Was that the reason Roger had involved her? The feminist part of her rebelled at the possibility, but logic prevailed. It was wrong, but it was still the way of the world. Some men would always smile at a woman and bark at a man. If that was the case with Zacharias Castelianos, so be it.
She could smile and get him as a client. Well, as Roger’s client, but she’d get a tiny bit of credit and a big chunk of change.
Assuming the cab ever moved again.
Assuming, too, that she didn’t melt away by the time it did.
Jaimie put away the iPad, scooted forward, and rapped on the translucent partition.
“Driver?”
The cabbie’s eyes met hers in his mirror.
“Could you please turn up the air conditioning?”
He nodded, jiggled a couple of doohickeys on the dashboard. She waited a few seconds, but nothing happened. Sighing, she unbuttoned her jacket, hooked her index finger into the neckline of her blouse, and eased it away from her skin.
She was sweating.
Ladies didn’t sweat, the teacher who’d given her and her sisters deportment lessons when they were eight, nine, and ten would have said. Jaimie knew better. Ladies did sweat, all right, but successful Realtors didn’t.
She crossed her legs, swung one foot back and forth.
This was not good.
She was stuck in traffic, her hair falling down, her suit turning into something resembling a tangled bed-sheet, her makeup undoubtedly sliding off her face while the possibility of making her meeting on time grew more and more doubtful.
Zacharias Castelianos would be irritated, Roger would be pissed, and she didn’t even want to think about Steven, undoubtedly brooding over the fact that she hadn’t gone to a concert with him but had, instead, gone to New York.
Steven. Back to him again.
She’d broken up with him a dozen times, but he kept turning up, begging for another chance, telling her he couldn’t live without her.
She’d finally mentioned it to her sister, Lissa, one day while they were Skyping, catching up the way they did whenever there was time.
At that point, still early in what Steven had already started calling their relationship, she’d felt the first faint stirrings of unease, so when Lissa had said, “How’s your love life?” she’d phrased her answer with care.
She certainly hadn’t wanted to sound like an idiot, complaining about a man who was so attentive. So first she’d said, “What love life?” and they’d both laughed because that had become their standard routine and then she’d hesitated and said, Well, there was this guy…
“He’s hot for you,” Lissa had said, on a long sigh, “but you don’t feel that way about him.”
“Right,” Jaimie had answered, and then she’d changed the subject because how did a grown woman explain that she wasn’t capable of handling the fawning attention of a congressional staffer, a Fulbright scholar, a man with a family tree that probably went back to the Mayflower?
That just wasn’t logical and if there was one thing her family expected her to be, it was logical.
Everybody in the Wilde clan had a claim to fame.
Her father was powerful.
Her brothers were brave.
Emily was The Creative One and Lissa was The Best Cook in the World.
Jaimie was logical, so logical that her sisters and brothers had nicknamed her James. She’d objected that giving her a man’s name because she was logical was sexist, and she’d quoted statistics about sexist attitudes until her sisters had groaned and her brothers had laughed, and she’d laughed, too, which had made the nickname OK.
It had been hers, ever since.
Yes, and why would a logical woman be trapped in a taxi all this time without taking some kind of action?