“Cinderella, you dropped something the other night.”
My abandoned granny loafer dropped at my feet Monday morning, making me flinch.
“Don’t feel bad. I have that effect on a lot of women.” Brooks winked at me from where he was leaning into the side of my cubicle, looking like he’d spent his weekend at a spa for deities.
“I’m sure you do. Right as they bolt the opposite direction.” I got back to replying to emails, breathing through my mouth so I didn’t have to smell his cologne. Which I was reminding myself smelled like sulfurous eggs.
“Kinda like what you did that night in Chicago? Oh wait . . .”
My fingers fumbled over the keys, successfully typing shit instead of shot. If that wasn’t foreshadowing for the direction this Monday was taking . . .
“Could you just die of ego-poisoning already?” I muttered, deleting my typo.
“Ah, but then who would you get to spend your Friday nights with?” Brooks dropped a cup of coffee on my desk before going. All ten feet away to his own cubicle. “Your cats?”
“I don’t have any cats, thank you very much.”
His mouth worked as he settled into his chair. “You manage to drive them away too?”
Breathe. Just breathe. Don’t let him drag you down to his level. “I’ve got work to do.”
“So do I.”
From out of nowhere, a chocolate croissant from Flour Power appeared on the ledge between our two cubicles. My traitor stomach grumbled, since I’d had to forgo my morning ritual thanks to staying up late last night digging up dirt on the man sitting across from me.
Brooks grinned across the divide at me. “Getting you to fall in love with me.”
Chocolate croissant or not, I was about to send it toppling over his cube when a voice boomed through the entire office. “Arden! North! My office! Now!”
I’d only heard Mr. Conrad use that tone a few times, but never directed toward me.
Brooks grabbed his coffee and paused beside my cubicle. “Wonder what this could be about,” he said, his face indicating he knew exactly what it was about.
“What did you do now?” After a brief internal debate, I grabbed the coffee he’d left for me. I could ignore who it was from if I tried really hard.
“I think this has more to do with what you did.”
As we wove through the office, I felt like everyone was watching us. Quinn was on the phone, but even she was staring at us like we were marching toward our doom.
“I didn’t do anything,” I replied as we approached Mr. Conrad’s office.
“Exactly. Dead fish have more panache than you did Friday night.”
Before I could fire something back, Brooks stepped into the office where Mr. Conrad was pacing behind his desk, his face a rare shade of red.
“What the bloody hell was that?” he said before I’d moved past the threshold. “In what world, by whose definition, was that charade of a snoozer considered a date?”
Mr. Conrad didn’t ask me to close the door, but I went ahead and sealed it anyway. Not that it mattered; everyone could probably hear each word being thundered in these four walls anyway.
“This is a totally new, dare I say wild concept, Charles.” Brooks set his coffee down in order to roll up his sleeves. Hello, forearms. How nice to see you again. “Taking into consideration it was our first ever airing, the ratings were solid from what you told me.”
Mr. Conrad snorted. “Sure, they started out solid. Until minute by dull minute, those numbers went down instead of up.”
Brooks’s head rolled. “We tried.”
“No, you tried.” Mr. Conrad stopped behind his chair and pointed a stubby finger my way. “She sabotaged—”
As I was preparing to defend myself, things took an unexpected turn. Brooks powered a few paces toward Mr. Conrad, leveling him with a look. “It was our first time. Given everything, I’d say we did a damn decent job of selling the circus you dropped in our laps.”
My head swiveled toward Brooks. I’d expected him to defend himself, but I hadn’t been anticipating him defending me as well. There was truth in what Mr. Conrad was saying—I had done most everything I could to sabotage that setup of a date. Brooks had gone with the opposite, pulling out all the showy stops to really sell it.
Mr. Conrad exhaled, his gaze landing on me. “You stormed out on a date that was being filmed.”
My arms crossed. “You wanted it to be believable.”
Beside me, a rumble echoed in Brooks’s chest.
“You dressed like you were going to hit the buffet line before playing bingo with your knitting club,” Mr. Conrad continued, the red draining from his face. Slowly.
“And all of that—running out on a date, dressing like some teenage punk rocker—every bit of it was fresh and different from what viewers might have expected of this kind of dating experiment.” Brooks ran his hand through his hair, moving his other hand animatedly. “The canned responses, the black dress, the fake laugh, the batting eyelashes . . . all of that was what viewers expected. That’s boring. Hannah gave them a show they couldn’t keep up with and, mark my word, you’ll see your viewership jump on date two.”
The way he said it, was more like Date Two, as though it were an event about to go down in the history annals.
For some reason, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was too shell-shocked by Mr. Conrad’s sneak attack, and dumbfounded by Brooks seeming to be . . . defending me?
Mr. Conrad licked his lips. “You better be right about that, North, because so help me God, I will drop another couple into your spots if you don’t start giving us a show actually worth tuning into.”
My arms crossed a little tighter, wondering how a department head position had turned into this experiment in humiliation.
“Trust me. You’ll have more viewers than you know what to do with,” Brooks assured him.
“Good.” Mr. Conrad nodded once. “You’ll have a chance to prove that tonight.”
My eyebrows pulled together. “Excuse me? What’s going on tonight?”
“Date number two, that’s what.” Mr. Conrad cracked open his first can of diet soda of the day and gulped down half of it in one swig.
“It’s a Monday night.” I glanced at Brooks for back up, but he didn’t notice.
Mr. Conrad finished the rest of his soda before dropping it in the garbage can. He plastered on a big smile. “The quest to prove love true or false never rests, Ms. Arden.”
“Did you see his article?” I paused on the sidewalk to tuck the newspaper into my purse, managing not to drop my phone tucked between my ear and shoulder as I did.
“You mean the ‘What Not to do on a First Date’ article published in yesterday’s paper?” From her voice, I could imagine Quinn’s face. When I made an mm-hmm sound, she continued. “Didn’t read it. Scanned the title and kept flipping.”
“You know how I can tell when you’re lying?” I glanced up ahead where I was supposed to be meeting him for Date Two, my posture falling. The Darwin Club couldn’t have been any further from my scene. “Your voice gets all high and you start speaking a million words a minute.”
On the other end, Quinn grumbled, “Okay. Fine. I read it. Every word was an insult to the English language.” She paused to take a breath. “Happy now?”
“No. Considering he pretty much wrote it as a direct reflection of what happened on our first date.”
“Wait. Your real first date or your fake first date?”
My head fell back. “Our fake one.”
“I don’t think it was directed at you specifically. I think it was more a newsflash to the world kind of thing. A PSA to all the single people on the planet.” Quinn’s voice was still high, and she was speaking like a turbo booster had been planted in her windpipe.
“I’m going to write my own article on what not to do on a first date. I’ll need twice the word count to finish, but I’ll show him exactly who needs pointers when it comes to dating.” Checking the time, I saw I was already running late . . . which made me want to linger a few more minutes.
“That’ll show him.”
I leaned into the building behind me. “I gotta go. I’ve got a second date with an asshole at The Darwin Club.”
“And here I was about to feel sorry for myself for spending tonight cuddled up to a box of Lucky Charms and NBA highlights.” On cue, what sounded like cereal being poured into a bowl rattled on the other end. “Good luck. Give me a ring if you need moral, mental, or physical support.”
“Thanks. I’ll check in with you in the morning.”
Adjusting my jacket, I started toward the club’s entrance. I was wearing heels—not my typical granny wedge kind—and I felt like a noob circus performer trying to balance on stilts for the first time.
Eight on a Monday night, and a crowd had already gathered outside, if that was any indication of how popular this place was. It was where people came to be seen, which was just perfect for someone who preferred to navigate life free of attention-seeking behavior.
From the look on the face of the guy guarding the entrance, hell would have to freeze before he let me in, but then a familiar face waved at me from behind the velvet rope.
“Arden!” Jimmy shouted above the din.
The bouncer already had the rope unclipped, stepping aside to let me pass.
“Hey, wow, look at you.” Jimmy waved at me. “You kind of went the opposite direction of Friday night.”
My gaze followed his as I second-guessed my wardrobe selection. “Is that the Jimmy way of saying I look like a five-dollar hooker?”
Jimmy barked out a laugh, steering me aside before we moved through the doors. “Fifty-dollar one at least.” That earned him an elbow into his side while he wrestled with the machinery on his head. “Okay, so Conrad wants us to start doing mini interviews before each date. Just a few questions I ask each of you before the date begins. So we get to hear, in your words, how things are progressing.” Jimmy turned to me, adjusting my positioning just so. “I’ll record each of your interviews, then dub them into the end of the date for viewers to check out.”
“Did you already do Brooks’s?”
“Done and done.” Jimmy started counting down with his fingers, giving no other warning.
My eyes did the saucer-blinky thing before I composed myself as he gave the recording signal.
“Okay, Hannah, alias Ms. Romance, we’re one date into this social experiment to prove which school of thought is correct when it comes to love and relationships.” Jimmy was holding a cue card, his voice sounding exactly like he was reading from one. “Has your opinion, in any way, been changed after spending some time with Mr. Reality?”
I gave a little smile. “Not at all. If anything, it’s only further secured my belief that love is very much a real, indisputable entity.”
Jimmy shot a thumbs-up and continued with the next question. “Have your feelings for Brooks changed at all?”
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from popping off the first words that came to mind. Mr. Conrad had come up with these questions, just as he’d come up with this idea. If I wanted to become a dating reality television star, I would have signed up for the Bachelorette.
Holding my tight smile, I replied, “I feel the same way about Brooks now as I did before.”
Jimmy glanced at the notecard in his hands. “What’s one quality you admire about Brooks?”
My face fell. I had not been expecting that kind of a question—saving the worst for last. As I chewed my response out on my lip, my mind vetoed every potential response. Taken from a stance of objectivity, Brooks had a laundry list of admirable qualities . . . but I was the last person to be in a position to view him from an objective standpoint.
Jimmy circled his hand as my silence continued. There I was, a person who made her living as a writer, and I couldn’t come up with a few-word response to a basic question.
My armpits were damp by the time something rolled past my lips. “He’s got nice forearms.”
Jimmy covered his mouth to keep from laughing, while I sweltered under the humiliation of what I’d said. He’s got nice forearms? Good god. I couldn’t say anything right. Even if he did have the most notable forearms in existence, who listed that as quality they admired in another human being?
Oh yeah, that would be me, the woman driving her career into the ground.
Jimmy pressed the record button and the green light stopped flashing.
“That was a disaster.” I wiped my palms on my dress. “Can you please ask me that third question again?”
“Sorry.” Jimmy started for the entrance. “Conrad said no editing or re-shoots. He wants the answers to be unrehearsed and raw.”
“I just said forearms on film.” I had to rush to catch up to him, which made me teeter like a newborn horse thanks to the heels I had on. “I can’t let the world hear that.”
“Why not? He does have beefy forearms.” Jimmy swung the door open for me, the rumble of music breaking over my body as I stepped inside. “Don’t give me that look. Just because I noticed they’re solid doesn’t mean I was the one to admit it to the planet.”
I didn’t miss how he was careful to move aside a couple extra feet, just out of arm’s reach.
“Jimmy—”
“Sorry. I can’t help you. I need this job, and I wouldn’t put it past Conrad to fire my ass if he found out I did any editing.” Jimmy held up his hands as we wandered inside. “Trust me, as far as answers you could have given, it wasn’t that bad.”
“No. It was worse,” I mumbled.
The club was busy, though it wasn’t one of those places that packed bodies in until it was standing room only. In the upscale venue, white leather furniture and tile floors glowed in the soft purple light. Men were dressed in suits, women in clingy dresses, and even the employees were dressed to the nines, although their suits and dresses were alabaster.
I felt so out of my element, Conrad might as well have suggested an underwater venue for our second date. “Is it just me, or might this place be the root of pretention?”
Jimmy made a clucking sound. “Not just you.”
As I scanned the vast space for Brooks, a question popped into my head. “What did he say when you asked him that last question?”
Jimmy rubbed his mouth. “You’re going to have to ask him.”
“A hint?”
“Let’s just say it was a legion deeper than your answer.”
My shoulders fell, and as I was about to ask him to expand on that, Jimmy started doing his finger countdown. When he was down to one finger, that’s when I saw Brooks. On the dance floor, drink in one hand, the bend of a brunette’s waist in his other.
Where in the dating handbooks did it say it was okay to dance with a woman when you were supposed to be on date two with another woman? Beside me, I was aware of Jimmy panning between my face and Brooks out there, moving with a woman who made me look like a negative two.
Making sure I didn’t let my annoyance show, I searched the room for an empty table. When I found one, I zipped straight to it, trying to ignore Brooks and his partner. It was a task I couldn’t accomplish though. Especially when watching him move the way he was had me thinking back to that night his body had moved with mine.
A shockwave bolted down my spine as I tried to flush those memories from my mind. For someone as uptight and obnoxious as he was, the man could move. His mind was rigid, his body loose.
When I slid into the booth buttressed behind the small white table, I glanced everywhere but Brooks’s direction. Jimmy shifted the camera between the dancing couple talking and laughing, and me, alone and waiting.
I swear this social experiment had turned into a quest to make me look as pathetic as possible.
Brooks must have noticed Jimmy, because he managed to peel himself away from the femme fatale to grace us with his presence. Again, I tried to make my expression as unreadable as possible, because I didn’t want him to know I cared who he did what with. Because I didn’t.
“And here I was thinking I was being stood up.” Brooks adjusted his jacket as he approached.
“Sorry I was late. But it looks like you found a way to pass the time.” My gaze shifted to the brunette still standing there, attempting to will him back with the look in her eyes.
“What’s that?” Brooks tapped his ear as he slid beside me. “Is that a note of jealousy I detect?”
“Ha,” I huffed, scooting aside. “That’s the note of indifference. You can dance with whomever you want. I couldn’t care less.”
The strange coloring and shadows in the room drew odd patterns across his face. “And what if I want to dance with you?”
Flip. Flop.
Went my stomach.
I excused it as indigestion from the chips and queso earlier. “I would say I don’t dance.”
He gave me a look that hinted at exactly what he was thinking. “And I would call bullshit.”
Jimmy drew a finger across his neck, but I didn’t think Brooks noticed. Or cared.
“Come on. It’s a club. There’s music. Dance with me.” In his eyes, there was a challenge. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
My back stiffened as I reminded myself yet again to keep my emotions off my face. “The first time was the last time.”
Brooks didn’t acknowledge my response, instead lifting his hand at a server scanning the club. “I ordered you a drink.”
“And I told you I don’t drink alcoholic beverages on a date.”
“Which is exactly why I ordered you H20”—Brooks took the tall glass from the tray after the server stopped at our table—“with a twist of lime.”
I eyed him suspiciously as he set the glass in front of me while the server set a tumbler of gin by him. Before taking a drink, I sniffed it, just to make sure it really was water.
“Why with lime? Most people do lemon in their water,” I asked as I squeezed the green wedge into my drink.
“Too sour.”
My forehead creased. “Limes are sour.”
“No, limes are tart.”
“There’s a difference?”
Brooks took a sip of his drink, no longer staring at the lime wedge. “Sour is unbearable. Tart is irresistible.”
I held his stare too long.
“So?” He took another sip of his drink, shifting closer. “Are you any closer to falling in love with me?”
Even Jimmy’s eyes widened.
Stalling by taking a drink of water, I composed an answer appropriate given the question. “No. But it’s not your fault you’re an asshole, so don’t be too hard on yourself.”
Again, Jimmy sliced his finger across his neck, but it was a half-hearted one, like he was resigned to the fact we weren’t going to edit ourselves anytime soon.
“If you don’t fall in love with me, it will have more to do with you being an invertible shrew than me being an insufferable ass.” He nudged me, which made me flinch. “It wouldn’t matter who the man was, Satan or Adonis, it would still take months to crack through that ironclad, man-hating crust.”
I really should have been more disciplined when it came to my New Year’s resolution of daily meditation. “I don’t hate men.”
Brooks’s head fell back, a chuckle following. “Oh, that’s right. You just expect us to be perfect all the time. If we’re not, then you hate us.”
Breathe in peace. Exhale anger. I thought that was what that meditation book had suggested. All three pages I’d gotten through.
“I do not hate men,” I enunciated.
He leaned in as though to tell me a secret. “You hate me.”
“I have a very good reason for hating you.”
Brooks faked an injured expression. “What reason is that? Because from what I recall, you have three very good reasons for not hating me.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was getting at. Those three reasons from the night I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.
“There are three million reasons for—”
“For you to love me,” he interrupted.
My fingers wound tighter around my glass. “Oh, and by the way, you are an egotistical, arrogant, cocky—”
“Asshole?” Brooks clinked his glass against mine, the gleam in his eyes telling he was loving every second of this diatribe. “All the same meaning by the way. Kind of redundant for a journalist who knows the price of every word.”
For a few minutes, I’d forgotten about Jimmy and the camera and the viewers. That changed when a server rolled up to our table and brought me back to reality.
“This is from the woman at the bar,” she said as she set a drink in front of Brooks. It was wrong; he didn’t drink whatever dark alcohol was swishing inside.
“Which one?” he asked, his eyes roaming the line of women sidled up to the bar as though he were ranking their screwability.
The server had already left when he asked his question, but I guessed it was more voiced to rile me up than to actually satisfy a curiosity.
“I know what you’re doing,” I said before faking a yawn.
Brooks turned toward me. “What am I doing?”
I ignored him, twirling my straw around in my water. “Trying to make me jealous in some desperate hope I’ll throw myself at you when I learn how in demand you are. But let me tell you something—dating has nothing to do with supply and demand.”
Brooks slid aside the fresh drink. “Of course it does. The fewer men, or women, that are available, the higher demand drives.”
I couldn’t help the face I made from his response. “Of course you would look at relationships like an Economics 101 class.”
“That’s because most everything in this life is tied to economics, whether it’s energy prices or potential suitors.” Brooks motioned at me. “And you are jealous. Or else you wouldn’t have brought the topic up in the first place.”
How that man had a talent for bringing my blood to an instant boil. I bit my tongue for a moment. “The only thing I’m jealous of is that those women aren’t sitting beside you instead of me right now.”
A noise emanated from his chest. “You know, they say disdain is veiled love in its infancy. Just like one day love becomes masked disdain.” He lifted his gin glass as though he were making a toast. “It’s the circle of life.”
My body angled away from him as I calculated how many more minutes I’d have to stay for this to count as a date. “Who says that? Adam Smith the father of modern economics?”
Before Brooks could reply, my phone pinged with a text. A moment later, so did Brooks’s. Mine was from Mr. Conrad and brief, albeit to the point. Judging from the sigh that came from Brooks, his message was identical to mine.
Slipping his phone into his pocket, he held out his hand. “What do you say about that dance?”
My hands remained folded in my lap. “I say it’s a bad idea,” I said as I stood, Conrad’s message ringing in my ears like he’d screamed it instead.
“And plenty of bad ideas have been the catalyst for something great.”
When I met him around the front of our table, I didn’t miss the way he was staring at me. Appraising me in a way I hadn’t felt in a while.
“I can’t think of one real-life example of that being true,” I said, smoothing my hands down my dress.
“And I can think of endless ones. That’s the difference between you and me. You think there’s only one path to a destination, whereas I see hundreds. You see life as one big search to find it, while I say you already have.”
His words were making my head hurt as we moved toward the dance floor, Jimmy floating in front of us. For a barbarian, Brooks had surprising depth. It was too bad that depth was totally flawed in its logic, but it showed he’d actually spent some time reflecting on life instead of gallivanting through it.
“Have I managed the impossible and potentially silenced the Ms. Romance?” Brooks’s arm nudged mine.
Maybe he had. But he definitely did not need to know that.
My head tipped as I turned to face him. “I thought we were supposed to be dancing, not debating.”
“I thought you could do both.” As he turned toward me, one of his hands slipped around my waist.
The air felt as though it were being siphoned from my lungs.
“Could is different than should,” I said, hearing my voice wobble a little when his other hand found its way around my back. “And if you don’t want to get kneed in an area responsible for your future offspring, let’s keep our debates to an arm’s-length distance.”
His chest rocked against mine from his muted chuckle. “Fair enough.”
As Brooks stepped into me, his feet staggering between mine, I froze, feeling like I’d lost all function in my limbs. Dance, I instructed myself, but I couldn’t recall the last time I’d danced. At least not when I wasn’t locked in my bathroom while Prince got me through my morning routine.
Even in high school, the one formal dance I’d attended, I’d gone with friends, not a date. The way one moved with friends was totally different than the way one danced with a man.
Seeming to pick up on my uncertainty, Brooks moved in a bit closer, leading, slowly guiding my body. The music and other people faded away until all I could make out was the dull beat of the drums.
“Not a big dancer?” he said, quietly enough I guessed Jimmy’s mic wouldn’t have picked up on it.
“Dance or the dentist. It’s a toss-up for which I’d rather do.” My hands fumbled to find a place to drop. They wound up draped over his shoulders, which seemed like a reasonable place.
“You’re keeping up just fine,” he said as he managed to manipulate my body just enough I didn’t look like I was having a seizure.
“Yeah right.” I glanced over at Jimmy a few feet away. With all of the noise and bodies, it was unlikely he could pick up any of our conversation, but I still found myself lowering my voice.
Brooks’s shoulders lifted beneath my hands. “Dancing is exactly like having sex, except you’re vertical and have clothes on.”
My spine tingled from the image that jumped into my head. “So you have a lot of experience having sex?”
“When it comes to experience, it’s about quality, not quantity.”
His hips swayed against mine, responsible for making my nails dig into his shirt harder than I’d intended. “So you’ve had quality sex?”
His blue eyes darkened a few shades. “What’s your opinion on that? Given your personal experience.”
My eyes cut to Jimmy. All of those people watching . . . even though they couldn’t hear what we were saying, expressions could hint at the tenor of our conversation.
“Don’t worry.” Brooks’s mouth lowered to my ear. “I’m not going to tell the world you fell into bed with some guy whose first name you didn’t know. That would be too easy.”
My knee actually twitched from holding back. “And don’t worry, I’m not going to tell the world the size of your—”
“Wouldn’t exactly hurt my case, would it?” His brows lifted as he smirked at me.
I exhaled, knowing arguing was pointless. In Brooks’s case, his ego actually did match the appendage hanging between his legs.
My eyes met his, the challenge in them mirrored in Brooks’s. “You’re never going to prove your point, you know?”
Brooks pulled me closer abruptly, sending the slightest of shivers down my back. He didn’t miss it. “I’ve already proven it.” He grinned. “Now I just have to prove it to the world.”