“Then kiss me now,” I said in a hot whisper.
You looked down, shook your head, but you weren’t saying no. You were saying yes. You were always saying yes. Is it so wrong that I always want you to say yes? Some days, I feel so selfish to want you this much, to make you bend, to ask you to kiss me all the time. But you never seemed to mind. You slid into the booth next to me, brushed my hair from my ear, and whispered, “Diner kisses.”
Then your lips met mine, and I shivered, as sparks raced across my body from your lips on mine. Your soft kisses sent me into a dreamlike state where my world was nothing but bliss and joy and pleasure.
I suppose, in retrospect, it’s safe to say we were never very careful in public. Maybe we wanted to be found out.
I think I do. I do want to be found. Because I don’t want the way I feel for you to be a secret.
Chapter Thirteen
Noah
Jonathan marches into the doorway a few days after the event at MoMA. He holds his hands out wide and raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow.
“Well?”
Damn. He must really want the guy if he’s willing to speak first. Jonathan rarely goes first. One of his golden rules of business. Whoever speaks first loses the negotiation.
“I met him. He’s a nice guy.”
He stares daggers at me as he steps into my office. Parking himself on the couch, he plants his hands on his knees and widens his icy eyes. “And?” he asks, as if he’s hanging on the edge of the word.
For some reason, I feel like toying with him. “And he enjoyed the polenta cups,” I say wryly.
“C’mon, Hayes. Did you get him?”
I tilt my head to the side. “It was one event. We spoke for three minutes, Jonathan. He’s not a “Wham! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am” kind of guy.”
Jonathan rolls his eyes. “Then what of guy is he?”
“He needs to be wooed. Romanced. We need to let him know what we can do for him.”
“Well, get on it. That’s your mission. Jewel won’t be on top forever. You need another big whale.”
He stands and walks out. He’s done with me for the day.
Everyone is disposable in this world. One of the things I always liked about working with Jewel was her pure love for the story. Lords and Ladies became a hit because she put her whole heart into it. That’s why it grew like crazy.
And as it soared, I fell in love with her daughter. I didn’t expect that to happen. I didn’t map out a plan to romance Kennedy at all. It simply happened thanks to the show’s runaway success serving as an unexpected wingman to us coming together.
When Lords and Ladies skyrocketed last year, I licensed it to countries all over the world, so Jewel was always signing contracts and papers. She had so many papers to sign, she started sending Kennedy over to my office to drop them off.
One fateful afternoon last June, I was wrapping up a deal for Lords and Ladies in Brazil, and the receptionist escorted Kennedy to my office.
“How are you?” she asked, as she plunked the papers down on my desk and helped herself to a chair, her brown hair looped in a loose ponytail at her neck. She had on lip gloss, and that was it for makeup. Her directness threw me off, but it was refreshing that she didn’t ask how business was. I’d been talking business all day. I didn’t want to talk about business.
“Good. I’m good,” I said. “You?”
“I’m great. What did you have for lunch?”
I laughed at the randomness of her question. “Sushi.”
“Nigiri, roll, or sashimi?”
“Combo platter, as a matter of fact,” I said, and tapped my pen on the edge of the desk, giving her a curious look, trying to figure her out. We’d chatted at her house, in the park on my morning runs, but this was the first time we’d ever talked in my office. “You like sushi?”
“As long as it didn’t swim beforehand.”
I smiled at her joke, knowing she was a vegetarian. “Good one.”
She gestured to my computer, to the music coming out of the speakers. I was listening to the soundtrack of Anything Goes.
“I get no kicks from champagne,” she said, the tiniest touch of sultry to her voice. There it was. Like a gauntlet thrown. Some kind of return to the night at her dinner table.
“Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all,” I said, starting the volley.
“So tell me why should it be true,” she said, and her lips curved up in the start of a pretty smile. Her eyes met mine, those beautiful green eyes that made my stomach flip. I wanted to serve up the next line, the one that followed: That I get a kick out of you. But it was too soon, too presumptuous.
“Love that song something fierce,” I said, trying to play it safe. She adjusted with me. Maybe she was tentative too.
“Do you ever listen to any other music, or is it show tunes all the way?”
“I would have to say it’d be a rare day if I listened to something that wasn’t meant to be belted from a Broadway stage. What about you?” I asked, eager to keep chatting.
“I like lots of music, but I like musicals best of all. They’re so … happy, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. I know what you mean.”
“What’s your favorite musical ever?”
“Well, I love Chess, as you know. And Les Miz, and definitely Rent, and of course Sweeney Todd. But my favorite ever is 42nd Street. My mom was one of the understudies for Peggy Sawyer for one of the revivals some years back.”