and my fist for comfort. But then, the magic had never been like this. Did that count for anything, or was I only fooling myself? I wasn’t sure there was a way to really know. There was only this, living in the moment, enjoying what I could.
I whistled on my way into the office.
Penny paused her typing, looking astonished. “Don’t you look chipper?”
“I’m feeling great. Today’s going to be a good day.”
“You got a call this morning from Joanna.”
“Excellent,” I called as I swung the door shut.
Just the lady I needed to thank. And maybe get the scoop on Melissa. I thumbed through the numbers on my phone until I hit Joanna’s. I kicked my feet up on the desk as the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Joanna! Good to hear from you.”
“Wyle, is that you? You sound different.”
“I feel different. And I owe you one, big time, for setting me up with Melissa. She’s great.”
She laughed, a tinny sound across the phone. “That’s why I was calling, to see how it went.”
“Couldn’t have gone better,” I said. “I have a good feeling about her.”
“I’m glad. When she asked about you, I could tell how excited she was.”
There was a brief pause as I heard rumbling in the background. I knew Joanna worked on big photography sets. What did she mean, though, that Melissa had been excited about me? S
he hadn’t known me before the date, so what was there to get excited about? If anything, I sounded worse on paper than I did in person. A forty-something divorced financial planner. Maybe Joanna meant that Melissa had been excited to see me again, after our first date had gone well.
“So you talked to her recently? What did she say about me?”
“No, not since I set you guys up. Hey, the models are freaking out, and it’s crazy over here. I’ve got to run. Glad things worked out!”
The line went dead.
It could be nothing. Maybe it was Joanna phrasing things oddly when nothing was odd at all. But my uncertainty about this merged with my earlier unease to make me very uncomfortable. I went cold, actually, a far cry from the heat of last night or the warmth of this morning. I’d known it was too good to be true, and I’d been right.
I couldn’t figure out why she’d done it. It was conceivable, though far-fetched, that she was spying on me for one of my competitors. I’d lost one of my clients just last month. Long before I’d met Melissa, but if there were someone targeting me, why wouldn’t he send in a super-hot woman to blindside me?
She could easily get information from our conversations. Eventually, I’d have invited her to my place, and maybe she’d even have ended up in the office, picked me up for lunch or something. She did call me during work. That was unusual. If nothing else, she distracted the hell out of me.
Or maybe she’d seen me or heard of me from someone, maybe one of my clients. Maybe she liked to have sugar daddies, and one of them had been my client. When he’d let her go, she’d latched on to a guy who probably had money – the guy who managed their money. Then it made a hell of a lot of sense that she’d been so willing to do what I wanted in the sack.
Any explanation I came up with had to do with money, because that’s the only thing I had of value. The whole thing made sickeningly more sense than a beautiful girl like her wanting to be with a washed up guy. And that made her a whore.
I was an idiot.