“Connor, everything’s a go. We’ll have about fifty potentials filtering in and out. A lot of talk about offers being made today. We’ll see what happens,” Damian said, walking up to me and breaking my stare away from Aaliyah.
“Good, good. Only a bit more time before things get busy. Damian, let me reintroduce you to Aaliyah. She’ll be around over the coming weeks because she’s doing a piece on me.”
He cocked a brow. “A piece of what?”
“You know…a piece. Like an article. For Passion Magazine.”
He blinked repeatedly. “You’re doing an interview?”
“Yes.”
“You? The man who thinks interviews are the devil?”
“Yes. Me.”
“The one who’s turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid doing interviews?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You do know your last offer was for half a million, right? Is this the half-a-million interview?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not.”
“How much are you paying him?” Damian flatly asked Aaliyah, who was still rubbing down the sofa.
She looked at Damian and smiled. “Oh, only ten thousand but he asked for it to be donated to charity.”
Damian shot me a ‘What the hell is going on?’ expression, and I shot him a ‘Shut up and drop it’ glare—to which he gave me a ‘You’re a fucking idiot’ stare. I followed that up with an ‘I know I’m a fucking idiot’ look. Aaliyah didn’t even notice that we held a whole conversation with just intense eye contact.
Sometimes, I felt Damian and I communicated better without words than we ever did with them.
“My boss is convinced Connor is one of the hot topics of this time,” Aaliyah explained.
“The topics must be very underwhelming this year,” Damian replied.
Aaliyah laughed, tossing her head back. “Yeah. We were really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this guy.”
Hell, her laughter was beautiful, too. She had that intense kind of laugh that vibrated off the walls and into people’s spirits. It was an infectious sound, the kind of laughter that made other people chuckle, too.
“Makes sense. I’m sure you asked others too and they declined the offer of being interviewed,” Damian said. “Honestly, that’s the only thing that would make sense.”
“He was actually the third billionth person we reached out to this time around,” Aaliyah chimed in, playing along with Damian. Most people didn’t pick up on Damian’s dry humor since it read as rude and dismissive a lot of the time, but Aaliyah fell right into place with it.
“You should’ve kept searching,” Damian said.
Aaliyah shook her head and crossed her arms. “I know. I told my boss that over and over again, but alas, we had to settle with this one.”
Damian almost smirked, and—holy shit how did she get him to almost smirk? What kind of witchcraft was Aaliyah into?
“Better get back to work. If you want to give her the bad joke today and save me from that misery, by all means,” Damian said.
“Sounds good. And Damian?” I nodded his way. “Take the lead today.”
He arched a surprised brow. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I think you’re ready.”
“I’ve never shopped a property this big,” he warned.
“Which is exactly why you should do it today. You got this. I’ll be lurking in the shadows if you need me.”
His brows knitted together, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Thanks, I guess.”
“I love you, too,” I joked, patting him on the back. He walked off to make sure everything was perfect around the property, and I knew he was excited. Even though he’d never pushed a property that size, I knew if anyone could sell it that afternoon, it would be Damian. Sure, he was cold in his demeanor when he wasn’t working with clients, but he turned on the fake charm once he stepped into the business role.
It was amazing to witness. He could make himself give fake smiles to clients and speak elegantly and charm their pants off without a problem. Yet the moment the clients left, Damian’s face would drop and he’d return back to his old Eeyore ways. The good ole bait and switch.
I bet he had to unplug completely from the world after engaging with other humans. It seemed exhausting to him.
Aaliyah kept smiling. “What a nice guy.”
“Nice?” I laughed. “Most people call him unapproachable.”
“I think he’s funny. A very dry sense of humor. He doesn’t smile much, now does he?”
“I’m still waiting to see it. I’m kind of scared for when I see a real, genuine smile from him. I don’t know how I’ll react.”
Aaliyah let out a small chuckle, and it transported me back to Halloween night when she laughed and left that sound imprinted on me.
“Come on,” I said, holding a hand out toward her. “Let me show you the rest of the place before people begin arriving.”
22
Aaliyah
I knew wealthy people existed. I wasn’t naïve about that fact. I’d seen enough episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians to know some people live a very different type of lifestyle than I had. Plus, for the past few weeks, I’d lived in Jason’s penthouse. Still, I’d never seen anything like the property I was standing in.
I’d never seen so much luxury in one place, so much…money. When the people began arriving for the showing, I could tell they were the types who could afford a home like that. They moved like wealth, as if they belonged in said home. The level of confidence they oozed inspired me.
Marie always said I had to act more confident in situations, but it was hard for me.
“Fake it till you make it, darling,” she’d say.
I was going to miss her knowledge. I was going to miss her.
Connor handed the reins of the showing off to Damian, who turned into the most well-spoken individual when interacting with potential buyers. That was the first time I’d seen him smile, which was a very nice look on him. He should’ve done it more often.
Yet the moment the buyers turned away from Damian, his smirk would drop and he’d return to
