I stand up to greet them as they approach. “Hi again, Janie. And hello, Landon. It’s good to see you,” I say, extending my hand toward him with a polite smile. I have a strong suspicion he’s not here for me but rather my companions—a suspicion that’s instantly corroborated because as soon as he shakes my hand and mumbles, “Good to see you,” his gaze homes in on my date and it’s as if I don’t exist.
“Landon Worth,” he announces, sticking out his hand at Marcus. “I’m Emma’s friend.”
Marcus’s eyebrows rise as he glances at me, but I keep my face blank. There’s no way I’m claiming this guy I barely know as a friend. I’m beginning to form a theory as to why Janie disappeared after they started dating, and it’s not a good one.
Marcus’s return introduction is curt, the handshake brief. “Marcus Carelli.”
“And this is my friend from college, Janie Brandt,” I say, gesturing toward her. “We ran into each other in the ladies’ room earlier.” Pre-Landon, I would’ve introduced her as “one of my best friends,” but it’s hard to consider someone your BFF when you haven’t spoken to her for six months—and she hasn’t returned most of your texts.
“Nice to meet you, Janie,” Marcus says, shaking her hand with a much warmer expression. Meanwhile, Landon goes around the table introducing himself to Marcus’s investors and handing out gold-lettered business cards. “In case you ever need some M&A or IPO advice,” he says to Weston Long with a wink. “My team at Goldman just launched the Guru IPO, you know.”
Everyone is polite to him, but I can tell nobody’s particularly impressed. These men must run into dozens of Landons daily; with their wealth, there’s no avoiding all the ass kissers and favor seekers. Still, I feel a little dirty watching Landon’s blatant efforts to ingratiate himself, and Janie looks uncomfortable too.
Thankfully, the ickiness doesn’t last long. Everyone was getting ready to leave anyway, and Landon’s arrival merely accelerates the inevitable. Within minutes, everyone heads out, leaving me and Marcus with Janie and her boyfriend.
“So,” Landon says, smiling wide enough to swallow a boat. “How about the four of us grab a drink? There’s a nice bar over at—”
“Maybe another time,” Marcus says as the waiter fetches our coats. He turns to my friend. “Janie, it was nice to meet you. I hope we see you again soon.”
And placing a hand on my lower back, he ushers me out of the restaurant and into the waiting car.
31
Marcus
Once we’re inside the car, Emma closes her eyes with a weary sigh, and I pull her to me, letting her head rest on my shoulder.
“Tired?” I ask, stroking her soft curls. A flowery fragrance wafts toward me, something unfamiliar but pleasant, though it does give me a tickling sensation in my nostrils.
“I’m exhausted.” Emma’s voice is muffled as she burrows deeper into my neck. “I haven’t socialized this intensely since Kendall’s twenty-fifth birthday party.”
Twenty-fifth birthday party? For some reason, I keep forgetting that my kitten’s almost a decade younger, with friends to match. I’m not exactly cradle-robbing here, but there is a definite difference between thirty-five and twenty-six. At my age, marriage and family are the norm, even in career-minded New York City, while most of Emma’s peers are too busy finding themselves to entertain such notions.
No wonder it’s so hard to get her to commit. She’s used to boys who don’t know what the fuck they want, not men who recognize a good thing when they see it.
“Well, you did amazing regardless. They all loved you,” I tell her, and it’s the truth. I suspected Ashton and the others would like Emma once they got to know her, but it took less than an hour for her to charm their socks off. Even notoriously stiff Bob Johnson was smiling by the end, and before he left, he gave me a verbal commitment for an additional $150 million—about $100 million more than I hoped to get from him at this stage.
My kitten didn’t just entertain him with small talk; she got him to increase his allocation to my fund.
“Really?” She raises her head and blinks owlishly. “I felt so clueless with all that finance talk around me. I thought for sure—”
A sneeze comes upon me so suddenly I barely have a chance to turn away. It’s immediately followed by another, and I realize what that tickling sensation in my nose means.
“Did you spray on some perfume tonight?” I ask nasally, grabbing a tissue from a box in the back and pressing it to my nose as I move away from Emma. My throat is itching now too, and my eyes are beginning to water; whatever my kitten used is potent stuff.
She looks startled. “Perfume? No, I can’t; my cats go crazy if I use anything with fragrance. I don’t even own perfume, and most of my products are unscented. Why, are you allergic?”
I sneeze again into the tissue. “I must be, at least to certain perfumes. Are you sure you didn’t use anything?” Now that I’m thinking about it, it is the first time I’ve smelled anything on Emma but her natural, delicately sweet scent.
“I’m certain.” Then her eyes go wide. “Oh, but I did hug Janie in the restroom, and she was covered in perfume. Maybe some of it got on me?”
“That must be it,” I say, pressing the button to lower the window. The chilly night air blows in, clearing away the flowery smell and easing the itching in my nose and throat.
“Ugh, I’m so sorry.” Emma scoots as far away from me as the car’s width allows. “Janie never used to wear perfume, claiming she was sensitive to the chemicals, but today, it was like she’d bathed in it.”
“It’s okay. Most women use that stuff. I’m glad you don’t.”
