“And your lunch date with him tomorrow?” Donny asked, grabbing another olive.
Samantha decided she’d better make martinis before Donny devoured the entire jar. She crossed to her stainless-steel refrigerator and snagged the bucket from the ice dispenser. The sun was setting low in the sky, lighting up the city. Her apartment was the size of a shoebox. But, oh! What a view. She could see the entire Chicago skyline from the John Hancock Building to the Sears Tower—which had officially been renamed the Willis Tower, although no self-respecting Chicagoan would ever refer to it as such.
“What about my lunch date with him tomorrow?” She dumped the ice in the shaker and used the jigger to measure the liquor.
“You going to be okay?”
After pouring a little olive brine in with the gin and vermouth, she capped the shaker and gave it a good jiggle.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re avoiding the answer to that question?” Donny yelled over the sound of alcohol and ice clanging against metal.
She grabbed two martini glasses from her cupboard, upended the shaker, and filled both. Only after she slid one to Donny and had taken a good tug on the other did she wipe her mouth and admit, “Because by avoiding the question, I won’t have to lie to you.”
“That bad, is it?” Donny took a sip of his drink and closed his eyes. “Mmm, good.”
She’d developed her mad love for dirty martinis from Donny himself. He had taken her out on her twenty-first birthday. She could still remember what he’d said to her when he ordered their first drink. “Now, usually your twenty-first birthday is for bad beer, cheap vodka shots, and puking out the window of the cab on the way home. But you deserve better, funny face. We’re going to start you off with the good stuff.” Four dirty martinis later, she’d still puked out the window of the cab on the way home.
“The truth is, I don’t know if I’ll be okay,” she admitted, the gin warming her belly but not her soul. The thought of seeing Ozzie again, of being near him but not being able to touch him, left her cold. “But I have to go. If I don’t, he’ll keep thinking he needs to apologize, to make up for…” She didn’t finish that sentence. “And that’ll just drag this thing out. I can’t handle that. I have to keep up pretenses and let things deteriorate the natural way.”
“The ol’ friendly fade,” Donny said, shaking his head before taking another sip. “Harsh.”
“Don’t act like you haven’t done it yourself. I remember Mark Bennett. You met him for drinks and dinner less and less. Emailed and texted less and less until one day…poof. He was gone from your life. Never to be seen or heard from again.”
“Not true. We exchange Christmas cards.”
“Come on.” She made a face.
“Fine.” Donny sighed, running a finger around the rim of his martini glass. “So I friendly faded Mark. But in my defense, that was so much more merciful than out-and-out rejecting him. He was too nice for that.”
“Exactly.”
“Difference there being I didn’t love or lust after Mark. How the hell are you going to keep from ending up in Ozzie’s bed again? Or better yet, what possible reason will you give him for wanting to put a halt on your nocturnal activities? Activities that, by your own admission, were better than good… They were grrrrreat!”
Better than good or great, she thought. Making love to Ozzie was transcendent. The man is a master.
And that thought reminded her why she had decided to turn down this road in the first place. He’d acquired that mastery by being with women. A lot of women.
“I’ll think of something,” she told Donny.
But when she woke up the next morning, she still hadn’t thought of anything.
Chapter 23
Black Knights Inc. Headquarters
“Why the long face?”
Ozzie jumped at the question. He hadn’t heard Becky come up behind him. He’d been too caught up in staring at Samantha’s text message, willing it to change.
Clearing his throat and pasting on a smile—he hoped it wasn’t too sick-looking—he turned away from his bank of computers. The late-morning sun always gave the shop a rosy glow. But even that wasn’t enough to soften Becky’s edges. She was covered head to toe in metal shavings and grease, and her expression was decidedly flinty. She always got that look when she was knee-deep in a bike build. Just so happened that right then, she was knee-deep in a bike rebuild. After five days, Violet, his beloved motorcycle, was beginning to look like her old self. Becky was a true genius.
“Long face?” He quirked a brow. “Wait. I know this one.” He forced a teasing note into his voice. “It starts out… A horse walks into a bar, right?”
Becky plunked down beside him, a bottle of water in one hand and a grape-flavored Dum Dum lollipop still in its wrapper in the other. “Don’t frickin’ distract me with that winning smile and those quick quips. Ten minutes ago, you were grinning and whistling that Come on, feel the noise song by…” She screwed up her face.
“Quiet Riot, although it’s actually a remake of an old 1973 Slade song,” he submitted helpfully. It would also forever remind him of Samantha, the song she’d had him play on the jukebox at Delilah’s bar all those years ago.
“Right.” Becky nodded. “And then you get a text message, and suddenly, you look like you’re sucking on a lemon. So what gives? Who was that?” She flicked a greasy finger at his cell phone.
He considered prevaricating or telling her it was none of her damned business, but what would be the point? She would find out eventually. He hadn’t exactly kept it a secret that he was supposed to meet Samantha for lunch.
“It was Samantha.” And just saying her name opened up another fissure in his heart. “She canceled on me.”
Becky lifted a brow. “Why? Did something happen to burst all those heart-shaped balloons flying above her head?” She pointed her lollipop at him. “What did you do?”
“M-me?” he sputtered. “Why do you assume I did something?”
“Um, because you’re a man, that’s why.”
“Is this one of those sisterhood situations or rules or something?” He frowned at her.
“Huh?”