“My god, Dane. What century are you in?” I shook my head. I could see now why my brother had wanted me here for the full week. “Yes, it’s raw fish, and you’re going to have some tonight. And you’d better like it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re meeting a Japanese CEO and his Japanese team. You’ll be taking them to dinner. The least you can do is get familiar with their cuisine.”
“We don’t know that Kaito Okada even eats sushi,” Dane said. “Maybe he likes Italian or Thai. What century are you in?”
“I’m not stereotyping,” I said, opening shoe boxes until I found the pair I wanted. “Kaito Okada does, in fact, like sushi. One of his first ventures was a series of sushi restaurants placed near Tokyo train stations. So if you are familiar with sushi, and you like it, then you’ll have something to make a conversation about.”
Dane stood up, coming toward me. “How do you know that?”
“I researched him while I was getting my nails done.” I handed him the clothes I’d picked. “Put these on, please, because we’re having dinner at Nobu, the most expensive sushi restaurant in the city.”
Dane took the clothes and put them on a chair. “Fine.” In one motion he pulled off the Batman shirt and dropped it, then put his hands to the button of his jeans.
“In the next room,” I said too loudly, my heart in my throat.
“Why? You’ve already seen everything. Years ago, and yesterday. Most of it, anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m dying to see it again, thanks. Go into the bedroom or something.”
Dane sighed, but he picked up the clothes again and turned away. As he walked, he undid his jeans and dropped them, kicking them off. I watched him disappear into the bedroom, staring, my mouth dry.
“You’re not wearing underwear!” I finally managed to shout.
“I know,” Dane said from the bedroom. “I guess it’s a good thing you bought me some.”
Eleven
Dane
* * *
“Have you ever done this before?” I asked, tilting my chin and looking up at the ceiling.
“Sure I have,” Ava said. “It isn’t hard. Stop talking.”
“Your boyfriends had you trim their beards?”
We were in my bathroom, me sitting on the counter with a towel around my neck, Ava standing between my knees with barber scissors in her hand. She was very, very close to me, and I could have sworn her breath was coming a little shallow. Then again, maybe I had a big ego and she was just mad.
“The guys I dated did not have me trim their beards,” she explained, making a few careful snips. “Mostly it was models on set, needing a last-minute adjustment.”
That was just great. Now I had the mental picture of Ava and some sweaty, half-naked model, a guy from one of the covers of the romance novels she liked so much. “You know a lot of models?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“Enough of them,” she said, her tone unimpressed. “They’re pretty, but the straight ones are flighty, and there isn’t a model alive who would date a stylist over a size four.”
I blinked at the ceiling, processing all of that for a second. I didn’t know what to say to any of it, so I said, “What the actual fuck?”
The scissors snipped again. “You know, when you talk you move your jaw,” Ava said. “Not really the effect I’m going for.”
I sighed as she snipped along the line of my jaw. My beard really was a mess; even I could admit that. But I rarely left my penthouse, I didn’t meet a lot of women, and I hadn’t expected Ava.
I might have trimmed my beard if I knew Ava was going to show up.
“Why are you in the fashion business?” I asked, ignoring her sigh of frustration as I talked again. “It sounds like it’s full of assholes.”