CHAPTER 15

FINN

I pulled out my favorite cuff links from the box on my dresser. I only needed to find a matching tie and shoes, and I would be ready. If I got very lucky, I would be exactly on time. Luck had been running in my favor lately, so I counted on that. I had the hardest time falling asleep the previous night, despite Scott laying on an exhausting guilt trip for hours before finally leaving. There were times when I hated how good he was at his job. I was certain I could find a CFO who was less of a genius and lower maintenance than he was.

Scott was furious that I left him to run our booth with the interns. He had always hated geeks and nerds, but he knew he had a gift with numbers. He thought he was too cool for either group, and mentioned that with great regularity. Yesterday pushed him beyond the depths of depravity. He had to interact with committed fans in elaborate costumes. He wasn’t taking that sitting down.

As much as I wanted to keep Maggie a secret from him as long as I could, I knew the only way to make him stop talking about himself was to tell him I found Maggie. It worked like a charm. He asked too many details, most of which I couldn’t answer anyway. To say he was disappointed I didn’t tag her ass was an understatement. He felt like he was a sexual Yoda to me and he had failed. To be fair, he used words much more crass than sexual Yoda.

Naturally, he wanted to meet her immediately. I thought about telling him she left the country. Or hiring an actress to play Maggie. But neither of those ideas would work long-term. He would meet her at some point, and I would have to do damage control like never before. Fucking Scott.

I reminded him that I would have been with her if he hadn’t called acting like a petulant child. He ended our day much sooner than I would have liked, even if I did need the sleep. I wanted to believe everything that happened with Maggie before that interruption was real. She was better than I remembered her. My imagination of what she would look like now had not done her justice. She was funnier and smarter and damn gorgeous. It was the first time I’d been on a date where I wasn’t bored to death. If I had to sit through another dinner where the woman said nothing, ate three leaves of lettuce, and fixed her makeup thirty-eight times at the table, I was going to punch a wall. Maggie was more than a breath of fresh air.

I checked my phone every few minutes the previous night to make sure her number was still there. I’d sent her a good-night text hours before I drifted off. She never replied, but I hoped she was sleeping. My Maggie dreams were more vivid than ever. They weren’t sex dreams, though. They were different and somehow better. They were tiny scenes of us doing simple things together—going to the market, cooking together, stealing kisses in passing. I had wanted Maggie in my bed for a while, but more than ever, I wanted her in my life. She fit. Everything made so much sense when she was around.

I finished with my tie and put on my coat. Jerry had texted me twenty minutes before to let me know he was downstairs. Scott was going to be furious. Well, he was already furious. Now he was going to be a level above furious. Yes, I had ditched him at Comic-Con to run the booth by himself with a few of the interns. I was still reeling from the earful on that. He hates fantasy, science fiction, and anything remotely related to it. If I didn’t make it there on time to ring the bell to open the goddamn stock market, his head would shoot off into the stratosphere. Guaranteed. The only thing he hated more than fantasy was talking to financial analysts. Which was what he was stuck doing until I could rescue him. He ran every financial aspect of our business, but he had that weird hang-up about nerds and number crunchers. If Cons were his second worst nightmare, being surrounded by numbers guys was his first. And I had left him alone in the belly of the beast on Wall Street. I might literally never hear the end of this.

Jerry opened the car door for me as I came flying out of my brownstone. “Rough start this morning, sir?”

I slid in the back seat and waited for him to get in the front. “I had a great morning. Just running a little behind. Or a lot behind. I overslept. Sorry I kept you waiting.”

Jerry hit the gas harder than usual. I braced myself against the front seat. “No worries. We’ll get you there on time, sir.”

I loved driving my grandfather’s old car, but it was nice to let someone else deal with rush hour traffic. Jerry had been with me since I graduated from college. I would never make it anywhere on time if he didn’t keep me in line.

“Did you have a nice weekend, sir?” He glanced at me in the mirror. “It’s not like you to oversleep.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I did. I spent the whole weekend with the woman I’m going to marry. How was yours?”

His eyes in the mirror reflection widened and then crinkled like he was smiling. “Wonderful. I spent the whole weekend with the woman I already married. When do I get to meet your future wife?”

Talking about Maggie was only second to being with her. My man card was revoked for sure, if I ever had one. “I’m meeting her for lunch today, and then I’m hoping dinner as well. I’ll introduce you. You’ve been able to tolerate me all these years; you’re going to love her.”

I looked out the window. I didn’t know how he did it, but we might make it with a few minutes to spare. I checked my phone to see if Maggie had texted, but all I had was a series of texts from Scott threatening to castrate me if I wasn’t there in the next thirty seconds. I was hoping to use my dick recreationally very soon, so Scott would have to work out his trauma on his own.

“Tell me about this lady who’s got you all wound up. What’s her name?” Jerry called from the front.

I had to look like a dopey cartoon character with eyes popping out of my head. “Her name is Maggie. She’s a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel. She’s smart and she’s funny and she has the best imagination.”

Jerry ran a red light, shaving a few minutes off our travel time. “Great imagination? Sounds like she’s perfect for you. Does Maggie have a last name?”

“It’s . . .” I rubbed the side of my face and looked out the window as if the answer would be there. “It’s . . . I actually don’t know. I guess we never got around to that.”

I was a fucking idiot. I didn’t even know Maggie’s last name. We talked about aliens and how much sauerkraut is too much sauerkraut and how tall we think we would be in space, but I never asked her last name.

“You’re going to marry her, but you didn’t get her full name?” Jerry raised an eyebrow at me in the mirror.

“I have her phone number, though. I’ll just ask her at lunch. It’s no big deal.” I was a fucking idiot. For a second, I thought about the possibility she gave me a fake number, but why would she spend most of the weekend with me? It was fine. I would see her soon and we would get it all cleared up.

***

Scott’s threats of violence had become alarmingly more creative by the time Jerry dropped me down the street from the Stock Exchange. I was escorted up to where Scott was being shown which button to push for the bell. I didn’t need to be able to read lips to know he called me a motherfucker when he saw me walk in.

We were shown out to the balcony overlooking the trading floor. I pushed the button and waved and it was done. We had a meeting scheduled right after, but at least I could stop worrying about the collapse of the global economy because the motherfucker slated to start the U.S. market slept through his alarm.

“You almost get a little trim and you just stop showing up everywhere?” Scott pulled me aside before we walked into one of the meeting rooms. “I was dying in there.”

I knew better than to tell Scott about any woman. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. “I just overslept. Some asshole took up a lot of my day yesterday whining about his job.”

He folded his arms. “That asshole wouldn’t have been whining if you had worked the booth with me like you promised. Is this some kind of early midlife crisis? You wouldn’t be like this if you busted a nut yesterday.”

I wasn’t about to tell him that selling our company was cutting into valuable getting-laid time. I wanted to go over the last of the details and get the hell over to Maggie. “I can assure you that my sex life is both fine and none of your business. I just want the last of the transition settled so I can take some time off.” I didn’t know Maggie’s financial situation, but I wondered if she were able to take a month off and lay around my yacht in tiny bikinis. I needed to ask her. Now that I put that image in my head, I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.

Scott clapped me on the shoulder. “You have your priorities so out of whack, man. Stick with me, and I’ll show you the way. Maggie won’t know what hit her.”

I had given up arguing with him long ago. “Sure thing, Scott.” I pointed to the door next to us. “Are you ready to get in there and finish this thing?”

“That’s what he said.”

This was going to be a long meeting.