“Wait. Why did you ask about salad and fish?” First things first.

“Because that’s what every woman I date orders when we dine.”

“Seriously? There’s a meal code? I’m breaking some rule by getting beef?”

“You ordered what you like. I find that appealing. No pretense. No affect. You’re just being Shannon.”

Which wasn’t enough for Steve. “I’m being the marketing coordinator for Consolidated Evalu-shop, Declan. You’ve just told me we have the account. Thank you.”

Deflect deflect deflect.

“No—thank you. Once I realized what you were doing in that men’s room, I knew we needed to give your company the account.”

I almost drop the wine glass in shock. A tiny splash of red wine stains the white tablecloth. It looks like blood.

“You knew who I was?”

“Not quite. I figured you were with Consolidated, though. We knew your company would perform shops this week. It’s one of the reasons I was there. Just spot-checking stores.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“I said a lot of things. You kept your cover as much as possible. Even to the point of hilarity.”

“And embarrassment.”

“That, too.”

“Most people find me uncouth.” Okay, Steve found me uncouth. Why am I thinking about Steve right now? I should be pretending to need to use the ladies’ room and running in there to frantically text Amanda and Greg the good news.

“Anyone who thinks that is an ass who doesn’t know an authentic human being from a blow-up doll girlfriend.”

“I never said anything about a boyfriend,” I protest.

“You didn’t have to.”

I am torn between being offended and being attracted to him, the professional in me screaming that this is inappropriate, but the woman inside wanting to press myself against him and explore.

All I can do is make a funny whimpering sound of defeat and confusion.

A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention. A couple has come in to the restaurant, the woman with long, straight blond hair that reaches the cleft of her ass. She’s willowy thin and wearing a tight white dress with a bright red silk sash as a belt. Her date is bent over, face out of sight, but I stiffen as I recognize the body, knowing those broad shoulders, that nipped waist, and the cut of the Armani suit with the fraternity pin at the lapel.

And then Steve stands up and looks into the dining room. Craning his neck, he’s playing the room, searching for someone he can network with and impress. Building a client base is important, he always said. But who you run into a dinner or a bar or the gym is worth so much more. His eyes land—

Directly on me. His face turns to the right as if he can’t believe he sees what he sees. His hand on his date’s waist tightens, like he’s saying I’m taken.

No shit, Sherlock.

Declan follows my stare and his eyes narrow. He reaches for my hand again. Predatory. Like he’s claiming me. Staking out his territory.

Maybe I’m taken too, Steve.

“Who is that?” Declan asks.

I watch as Steve’s eyes move over to Declan. Instant recognition kicks in. Steve is an opportunist at heart. He appears to know exactly who Declan is, and this is a script I can write, too.

“That’s my ex,” I say without moving my lips.

“Good ex or bad ex?” he mutters. I break away and stare at Declan now, because what kind of man gets the landscape of dating that well?

“Social climber ex. Mendon girls aren’t his thing. He traded up for a nicer model,” I whisper, my insides going cold.

Declan shifts his chair a tiny bit closer to me and says through a serious expression, “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Steve and his date are still chatting with the maître d’, though Steve points to us. Her eyes light up when she sees Declan, and she chats animatedly with Steve.

“Let him dictate how you view yourself.”

I snort. “Like it’s that easy.”

“It can be.”

“It can be,” I mimic. I reach for the wine glass and chug it all down in a few gags.

“If you let it, Shannon.” His eyes are serious.

“Why did you go all cold billionaire at the end of the meeting earlier today?” I ask. What do I have to lose? Might as well just give in and be me at this point. My day started in the crapper, and as Steve walks slowly across the enormous dining room toward us, it looks like it’s ending with a piece of shit.

“Because I learned a long time ago that it’s better to have people react to you than to react to them.”

Stunned, I sit and ponder this, his words reverberating in my head as Steve appears, gushing and complimentary.

“Shannon! What a wonderful surprise!” Steve’s doing his best Tim Gunn impression. “Don’t you look fantastic!” Air kisses follow as he bends down and awkwardly embraces me. I get a mouthful of blue wool lapel.

His date looks like she just ate a lemon.

“Jessica Coffin, this is…” Steve pauses. Declan’s hand clasps mine hard. “…an old friend, Shannon Jacoby.”

Old friend? All righty, then. If you call the woman you went shopping for engagement rings with and slept with for the better part of two years an “old friend”…

I don’t stand. She reaches out and shakes my hand with a cold salmon she pretends is a palm and fingers. Coffin is an old New England/Mayflower family name. It fits her.

Steve looks at me, then Declan, then me, then Declan, clearly expecting me to introduce them. His eyes land on our clasped hands.

I’ve never seen a coyote at the moment its ears pick up the sound of doomed prey, but as I watch Declan watching Steve, I feel like I’m pretty close right now. It’s like When Animals Attack: Boston Brahmin Brawl—coming soon on The Learning Channel, right after Honey Boo Boo!

Steve clears his throat. Jessica looks like a Scandinavian Barbie, bored to tears. Finally, Declan stands and lets go of my hand, but plants a very territorial paw on my shoulder. He gestures with his other hand.

“Why don’t you join us?” I swear he growls. Just a little.

Chuckles would be so cowed by the look I give Declan. In fact, I think I’m channeling my cat via astral projection, because I become pure evil via my eyes.

Declan just winks.

Winks! How can he wink when I am killing him with my laser death stare?

Steve rushes to sit down next to Declan, leaving Jessica to stand there, the right corner of her lip twitching. Or a bubble of Botox broke free. Hard to tell.

She clears her throat. Steve ignores her, about to open his mouth and say something to Declan. He looks like a golden retriever puppy who can barely control himself from pissing all over the foyer as he waits to be let out.

“Ahem,” Jessica says again, looking at Steve with an icy glare that even he can’t ignore.

Declan remains standing the entire time and gallantly walks over to her chair, pulls it out, and inclines his head. Her face cracks into chunks of ice the size of glaciers, and a smile that could act as a backup disco ball emerges from her head.

Steve is oblivious. It’s his job to remain so. He’s a player, a mover and shaker, a guy with one foot on the next rung of the ladder no matter where he’s at—as he reminded me a million times while we were together—and he’s got his eye on the prize, and the prize isn’t Jessica any longer.

It’s Declan.

Who looks at Steve like he wants to deworm him.

Meanwhile, my heart is dancing the cha-cha and my legs start to shake from nerves. Just then, the waiter comes to offer wine.

“We’d love to get another bottle of whatever Declan’s ordered,” Steve says in an arched tone, one he reserves for interacting with “the help” when we’re in front of bigwigs. That makes Declan pause and look down at Steve, who is now sitting across from me with a look that says, Don’t blow this.

Declan recites a few words of French to the waiter, who turns as if to go.

“One moment,” I say. The waiter stops. “I would prefer a lighter white wine.”

“You ordered the beef,” Steve says, frowning. “Of course you drink red with beef.” He knows I’m a steak girl, but the way he says it makes me bristle, a streak of self-loathing fury rising in a straight line up from belly to throat. The assumption that I’m a rube who can’t possibly know what she’s doing was part of the foundation of our entire relationship.

Worst of all? I reinforced it. Not the rube part, but the belief part.

Declan says something else in French to the waiter, who nods to me and walks away. Then he turns to Steve and says, “You know my name?”

Steve laughs in his fakey-sophisticated way. He doesn’t seem to realize how obviously pretentious he is. I see it, Dad saw it from the first handshake he had with Steve, Amy sees it, but so many people Steve worked with never saw it.

It was my mom’s job not to see it. All she saw when she looked at Steve was Harvard and Farmington and little MBA-fathered babies all lined up and cute in their matching Hanna Andersson pajamas while sleeping in their PoshTots nurseries.

Declan’s tight jaw and cold eyes tell me he sees it quite clearly.

“Everyone who’s paying attention in this town knows who the McCormicks are,” Steve says blithely.

Wrong answer.

Jessica is sitting across from Declan and I’m across from Steve. Declan’s hand slips under the table and he leans toward me, hot palm landing on my thigh. Although everything below my waist is obscured by the table, it’s damn obvious what he’s doing to anyone observing.

Steve’s face turns a pale pink I don’t recall ever seeing, and Jessica’s eyes roll so hard she burns twenty calories with the motion.

“Paying attention is a good quality,” Declan says, turning his eyes to me. He gives my thigh a squeeze. I put my hand on his and try to move it.

It is granite.

Something in me snaps and floods at the same time, desperation and attempts at maintaining an illusion of control all melting away with a rush of pleasure. Maybe it’s the wine I guzzled. Maybe it’s the feel of Declan’s hand on my leg, half on the cloth of my skirt and half on my stockings. Yes, the split was that bad.

Bad never felt so good.

Steve is cataloging me now, his eyes done with resting on Declan, instead looking at me as if he’d underestimated the value of a discarded possession.

The waiter picks this exact moment to return, carrying a bottle of white and four glasses. He pours a small amount in a glass. Declan does the necessaries, sipping and nodding with approval. I receive a nice, healthy glass of white wine and then the waiter pours a twin glass for Declan.

He offers some to Jessica, who nods.

Steve declines.

After replacing the chilled bottle in its ice container in a stand that now sits at my left elbow, the waiter asks Jessica for her dinner order.

“I’ll have a small field greens salad with vinegar and oil and the tilapia.”

Declan makes a noise of amusement and I try not to laugh. Salad and fish. Boy, did he call it. The only way not to start giggling is to drink my wine, which I do. All of it. Like it’s Gatorade. I decide right then and there to order the biggest dessert they have on the menu and eat it with gusto.

Because I can. And it won’t have maple in it.

Steve’s eyes bug out of his head while Jessica keeps her bored expression, Maybe it’s a new Xanax-Botox combo. Perhaps they inject the Xanax directly under the skin, because whatever it takes to achieve a flat affect that is so utterly devoid of emotion can’t be organic. It must be manmade. Someone patented that.

Except it all morphs when she talks to Declan. The ice queen becomes a sweet, warm princess and she is hot to snag him. Not that I have a claim on him or anything, though the way his hand is learning the terrain of my inner thigh makes me think he was a geography major with a keen interest in cartography.

I don’t stop him. I don’t want to. And he’s showing no signs of wanting to, either, as his fingertips graze my skin, moving in light circles, taking their time as they feel their way through questions I know the answers to now, but can’t quite put into words.

Good luck, Jessica. You can’t compete with Toilet Girl.

But you just keep on trying.

Steve alternates between looking like a ferocious business insider and a wounded intern. I can tell the landscape of his internal sense of the pecking order of the world has been deeply shaken. Accustomed to treating me like a social necessary at dinners like this, he used to think he had to carefully coach me. As if I were a walking liability ready to spring a faux pas at any minute and ruin his chances for success.

And yet I loved him. Still kind of do. Because even now, with Declan’s hand practically typing out all the sexy scenes from Fifty Shades of Grey on my leg in Morse code, a part of me wants to help Steve. Whatever that means.

“I saw the exhibit your brother has over at the Bromfield,” Jessica tells Declan, taking the opportunity to reach out and touch his forearm. My eyes lock on her perfect, slender hand, and suddenly the only meat I want between my teeth are those fingers.

The possessiveness makes my body go on high alert, and Declan’s hand stops moving. Even he can feel it. He shifts his arm just so, enough to make her drop her hand as he reaches for his wine glass, giving me a sidelong glance that tells me the message was most certainly received.

“The Bromfield is a gallery for modern art,” Jessica says pointedly to me, leaning around Declan. She says it like she’s a children’s television show host explaining a new concept to an imagined four-year-old audience.

“I’m more a Fountain Street Studios kind of gal,” I say as I reach for the bottle of wine in the bucket next to me. Steve’s eyes widen a touch, the signal obvious. I’m supposed to wait for someone else to pour it, or to ask Declan or Steve to, or I’m supposed to disappear into a giant sinkhole created by the gravity of my lack of manners.

Instead, I pour the rest of the wine into mine and Declan’s glasses, and gently return the bottle.

“Fountain Street?” Jessica says, eyes as wide as saucers, a sarcastic curl to her lip as she looks with fake helplessness between Steve and Declan. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of them.”

“They’re in Framingham,” I say, pretending not to notice the condescension. She sniffs, expecting the men to join in her game. Framingham is a former working-class town with a city center that is not even the kind of place where Jessica could imagine her cleaning lady would live.

“The old warehouse?” Declan asks. “The one that the artists took over as a sort of co-op?” His eyes light up. “We’ve had commercial photographers from that operation come and do beautiful work for our promo materials in the real estate operation. High-end, quality work.”

Jessica’s eyes open wider, but this time driven by something other than coquettishness. A sharp look at Steve makes him literally sink a bit in his chair, as if his balls were deflating by the second.

“Have you been to one of their open houses?” I ask. The place advertises every few months, and I’ve always been curious.

“No, but I think we’re about to. It’s a date,” he whispers, loud enough for Steve and Jessica to hear. She leans back with her lemon face again and Steve reaches for her hand with a loving look on his face. She tolerates his touch like she’s getting a pap smear. Including the shudder, as if cold steel slides along her skin.

Declan and I reach for our glasses of wine at the exact same moment, and he holds his out to mine. “A toast!” He looks at Steve and Jessica, and they both pick up their wine glasses, Steve letting out a sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath for too long.

“What shall we toast to?” Steve asks.

Declan looks down in contemplation, and his hand opens on my leg, massaging up and down. I don’t even try to pretend to ignore it now, loosened up by the wine and his attentions—both public and private. Doubts fade as the scenario sharpens. Crazy as it sounds, Declan’s got his hot palm on my skin, his eyes on me, and his words, I suspect, are about to center around me, too.

“To…shopping for a billionaire!” Declan declares.