“How is that relevant to our game?” I asked.
“Hey, you said we could ask anything we wanted,” she said. “So, I’m asking you about Cassandra Leone.”
“Okay, well, Cass and I are friends.”
“And?”
I frowned at her. “And what?”
“And what else?” She shook her finger in the air. “I Googled you last night.”
I put on a horrified face. “OMG, please, don’t say that I’ve been Googled!”
She grinned. “You’ve had quite the colorful life, Mr. McGee,” she said. “So many news reports of your exploits in the business world. And so many images of your… other interests, shall we say… from TMZ and The New York Times. It turns out, you’re a regular on the gossip pages. I feel so silly for not realizing that I was in the presence of a celebrity.”
“Oh, I’m a celebrity, all right,” I said, playing it off. “What would I find if I Googled you, Miss O’Hara?”
“You’d discover that you were with the most boring person in New York City.”
“Come on, I don’t believe that.”
She sighed and spread out her hands. “You’d find me listed on the Yates Hamilton & Booz website, and on a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated in months because I’ve had nothing to tell. Like I said, I’m probably the most boring woman in New York City.”
“And yet, here you are with a notorious celebrity like me.”
That made her smiled. She put a hand on my arm and gave it a squeeze. “Seriously, tell me about you and Cassandra Leone. According to Google, you two have been an item for years. I found an engagement announcement from like five years ago, but you never married that I could find. Why no wedding bells?”
“We just never took that plunge,” I said honestly. “Cass is not the marrying kind.”
“Ah, so she’s the one.”
“Yes, believe it or not, she is the one. I’ve proposed to her several times. She does not believe in monogamy. She would gladly marry me if it was just in name only, but she is not ready to settle down, at least not with me.”
“That’s… sad,” she said, squeezing my arm again. “But you’re still friendly?”
“Oh yeah, we’ve known each other since college,” I said. “We hang out, we go to dinner, we… hang out…”
“Enough said.” She settled back in the seat and turned her eyes toward the road. “She’s very beautiful, but also very intelligent, isn’t she?”
“Cass has one of the sharpest business minds of our time,” I said. “It’s just packaged in a stripper’s body.”
“She was coming on to my Uncle last night,” she said, eyes straight ahead. “Was that just her being flirty, or did you put her up to that?”
“A little of both,” I said. “I asked her to occupy Allen, so I could sass out this hot shot attorney he was bringing to dinner. Of course, that was before I realized that the hot
shot attorney was you.”
“I see,” she said tentatively.
“But it worked out well,” I said. “It gave you and I time to get reacquainted.”
“I’ll let you know how well it worked out,” she said, glancing over with a smile. “After the weekend is over.”
Chapter 17: Katie
The trip from my apartment in Manhattan to Conner’s house in the Hamptons on Long Island took about three hours, which was an hour longer than it should have taken.
The traffic wasn’t the issue, as it would have been in the summer. It was February and freezing outside. Nobody in their right mind was heading to the Hamptons for a long weekend. The streets in the town would be deserted, as would the beaches, until the middle of spring.