“No,” Bob half-whispered back. “I think we should warn him. She’s a really nice girl, and Vaughan wouldn’t know what to do with her.”
I chuckled again. “You know I can fire the both of you before she gets back here with the coffee pot, right?” Claudia was heading back toward us, and I glared at both of them. “Be cool or else.”
Claudia served the coffee with another saucy smile directed right at me, then left to race laps around the diner.
As the guys talked about our latest construction project being right across the street from a gym with very sexy ladies in the window, I was only half listening. It was impossible to tear my eyes from Claudia. The way she was so patient and attentive with the elderly people. The way she played peekaboo with a menu to make a toddler laugh. The way she seemed to be constantly joking with the cook.
She was so gorgeous it was almost difficult to take her all in. Yet it was her fantastic spark of energy that made it impossible to tear my eyes away.
“Boss, your phone is beeping,” Taylor said, pulling me out of my daze and back to reality.
“Sorry. Thanks.”
It was a long, wordy text from my assistant Cheryl, warning me that my ex-girlfriend Jessica would be coming to the event celebratin
g the opening of the new hospital wing this Saturday night. Her date was a doctor there.
Instantly my fabulous mood turned dark. We had busted our asses to get that hospital contract, and pulled in every favor to make sure the job was perfect, and completed exactly on time. Apparently we were the only construction company to ever hit a deadline for them right on the nose. The big summer bash to celebrate the opening of the wing before all of the furniture got moved in was supposed to be the party of the year.
Now I was supposed to go stag while Jessica showed up with a doctor?
Dammit.
Jessica and I had only dated for about two months, and we had broken up over a year and a half ago. Yet that conniving little… person …still got under my skin.
She was a social climber of the worst kind. I found out that she had been using my private files to get the contact info of the owners of the corporations I was building for.
Since then, she had been like a termite, trying to worm her way in to grab more information. Phone calls to the office, pretending that we were still together. Calls and texts to me, my assistant, and others. It was bordering on harassment. She would just show up places, expecting to be let in so that she could meet people that she could later use in her bizarre quest to connect with all of the city’s wealthiest people.
It was very distracting, at a time when I was very busy trying to expand the company now that I’d taken over from Dad completely.
I glanced up to see Bob looking at me strangely. “I know that look,” he said. “What has Jessica done now?”
“Nothing. Just a heads up from Cheryl that she’s going to be there on Saturday with some doctor as her date.”
“You need to one up her,” Bob said. “Show up with someone even more amazing.”
“Those things are lousy for a real date,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s a networking thing. I’d never bring a woman I was interested in to one of those. She’d be bored to tears.”
Taylor’s eyes were blazing. I’d always suspected that he had more dirt on Jessica than he let on, since he seemed even more angry with her than I was. I knew that he had to escort her out of dangerous construction zones more than once.
“You need to stick it to that nasty piece of work,” Taylor said. “Get yourself a gorgeous girl, and show up looking so happy that it makes Jessica cry.”
“Not just a date,” Bob said, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the formica table top. “Make her pretend to be your fiancée or something. You know, like, serious. Make sure Jessica knows she never has another chance with you, ever.”
“Trust me, she’d never want me,” I said, forcing a smile. “She’s looking for a guy who is super successful and mega rich. I was just a stepping stone.”
Bob frowned as he reached out to clap the back of my shoulder. “I’m sorry, boss. I know. And all the more reason that I think you should take this opportunity to stick it to her once and for all.”
Taylor laughed far too loudly at the double entendre. I didn’t bother to tell him that I had never quite “stuck it” to Jessica at all. We had rarely been alone, since she had dragged me out to event after event, then said she was exhausted at the end of every night.
I couldn’t help feeling that I dodged a bullet there. She was so determined to be a trophy wife I could see her getting knocked up on purpose.
“You need to show up with a girl who has things that Jessica never will,” Bob said, grinning widely.
I looked up to see Claudia’s radiant smile as she came toward us with three huge plates.
“Claudia would be perfect!” Taylor boomed. “She’s ten times prettier, and so sweet that she would make that evil witch sick.”