“Should I grab another chair?” The hostess shot an unsure look at Jimmy, who was hovering at the table, panning between Brooks and me.
Jimmy shook his finger because I guess he couldn’t exactly shake his head without causing a serious hiccup in production value.
“Well, okay. Have a nice dinner.” Shooting one last look our way, she bolted off.
“She didn’t leave a menu. Do you think the server will bring one?” I checked the table to see if menus were tucked between the salt and pepper shakers, like the diners I frequented. No dice.
“They don’t have menus here.” Brooks glanced around as though he were as comfortable here as he was in his own living room. “Every night the chef puts together an eight-course menu, and that’s what every guest is served. No choices. Everything’s delicious. Simple.”
Jimmy was crawling around the table, trying to find a good angle I guessed. It was unnerving. Along with everything else pertaining to this whole situation.
“But what if someone doesn’t like what’s being served?” I asked.
“What if you don’t like what’s being served?” Brooks cocked a dark brow at me. “Are you a picky eater, Miss Arden?”
My eyes circled the restaurant. “If by picky you mean eating snails, duck liver, and caviar, then yes, I am picky.”
“You’re a cheeseburger and fries kind of girl then?”
I folded my napkin into my lap. It was the nicest article of fabric I had on. “Along with fried chicken and mashed potatoes.”
He smiled at that as a server approached the table, giving Jimmy the same look the hostess had. In his hands was a silver bucket and a couple of fancy glasses.
“The champagne you requested, sir.” The server presented the label to Brooks who, after giving it a check, gave a wave, at which the server tore off the foil wrapper.
When he set the champagne glass in front of me, I shook my head. “No, thank you. I won’t be drinking any.”
“This is good stuff. You’re going to want to have some.” Brooks motioned for the server to pour me a glass first.
I covered the glass with my hand. “I don’t want any,” I said slowly, more to Brooks than the server.
“Then what are you going to drink all night? Ice water?”
“Coffee.” I removed my hand once the server had moved to pour into Brooks’s glass. “It’s late, and I need to stay alert.”
His head tipped. “Alert?”
“Awake.” I cleared my throat, although I knew I needed to stay both awake and alert around him. Sleep with me once and turn out to be a dick, shame on you. Sleep with me twice as a known leader of the dicks, shame on me. Or something like that.
“And ice water,” I added as the server left to go find me a cup of coffee.
Brooks lifted his glass at me. “To uncovering the truth, once and for all.”
I cheered with my empty glass, knowing exactly what truth would be uncovered when this whole thing was said and done.
“Did your real estate agent find you a temporary place yet?” I asked, putting an emphasis on a certain word.
His mouth quirked, his eyes expressing he knew how much I hated this whole arrangement. And that he didn’t care. “My luggage’s already moved in, and my agent assures me it can turn into a long-term contract if need be.”
“Need won’t be,” I said, picking at my nails. Might as well continue chronicling what not to do on a date.
He ignored my quip, his gaze wandering the restaurant aimlessly. “So. Ms. Romance. How does a person get into writing a weekly romance column?” He didn’t miss the way my head tipped. “One of the most read columns published in the most prestigious paper in the country?”
Better. I had a sore spot where my writing was concerned—more specifically, the topic it addressed. My high-brow colleagues considered romance a tasteless topic meant for a writer who couldn’t hack it in the real world of journalism. Covering wars and politics was what they were getting at.
“Well, let’s see . . .” I lifted one of the five forks in front of me. It had been polished to such a high sheen, I could probably blind someone with it if I wanted. “She starts out as an avid reader early in life, moves on to reading the Sunday newspaper with her dad during breakfast in kindergarten, and after that becomes the editor in chief of her high school’s newspaper. As a sophomore.” I paused for emphasis. “From there, she gets accepted into five Ivy Leagues.”
“How many did you apply to?”
“Five.” The corner of my mouth quivered when that smirk of his was cracked by a seam of surprise. “She graduates magna cum laude from the top Ivy League in the nation, and pretty much has her choice of offers from any paper in the country.” When the server arrived with my coffee, I leaned back into my seat. “That’s how a person gets into writing a romance column.”
For half a second, he was speechless. It wasn’t a record, but it was something. “All of those . . . gold stars, and you choose to write a column on romance?” He watched me stir a heap of cream and sugar into my coffee. “Why?”
“Because it’s what I like. And romance has gotten an unfair reputation. It’s not fluff.”
“No. It’s fiction.”
Keep cool. You’re on camera. I’m not going to win anyone to my side by throwing coffee in the face of the door-opening, chair-sliding-out slice of man pie.
“So, Mr. Brooks? How does a person get into writing an anti-romance column?”
“It’s not anti-romance. It’s reality.”
Jimmy shot us a thumbs-up, whatever that meant. We were communicating at least, though I wasn’t sure how constructively.
“And it’s the top read opinion column in the country, so I can’t be alone in my thinking.”
Another server appeared tableside, going from looking at me to Jimmy, and then repeating before managing to set down the plates he held. The first course, I presumed. Although what it consisted of, I couldn’t say. I couldn’t even take an educated guess.
“You peddle fairy tales and false hopes. I sell things the way they really are, with a side of snark.” Brooks was already getting after the first course, failing to acknowledge the grenade about to go off across the table from him. “Happily ever after, soul mates, meant to be, ‘til death do us part. The only place a person can find that kind of stuff is in the pages of a picture book, not in real life. And when a person gets that image in their head of the way relationships should be, they’ll never be happy. No matter who they wind up with.”
Inhale. Exhale. Repeat just to be safe. “By your argument, you could pair that guy with that girl”—my finger pointed between two individuals at different tables—“and they could be happy together just like that.”
“Not just like that.” He finished his bite, shaking his head. “But if that guy and that girl were both heterosexual, emotionally available, and willing to let go of the romance dribble society has infected us with, then yeah, it could happen. In the right situation.”
“The right situation?” I took a sip of my coffee and was surprised to find it was pretty damn good. Not Flour Power good, but close enough for an honorable mention.
“One like this.” Brooks waved between him and me. “Two single people giving each other a chance, being as objective about one another as possible.” He glanced at me in a way that suggested he questioned just how objective I was about this setup. “Add time, patience, mutual respect and affection . . .” His shoulders moved beneath his dark jacket. “Then yeah, the odds are quite good any two people could fall in love. Love isn’t some magic spell. It’s a detailed recipe.”
“So you do believe in love?”
Brooks set down his fork. “I believe in tolerance. And being able to tolerate certain people more than others. Love? We can just lump that in with the soul mate shit.”
A clearing of a throat sounded beside us, followed by Jimmy slicing his finger across his throat.
“Stuff,” Brook’s edited. “Soul mate stuff.”
/> “You aren’t right, you know?”
He slid his plate aside, half finished. His eyes found mine. “And you can’t prove me wrong either.”
The remaining seven courses followed, and I managed to take a bite of all but one of them. Snails. I knew some kind of crustacean would make an appearance. The conversation stagnated after our romance versus reality feud, and Brooks seemed to relax as much as I did when the bill finally arrived.
I already had my card out, but when I went to slide mine in with his, he swung the envelope out of reach.
“It’s on me,” he said. “This is a first date.”
“We’re splitting the bill,” I said, setting my credit card on the edge of the table. “And this is a pretend first date.”
Beside us, Jimmy shifted. Damn that camera. It had been rolling for barely two hours and I already wanted to drive my butter knife through the lens.
“Pretend?” Brooks’s head tipped. “This might be the most real first date ever. You know my thoughts on relationships, and I most certainly know yours. We don’t have to go through a decade of dating, engagement, and marriage before the curtain falls and who and what we really are is revealed. You see the real me.” He leaned slightly across the table toward me. “And I see the real you.”
I glanced at my garish outfit, resisting the urge to roll my eyes at his shameless soliloquy. “And what is it exactly you think you see?”
Brooks had his credit card in the waiter’s hand before I’d noticed him approaching. Brooks shot a smug look my way, one that read that I was cute for trying. “I see someone who’s believed something for so long, it’s become a part of her. The guiding part. Maybe even the defining part. To admit to herself it’s all been a lie would be like confessing her whole life has been one, and that’s too steep a price to pay. So you hold on to your belief, clinging to it as a child to a security blanket. You’ve gotten to a point in life where you’re no longer determined to prove yourself right, but are terrified of the cost of being wrong.” Brooks paused, unblinking. “That’s who I see in front of me.”
The waiter had just returned with the credit card slip to sign as I shoved out of my seat. “For your information, you can’t see anyone, or anything, when you’re blind, Mr. North.”
I made a beeline for the exit, weaving in and out of tables of people who seemed as enthralled by my wardrobe choice as they did the man following me with a camera strapped to his head.
How dare Brooks say that, as though he could sum up the entirety of who I was in a handful of words after spending a few hours with me.
How dare Mr. Conrad set this whole thing into motion, as though he could slap two journalists together at his whim to star as actors in some reality soap opera.
By the time I charged through the door, I was fuming. The driver was waiting and when he saw me coming, he started to open the back door. I turned down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. I was done with this “date.”
Jimmy was following me as I hailed the first available cab I saw. I could almost see him flying into the back of the cab with me, so I sprinted the last few feet toward it. As I did, one of my granny loafers fell off, but I didn’t stop to collect it. When the driver asked me where I was heading, I froze for a moment. The question took on a complicated meaning.
“Just. Go.”
“He does a lot of these triathlon thingys.” Quinn’s voice was muffled thanks to the pizza she was chewing on. After a Sunday’s worth of digging up intel, a large supreme from Gianni’s was in order.
“What’s a triathlon?” I asked, glancing up from my laptop as I did my own research.
“It’s one of those events where you swim, bike, and run.”
My nose curled. “Why would anyone want to do that? It sounds like a form of torture.”
“Not only does he do them, he’s even done the long ones.”
“What’s a long one?” I asked, separating a fresh slice of pizza from the box.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed at her own laptop screen. “Try a couple mile swim, over a hundred-mile bike ride, and then just top it all off, a marathon.”
My mouth fell open. “That’s an actual event that people choose to participate in?”
“Against all reason, yes.”
My head shook. “Well that explains a lot. Anyone who volunteers for something like that has to be void of any and all joy.”
Quinn reached for her bottle of water. “And from the places he’s come in at these joyless people’s sport, he’s pretty damn good too.”
“Of course he is. Brooks North is positively the most joyless person on the planet. It gives him an edge in the sport of masochists.”
I clicked around his dad’s architectural firm’s website, based out in Arizona. From what I’d gathered, it was a successful corporation that employed hundreds of people with offices around the nation. Being the only child of Xander North, Brooks would have had an easy in with the millionaires’ club if he’d followed in his dad’s footsteps.
Yet instead, Brook’s had gone to one of the top universities in the nation to major in journalism, a far cry from architecture. Going into freelance work straight out of school, he had to have known lean months. God knew I had, even as a staff writer straight out of school. Those last couple of days before paydays, I’d sustained on tap water and cup o’ noodles.
“I bet he’s a trust fund kid,” I stated, scanning Xander’s bio and portrait. There was a serious resemblance between him and his son. “His paychecks are probably less than he spends at the country club pro shop before tee time on Sundays.”
Quinn shot me a look above her laptop. “I don’t think so. From what I’ve been reading, his dad didn’t make it big until Brooks was in high school, after the divorce. Brooks lived with his mom until he left for college, and I can’t seem to dig up any photos of him and his dad following the divorce.”
I wiped my greasy fingers on my napkin. “Falling out?”
“Looking that way. Especially when you see a picture of the new Mrs. North and discover they married less than six months after the divorce was final.” Quinn spun her laptop around. A large picture took up most of the screen.
I blinked a few times. “He married someone the same age as his son pretty much.” I scanned the photo of Mrs. Brooks—former name Heather Divine, according to the caption below the photo. “Who looks like she could have been the leading lady in a mess of adult films.” Because really, who needed an augmented chest that large if it wasn’t porn related?
“Correction.” Quinn lifted her finger. “She did star in a handful of adult films.”
“Of course she did.” I blew out a breath.
“Okay, so here’s a guy whose parents divorced when he was fifteen after Mom supported the family while Dad was going to school and building his career. Months after the divorce, Dad finally makes it big and marries a semi-retired porn star who was ‘twenty-one.’” Quinn flipped the screen around and clicked to something else. “No wonder the guy’s a little cynical when it comes to love.”
“Cynical? He wrote an article titled ‘Love is Dead. Get Over it Already.’”
Quinn bobbed her head from side to side. “I don’t know a more extreme version of cynical. Sorry.”
“I do,” I muttered. “Brooks North.”
“Oh no.” Quinn set down her water. “I just found an obituary for Janice North.” Her eyes scanned the screen. “His mom died two years ago. Of cancer.”
That little ache in my chest was not supposed to be felt where Brooks was concerned.
“He doesn’t have any siblings, doesn’t seem to have a relationship with his dad anymore, and has never been married.” Quinn frowned. “Talk about a lonely life.”
“I’m sure he’s not that lonely.”
Quinn exhaled sharply. “Why? Just because he hooked up with you means he’s hooking up with everyone else?”
“Pretty much.”
Her shoulders fell. “Maybe he assumes the exact same thing ab
out you.”
“That was my first time ever doing something like that,” I said, tossing an uneaten scrap of pizza crust at her.
I didn’t come anywhere close to hitting her.
“And what if that was his first time doing something like that too? And here you are, making assumptions that he’s scoring more than Shaq during his golden era.”
I got back to my “research.” “Who’s Shaq?”
Quinn threw her head back. “I can’t even.”
“Come on, Quinn. Let’s jump on the expressway back to reality. Brooks North is about as selective and monogamous as a bonobo. You’ve read his articles. He believes in the total opposite of what we do.”
“Of what you do,” she muttered, fingers clacking against her keyboard.
My expression flattened as I wondered if I’d heard her right. Sliding my laptop aside, I directed a pointed look at the person I thought I knew inside and out. “What I do?” I said slowly, not missing her unwillingness to make eye contact. “But not what you do?”
She pretended to be enthralled by whatever was on her laptop screen. “Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that maybe relationships aren’t so cut and dry. You have some valid points . . . and so does he.” With that, Quinn looked like she was bracing for me to toss a carton of eggs at her.
“He basically believes love is the byproduct of two individuals’ needs to satisfy an innate sexual demand, as well as humanity’s desire for companionship. Which translates to two people being drawn together because they want to hump and don’t want to be alone.” Just saying that put a bitter taste in my mouth.
Instead of looking like she was about to take back what she’d said, Quinn lifted her hands. “What’s so wrong with that? I don’t want to be alone forever. I want to have sex.”
“But not with any random schmuck who puts the offer on the table,” I argued, feeling the teensiest bit betrayed. “I mean, Brooks is the guy who penned a full two-thousand-word article about the scientific reasons men gravitate toward an hourglass figure.”