The Invitation
: Chapter 14

Our lunch meeting had turned into a party. Robyn, the host of the show, invited her co-host and a segment producer, the head buyer was bringing someone along, and Jack had also decided to grace us with his presence. With so many people, and Stella wanting to bring sample boxes for everyone, I drove to make it easier. My car was parked at a garage a few blocks away from the office, so I left early and told Stella to meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes.

She was waiting in front of the building when I pulled up to the light at the corner. It gave me a chance to watch her without her knowing. Two large flowerpots sat on either side of the main entrance to the office. They were old wine barrels, and I’d never given them much thought, though I passed them every day, other than to notice that building maintenance changed the flowers out every so often. I watched from a distance as Stella looked around, almost as if to see if anyone was paying attention, and then leaned over. I’d thought she was going to smell the flowers, but she bent lower and brought her nose to the barrel beneath. Did she just smell the pot?

I chuckled to myself at how nutty she was. Anytime I thought I knew what she was going to say or do, I quickly found my assumption wrong. It was oddly refreshing. Within five minutes of meeting most women, I could guess the salad they were going to order, or that yoga or tennis was their hobby of choice. But not Stella—there was nothing cookie-cutter about her.

She stepped over to the flowerpot on the other side of the doorway and again checked to see if the coast was clear before going in for a sniff. Only this time, she didn’t bend at the knees. She bent in half at the waist. Which gave me an unobstructed view of her ass—her phenomenal freaking ass.

Great. Just great.

I nailed the gas as soon as the light changed and pulled up in front of the building. I’d brought the boxes downstairs to the lobby before I went to the parking garage, so I got out and headed inside.

“Why don’t you get in since I’m double parked, and I’ll grab the stuff from security?” I told her as I passed.

“Oh…okay.”

After I finished loading the trunk, I slammed it shut and waited for traffic to slow enough so I could open the driver’s side door and get in without being clipped.

“Thank you for taking care of that,” Stella said.

“Of course.”

I buckled. “We have an hour before we have to be at the restaurant, but it’ll probably take us almost that long with this traffic.” Looking over my shoulder, it took a while before there was a gap in the cars big enough to pull away from the curb.

Stella sniffed a few times. “Is this brand new?”

My car was actually three years old, but it looked new since I didn’t drive very much.

“It’s a few years old.”

“It still has that new-car smell.”

“Oh yeah? Do you like that smell better than the flowerpots outside the office?”

Stella sighed. “You caught that, huh?”

“I did indeed.”

“I was curious if they were actually aged barrels once used for wine.”

“Were they?”

“I’m not sure. All I could smell was dirt.”

I smirked. “Large quantities of soil tend to smell that way.”

“What kind of a car is this? The interior is so pretty.”

“It’s a Maybach S 650.”

“Is that an impressive car?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. Are you impressed?”

She smiled. “Not really. I don’t drive, so I don’t know too much about cars.”

“You mean you don’t have a car because you live here in the City?”

“No, I mean I don’t have a driver’s license. I had a permit once, and my ex tried to teach me years ago, but I hit a fire hydrant rounding a corner and, well, that was the end of that.”

We inched our way uptown slowly. At one point, a car came out of nowhere and cut me off, so I had to slam on my brakes. Stella and I both had our seatbelts on, so we were fine, but her purse flew off the seat and dumped onto the floor. It landed upside down, and when she went to pick it up, the contents spilled all over the place.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

When she leaned forward to collect her belongings, I noticed the box with the diary from yesterday.

“My ex-wife used to write in one of those every once in a while. I’d replace her writing in it after we argued. Pretty sure all she did was bitch. Isn’t that mostly what people use that for? To vent?”

“Sometimes they’re like that,” Stella said. She straightened the book in its box and put the top back on. “I’ve gotten a few of those. The seller usually posts some screenshots of pages to give you a sample. That helps me rule out a lot, but occasionally you can’t tell from just a short excerpt.”

“Have you started reading Nico’s secrets?”

“It’s Marco, and yes, I did.”

“Well…how was it?”

Stella sighed. “I read almost half the diary in one night.”

I laughed. “That good, huh?”

She held her hand to her chest. “He’s in love with an older woman. Amalia is nineteen years his senior and the librarian for the small village they live in. He’s a grape farmer. She thinks it’s just infatuation and will pass, but he sounds like he’s head over heels for her. He’s thinking about bringing another woman around, hoping to spark some jealousy to make her admit she has feelings for him, too. But I’m worried it’s going to backfire and push her further away.”

“I think Amelia, or whatever her name is, is probably right. Marco is just a horny kid. It’ll pass. Every young guy’s fantasized about a hot librarian at some point. He’s not in love with her. He’s in lust.”

“You didn’t even read the diary. How can you know how he feels?”

I shrugged. “Most relationships end up in the same place anyway.”

“Someone’s extremely cynical…”

“I’m not cynical; I’m a realist. Even if they get together, what do you think the chances are that a guy at forty isn’t going to be looking elsewhere when his librarian bride is sixty?”

“Not when he loves her as much as Marco loves Amalia.”

I scoffed. “It all starts out as fun and games…”

“Whatever.”

“You said your ex was sleeping with someone else. And yet you still believe in fairytales?”

“Just because I’ve been burned doesn’t mean I don’t believe in love. I was devastated when Aiden and I broke up. It took me a long time to move on and replace happiness again. Heck, I’m still working on replaceing my happiness. But one of the things that keeps my spirits up is to believe we’re all meant to have a happily ever after. Mine just wasn’t supposed to be with Aiden.”

My eyes flashed to hers and then back to the road. “Whatever you say…”

“If you’re so bitter about relationships, why did you ask me out?”

“Do I have to stay celibate just because I don’t think everything ends in hearts and roses?”

“Oh.” She rolled her eyes. “So you just wanted to get laid. I’m glad we cleared that up. I actually prefer to get to know someone and spend time with him, in addition to physical intimacy.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. I enjoy spending time with a woman, too. Sometimes we just have different expectations of where things will end up.”

Stella shook her head. “You know what you need? To try my happiness system.”

“Your happiness system?”

Stella nodded. “I know—it needs a better name.”

I grumbled. “I can think of a few.”

“I heard that, but I’m choosing to ignore it. Anyway, when I was struggling and feeling grumpy all the time, I made a list of things that make me happy. Small things—not things that were out of my reach and difficult to accomplish. For example, I try to give someone a compliment every day. That might not seem like much, but it causes you to replace something good in at least one person each day. After a while, it helps change your mindset. Another thing I do is set aside ten minutes to meditate each morning. I also watch the sunrise or sunset at least once a week. And I try to do something I’ve never done before every single weekend.”

I smirked. “If you need help doing someone you’ve never done this weekend, just let me know.”

She rolled her eyes. “Something, not someone.”

I chuckled. “Our happiness systems must work a little differently.”

Traffic had lightened up, and we were already halfway to the restaurant. “As riveting as this conversation is, why don’t I fill you in on the network before we get to lunch? We’re going to be at the restaurant soon.”

“I already read up.”

“Okay, then. Tell me what you know.”

Stella proceeded to rattle off facts about the ownership of the network, statistics on the types of products they sold, which were their best- and worst-performing items, and the qualities they looked for in partners. Then she detailed personal and professional information on both the host and co-host. She’d done more homework than I had.

“You’re thorough,” I said.

“Thank you.”

We stopped at a red light, and Stella shifted in her seat. She uncrossed her legs and re-crossed them in the opposite direction. It had been innocent enough, likely done in an effort to get more comfortable since we’d been sitting in the car for a while now, but the way my eyes ogled her bit of exposed thigh was anything but innocent.

Happiness system. A little leg worked for me. Why did women always have to overcomplicate shit?

Who was the woman I’d sat next to at lunch?

The same woman who’d spent fifteen minutes telling me all the details of a garage sale she went to at age twelve when all I’d asked was how she’d gotten into reading used diaries, the same woman who’d been sniffing barrels just a few hours ago, had morphed into an astute businesswoman. Rather than ramble on with stories, she listened—really listened—and quickly found the hot button for each of the key players at lunch. Then she subtly steered the conversation to those areas when she spoke. She’d had the network bigwigs eating out of the palm of her hand. Robyn Quinn even invited her to a woman’s leadership luncheon to talk about how she took an idea and made it into an innovative business.

The valet brought my car around first, so I shook hands with the group. Stella got hugs from the women. Once we were back on the road, she looked over at me.

“So…go ahead. Tell me what I did wrong.”

I glanced at her and back to the traffic ahead of me. “Wrong? What makes you think you did something wrong?”

“You’re quiet.”

“So?”

“You usually get all quiet and do this staring-at-me thing before you say something snarky. But you’re driving, so your eyes are stuck on the road.”

“Actually, I was thinking about how well lunch went. You did a great job. I might’ve made the introduction, but you sealed the deal.”

From my peripheral vision, I saw Stella blink a few times.

“Was that…a compliment? Are you giving my happiness system a test run?”

We stopped at a light, so I looked over at her. “Definitely not. Though I am capable of giving them when due.”

Her lips curved to an adorable smile. “I was good, wasn’t I?”

“I already gave you one compliment, let’s not go fishing for another so soon.”

She laughed. “Alright. I guess I’ll take what I can get.”

Three days later, my assistant buzzed in to my office. “Jack Sullivan is on the line for you.”

“Thanks, Helena.”

I leaned back in my chair and picked up the phone. “I know I still owe you a beer, but it’s only eight in the morning.”

Jack laughed. “Like we haven’t had beer for breakfast before.”

I smiled. “That was a lot of years ago.”

“Speak for yourself. You didn’t go to Frank’s bachelor party a few months ago.”

I chuckled. “What’s going on?”

“I have some news that should get you big points with your little girlfriend.”

I knew exactly who he was referring to, yet I said, “There’s no woman in my life at the moment. Plus, if there was, I wouldn’t need your sorry ass to help me earn points with her.”

“So you must not want to hear the news then…”

“Spit it out, Sullivan. What’s up?”

“There’s good news and bad news. The good news is, the new Steamer-Beamer—some sort of contraption that lets you get the wrinkles out of your clothes while wearing them—caused second-degree burns on one of our producers.”

“Someone you work with got burned? That’s the good news? I hate to hear the bad news.”

“Obviously it’s bad news for that dude. But it’s good news for you. The Home Shopping Channel had to yank the Steamer-Beamer from its scheduled spot, and that means they have an opening for a product with some immediate air time.”

“Oh yeah? Think Signature Scent might have a shot?”

“Better than a shot. Spot’s yours if you can be ready faster than you originally planned.”

The launch was set for nine weeks from now, but we could definitely speed things up a bit if needed. “No problem. When would we need to be ready?”

“That’s the bad news. You’d have to be ready next week.”

“Next week?” I shook my head. “That’s impossible.”

“Well, the show would film then. It would air the following weekend. But they quote two to four weeks for shipping. So you’d have some time to get the goods out the door.”

I blew out a deep breath. “I don’t know if we can move things up that much.”

“Have I mentioned the volume they’re forecasting?”

“No, what are we talking?”

It took a lot to make my jaw drop, but the number that came out of Jack’s mouth left me catching flies.

“Jesus. That’s more than we anticipated selling the entire first year.”

“Women eat up the products they hawk on that channel. Robyn needs an answer within an hour. If you can’t do it, she has a list of anxious people with products who can. So you better figure that shit out.”