“Is it bad?” I steal more chocolate just in case.
“No, Heath and I looked over the spreadsheets you did and everything is great. More than great.”
“Good.” I smile.
“I know you lent me money to buy the chain so I didn’t have to ask Heath. It will take some time to pay you back, but as we both can see so far I will be able to.”
“I know. I told you I thought it was a good buy.”
“I want you to think about it not being a loan but your share. We can do this together.” Ah. This again. She suggested this when she first had the idea, but I offered to give her the loan instead. I had the money just sitting in an account. I never used it. It was something Con set up long ago. “You’ve been such a big part of me buying it to begin with. I couldn’t have done it without you and now you’re spending all this time helping me too.”
“I will always help you.”
“I know, I just want you to really think about it.”
“Okay,” I agree. I turned the offer down before because I thought I had other plans. Baby plans. I’m not sure I can let those go yet. The doctors all say there is nothing wrong with me. To give it time. I have and still nothing.
Cindy comes sliding into Orchard’s office. Her hair is a mess and I think there is a hickey on her neck. I have to fight a laugh. I remember the time Con gave me a hickey. It was high school and I know he was trying to mark me to fend everyone off. I smile thinking about it.
“That Blank guy is banned from the store,” is all she says before grabbing a few chocolates for herself and leaving as fast as she came.
“Good luck with telling Blank he can’t do something.” That never works well with the men around here and the women they want to claim.
Chapter 7
Constantine
“You’re late,” I inform Blank as I leave the court. I had it reserved for an hour and found a different player since the hedge fund manager flaked on me.
The blond hits his racket against his leg before answering, “I had shit going on and I was here thirty minutes ago.”
“Too bad.” I give a chin nod toward my playing partner. “See you Thursday.”
“This is betrayal, man,” Blank whines.
“Should’ve shown up on time.” I stride into the locker room.
“I’m wooing someone,” Blank informs me.
“Wooing?” I hand my shit to the attendant. “I’ll be using the steam room for fifteen minutes.”
The man nods and promises to have my things ready for me when I exit. “You coming?” I call over to Blank. “I want to hear more about this wooing bit. Who’s the victim?”
Blank strips off his workout gear, which the attendant spirits away. The steam room is empty, which is one thing I like about this club. It only has a select few members so I’m not packed ass to balls with others. There’s enough steam that it’s even hard to see Blank, who sits on the opposite wall.
“How long have you and Abby been together?”
“Twelve years.”
“Tw-twelve years?” my friend sputters. “Has it been that long? I don’t think I’ve owned anything for that long.”
I’m not surprised. Blank doesn’t subscribe to the invest and hold theory. That’s not how he made his money. He’s quick thinking, nimble, and risk taking. That philosophy has grown his fund from seven figures to ten in under five years. “Women aren’t stocks. You find the right one and you want to hold her forever. Whoever you’re wooing might not be responding well because she senses this is a game for you.”
Blank doesn’t respond. I guess I gave him some food for thought. As he contemplates this, I stretch out my legs and think back to the first time I saw Abigail at the Manhattan prep school. It was early morning and I was sitting on the stairs to the second floor with the other seniors waiting for Coach Kim to get done banging the chemistry sub in the boys’ locker room. Coach Kim was good for only two things–basketball and fucking. He’d been kicked out of his former school because of the fucking thing. He’d wised up by the time he got to St. Mark’s though and only screwed around, literally, with the young teachers. We were only a few games from winning state, so if Coach Kim wanted to bang the twenty-three-year-old teacher in the locker room, so be it.
Everyone in school knew the rules except Abigail because she was new. She had forgotten a textbook in the girl’s locker room and had raced down to get it. In St. Mark’s every girl wore a plaid skirt, knee socks, and white shirts with little Peter Pan collars. In fact, that’s all the girls wore in all my classes since I was in kindergarten. That shit didn’t move me. Or, at least it didn’t until Abigail came along. I wasn’t the only one who noticed something different about her. The whole team started quivering like dogs in heat as she came to a halt in front of us. I was the only one who took action. I parted those damn mutts like Moses split the Red Sea in half, escorted her up to the girl’s locker room, kissed her before she went back to her classes, and took her virginity by the end of the week. She showed up to classes for the first month after with a big hickey on her neck. Juvenile, maybe, but everyone knew she belonged to me.