RESCUE ARRIVES THIRTY very long minutes later. May and I have finished our dinner and shifted to the bar. The pink cards come with us, although I’ve given up hope for the night. The bar’s great, though. It’s classic: polished, wood countertop, tall stools and shelf after mirrored shelf of liquor bottles. I count ten different kinds of whiskey alone. In the mirror, May and I make a cute couple. The bartender winks at me and gives me a thumbs-up. I ignore his knowing smile and focus on my date, who is casting my astrological chart on a cocktail napkin and admiring my love line. It’s bold. Or strong. Or something. I don’t snort because that would be rude.
“What’s my future hold, love?” Our bartender leans in, subtly cutting me out with his shoulder as he smiles at May. “I could use a good heads-up.”
May asks when his birthday is and he winks at her. “Tomorrow.”
He’s probably lying, but May rolls with it and starts scratching on a new napkin. All around us, the bar is full of happy, drinking, chatting people who have plenty of things to say, but I feel like an observer. The bartender is promising May that he can guess what she’ll like. I’m not sure he means a particular drink, but she accepts something pink and frozen with a happy smile. He makes her feel special.
I’m pretending an all-encompassing interest in the drinks menu when May’s eyes widen almost comically. I follow her gaze instinctively, but then her face is obscured by the blonde who drops onto my lap. My brain promptly short-circuits because my new companion wiggles as she starts to slide down my thighs. She has a fabulous ass. Thighs. I mean, honestly, the whole package meets with my enthusiastic approval, even when she wraps her arms around my neck like ivy on an oak. For the first time tonight, anticipation buzzes through my veins. And other parts.
“You owe me,” the blonde whispers against my ear.
Hazel.
Of course it’s Hazel.
I do owe her, although I suspect we should have agreed on a less open-ended plan. I also had no idea that Hazel kept a stash of emergency wigs in her massive walk-in closet. She turns with another hard-on-inducing wiggle until she’s facing May, who is still staring. I don’t think she saw our date ending this way, either. Hazel is wearing a pair of skinny jeans, white Fendi boots that stop just below the knee and a fitted white T-shirt with a black-Sharpied White Knight scrawled across her boobs. Since we’re separated by mere inches, I can tell her eyes are lit up with impish glee. She has that wicked, hot-biker-chick thing going on for her—the kind of woman who graced my teenage bedroom walls and who I jerked off to more than I care to admit in high school. How is this woman possibly single?
“Excuse me?” May crumples up the bartender’s future, sounding rather proprietary. Yeah. She’s definitely decided I’m her billionaire bachelor.
Hazel leans forward. Instinctively, my hands cup her ass because she’s straddling my legs and my knees... Well, I’m pretty certain I’m not supposed to notice what they’re pressing against. Let’s just say it feels amazing.
Look, I know this is a bad idea. I should just tell May that I don’t think we’re a match and that we should get on with our separate lives.
But I might be a little too aware that May’s been fantasizing about her billionaire date night. If I’d simply been looking for a hookup or sex, I might ask if I could take her home or sweep her away to a palatial hotel in San Francisco. It’s not as if there’s a billionaire code of conduct that gets passed out when your bank account hits ten digits, but I’m literate and Hazel keeps stacks of Harlequins on her bedside table. As a member of the billionaire-boys club, I’m supposed to wine, dine and charm, preferably in a Maserati, a Hugo Boss suit and a penthouse suite.
“Bonjour, mon chéri.” Blonde Hazel throws her arms around my neck in an octopus hold and swoops in.
Holy shit.
Her hands cup the side of my head, angling it until she has me exactly where she wants me, and then her mouth covers mine. It’s the kind of aggressively hot kiss that goes from zero to sixty in under a second. Her tongue strokes along my upper lip, I open and she takes full advantage. Our kiss gets hungrier, noisier. There is nothing subtle about how she kisses me—it’s balls-out, loud, messy and the hottest thing ever. I feel her arms tighten, her breasts pressing against my chest. She’s practically giving me a lap dance and we’re sitting in a bar.
In public.
In front of May.
This is not the plan I would have gone with, but nevertheless I find myself falling into our kiss, my tongue dueling with hers because Hazel tastes amazing and this is...fun.
Hazel comes up for air and I grab her hands because I’m not sure how far she’ll take this. She looks over her shoulder and winks at May. “C’est moi.”
I’m no French expert but I don’t think that makes sense.
“I’m calling an Uber,” May says with fierce dignity.
I nod because she’s a grown woman and we both know this isn’t going to work.
The bartender slips a new, folded-up cocktail napkin to May. I’m pretty certain that it’s his number, but whatever it is—number, grocery list, scathing indictment of my social skills—she tucks it into her purse with exaggerated care.
I should say something to her. Instead, I lift Hazel off my lap, set her down on the bar stool next to me and walk May outside. She doesn’t say anything while we stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalk, staring at the car icon crawling across the screen of her phone.
When the Uber pulls up to the curb, I make sure she’s shared her ride details with a friend and I give her my number so she can text me that
