HAVE GOWN, WILL WED

SKillian McRae

2013

Smashwords Edition

Copyright ©2013 by Killian McRae

All Rights Reserved. Except as specified by U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this publication may be reproduced, dis-tributed, or transmitted in any form or media or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without prior written permission of the author.

This work represents a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real

Dedicated

to Robert M. Gray, and to all the brilliant minds he has inspired and mentored.

The Deal

Tonight’s agenda would feature lots of high-priced, high-spirited, celebratory drinking.

She’d done it, she’d actually closed the biggest deal of her life with one of the biggest corporations in the industry. Now, half the laptops, smartphones, and cheese graters in the world would carry BetaHouse applications, with an easy option to upgrade to the pro version with just a few clicks and a credit card. Already, she was looking forward to the huge bonus she’d be able to give her employees this year. The hundred or so people she employed had really been working their tails off, pulling sixty hour weeks without any time off for months. She was committed to making sure each and every one of them shared in this victory. For the moment, however, she was going to celebrate her own success in sealing the deal.

Had she really thought eight years ago when she left Stanford, wide-eyed and clutching a dual master’s degree, that she’d come so far, so fast?

Of course she had; that’s how she’d planned it, after all.

The click-clack of Rosalind Betters’s Prada pumps laid down a driving tempo for the victory parade through San Francisco airport. In typical fashion, the moment the captain flicked off the seatbelt light, she had her iPhone in hand, catching her up on all the news she’d missed in the twenty minutes since the in-flight WiFi had been cut off. A small time in the grand scheme of things, but enough time for the world to change in the Pacific time zone.

However, this time reports about the goings on of her competitors and the latest stock prices took a back burner, atypical for Rosalind. The big clock on the wall in the terminal read three fifty-eight. Two more minutes until the embargo passed, and the news about her deal went out in an automated press release. Two minutes until she was officially the toast of the industry and, oh yes, no less than a little wealthier for the exchange.

Top shelf liquor tonight. And tapas. For some reason, she really wanted tapas.

Like all breaking news, Twitter caught fire first. At four-o-six, @TechBizTimes declared “Bigger and Betters gets bigger and better in $30 million contract from leading industry firm.” Then slowly at first, but with growing momentum, the headline infected all the ping-pong accounts, creating leader links which harvested readers to advertising-cluttered websites, each echoing the details of the deal with further clarity, a new angle, a deeper, more exclusive snippet. BetaHouse was hotter than celebrity trash, in the right circles, that was.

Rosalind was just about to shove her phone back in her bag when she felt it buzz against her palm. The text message made her grin like the cat that got the cream.

Kam: OMG, is this true?

Rosalind had been bursting to tell Kamakshi the news since the ink was on the paper earlier in the day. She’d had no doubt her best friend of over a decade would be surfing the news streams to see what had Rosalind’s Facebook emoticon showing a toothy smile.

A driver waited just outside the baggage claim, holding a placard on which Rosalind’s name was printed in clinical text. Rosalind held the phone to her ear as she maneuvered through the crowd, her other hand insistently pulling her roller carry-on bag as though it were an unruly child out of a candy shop. Somewhere between Washington and California, she’d misplaced her earpiece. Her neck would remind her of the injury all night. After depositing herself in the backseat, she dialed Kamakshi’s cell.

“You think news programs lie?” she asked before her best friend had even had time to say hello.

There was no reply from the other party.

“I mean about something like this,” Rosalind clarified. “Kam, I wanted to call you and tell you this morning right after I got out of the meeting, but they convinced me someone might be listening in on the call. I had to wait until it went public.”

“No, I understand. Sometimes you have to keep things confidential. Do you really think that someone might have bugged your phone or tapped your signal, though?”

“Your brother told me he hooked me up proper when he outfitted BetaHouse’s cells, but with everything you see in the news these days…” Her voice tapered off as she remembered the look on the executives’ faces when they had made the request. “To tell the truth, I think they were just pissed that I had an iPhone. Apple is their biggest competitor, but it wasn’t as though half of their corporate office didn’t have them either. Geesh. You want to test it to make sure?”

Kamakshi giggled. “Sure, how?”

“Say something you think would make Perez Hilton or the bloggers on CNET salivate.”

“Naked Justin Bieber!”

“Salivate, not squirm!” The squawking laugh drew a raised eyebrow via the rearview mirror from the driver. “Seriously, though. About me.”

“Rosalind Betters hasn’t had sex in two years!”

Rosalind’s hand slapped over her mouth, a mixture of surprise and incredulity. “Kam!”

It wasn’t untrue, though it wasn’t like she’d marked the date and kept track. Scanning through the Google calendar in her mind, however, she supposed the math worked out about right. Her brief fling with Craig Ipswitch counted as just another statistic in the graveyard of dead-end relationships, a scenic scattering hosting more than one unkempt and overgrown crypt. All serious suitors had been killed off or seriously maimed—metaphorically speaking—by the growth of her startup the past few years.

C’est la vie. Every silver lining had its cloud. One thing Rosalind knew for sure: unlike scores of literary inventions and hallmark movie heroines, no empty place in her heart existed where a widget called “man” would fit. It wasn’t as though she and Craig had parted on bad terms, either. They had a few months both had enjoyed, a few rounds of sheet tag, and then they parted with best wishes to the other. She just couldn’t seem to convince herself the benefit of the relationship justified all the effort and time it took to keep it going.

“I’ve had Carmen clear my schedule tonight,” Rosalind blurted out suddenly, not wanting to echo her momentary internal gnashing over the phone and in the presence of Nameless Driver. “You and I are going out to celebrate. The question is where. Four on the Floor or Fault Zone? The crowd at Fault Zone is a little shaky, but the drinks at Four are so overpriced.”

“Fault Zone?” Kamakshi repeated the name of the club as though it were a foreign phrase. Which everything sort of sounded like anyway through her muted Indian accent. “It shut down six months ago.”

“Really? Well, Four then.”

“I don’t know…” Kamakshi sounded unsure.

Rosalind took up the hint. “Fine, we can get blitzed just as well at someplace rated by Michelin as we can at a dive bar in the Mission. The important part is that we do something. I can’t have it written in my memoirs that the day I scored the first huge deal of my life, I stayed at home alone with my dog and watched Klondike Annie again.”

“How about I come over and pick you up? We can head down to Sutro’s for dinner.”

Smoothing some lip balm onto the dry skin around her mouth, Rosalind smacked her lips before answering. “Absolutely! Sutro’s sounds great. You want me to ask Carmen to make a reservation for, what, seven o’clock?”

“No, no. That’s okay. I’m sure with all the new business coming in, Carmen’s got enough on her plate.”

“Congratulations, Miss Betters. Welcome home.”

Carmen met the car at the curb and pushed a folded note to the driver through the passenger side window before Rosalind could intercept. Rosalind had told her assistant not to worry about such things, that she was not that kind of boss. However, Carmen insisted. “Whatever makes your day a little easier, that’s my job,” she’d argued. The well-tipped driver set the bags on the curb, thanked both the ladies, and bussed back into the driver’s seat.

“Thank you, Carmen. Though I have to admit, without your tip on Yomiko Kinsi, I might not have closed the deal at all. He was the total inside man. Once I won him over, the rest of them fell like dominos.”

When the headhunting agency had found Carmen a few months ago, the fact that she had come straight from a position as the assistant of Seatech’s VP of Development didn’t hurt. The stout but soft-featured Latina in her early forties was able to fill perfectly her role as Rosalind’s PA, but also was able to give her new boss a rundown of the personalities with which she’d be negotiating. Not only that, but because of her, where there had been chaos in Rosalind’s life, there was now… Well, less chaos. She wasn’t the Messiah, after all. Nonetheless, Carmen did possess a steadfast sense of organization and a diplomatic repartee. Of course, she wouldn’t disclose anything negative or personal, but she had mentioned to Rosalind that gearing a presentation toward Mr. Kimsi’s area of expertise and passion probably wouldn’t hurt her chances.

Carmen followed Rosalind up the corridor of the South of Market residence with a gate that could’ve been cited by West Point staff as a demonstration of proper charging technique. “Well, the rumor always was, he has a hard time saying no to a pretty face. But, Miss Betters, I don’t think that was it at all. BetaHouse makes a great, highly-marketable suite of applications. Yomiko-san has always understood the value of giving the consumer what he wants. He would have picked it up even if you were forty-three, balding, and had a beer gut.”

“Maybe, though maybe not if I looked like that and still wore this skirt.”

As the two women boarded the elevator, Carmen pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. She illuminated the screen and handed it to her boss. “Thought you should see this.”

This was—frankly—a very complimentary photo of Rosalind under a headline on Yahoo! Finance that read, “It doesn’t get any Betters than this.” Rosalind gave her eyes permission to roll. Having such an easily mocked name meant she had heard it all in her time. It saddened her that so few people could surprise her with anything original any more.

The blurb summed up the publicly available facts. Clicking through, she couldn’t help but notice how the brief article closed out with a mini bio:

Rosalind Betters (31) holds master degrees from Stanford University in both Computer Science and Business, and founded BetaHouse two years ago with the help of several prominent Silicon Valley capital venture investors. She is unmarried and lives alone in San Francisco, CA.

“You ever notice how they never do that for men?” She pointed accusingly at the offending text.

Carmen leaned over and read it, giving it a disapproving glare. “As if to say, ‘well of course she’s successful in business, she has no social life’,” she concurred as she took back the phone. “Still, you are the headline of the day. That’s got to be something, right?”

“Hell yeah. Oh, did you get my dry cleaning this morning?”

“Yes. I put it in your bedroom closet. I also picked up your mail from the front desk and sorted out the bills to hand off to your financial manager. There’s a few I wasn’t sure were right, so I left them on the table in the entryway.”

“What about Strudel?”

“Out with the walker right now, but he’ll be back soon. He settled in to my place without a problem.”

Rosalind gave her a warm smile. “You know you didn’t have to do that. The boarder I use is very accommodating and Strudel’s been going there for a few years now. I’m sure they could have snuck me in last minute.”

Carmen waved away her concern. “What’s the point of putting him in a cage for hours a day when he and my Paco could be sunbathing on my patio instead? Besides, I think Paco’s got a crush. My dog’s really fitting in in San Francisco. Not that he’d be able to do anything.” Carmen held up her hands and acted out snipping scissors. “Plus, how a basset hound would have his way with a German Shepherd is beyond me.”

“Assuming you don’t have a stool Paco could stand on.”

The keypad’s digits beeped and blinked under Rosalind’s finger. Unlike the other units in the building, the Penthouse occupied an exclusive floor, and yet, also had a traditional front door entryway and vestibule outside the elevator doors. The super had explained that just because you wanted to have someone come to your loft didn’t necessarily mean you wanted them inside the second they stepped off the elevator. The first Chinese delivery episode, complete with a sleazy, greasy delivery boy who eyed her when she’d open the door in just her yoga pants and a cami, convinced her why that was actually a superior idea.

“I’m going to be heading out to celebrate with Kamakshi tonight,” Rosalind explained. “Any chance you could take my clothes from the bag here and drop them at the cleaner?”

“More than happy to.”

It was then that Rosalind noticed that not only was Carmen following her, it was odd that she was about at all. “Wait, why are you here?”

Carmen’s eyes darted toward the floor indicator light as it moved from three to four. “Just wanted to make sure you got in all right, is all.”

“No, really?”

The smile Carmen was laboring to suppress didn’t elude her.

“Oh my God, Carmen. Is there something upstairs you’re not telling me?” Bubbles may have been bursting around the corners of her mouth. At least that’s what it felt like.

“Maybe.”

So when the door opened on the fifteenth floor a moment later, Rosalind sprinted. It had been a lifelong dream of hers to walk in to a room and unexpectedly find it filled with balloons, streamers, and friends. As it was, she had wondered why there weren’t more calls right after the news broke. The fact that all her friends must be waiting for her above suddenly solved that mystery.

Throwing open the door, she ran inside and blinked rapidly.

No streamers, no banners, no twinkling lights.

Just Kamakshi, who beamed from her position in the middle of the entryway, a bouquet of daisies at the ready.

“Congratulations!” she shouted as she rushed forward and took her best friend in her arms, jumping up and down like she’d just won the Showcase Showdown. “I knew you were up to something great. This is awesome. I’m so happy for you!”

“Thanks.” Rosalind tried not to sound like she’d just had one of the biggest let downs—albeit self-imposed—in her adult life. Instead, she just lifted an arm, put it around her friend, and hugged her back, sighing again, “Thanks.”

Carmen shuffled in behind, her head turning left and right, searching. “Where is everyone?”

“Everyone?” A beam of hope lit Rosalind’s features as she pulled back and dashed her head in ten directions.

All it took was Kamakshi’s inability to meet Rosalind’s gaze to answer that question. As though realizing she’d disappointed her with the response, a string of rushed explanation burst from Kamakshi’s mouth.

“I knew when you said you were going for a potentially game-changing meeting in Washington, you meant it. But I didn’t want to plan anything too extravagant, just in case it all fell through. Plus, I’ve barely seen or talked to you in weeks in I didn’t know how stressed you were or if your home was in complete chaos. I mean, I sent out texts to everyone in the gang, but I only had an hour’s notice when I knew for sure and—”

“Kamakshi, you are the most anal retentive person I know when it comes to planning out each moment of your day,” Rosalind declared by way of cutting off her friend. “You schedule your dentist check-ups a year in advance. Just, tell me the truth, when did you really plan this?”

“A week ago.”

She may actually cry. Okay, her friends all had their own lives and jobs and some even had families now, if she remembered correctly. But still, there was a whole office of workers just a few miles away that should be just as happy about this. “And my team from BetaHouse?”

“I didn’t want to involve them too early. I was afraid they would blab,” Carmen admitted. “I did give the office manager a call on my way over here to see if anyone could come, but they said they had already clocked out for the night to celebrate and most of them were three bottles in. I didn’t think you’d want them stumbling over here half drunk.”

“Okay, okay. That makes sense.” Rosalind planted her hands on her hips and looked at the floor, as though she were lecturing her feet about the importance of staying under her. “But… none of the gang said they’d come over?”

Kamakshi diverted her gaze. “Well, not without cause.”

Her long, silky black hair fell against Rosalind’s shoulder as she guided her toward the living room. Carmen closed the door to the elevator lobby and dashed off to the kitchen, reemerging a moment later with a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

“Jamie’s at home taking care of the baby. Lani couldn’t fly up from L.A., she and Jack are leaving for a cruise in the morning. Angie really, really wanted to be here, but she’s visiting her in-laws in London this week. And Nichole. Well, you know about Nichole.”

“No, I don’t. What about Nichole?” Somehow, Rosalind’s upper and lower teeth had declared war on each other, not out of anger, out of fear and confusion. The clenching stopped, however, when her imagination took off. “Oh my God, is she dead? Kamakshi, tell me she’s not dead. I know I’ve been busy, but I haven’t been that busy. I would notice if one of my best friends died.”

“No, she’s fine!” Kamakshi took the flute Carmen offered. “She moved to Dubai with her husband. You don’t remember me telling you about that Arab millionaire she married? Yup, he’s heading up his daddy’s construction firm.”

“Wait! Nichole is married?” Shell shocked was putting it mildly. “And Jamie had a baby? Like, a baby human?”

“Last spring. Ben. He’s almost a year old. He is so cute! Last week he started doing this thing where he… Roz, you don’t look well. Sit down. Carmen, help me?”

Together, they hooked arms with Rosalind and maneuvered her around a glass coffee table with chrome accents, then lowered her to the white leather sofa. Her body surrendered to the couch with a gentle moan of the leather under her lithe frame.

“Drink this.” Carmen pushed the flute into Rosalind’s hand.

Without looking anywhere except dead ahead, Rosalind pressed the glass to her lips, tilted it back, and in one fell swoop, downed the entirety.

Kamakshi bit her bottom lip. “Maybe we should have gotten her some water instead.”

The penthouse loft on the fifteenth floor boasted an expansive view of the city by the bay. Rosalind’s prime SOMA location afforded a view of the Museum of Modern Art and the Moscone Center. Though the hills in the mid part of the city rose to block her view of the sunset, she could still see it by the time the reality sunk in, red and orange staining the sky.

Okay, so she was a little behind on the lives of women she used to be so close to in college, they’d text each other good night across campus as part of an on-going joke.

“What did I think, that they’d all stop moving on with their lives just because I got a little distracted?”

She hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud until Kamakshi answered, “Of course not. And they all understood. You were building BetaHouse, working fourteen-hour days when you weren’t traveling. You were doing it: living the dream we all had.”

“But that’s what gets me, Kam. This is what we all wanted to do. We all said bras and biz before bros, cash before cocks. What happened? Seems like you and I are the only ones who remained true to that.”

Carmen, the outsider to the sisterhood, perhaps had the best perspective. “Miss Betters, that’s how life works. Sometimes you set out walking down a road thinking you’re going somewhere, and somewhere along the way something else grabs your attention.”

Rosalind inhaled deeply, gathering all her tension into a ball at the pit of her stomach, then convincing herself it was leaving her body as she pushed the breath out through pursed lips. The coping routine was one she’d been taught long ago as a child. “Right, Carmen. You’re absolutely right.” Then she turned to Kamakshi. The stark ivory of her own hand looked even paler when laid atop her Indian friend’s latte tone. “At least we’re still in it together. I got BetaHouse, you have KeyTerra, and we’re going to rule the world, just like we planned, right? No relationships, just equity.”

As though Kamakshi had suddenly developed an intestinal bug, she cringed and squirmed. “Um, yeah.”

The nerves were back, and so was the sound of her own pulse pounding in her ears. “No, I am not that out of the loop! You, I know. We still have dinner once a week! Well, except these last few weeks, but leading up to the big meeting… What happened? Did your funding fall through? Did you liquidate? Whatever it is, we can undo it. With the next phase of BetaHouse underway, we can get together and brainstorm like we used to do. We’ll find a way to fix it.”

“No, no, no! KeyTerra is fine. And both you and I know that your big contract is going to double your work load, not lighten it,” Kamakshi returned. “It’s… something else completely. This isn’t really the way I pictured telling you this, but…” Pushing her hand in to her pocket, Kamakshi withdrew a gemstone that could choke a goat. It was only when she slipped the rock over her finger that Rosalind noticed there was a ring attached to it. “I’m engaged.”

One final thud of her heart, and Rosalind was through. There were only so many revelations a body could take before it had to reboot. Rosalind Betters rebooted, right onto the floor.

Left Column, Right Column

“When will you be home tonight?”

Rosalind pulled her blonde hair back into a high ponytail, her eyes searching the drawer for the bobby pins she’d need to secure her bun in place. “Don’t know. I have an all-hands meeting at six-thirty and a one-on-one with my chief web architect at eight. Then some phone calls to Asia, emails… Could be pretty late.”

Chris sighed like she just told him his car had been towed.

Rosalind reached behind her and rubbed his smooth cheek, using his reflection in the mirror behind her to see. He lowered his mouth to the meeting of her neck and shoulders, a move with him that signaled moping. “Hey, I’m sorry. You’d know I’d much rather be here with you, eating take out and watching Fred Astaire. But this is a critical time. If BetaHouse is going to get that investment line secured, we have to show them a fully functional demonstration of the first application by the end of next week. I can’t screw this up.”

“Yeah, I know.” The corners of his mouth lifted as she turned in his arms. His infectious smile brought one to her face as well. He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose. “I feel like we never spend any time together anymore. I know we haven’t been together long, but I kinda, you know, miss you.”

In the psychosis playground of her mind, a behemoth clunky robot had a warning light on full blast, telling Will Robinson to get his ass home and lock the door tight when he got there. “Really?” she managed to say without sounding panicked. “You miss me that much?”

His laugh managed to sound simultaneously light and dark. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Was it? Could being close enough to someone for them to miss you be a bad thing? Logic and her mother’s voice in her head said no, but something about having someone depending on her for that sort of emotional connection gave her a fear of roots. Everything these days was so live-by-the-minute. She feared ties.

“Of course not. I’m just flattered.” She wished she could find a less dismissive word, but nothing came to mind at the moment. “Tell you what? I’ll bump back my eight o’clock to seven and only answer the most critical emails. I’ll try to be home in time for The Daily Show, okay?” Playfully, she closed her eyes and raised up on her toes to weave her hands behind his neck. “And if you give me a little reminder of what I’m coming home to, I might even pick up dinner on the way.”

Chris’s strong hands anchored on her cheeks, the pads of his middle fingers skimming her earlobes. Gently, he coaxed her toward him, angling her head up, bringing them to the point of contact. The scent of lavender—an odd choice for cologne, but he must have known how she liked it—tickled her senses.

And then he licked her like a man; full, wet, warm slops of saliva spread from her chin, up a line, past her lips and up the arc of her nose. Over and over his tongue darted out and lapped her face, moving left to her cheek bone, then her eye lid. Rapid, needing, aching...

“STRUDEL! Stop!”

Carmen’s hands fretted about her own neck, as though she were trying to decide whether or not to strangle herself. Kamakshi, on the other hand, stood overhead, a small brown bottle in her hand, looking down at Rosalind, proud as a peacock.

“I knew lavender oil would do the trick. It’s her favorite.”

When the licking resumed, Rosalind jolted up to a sitting position. Her head still swam in confusion about what had just happened. As the fuzzy image before her sharpened into fur, she realized her saliva suitor was none other than her dog, Strudel. The seventy-pound canine was still under the impression that one, he was a puppy and two, that Rosalind’s lap was actually a doggy mat. He crawled on to her legs and proceeded to cover her face in spit-fueled love.

“Hello, baby,” Rosalind cooed, taking the dog’s ears in her hands and scratching. “Momma missed you. Did you just get back from your walk?” Then, looking up at a beaming Kamakshi, who considered Strudel Rosalind’s second best friend in the world, she asked, “What happened?”

“I told you I was getting married, and you decided to pioneer apartment floor planking.”

Carmen reached out a hand and hoisted Rosalind to her feet. “I’ve never actually seen someone faint from shock before. It was just like a scene out of some old Hollywood movie.”

The corner of Kamakshi’s mouth pulled back into a pinch. “Where would Rosalind have seen any old Hollywood movies?” she asked with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

Carmen was undeterred. “You need me to set up an appointment for you, Miss Betters? You feeling okay?”

Strudel pushed his snout under Rosalind’s hand, his big black eyes fixed on her as he jumped down to the floor and stationed himself at her feet and at the ready to go anywhere she was. “Thank you, Carmen. I’m fine. Can you help me walk to the sofa? I think I just need to sit a few minutes.”

Few times in her life had she actually been blown completely out of the water. The first had been when Arnold Swartzenegger managed to become governor of California. Unless Carmen was about to add that she was actually a Siamese twin living in disguise, Rosalind felt confident it would be a while before anything like this walloped her again.

“Who?”

Kamakshi fidgeted. “His name is Prashant.”

“Prashant?” She searched her memories. True, Betahouse’s to-do list came before keeping up with Kamakshi’s social life as of late, so they hadn’t exactly been sharing minute-by-minute blows of all their going-ons, but still. “Prashant who?”

“Radhakrishnan,” Kamakshi supplemented, seating herself on the edge of the couch next to her friend. “Don’t worry, you aren’t completely scatter-brained. You’ve never met him. Actually, until a few weeks ago, I’d never met him either.”

Rosalind’s eyebrows knitted. “So you, what, fell in love at first sight or something?”

“Well, not exactly.” Pinching her fingers together, Kamakshi scooted to the edge of the cushion. “A matchamaker found him for me.”

Well, didn’t that up the ante of on the WTF-o-meter. “Are you saying that you had someone find you a husband?”

Nervously, Kamakshi bobbed her head.

Rosalind blanched. “You mean you’re getting marrieds… on purpose?”

“Miss Betters, I don’t want to intrude, so I’m going to go ahead and take off.” Carmen, who had already been inching toward the door as Rosalind’s face inched toward the red spectrum of the color wheel, cleared her throat and grabbed her purse off the side table. It wasn’t so much excusing herself as fleeing the scene lest later she be subpoenaed as a witness. “Congratulations again! I’ll see you in the morning for the nine-thirty debriefing?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. With a quick wave and a sympathetic glance at Kamakshi, Carmen bolted out the door.

Which left the two of them alone, glaring.

Kamakshi was the one to finally break the silence. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you, Kam? Do you really?” She shot to her feet and began measuring the width of the loft’s seating area footstep by footstep. “Because I’m not sure I do. I mean, if you had told me you decided to cut off all your hair and join a biker gang, I think that would have made more sense. That would be in line with how bold, how committed, how willing you are to being your own person and being a success in the way you see it. But marriage? I thought we all agreed that was an old world practice meant to keep a woman in check so she doesn’t get too uppity and independent? To make sure she remembers her highest purpose in life is to be the servant of her husband and, lord help me, kids?”

To her utter amazement, Kamakshi took every slight with grace. Never did she bristle or bite; she just waited for Rosalind to lay out her piece, then explained in a voice both calm and firm, “Roz, when we said those things, we were twenty years old. And I agree with you still; many women use marriage as a crutch to prop up their own sense of identity. But we’re older now, and hopefully a little bit wiser. We see those things we once thought black and white have many shades of gray in between. That’s what a marriage can be for some, but it’s not what it has to be for all.”

Rosalind stared slack-jawed and gap-mouthed, like Kamakshi was trying to explain the basic principles of astrophysics and not justify spontaneous matrimony. “I don’t get it.”

Kamakshi reached across and took Rosalind’s hand into her own. Strudel took advantage of the joining to lick over both the women’s knuckles.

“Rosalind, why are you trying so hard to make BetaHouse a success?”

The befuddled blonde withdrew her hand and leapt to her feet. “Gah, that’s such a stupid question!”

“It’s not. It’s a simple question. So answer it.” Kamakshi folded one leg over another and waited patiently. “And don’t try to tell me it’s for the money. I know for a fact that you were offered everything short of paradise by Google to stay, and that Yahoo and a handful of other valley companies chased you like a rabbit when the rumor circulated that you were leaving.”

Planting her feet into the ground, Rosalind folded her arms over her chest and huffed, “Because I didn’t want to be anyone’s lapdog!”

“That’s true, but that’s also not the reason. We both know you would never allow yourself to stay in a position where you were being taken advantage of.” Her eyes narrowed. “The truth. Now.”

It call came out like a floodgate bursting. “Because I want to make something that’s mine! I want to hone, and strive, and labor, and grunt, and at the end of the day, turn around and say, ‘Look! I did that! I made that! My work, and my time, and my idea, and it happened, because I believed I could.’”

At the end of Rosalind’s screed, Kamakshi cupped her chin and cocked her head to the side. “And you would be saying this to…”

Rosalind shrugged. “Everyone.”

“Everyone doesn’t care. Maybe some will give you a pat on the back and or a write up in Forbes, but the following day, they’ll be on to the next hot thing. Think back a bit. Remember the night you got that first investor to come on board? And you were so excited, who was it that you came running to with the news?”

“You,” Rosalind said shortly. When Kamakshi’s impatient glare continued to burn into her, she added, “And Nichole. And Lani and Jamie, I guess.”

“Exactly, your friends, because that’s whose opinion really counted. Today, quite likely the most important day in your career, and who is here?”

“You, my one remaining single, still-her-own-woman friend,” spat back Rosalind.

Still demonstrating tranquility, Kamakshi nodded. “Because Nichole, Lani, and Jamie have all moved on now. Maybe you haven’t, but I see how happy they are. I saw how their marriages worked: how they supported their husbands, and were supported by them. And here I was, slaving away day after day, and going home to my vast collection of Bollywood DVDs and microwaved chapatti. At the end of the day, I have no one to brag to, to get comfort from, or to give comfort to.”

“Your brother lives right over in Berkeley, and you still have me!” Rosalind interjected. “I’m still here. I would never turn my back on you. You know that! Okay, okay, maybe we were wrong. Maybe marriage isn’t always horrible, but I stand by it being debilitating to a career. Well, to a woman’s career, anyway. You can’t tell me that’s not true.”

“Don’t think of it as a negative. It’s like Nichole told me: she just got to the point where her priorities changed. She’d look at the really successful valley suits—men and women—and see how they built empty castles. Yes, Rosalind Betters, you might be the next Meg Whitman or Carli Fiorina, but remember, they both are married, and I think the better for it. Everything you and I thought … it was wrong. Marriage doesn’t make a woman weak. A good marriage makes a woman stronger. I want that. I want to be part of something like that. I’m just as dedicated to my career as you are. I want my company to grow and flourish, but at the end of the day, I want my soul to grow and flourish, too. That’s why ... that’s why I’m getting married. Because I want what I do to count for someone who cares, who will be with me forever.”

Soft fur brushed against her hand. Rosalind looked down to find Strudel’s big black eyes fixed on her, as though issuing her a challenge to argue that.

“And Prashant… is he a…” What was the right word? “…wise decision?”

A smile spread across that beautiful sandstone-hued face framed by thick, black hair. “Are my decicions ever elsewise?”

No, they weren’t Rosalind trusted in Kamakshi’s judgment implicitly. Early on, when she’d just been getting BetaHouse going, Kamakshi served as both her biggest cheerleader and her most trusted sounding board.

Strudel let out a whine, forcing Rosalind to lean down slightly and stroke his head. The loyal mutt, basking in his master’s attention, rose to his feet and moved closer, almost throwing Rosalind onto the floor.

The shift of focus provided the moment to collect herself that she so desperately needed. It also reminded her that when Kamakshi left the apartment, it would again be a party of one. Plus a dog. Which is how Rosalind Betters came to realize that her friend had struck on something not only surprisingly true, but absolutely brilliant.

She both hated and loved when Kamakshi did that.

She looked up from Strudel and opened her arms. “I guess, then, the only thing left to say is I can’t wait to meet him, and congratulations!”

The Hunt

“Mr. Hommes, your two forty-five is here.”

Xavier looked up from his laptop to his assistant, Cory, hanging on the edge of the doorway.

“Already that late?”

Jet lag played havoc with the basic feeling of day and night. He was starting to wonder if he just shouldn’t open up a branch in Bangalore or Shanghai to make the recruiting from Asia less taxing on his body. He clicked out of the full-screen view of the document he’d been editing and double checked the clock on his task bar, confirming that a large part of the day had gotten away from him.

“Yes, sir. Shall I send them in, or do you need a few minutes?”

“No, I’m good.” His fingers went to work massaging his eyes, trying to push some blood into his muscles and give him a more alert appearance. “Show them in, please.”

The fact that BetaHouse had a high-ranking position to fill came as no surprise. When his assistant had informed him that they were requesting a consult, Xavier almost half-expected it. A few days ago, the news burned through Silicon Valley circles about the big multi-million dollar contract it’d landed. The startup had new revenue streams coming out its wazoo, bringing with it an influx of cash and newly-created positions. If it wasn’t bought outright, that was. Xavier had seen the same play with different actors on more than one occasion.

What he didn’t expect was that BetaHouse’s CEO would be arriving for the consult personally. The position she had to fill must be top tier. Three months prior, Xavier’s firm had been hired to headhunt Rosalind Betters’s personal assistant, and even then she’d been a tough fish for his top officer to grab on to. Still, Jack Colbon gladly dragged his ass up and down the west coast for the perfect candidate on suspicion that BetaHouse was apt to go supernova. Xavier Hommes knew that to get a bumper crop, you had to sow the best seeds early in the season. Now BetaHouse was booming, and thanks to Jack’s stellar performance, Hommes HQ—“Headhunters of Quality,” he joked that the name stood for—would be reaping green.

His half-dizzy head pushed through the possibilities: CFO? CTO? An HR director? That Miss Betters was reportedly bringing Carmen Flor with her added another question to the queue. Perhaps Carmen had screwed up terribly, and Betters wanted to ridicule both the PA and him in parallel, or she would be looking for a right-hand man to help her with the expansion, in which case Carmen would be there to take notes in hopes of expediting the process.

Cory returned a moment later with Carmen in tow. The brown-haired, tan-skinned woman extended him both a hand and a smile, though the gesture looked only skin deep. She walked a little bit too fast, and her eyes were a little too wide, to suggest her presence was totally devoid of apprehension.

“Mr. Hommes, good to see you again.”

“Ms. Flor, same. How are you?”

“Settling in quite nicely, and arrived on the job in the nick of time,” the Latina noted. “I guess you heard our news?”

Xavier nodded. “How could I not? Ms. Betters’s name has been all abuzz in the tech circles the last few days. Speaking of which, I thought she was here as well?”

Carmen motioned toward the door with a lift of her chin. “Phone call. Japan. She’ll be in in just a moment.”

As though to support the claim, he heard a woman’s voice, demanding yet professional, just far enough down the hall to render her words indistinguishable but her tone unmistakable.

“Of course.” He nodded a dismissal to Cory before motioning to the black Aeron twin chairs that sat in front of his glass-and-chrome desk. Beyond, the San Francisco financial district gleamed in the angled sunlight of the late California afternoon, as demonstrated in the view from his fortieth floor office. “Won’t you sit?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He rounded his desk before settling in with a pen at the ready. “Must be exciting over at BetaHouse these days.”

“That deal was a blessing and a curse. I don’t think Rosalind’s had two minutes in the past three days where she’s not either on the phone, in a meeting, or about to fall down.”

So then, perhaps it was the second scenario that would play out. However, that didn’t explain what had Carmen so on edge. She might not notice how clearly she was telecasting her unease, but if she gripped the arm of that chair any tighter, several states would consider her in a common law marriage with it.

“I can imagine,” is all he said, giving her a comforting smile. “Is she holding up okay with that?”

Carmen shrugged. “Well, you know Rosalind.”

“Actually, I’ve never had the pleasure.”

Which was an unfortunate consequence of the needs of another client. When looking for Betters’s assistant, Xavier had been on a recruiting trip in Beijing. He’d heard all about her, of course, and spoken to her briefly on the phone to give his apologies for having to hand off the assignment to one of his staff, but he’d never actually set eyes on the infamous bombshell.

“I hear she’s a force of nature.”

“Like a hurricane in the middle of an earthquake.” Carmen looked at her watch. “And if I don’t get her in and out of here soon, she’s going to miss her next meeting back at the office. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, Mr. Hommes.”

He didn’t have time to rise or speak, though he did the former only after Carmen had shot up and out. A moment later, he heard the droning voice in the distance fall silent. Then, the cadence of what he always jokingly referred to as “power pumps,” pounded up the black tile of the hall. The door opened fully, and in walked Carmen, and following her, a woman he was certain had wandered in accidently from the modeling agency offices down the hall.

Even in the normalizing attire, Rosalind Betters had managed to pull off a unique look. Rather than a standard jacket, skirt, and lavishly expensive blouse, which seemed to be issued out to Biz School grads along with their diploma and briefcase, she looked as though she’d just walked off the set of a 1940’s noire drama. White slacks and a cotton shirt complimented a matching duster that gave her a style of perfectly melded modern sophistication with Gibson Girl grace. Her dark blonde hair sat in a loose bun atop her head. Her ivory skin surprised him, being a much healthier hue than what one expected from a successful CEO of a tech-driven company who likely spent more hours a day in the sunless shelter of a boardroom than the great outdoors in a month. The paleness of her ensemble suited her and almost made her look approachable, vulnerable. Likely a fallacy, Xavier thought, for fools were few among the lot who had achieved so much with so little time.

Rosalind had been holding out her hand without reciprocity for the better part of ten seconds when Xavier realized that her lips were moving for more than just his entertainment.

Blinking, he pushed himself back into the here and now. “Sorry, what?”

Looking momentarily at Carmen, who in turn passed what could only be described as a reassuring nod, Rosalind again turned to him and said, “It’s nice to meet you in person, Mr. Hommes. I’m Rosalind Betters.”

This time Xavier reached out in kind, wrapping his fingers around the heel of her hand. “Likewise, Ms. Betters. Please, sit.”

Rosalind settled herself, Carmen following suit. Then—without pretense, precaution, or invitation—she launched into her agenda. “Mr. Hommes, when I contacted your agency to find me an assistant a few months ago, you delivered. Carmen has become an indispensable member of my team. I’ve grown addicted to her.”

Carmen’s cheeks blushed as she fished out an iPad and stylus from her side bag.

So, it wasn’t a case of Carmen’s performance being subpar then. Images of dancing dollar bills began to appear in Xavier’s mind when he imagined all the new positions BetaHouse would need filled in the coming months. “I’m delighted to hear that, Ms. Betters. We were very particular about finding you a perfect fit. I’ve trained my team very specifically on analyzing a client completely to best understand not only their needs, but their personalities. While I do apologize for being unavailable to attend to that search myself, I’m delighted to hear that Jack Colbon’s selection of Carmen was spot on. I admit, however, when I heard you were both coming in today, I feared that, perhaps…”

“Oh, no, not at all.” Rosalind’s hand landed on Carmen’s, as though reassuring the PA that the thought had never crossed her mind. “It’s just like you say, she’s a perfect fit to me. And that’s why I’m coming to you today, because I have a very… critical position that I need you to fill.”

Xavier didn’t miss how Carmen shifted in her seat. He motioned continuance with his hand. “Of course, just let me know how I may be of assistance.”

Again, Carmen’s hand reached into her bag, this time pulling out a manila folder, which she passed to Rosalind. Rosalind opened it, removed a piece of fine linen paper, handed it to Xavier, then proceeded to jump to her feet and pace a path back and forth in front of his desk. Memories of lecture halls and college professors teased his recollections.

“My expectations and requirements for this position are very high, but each one, very critical,” she began. “This individual will be working closely with me, on an intensely intimate level, for—well, hopefully—a very long time.”

But she already had a PA. Did she need a second? It wasn’t unheard of for high-profile CEO’s to have a retinue of support staff reporting directly to them, but Xavier wondered if BetaHouse had truly gotten that big, that fast.

The list, handwritten, indeed included very specific requests.

“Fluency in at least one foreign language?” he asked as he read. Such a skill could be critical if she was looking to expand into overseas markets. “Any particular language or languages?”

She paused, her head tilting as though confused. “I hadn’t thought about that. Something useful, I suppose. I mean, I don’t think fluency in Latin or Creole will quite cut it, but I’ve always believed mastery of a second tongue demonstrates a certain level of intellectual diversification and engagement that will be quite important to me.”

Fair enough. He made a few notes before moving on to the second item. “Degree from a prestigious university, advance preferred. Any particular field of study that is more useful to you? Business, engineering, marketing?”

Again, a chin bob, as though he was suggesting to her possible wines. “Yes, any of those would work.”

The remaining requirements had been written out in the style of a sixth grade theme statement, and sent his own head on a sideways conk of confusion. “‘The most desirable candidate will have a proven track record of success in his field, be well read, and cultured. Have a willingness to travel, and is punctual. Has a sense of humor and a nose for detail and discretion. No applicants with children from previous relationships need apply.’”

Xavier lowered the paper along with his excitement.

“Ms. Betters, the other qualifications you’ve listed are what I would expect to see for a senior position of a globally-minded company. Unfortunately, under California employment law, you cannot take an individual’s household situation or marital history under consideration when evaluating their qualifications. At least…” He leaned forward over his desk, lowering his voice. “…not in writing.”

A grin the size of the San Andreas Fault broke across the blonde’s face. She halted her pacing, planted her hands on the edge of his desk, and matched his tone and composure. “This is an exception, Mr. Hommes, I assure you. While we’re on the subject, and though this might just be tripping down the path of logic, it should also be obvious that only male candidates need be recruited.”

To say her voice was filled with a suggestive tone would be overstating the truth. What it was, more precisely, was some level of mischievousness. As Xavier stood slowly, feeling like he was about to take all his marbles home when he realized the ground was too muddy for play, he exhaled before pulling a full drought of air infused with Rosalind Betters’s intoxicating fragrance. On his feet, he had a good four inches of height over her. As though they both realized how his stature dominated hers, she pulled back her hands and visibly faltered, even if just for a moment. Then, almost as if she noticed her own actions, Rosalind straightened her spine and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Is there an issue with my expectations, Mr. Hommes?”

Xavier knew well enough someone with the tenacity to build the sort of empire she had in so little time wouldn’t be intimidated by him, but something about him set her off kilter. Part of him wanted to let go of his well-disciplined restraint and professionalism and tell her that sexism wasn’t made proper by its practitioner being female. Of all the people he’d ever thought he’d have to school on the importance of gender-neutrality in employee recruitment, the high-flying woman CEO in an industry dominated by men wouldn’t have been one.

“Ms. Betters, I’m afraid I can’t assist you with what amounts to an illegal recruitment,” he managed to proclaim in an indifferent tone. “The law is very clear on this sort of thing. And if you don’t mind my adding, I’m a little surprised a woman in your field, whom I’m sure has encountered her share of sexist asses all her life who thought her reproductive organs meant she was inferior, would have such an idea.”

“Oh, I’ve had my dealings with those types, I assure you. But I’m afraid you quite misunderstand me.” She back stepped to her chair and sat, crossing one delightfully long leg over the other. “I’m not looking for an employee.”

His mind reached for another possibility. “Even for interns, this isn’t—”

Her gray eyes narrowed. “Not an intern, either. What I’m after is—”

“A husband!” The words exploded from Carmen’s lips along with a sound that was somewhere between a squeal and a sigh. “She wants you to recruit her a husband.”

Xavier’s eyes dashed from Rosalind, to Carmen, and back to Rosalind again.

“You must be kidding.” He wasn’t sure if he should laugh. He was sure he wanted to.

“Not in the slightest.” Nonplussed, Rosalind pulled another sheet of paper out from her folder and passed it across the desk. This one was printed in ten-point Arial on ivory linen paper. “As you can see, I have quite an expectant timeline for this project. It’s already April, which doesn’t leave much time to plan for a June wedding. Given that, Carmen will be meeting with several wedding planners next week, so we can expedite the process.”

An expectant time line indeed. “What, no dress?”

Her features shifted for a moment to something approaching annoyance. “Actually, yes, I already have a dress. So, yes, that issue is already settled.”

Xavier’s body forfeited; he surrendered to his chair, pushed down by mere shock. “I’m… I’ms…” When he caught Rosalind looking at him askance, he righted himself, sitting up straight. “What makes you think I’m the right person to see out this assignment? I don’t have any credentials or experience arranging anything like this.”

“You found me Carmen.” Rosalind motioned to the PA behind her without turning. Had she given a glance, Rosalind would have witnessed a woman for whom not breaking into a round of hysterical giggles was becoming more and more difficult. “Anyone who can find me a PA so perfectly matched can help me with this. I consider myself a professional with the ability to diversify my approach, but you were able to find someone who grooves with me no matter the direction I turn.”

“Nonetheless, I’m not a matchmaker,” he attempted to argue.

Again, she leaned into his desk, bringing with her proximity a fresh wave of baby powder scent mixed with roses. “But you are.” She twirled around as though the very act closed off that statement to argument and took a seat next to Carmen. “I admit, when the thought first crossed my mind about… well, let’s just say it, an arranged marriage, I dismissed it, too. But then I got to thinking. Finding a spouse isn’t so different from finding a personal assistant or filling any other high-interaction position. It isn’t as much about the skill set…” Her head dashed to the right. “And that’s not at all to say that you don’t have some mad skills, Carmen, as it is about finding a personality match. When I came to your firm a few months ago, I was really impressed with how much care your associate took. Jack Colbon really got a handle on not only what my needs as a professional were, but who I was as a person, in order to find me the perfect match.”

The method, which Xavier called “human sourcing”—as opposed to “human resourcing”—made Hommes HQ the in-demand service for executive needs and recruiting. Still, to reduce its brilliance down to a wayward version of The Dating Game for executives…

“I went back to Jack with this to see if he would help me,” Betters continued. “He said he thought, as the person who first mastered and then taught him the techniques that make you all so successful, you would be much better for this particular and very important, and highly confidential, assignment. I believe he was right about that.”

More like Jack had found a way to pass the buck without pissing off or offending a potentially highly lucrative client, Xavier thought to himself. “That’s very kind of you, but still, I couldn’t possibly…”

Rosalind stood. The woman clearly did not like to remain still. She cocked her hip and rested a crooked hand on her waist. Gone was the lighthearted, almost sympathy-inducing batting eyes. Now, steel-featured and solemn, she declared, “One year of exclusivity.”

He looked back to her wish list. “Well, that is considerably longer than most high profile marriages are able to keep it up, but I don’t see that qualification on your list.”

“I mean for BetaHouse,” she retorted through clenched teeth. “Take on this assignment for me, and I’ll give Hommes HQ one year as my exclusive go-to service for all my high level staff. You heard about the new contract we closed on last week, I trust?”

He nodded.

“Well, then, you see how beneficial this could be for you. I’m about to push off on a massive expansion, Mr. Hommes. In the next six months alone, I’ll need your help to find a CFO, COO, and a number of senior scientists, marketers ... My business is booming. Do this for me, and yours will be, too.”

Holy…

Except, he was still convinced that she had to be kidding. Any moment, one of those pithy hipsters from some “You’ve Been Punked” show was going to leap out and prove him the fool, because there’s no way in hell he looked anything like Chuck Woolery.

He stood and mirrored her somber pose. “I can’t make guarantees that you’ll find any of my proposed candidates acceptable. This is something different entirely from my normal MO. Chemistry isn’t usually a qualification I have to worry about, unless we’re talking about a PhD in Organic.”

A smile cracked across her face at his quip. “I trust in your abilities, but we must have some measure of success, mustn’t we?”

“Indeed,” he agreed. As his thoughts turned toward determining a benchmark, he reached up and rubbed his chin. Only a moment later did he catch Rosalind’s eyes lingering on his hand. The audience brought him to a frustrating cessation. “As only you will determine if any candidate is desirable, I will consider the position filled when you propose marriage to the candidate of your choice.”

“Me propose?” Rosalind blanched. She coughed once, then resumed her determined tone. “That’s not really the usual way things are done.”

“Neither is using a headhunter to find a spouse, Ms. Betters, but I’m trying to fit the proverbial cure to the disease here.” Xavier leaned down to a desk drawer and pulled out his standard contract, filling in where needed the necessary information. “Furthermore, as you are the one tasking me with this service, I feel it’s only appropriate that my commission become payable when you propose regardless of the answer you receive from your intended.”

She chewed on that a moment, exchanging a glance with Carmen who deigned a concurrent nod. “Okay, we have a deal. You agree to provide me with a list of potential spouses, and I’ll commit BetaHouse to Hommes HQ for one year, and your fee will be payable upon execution of my proposal for marriage, regardless of the response of the third party.”

His hand jutted out, ready to accept hers across the desk. “Eighteen months and we can shake on it.”

Looking at first surprised, her features softened in to a mask of satisfaction. As she pressed her hand into his, the corners of her mouth rose again. “Deal.”

“Good!” Xavier’s pen scratched out his signature on the contract. He handed the document across the desk to Rosalind, who examined it for a passing moment. “That is my standard form, with a few notes and my required commission noted on the second page. We’ll have my assistant send a copy to Carmen’s attnetion for your files.”

Rosalind turned the page as a grin covered her face. “Am I financing a boat for you, Mr. Hommes?”

“Yes, a small dinghy, so I can row myself out to Alcatraz and be locked away when all this turns out to have been as crazy as it first sounded. Perhaps they’ll be room in it for us both, Ms. Betters.”

Turning to leave, Carmen was right at her heels, but both paused in the doorway when Xavier raised his voice.

“Ms. Betters, I believe that you are familiar with my method. As you said, it involves a very intimate inspection of the person under whom the candidate will be working.” And in the case of a husband, he supposed those words were more than just metaphorical. “If I can ask Ms. Flor to stay behind a moment, I’ll work out a time on your calendar in the next week or so for me to start that process.”

Rosalind nodded. “Of course. Carmen, I’ll see you for the five o’clock con call with Singapore?”

“I’ll be back over to the office just as soon as possible.”

As Rosalind exited, Carmen and Xavier remained, both on the edge of laughing. Still, now that the assignment was his, Xavier supposed he should start treating it with some respect.

“Carmen, if I’ve put you in a position where you feel uncomfortable, I take full responsibility. If Rosalind Betters is a closeted crazy given to irrational actions, I’d be happy to float your resume around. I have several clients in the area who would benefit from your qualifications.”

“Rosalind isn’t crazy, only this idea of hers is.” She folded her arms over her chest. “She’s just scared.”

The words seemed impossible to apply to someone with such a bold spirit. “Of what?”

“Of being the last one.” She looked down at her iPad. “I have a four o’clock open tomorrow afternoon. Just thirty minutes. Will that be enough?” Her eyes hung on his answer.

“Where?”

She masked over in confusion. “At BetaHouse of course.”

He shook his head. “No, it has to be in her home. No office appointments.”

“Um, okay. 7:30 p.m., Tuesday night? Does that work for you?”

Rounding his desk, Xavier pulled up his own calendar and checked against it. “Yeah, that will work.”

Carmen tapped furiously at the tablet’s screen. “Actually, not a bad idea. If you catch her at the office, she’ll be distracted and pulled in a hundred directions. If you get her at home, you have a fifty-fifty chance of actually having her undivided attention.”

Perfect, because if there was one thing he needed from her, it was her attention.

Dinner & a Date

No form of exercise known to man prepared one for what Rosalind thought of as “the human is eaten by snake.” The proper form called on one to: 1. Hold a briefcase in one hand; 2. Fish out keys with the other; 3. Simultaneously use the arm of choice to secure a bag of take-out food; and 4. Keep in position a cell phone against one ear using only a shoulder as you had again misplaced your Bluetooth earpiece for what must be a world record number of times. For advance practitioners, using one foot to push the newly unlocked door open while balancing gracefully on a single high-heeled shoe could be added for an extra challenge.

“Koji-san, I understand where you’re coming from, but you have to understand, I just don’t have that kind of bandwidth right now. My schedule is stacked tighter than a 6 p.m. Tokyo train. I couldn’t possibly get to Japan anytime in the next few days.” Her keys, a moment before aligned with the lock on her door, slipped to the right and dropped to the floor. “God damn you!”

The man on the other end of the line stumbled for confirmation. “God damn-o me?”

Rosalind did her best to pick up her keys from the floor and her place in the conversation. National Geographic could make a documentary on this impossible dance she performed each night, complete with a team of observers speculating about the meaning behind her manic gesticulations and pivots. Somehow, she managed to retrieve the keys from the floor without letting go of anything else or dislocating a shoulder.

“No, sorry, not you Koji-san. I was cursing at inanimate objects.”

“Again?”

Her silence was all the answer he needed.

“Next week you come then,” came the excessively accented voice. Koji had spent his formal years in Honolulu. What game he was playing at pretending that he barely spoke English was beyond her. “We plan your visit-o.”

“Maybe. Only for a day, two tops. I’ll have my assistant call yours in the morning to work out the details. I really have to go now.”

“Hot date?”

She could practically hear the grin in his voice.

“Yeah, with my dog. Crap, Strudel! Down.”

The German Shepherd leapt up the moment the door opened, forcing her to drop both the bag of Chinese food containers and her briefcase. Normally the pup would have arrived with her from the office. Today, however, she had asked Carmen to swing by and deposit the dog at home so she could stop at Madam Ming’s. It seemed to her that Strudel was eager to make up for lost bonding time.

Rosalind managed to say a polite, if rushed good-bye, and toss the cell and her keys on an accent table adjacent to the door. A flash of black-and-tan went long, in pursuit of a paper sack that had landed a few feet away. Panicked, Rosalind dropped to the floor and pawed in pursuit on all fours, reaching her goal just as Strudel’s nose nudged into the bag. The dog whined when the opportunity to perform an olfactory inspection and possibly, sample the victuals to ensure the food was not poisoned was denied.

“No, boy,” she said, waving the bag in front of the pooch’s snout. “That’s for momma and her guest.”

The acknowledgement of a second round of knocking only registered on her radar when it was accompanied by the realization that something tall, dark, and handsome was eying her from behind.

She, down on all fours. In a pencil skirt.

Rosalind’s head turned, her jaw dropped, and her dignity left the building. The good news was that she hadn’t yet turned on the light inside the entry. The bad news was that the light that hung overhead outside her door spilled in over her, making her look like some Fortune 500 version of a cabaret performer.

“Oh, God…”

He took two steps in, his black trench coat still misted from San Francisco’s persistent fog. He must have come up in the elevator with her; one couldn’t get in on this floor unless they were with someone who knew the code or unless someone had buzzed them up. Had she really been so absorbed in her own world she hadn’t even noticed Xavier Hommes standing in the elevator?

The vague memory of feeling like someone was watching her in the lift came back.

Crap.

The headhunter had the good grace not to inquire. Not about why she was currently in what one of her exes had referred to as “the receiving position.” Not to ask why she stayed frozen in said position while her mouth went into suspended animation. Not to ask why she was unable to speak.

Had Rosalind Betters known that this man looked as though he might have come into his profession following a career as a Men’s Health cover model, she might not have insisted on meeting with him in person. How she had managed to get out of his office a few days before without embarrassing herself then remained a mystery. It defied precedence, that was for sure, but hell, she was certainly making up for it now. For all her brains, her beauty, and her bravado, putting Rosalind in front of a man that gorgeous usually turned her into a fidgeting, awkward, blabbering pile of geek goo. She’d first discovered that fault in herself in college, and had took on a persona as an ice queen in part to avoid potential opportunities to out herself. Had the meeting not had a business purpose to distract her from how attractive he was, he’d probably be in serious doubt of her sanity.

Which, given that thirteen seconds had passed and still she gaped at him over her shoulder while she played Clan of the Cave Bear on her Persian carpet, he might think anyhow.

“Ms. Betters?”

When he took another step toward her, flipping on the light switch next to the door as he did so, Strudel leapt. The well-intentioned mutt went into guard dog mode, circling behind his master and putting himself between her and the intruder, a rumbling growl filling the soundscape.

Rosalind snatched the paper sack and at last managed to rise.

“Strudel, heel!”

As though she had slapped the dog on the nose with her words, Strudel’s posture eased. He whined again as he nuzzled his cold nose into her empty palm.

“Sorry about that,” she said to Xavier. “Strudel’s a little protective of me, but he only attacks when commanded. Or when he sees a squirrel.”

Xavier closed the door behind him, removed his coat, and took off his hat. While not ignorant of fashion, she admired the classic style Xavier represented. He could have just walked off the set next to James Cagney and no one would find him a step out of place.

“I’m glad.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “My dog threatens you and you’re glad about it?”

“Exceedingly,” he assured her as he hung his coat. “A beautiful, successful woman living on her own in this city? I’d be worried if you didn’t have at least a dog.”

Rosalind shook a knowing finger. “Ah, I see.”

“What?”

“That your throwback style doesn’t stop at your trench coat and your fedora. You’re one of those men who thinks a woman always needs a protector, that she can’t fend for herself.”

His dark eyes closed as he exhaled and shook his head. “With all due respect, you’re the CEO of a multimillion dollar company in one of the most cutthroat markets in the world. I think you’ve already more than proven you can fend just fine. Even the most diligent person can overlook seemingly obvious risks. For example, riding up in an elevator while so distracted by her phone conversation that she doesn’t notice a man like me standing next to her and following her off.”

Despite the lack of ridicule in his voice, Rosalind felt her cheeks blush in embarrassment. She turned and took up as much as her arms could handle, desperate to flee into the kitchen where she could put a counter and a few breaths between them.

Xavier let his eyes take a wider survey of both her and their surroundings. “Can I help you with something?”

Before she could speak, he’d taken the paper bag out of her hand and was en route to the kitchen. She’d have questioned his instinct about the direction, but the layout of a loft like hers didn’t exactly confuse. Outside of a walled off bathroom, her own bedroom, and the stairs leading up to the guestroom, the space flowed; from her entry door her abode spilled out into an amoebic procession of kitchen, dining area, living room, and home office.

“I hope you don’t mind takeout,” she called to him as she took advantage of his absence to kick off her Jimmy Choos and take off her coat. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I had Carmen order a few things randomly.”

“Actually, I wasn’t expecting dinner at all, so this is a treat.”

“You made an appointment to see me at home at seven-thirty, did you think I would send you away hungry?” By the time she joined him at the kitchen island, Xavier already had several white boxes open to inspect the contents. “What were you planning on doing otherwise, just stare at me while I checked email?”

He shrugged, pulling out a drawer and taking from it some serving spoons. “Basically.”

“Isn’t that a little, you know, creepy?”

“Not if you’re getting paid to do it. Do we just eat from the boxes or do you want to get out some plates?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with. Help yourself to anything, except,” Rosalind’s hand dashed out when he cracked opened the final box, “that one.”

As Xavier’s now empty hands remained clutching a phantom container, he narrowed his dark eyes on her. “Interesting.”

She didn’t like the way he grinned. “Why do you say that like I’m a cheetah and you’re David Attenborough?”

He didn’t answer directly, but proceeded with his roundabout explanation as he turned to her cabinets and began looking for plates. He found them in the second drawer, pulled down two and set one in front of her, the other in front of himself. “You noted that I have a specific method for finding just the right candidate for a job, Ms. Betters. Observation is the core principle of that method. The decisions you make in your environment, seeing how you function, it tells me tons about the sort of personality that will work best with yours.”

With a mouthful of chicken, she spluttered, “My love for Kung Pao tells you what kind of husband I should have?”

“Not so much that as how you took the box out of my hands like you were Gollum and it was the one true ring.”

In her best tribute voice, she growled “my precious” while giving the box in her hands a doughy glance. Her fork speared a tender morsel dripping in sauce. “But clearly spoken like someone who’s never had Madam Ming’s signature dish.” Through a mouth half-filled with food, she continued, “Tell me something, Mr. Hommes, why are we doing this at all? Jack already worked up a profile on me when I came to you for a PA. Can’t you just borrow his notes, or something?”

On his fork Xavier had speared a piece of broccoli so green, Kermit would wonder if he was related to it. “Insufficient for this assignment. The whole profile lacks a central characteristic intrinsically necessary to make this placement successful.”

Her arched eyebrows forced him to continue.

“Jack observed you in an office environment, and the questions he asked during his meeting with you were of an entirely different bent. He profiled you as a professional, and due to the nature of this placement, I really need to understand who you are when you’re not at the office. That’s why I’m meeting you at home. Your loft is, for better or worse, the board room of your domestic life. I’ll also need to explore an entirely different aspect of your personality, but we’ll get to the new set of questions later.”

“So glad to see you’ve come around on this. For a while the other day, I thought you were going to call the police and have me put under observation for my own good.”

He fixed his eyes into a container of fried rice. “It’s still an option I’m considering.”

When he looked up at her, the crooked half-smile playing on his face struck her deep inside as something not entirely professional. As though he had picked up on the thought, Xavier coughed to clear his throat and straightened his posture. Another few bites of steamed veggies and rice, and he pushed the food aside.

“With your permission, I’d like to have a look around.’

“Why?”

“Building your profile in my mind, Ms. Betters. Mind you, this is a lot more intimate than I tend to get with a subject, but not unprecedented. I’ve done something similar before, when I placed an estate manager with one of the more prestigious families in the area.”

“Personal assistants, chief accountants, and estate managers? My, you do get around, don’t you?”

Xavier nodded. “Professionally speaking, yes. I don’t want to invade your privacy or make you feel uneasy. Follow me around, and if there’s somewhere you don’t want me to look at or if it makes you feel uncomfortable, just say so. When you’re ready…”

She couldn’t help but give a teasing grin as she hid her Kung Pao in the fridge.

“First, and I admit, this is partly out of curiosity as well as cause, why?”

She followed the direction of his stare as he went through the contents of her kitchen cupboard.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Not really. How you choose to answer is part of my observation.”

Ah, so it was one of those the answer is in the question things. “Um. So, I used to be part of this group of friends. We were all students at Stanford together. I am still part of it, I guess. But over the last few years, we’ve seen each other less and less. I don’t know why; they got busy, I got busy... I was at Google after college, then left to form BetaHouse. I guess we all just went our separate ways over time. But the other night, my best friend, Kamakshi, told me she was getting married. She! Kamakshi I’m-So-Not-Meant-to-Sit-Home-and-Make-Gobi Pure. And suddenly, it all seemed to make sense.”

He sniffed a container of tea, a favorite blend of hers only sold in a few shops around the Bay Area and only for a few months out of the year. “It?”

“Marriage,” she said with a huff. Wasn’t that obvious? “I mean, I’m not one of those ultra-feminist types. I’m not anti-marriage, per se. I just never thought of it as something meant for someone with my kind of ambitions.”

“So you’ve never had any serious relationships?” he asked.

“No, I’ve had a few, just none where the topic came up. Then, Kamakshi told me why she was getting married, that she didn’t see the point of everything she was doing if it was just for her and not shared with someone else. Suddenly, I knew that was the path for me. I knew that’s where I needed to be.”

His inspection led them to what could be described as a living room, if it had walls. As Xavier Hommes’s eyes surveyed the spines of a neglected DVD collection, Strudel in turn observed him with the same amount of care and suspicion.

“You have a penchant for black and white films.”

A statement, not a question. Yet, it put her on the defensive. “I watch classics almost exclusively. So much of what gets made today is porn disguised as plot or a cheap excuse for someone with a CS bachelor’s to show off his animation skills.”

His eyes were already skimming over the shelf above loaded with CD’s. “Got it. Not an FX fan. Doesn’t like porn.”

“There’s nothing wrong with porn.” Had she actually just said that? He looked at her amusedly, as though asking himself the same question. “I mean, it’s not my thing, I just don’t like when something or someone tries to pass itself off as something it’s not.”

He gave her an acknowledging nod. “Very keen, Ms. Betters. That’s exactly what I was thinking. Also, I get a lot out of seeing that you have a taste for black and white films.”

“Especially Mae West.” She leaned forward and pointed at the spines in turn. “Klondike Annie, My Little Chickadee, I’m No Angel. She exemplifies to me what it is to be a strong woman. I like Ginger Rogers, too. With or without Fred.”

“That ever a problem in any of your past relationships?”

“What part?”

Again, he waited, not deigning to clarify.

“Ah, another test,” she said. He nodded. “Okay, so, yeah, on occasion. My tastes aren’t normal for someone of my generation. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t want to run out to see some graphics-heavy summer hit in lieu of something with actual good dialog and perhaps, a little dancing.”

Xavier beamed at her. “Very interesting. You are a smart one, aren’t you?”

“It seemed to answer every scenario of ‘what’.”

A few more minutes spent looking through the items on her work desk, which books lay on the bookshelf, and Xavier’s eyes turned toward the bedroom. Her cheeks burned crimson as she sucked in her lower lip.

Xavier’s hand hesitated on the door knob. “I don’t have to go in.”

She swallowed her nerves as she stared at her feet. As though sensing her unease, Strudel took defensively to her side.

Finally, she cleared her throat and her unease. “Um, no, that’s okay. Go.”

She didn’t follow him. There was no reason to. He wouldn’t find anything revealing or insightful about her in such a bland space, unless the fact that her sheets were 1000 count said anything. Bed, white sheets, white pillows, night stand with one white lamp and an alarm clock with an integrated iPhone charger. Walk-in closet with a collection of clothes that hung in prescribed fashion, from lightest to darkest. Shoes arranged on shelves in the boxes in which they’d come. A pair of slippers she’d lifted from the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore, aligned perpendicular to the bed. In short, a room full of function, totally lacking in form.

Hence, when after just a minute, he reemerged and pulled the door closed behind him, the brevity came as no surprise. When she looked up to meet his eyes, however, the expression threw her for a loop. Something akin to sympathy filled his features. Simultaneously, she felt dismissive and defensive.

“I’m barely ever at home,” she found herself babbling, apropos of nothing.

Xavier scratched the back of his head. “Um, I have a few more questions. Maybe we should sit?”

“Sure, how about there?” She pointed at the couch. Strudel followed, seating himself in guard dog position on the floor beside her feet.

“She is a pretty dog,” Xavier offered as he reached out to scratch the dog’s ear. Strudel accepted the gesture, but took no aims to acknowledge it. “Does she stay here alone all day?”

“He, actually. No. Strudel comes to the office each afternoon and sleeps under my desk. We run in the mornings before I leave. I have a dog walker that picks him up around one each day, runs him about an hour, then brings him to BetaHouse.”

For a few moments, he hesitated. Then finally, softly, he asked, “What about sex?”

Rosalind squirmed under his stoic gaze. “Is that really something we need to discuss at this point?”

“No, we can come back to it later. You’ll forgive my bluntness on the matter, Ms. Betters. I am attempting to be forthright without being disrespectful. Normally when I’m developing the concept of the type of person I’ll put forward to fill a position, I must ascertain the employer’s desire in the way that candidate will handle the key tasks for which they’ll be responsible. If I offended you…”

His voice trailed off, leaving Rosalind to determine if this subject would indeed be addressed here and now. She sniffed in some courage, and tried to keep her voice flat.

“I think that’s part of a marriage, but I won’t make a decision about a spouse based on his sex appeal. If all I wanted was a pretty face or rock-hard abs, I’ve passed on opportunities for that one already.” In her mind’s eye, an image of Chris’s face, chest, and… um, other parts of his anatomy, teased her memory.

“Are you sure this is the way to handle this, Ms. Betters?”

She leaned in, grinning contemptuously. “This, Mr. Hommes?”

When his eyes met hers and his face screwed up, she regretted the momentary lapse in professionalism. Boundaries would keep her from embarrassing herself.

“Touché,” he finally said, dragging his eyes away. “But there’s nothing to be gained from being imprecise. I’m talking about this approach to finding a spouse. I can understand the appeal. In some unexpected way, coming to someone like me even makes sense. I guess what I do for a living isn’t that different from a matchmaker in some cultures, even if my pairings tend to be more about work relationships than working relationships. However, you’re not… It’s just…” He seemed to be as uncomfortable with the place in the conversation as she had just been. “I wouldn’t expect someone like you to have difficulty finding someone.”

“I’m sure I could, if I had the time,” she sighed. “Rest assured that I hesitated, but I know what I want, and I know now’s the time. I don’t have time to start dating a sea of men, playing all the little character-discovery games you have to play to figure a person out, hoping they measure up to your expectations, developing a relationship that may or may not go anywhere. I just want to bypass all that. I want to get to point B by the fastest route possible.” Her hand came to rest on the sleeve of his jacket. “I want you to help me do that.”

His eyes trained on her fingers. On him.

Her gaze met the misty expanse of his. “I will.”

“What cologne are you wearing, Mr. Hommes?”

Confusion helped clear some of the tension. “Acqua di Gio?”

Leaning in, she closed her eyes and inhaled. When her eyes opened again, she was certain she probably looked intoxicated. It’s certainly how she felt.

“I adore a fine fragrance. Maybe that’s something you can add to my list of necessities? An appreciation for fine cologne and perfumes.”

“And you said you already have a dress?” His look turned clinical.

Oh, goodness. She had forgotten that she’d mentioned that. Pinpricks of heat danced over her cheeks. “Yeah, but it’s not what you think.”

“You have no idea what I think,” he cautioned. “Nonetheless, I’ll admit, there’s more behind the question than just idle curiosity. If you were formerly engaged…”

He let the statement linger. Was it another test? Would her reaction inform him of something?

However, the truth was pretty bland. Though she felt like it nudged her comfort to share this with someone she had so recently met, she couldn’t think of a good reason not to, given the situation. “No, I’ve never come close to taking the plunge before. Like I said, I’ve been a career girl for all my adult life. The dress was my mother’s. She got it from her mother. Both asked me to wear it, if I ever found someone.”

“For someone who works on the cutting edge of technology and has heretofore shunned the altar, you have a very interesting traditional streak, Ms. Betters.” His eyes took a study of her shifting features, and Rosalind felt in that survey something much more than curiosity. She felt like she was being catalogued. “You almost make me wonder if I should take this search international. Your temperament doesn’t exactly reflect local social norms.”

“My mother used to say that fate brings people together when they’re ready, and you don’t need to cross an ocean to find a shore.”

His eyes twinkled. “And yet, you hired me.”

Rosalind shrugged. “In my experience, Fate doesn’t get great customer feedback.”

When his hand reached out and rubbed her arm, she felt a chill shoot through her. Rosalind knew he shouldn’t be so informal on their first meeting, but she’d forgotten how pleasant it was to have a man touch you with tenderness. Even if it was an independent contractor.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I have much higher client ratings than Fate.”

Before Rosalind could reply to that statement, the whistle from her phone nearly made her jump out of her own skin.

“Sorry.” Leaping to her feet, she plowed across the loft to where she’d left her phone by the entry. “I’m expecting several important messages. Just in case, I better check that.”

“And it’s getting late, and I should probably go,” Xavier said.

How he moved so quickly behind, and yet, away from her, she’d never know. She had barely breezed through the text and quit her phone’s sleep screen when he had his coat back on and his hand at the front door handle.

“I’ll start to put all this together and call Carmen to set up another meeting. Because of the far-reaching impact of this position, I’ll need opportunities to observe you in several environments before I can begin the selection process. Of course, I’ll keep this whole assignment under the strictest control, and exercise care that only candidates meeting all your expectations—and mine—are approached. In the meantime, feel free to contact my office if you need anything.”

He paused for a moment outside her door. His finger raised meaningfully and he turned his gaze back over his shoulder, until it looked like he thought better of it. Instead, Xavier merely ran a finger over the rim of his hat before tipping it in acknowledgement while stepping on the elevator.

Kamakshi’s message was still waiting for her when she turned her eyes back to the screen. “29 May in Mumbai! Mark your calendar and book your tickets!”

Thank God, May 29th. Now, when Rosalind married on June 21st, she wouldn’t be stealing Kamakshi’s thunder.

Assuming, of course, that Xavier Hommes delivered.

The Onus of Crazy

“Mario Bellini. Let’s see. He’s got a PhD in Classics. A junior professor at UC-Berkeley. Speaks his native Italian, several dead languages, English, of course, and oddly enough, Swedish?” Xavier took off his glasses and gazed up at the man sitting on the other side of his desk for further clarification. “Italian, English, and Swedish? Is this right?”

Jack Colbon made sure to give his full attention to his caramel latte before answering. He sipped off the foam like a man for whom leisure came free. “Yup,” he finally said, popping his p. “I thought that was weird, too. Did a little more digging, and turns out he was married to a bikini model from Stockholm until a few years ago. Must have been trying to impress the in-laws. I learned Spanish to make Javier’s family love me.”

Jack Colbon: always the one to fish for compliments.

Xavier tossed down his pen and leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out behind him. “Jack, Jack. How could they not? You’re so completely lovable. Like a giant plush toy or the guys from that Some Direction group.”

The pasty man with thinning white hair and a tire rack around his waist faux-blanched. “No need to bring my size into it. But you’re right. They adore me. Now…” He took up the file folder again and examined the contents with more scrutiny. “What are we saying on il professore here? Yes, no, or maybe? I’m thinking a definite yes for a follow up call at the very least. Then again, I’ve always had a weakness for Italian men, and he does look so dulce.”

“Il professore è un no.”

Jack’s face contorted. “For those of us who don’t know Italian?”

“No to the professor,” Xavier amended, closing the file and tossing it on his desk. “A man like that is only looking for the hottest model to upgrade to, if you’ll forgive the pun. I don’t think our client would be interested in only being the latest gadget.”

Three piles of recycled manila folders lay before them, the most towering of which had a sticky note on the table before it labeled N-O in a shockingly bold script. For the last two days, he and Jack made and reviewed profile after profile. It had actually come as a surprise just how many eligible bachelors met the precursor of Rosalind’s criteria up and down the west coast. Of course, elsewhere in the country, Xavier was certain pickings would be slim. Ambitious, career-minded folks in an acceptable age range for Rosalind tended toward the left coast. The culture here nurtured and honed ingenuity and business acumen. New York might be the financial capital of the country, but any industry requiring technical know-how and a hotbed of risk-taking capital venturists migrated west. He was suddenly reminded of one of his favorite quotes from Frank Lloyd Wright, “They turned the country on its side and everything loose fell into California.”

Unfortunately, meeting Xavier’s own criteria proved more difficult. Out of eighty initial candidates, fifty-nine got tossed on to the no-pile. Sixteen were borderline, getting added to the maybe stack. That left only five… five candidates from the pool who he deemed proper and worthy of approaching in confidence. He had really hoped to offer her more of a choice than that. The express lane at the local In-n-Out had more variety.

Xavier began to peruse the edge of the maybe pile again. “Maybe I should pick a few more from here, just in case.”

“It’s your call, boss. So, you going to tell me finally how Rosalind Betters succeeded in getting you to play Yente? I was positive when I batted it to you, you’d turn her down flatly.”

Xavier looked up from his newly opened file. “I’m sorry, play what?”

Jack had the nerve to look annoyed. “Not what, who. Yente, the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof.”

A fact Xavier could see from Jack’s expression that the latter man believed a self-evident truth, but to which he could only return silence.

Jack swung forward in his seat, guffawing. “Seriously? Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Fiddler.”

Xavier’s answer was as empty as his stare.

“Oh, for the love of Ethel Merman. If Mozart or Puccini didn’t write it, you’re hopeless. But it’s only one of the most famous Broadway plays and, oh, by the way, movies of all time. You know the song… Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. Find me a find, catch me a… yada yada yada.”

Xavier waved his hand through the air, like the queen dismissing her butler. “I may have heard it once or twice.”

“No, this is unacceptable. Having a gay man as your best friend, there is no excuse for you not to have seen the brilliance that is Anatevka.” Jack fished out his cellphone and began punching digits. “I’m calling Javier. We’ll grab some crab from the wharf and have a movie night.”

“No, I have a meeting.”

His finger frozen in mid-punch, Jack looked with suspicion at the man who doubled as his boss and best friend. “On a Friday night?”

“Are you accusing me of something? Because from the sound of your voice and the arch of your eyebrow, I get the impression that you’re accusing me of something.”

“Just, you know, I thought you had a strict the weekends are my personal time philosophy. And since I know you’ve given up your le femme du jour program...”

Pulling his pen to ready position and settling back behind his desk, Xavier sighed. “Getting on Better’s calendar is nearly impossible. Luckily she has no social life, so tonight it is. Can we focus? Show tunes aren’t going to solve this.” His finger indexed the spines of the folders. “I think one more, at least. Five candidates seem skimpy. Six? Six is respectable.”

Jack stood and seized the pile out from Xavier’s inspection. “There was one I thought was perfect, though you didn’t like it. Just let me find it.” His face broke into a smile when he pinched a folder and fished it out. “This one.”

Setting out the contents across the desk, Xavier reexamined the profile. “You sure you’re not just suggesting this because this guy looks like someone out of a cologne commercial?”

With a huff, Jack snatched back the picture from Xavier’s hands. “Don’t hate him because he’s beautiful. He meets all her guidelines. Masters of Business from Stanford. Acting Director of the Flushman Group at CFI Financials. Recently back from a long vacation to Morocco. He’s the right age, and in the right place. Lives right here in the city. And you’ll love this: he donates both money and time to the San Francisco Opera. Maybe you should write him a thank you note. You have season tickets, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t actually been able to use them but once this season. Too busy.” The concrete expression on Xavier’s face began to dissolve. “Fine. I’ll give him a call and add him to the docket. I hope he impresses me as much as he impresses you.”

“Let it be noted that my taste in men is much better than yours,” Jack teased, handing back the folder, which then assumed a sacred place atop the yes-pile. “Of course, you’re assuming any of these guys will actually be open to the idea of marrying Rosalind Betters.”

“They should be so lucky,” Xavier said without thinking.

It didn’t take a moment before he caught that mischievous, annoying, accusative glare from Jack.

“What?”

His colleague flushed. “You like her.”

“I admire her,” Xavier corrected. “There’s a huge difference.”

“There’s no difference.”

“Is too,” Xavier insisted. “I admire the paintings of Rivera, but that doesn’t mean I want to rip one off the wall and make love to it.”

Jack shrunk back in his chair. “Rosalind Betters is a whole lot more three dimensional than a painting, and a lot more colorful as well. You sure you’re not… You know.”

Teeth gnashing, Xavier looked over Jack’s shoulder to make sure no one lingered by the door. Softly, he hissed. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I think she’s beautiful. And yes, while this whole unorthodox approach to matrimony threw me for a loop, it makes sense when you think about it. I’m really impressed by someone who can see a solution to an obstacle and approach it so rationally. Also, I’d like to see her happy, because I think she deserves that. Not to mention, she’ll be more willing to pay our hefty fees.”

“You barely know her,” Jack said. “What would make you think she’s owed something?” Then he too mimicked Xavier’s conspiratorial manner. “What did you see when you profiled her at home? You caught on to something, didn’t you? I did too, when I met with her a few months ago. Care to compare theories?”

“Not with you.” Xavier leaned forward and lifted his phone. “Cory, could you come in here please?”

Within three shakes, his assistant stood before them. Xavier took the sacred six folders, normalized the stack, and passed them off. “Please contact each one of these men and see if I can get on their calendars this week. In person meetings only. No telephone calls, and make sure they have a non-disclosure agreement signed and sealed before I get there. Thirty minutes should do it. Book flights where needed accordingly. Tell them it’s in regards to a high-level position around an upcoming possible merger.”

He turned back to Jack. “I’m allowed to like my clients and leave it at that, Jack. This is just business. BetaHouse’s growth could help to push our company to the next level. Whatever makes Rosalind Betters happy, makes us happy.”

Copycat Sydrome

Despite her Indian background, Kamakshi had never practiced yoga. Her idea of exercise involved a treadmill and a trashy gossip magazine. While fit, she just wasn’t that flexible. Her body, however, had failed to communicate that fact to her jaw. Based on the stretch she felt in the sides of her face, her chin had surely landed amongst the bed of lettuce on her plate.

“You’re… what?”

Rosalind bit off the end of a carrot and reached for her water bottle. “You heard me.”

“When?”

“June 21st.”

“This June 21st?”

The blonde nodded.

Kamakshi, still wondering where the cameras in the café might be hidden, advanced to the most obvious question. “To whom?”

Rosalind hitched her shoulder and shoveled a forkful of baby spinach in to her mouth. “Don’t know. I haven’t picked him yet.”

The Indian information specialist would admit, she had a tendency merely to audit some conversations with Rosalind. It couldn’t be helped. While her best friend, Rosalind’s inability to pick up on social cues, i.e. when your conversation partner had heard enough about split mergers and UI implementation models, was legendary. She was fairly certain there must have been something she missed between the time Rosalind had said “I have some big news” and “I’m getting married.”

“Rosalind, June 21st is less than three months away. Are you telling me you’re getting married in twelve weeks and you don’t know who the groom is?” Kamakshi’s eyes became slits, letting nothing except her suspicion through. “Did you get asked to be on one of those reality bachelorette shows?”

“God, no, and if you ever hear me doing anything remotely related to reality television, call my uncle and tell him to lock me up in his cabin up in Truckee until I’m talking sense. No, it’s just that I thought a lot about what you said. You know, about marriage and building a life with someone? And like usual, you made some really good points. So I decided you were right. I have so much going for me right now, and I have no one to share it with.”

“You have me!” Kamakshi protested.

Rosalind reached across the table and took her friend’s hand. “But you’re already spoken for, sweet. Unless you think you’d like a sister-wife.”

In a split second, Kamakshi reclaimed her hand and used it to give Rosalind a playful slap on the wrist. “You know what I mean. When I told you all that, I wasn’t trying to make an argument for why you should get married. I was trying to get you to understand why I am.”

“I know that,” Rosalind said. “Maybe you should have been a lawyer. Your argument won me over. So I’ve decided to just do it already.”

“Good Lord, Roz, this is a major life decision, not a sports shoe advertisement. And I return to the question: who are you marrying? Without even having a boyfriend, how are you going to find someone and get him to pop the… Oh, no, you didn’t. Really, you didn’t. Did you?”

Rosalind twirled her fork. “Yes, I hired a service.”

Feeling as though she had finally found the fatal flaw in Rosalind’s plan, Kamakshi pounced. “You’re okay with an Indian or Pakistani husband? The matchmakers here don’t have many white men coming to them to find brides.”

“That’s a low blow.”

“Sorry,” Kamakshi answered. “I know you wouldn’t care.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” Rosalind rested her fork on the side of her plate. “But as a matter of fact, no, I didn’t go to an Indian matchmaker. I hired Hommes HQ.”

“The headhunting agency?” Kamakshi spit out. “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

“Come on, it’s not that different from what you did. And Xavier Hommes is renowned for his professionalism and repartee. His agency found Carmen for me in just three weeks. He’s already at work building a profile and finding someone to fill the position.”

Despite wanting to take up on her friend’s invitation to call her uncle, Kamakshi instead took a few deep breaths. She knew from experience that once Rosalind got it into her mind to do something, arguing with her to the opposite was like trying to pull out an embedded porcupine quill. The idea only dug in deeper. You just had to stand back and give her the opportunity to work herself out of her own notion.

And she would have let it rest at that, if Rosalind had not added, “Will you be my matron of honor?”

“You do realize how crazy it is to ask me that when you don’t even have a groom yet, right?”

Rosalind blinked twice. “So, is that a no?”

“That’s a ‘if you actually go through with this crazy idea’ yes. But I’ll admit, Rosalind, I don’t think you will. You’re just not the marrying type. You’re far too picky. And that’s fine. You don’t need to have a partner to have a purpose. Just look at all the good work your nuns do.”

“Oh, this will happen,” Rosalind assured her as she took back up her fork and speared a tomato wedge. “I’m determined, and I know Xavier Hommes won’t let me down.”

At least, she hoped that Xavier Hommes would not let her down. After their first profiling session, Rosalind had come away with the belief that he had embraced her mission as his own. When Carmen informed her that Xavier wanted to meet her that night in a social setting for observation, however, doubts festered. Was he just placating her, and getting her to pick up an expensive meal as a bonus?

She spotted Xavier sitting at a booth across a room crowded with diners. A checkerboard floor with alternating black and white tiles made her feel like she had just stepped on to a chess board. At the far corner of the restaurant, a man dressed as a gondolier played an accordion while another dressed just the same, belted out something in Italian that had two female tourists at the table beneath them swooning. Rosalind tiptoed through the front door and jolted when a woman, who was in the tightest white dress she had seen this side of a mummy, appeared from nowhere and asked how many in her party.

“None,” she exclaimed, putting her hand to her heart as though that could stop the racing.

“Just looking then, madame?”

She felt a tingle at the top of her ears that slowly worked itself down her jawline and met her lips. Madame? Surely the hostess had meant to say miss.

“I’m meeting someone, but I see him right over there.” Rosalind extended a finger in Xavier’s direction. The headhunter must have felt their eyes upon him. He lifted a hand and flexed his fingers in a wave.

“Ah,” said the hostess, in a tone that spoke so much more than just understanding. “Yes, Signore Hommes. Enjoy your… um, meal.”

Xavier rose to his feet when she started to swivel into the booth. She assured him that he needn’t be so gallant on her account, but he nonetheless waited until she was comfortable to return to his side of the table.

Rosalind decided to employ some of his own motives against him. “They seem to know you here.”

Much to her chagrin, he didn’t take the bait.

“Did you have any trouble finding it?”

Rosalind shook her head. “Don’t dodge the question.”

The glass paused at his lips. “You didn’t ask a question, Rosalind.”

Reviewing her words, she quickly remedied that technicality. “How do they know you so well here?”

His answer was as bold as his choice of wine. “I used to bring… dates here.”

Rosalind turned her attention to unrolling the napkin and placing it on her lap. “Women you slept with?”

“On occasion.” He sipped his wine.

She felt a reverberation shutter through her. She grabbed the menu and splayed it across the table. “And the reason you’re bringing me to this pizza parlor is … ?”

“…Purely professional. I want to watch you order.” Xavier rubbed a chin on which an after-five shadow of gruff teased her eyes. He, in turn, seemed to be studying her every intricacy with as much dedication.

“Watch me order? Please reassure me you’re actually my contractor and not a stalker.”

“A moment ago you were jealous I had been here with other women, and now you’re worried I’m pursuing you too closely. Are you always this indecisive?”

Anger brought her arms across her chest. “I’m not jealous!” she huffed. “Besides, there’s nothing to be jealous of. You don’t bring women here anymore. You used the past tense.”

“You’re picking up my powers of observation, I see. But tell me, would you be jealous if I still did?”

The corners of Xavier’s mouth twitched, but she wasn’t taking the bait. She was quickly discovering that underneath a very controlled exterior, Xavier Hommes had a thin line of animosity reserved for her. Oh, he took on her job, but he still wasn’t convinced that it had been a wise decision. Since he obviously understood the serious green that lay at the other end of this rainbow, however, he seemed to be acting out then in the only way available to him: bristling her with teasing jibes.

After a few moments of her stoic silence, he continued. “I’m only a stalker of good Merlot. FYI: this isn’t a pizza parlor. I believe the proper term for it is una ristorante italiano.” When she still looked unsure of his sanity, he continued, “I know of your penchant for golden Hollywood, but have you ever seen When Harry Met Sally?”

She nodded. “Total chick flick, and I am a woman, so of course I have.”

“Do you remember that scene in the diner where Harry watches Sally order, then explains to her the difference between high maintenance and low maintenance?”

If he wanted banter, she’d give him banter. “Right before she fakes the orgasm in public. Going to ask me to do that, too?”

“What? No, no,” he stumbled to answer, coughing into his napkin. It took a good twenty seconds and a tall drink of water to regain his ability to speak. “Even in San Francisco, I think that would likely result in our being asked to leave. Point is, Harry would have been quickly promoted in my company. He understands how the seemingly mundane acts we engage in everyday without thought showcase everything about us. Beyond watching you order, the food here is excellent. The wine list, impressive.”

Rosalind breezed through the dishes. When the waiter emerged a few minutes later with a basket of bread, she felt the weight of Xavier’s eyes on her hand as she reached out and grabbed a slice.

“Will you please stop that?” she asked.

“What?”

“Making me feel like I’m under the microscope,” she said. “I know observation is part of your procedure, Mr. Hommes. I remember that with Jack. However, he observed me at work where I was surrounded by people. This sort of one-on-one thing with you tracking me from moment to moment… It’s very unnerving. You can see perfectly well what I’m doing without training hawk eyes on me. I’m not about to bolt out the door.”

“I’m upsetting you,” he said in realization. “Apologies. I’m not accustomed to having such a specified subject in such an intimate situation.”

She heard herself gulp. “Intimate?”

“Yes, in that we are meeting one-on-one. As you duly noted.”

Rosalind sat back, feeling silly that she let the word mean anything beyond its most dictionary-citable nature. The menu hitched on the side of the table, her mind began to see much more to her probable order than a preference of pomodoro versus pesto. The waiter returned, pen poised, looking at her like she were about to sprout poetry.

What would Xavier possibly be able to deduce from what she was about to say? If she ordered chicken, would that suggest she had very bland tastes? Did pork signify a sweet tooth and desire for a quick rush? Did fish imply she gave so little care to the state of her breath so as to inflict a mist du trout to whomever should come mouth-to-mouth with her?

Feeling like any selection she made was bound to put too much stock into a meaningless measure, Rosalind closed her menu and leaned back in her seat. She raised two fingers on her right hand and pointed them at Xavier.

“Actually, the gentlemen will order for me.”

Xavier’s eyes glossed over. A devilish grin spread across his face as he coaxed the waiter near and spoke into the young man’s ear. The waiter in turn nodded, scratching on his order pad. Rosalind couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as though they were speaking another language.

“Oh, and a garden salad!” Rosalind added when they had finished. “Please substitute Caesar dressing for Italian, and if you can sprinkle just a little parmesan on it, that would be great.”

The waiter looked confused. “So, a Caesar salad, then?”

“No, I noticed in the menu that your house salad is three dollars less, and the only difference between what I ordered and that is a few bites of grilled chicken.”

“Then I’ll give you Caesar salad, no chicken.” He began scratching on his order pad again.

“Will you charge me less if I ask for it with no chicken?”

The waiter shook his head and let out a few nervous chuckles. “What can I say, signorina, it’s all in the computer. I just hit the buttons.”

“You can say you’ll follow my request,” Rosalind returned. “Garden salad with Caesar, hold the Italian, with just a pinch of shredded parmesan.” When at last he unhappily acquiesced and left, Rosalind turned back to Xavier. “So, what does that decision tell you?” She hitched her chin on her balled up fist. “Or aren’t you going to tell me?”

“You’re not a humble person.” He took a sip of his wine.

Rosalind’s face screwed up. “I guess I shouldn’t have asked.”

Tapping his palate with his tongue, Xavier shook his head. “That’s not a bad thing. You’re extremely confident and self-aware. You don’t demure, you redistribute. It’s an astounding quality in someone of your age, to realize when you’re in a situation where the best course of action might be to take someone else’s advice.”

“We’ll see about that when I taste whatever it is you ordered for me,” Rosalind joked.

Xavier chuckled in turn. “This is one of North Beach’s best. I assure you, you’ll love it.”

She’d just see about that. She had astoundingly particular tastes when it came to food. “And what’s with all this, ‘someone of your age’ …as though we’re that different.”

“On the contrary, I have a whole five years on you,” Xavier informed her.

She tipped her wine at him. “Funny, I would have put you a few years more than thirty-six.”

In kind, Xavier saluted her with his drink.

They chatted several minutes about both of their careers. Rosalind explained how she grew up in a nearby coastal town famous for its hippies and their horticulture. Xavier said he had arrived to the West Coast after university and taken up a job with an existing firm. After several years, he had built up a reputation and proven track record that made going into business for himself seem the most logical thing.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy where I was,” he explained as the wait staff cleared the appetizers and wheeled out their entrees. “I just knew I’d never have the kind of control over the career I wanted unless I was doing my own thing. I wanted something that was mine.”

“I understand completely,” Rosalind returned. “That’s why I founded BetaHouse. Only, where you work with people, my work mostly involves allowing others not to.”

Two steaming dishes appeared on the table before them, leaving Rosalind surprised. Not only had Xavier ordered them both the same item, but despite what she thought a thorough background in Italian dining, she found the offering misplaced.

“Are these… kebabs?”

It certainly looked more like something from the Persian café two blocks from her loft than anything one would find in Rome.

“Spendini,” Xavier answered. He used his fork to coax the morsels of shrimp, beef, and pork from the spit.

“Aren’t kebabs Persian?”

“So the Persians claim. As do the Greeks, the Turks, the Arabs … As the case may be, kebabs came to Italy via Venetian merchants conducting trade with the Ottoman Empire.” His knife sliced a roasted potato flecked with rosemary.

Rosalind speared a liberated shrimp from her plate. “Still, I usually don’t care for too much meat. So you’re also a food historian?”

“When something grabs my attention, I find myself wanting to know everything about it.” His eyes lingered on the morsel she held out at length for visual examination. “Try it. If you don’t like it, you can spit it out.” He gave her a wink.

Pulling the shrimp to her mouth, she parted her lips and bit. An explosion of olive oil, rosemary, thyme, and oregano jolted her taste buds to life. As she chewed, her eyes drifted closed, wanting to concentrate on the taste. The saltiness of the sea drawn from the shrimp mixed with the lemon’s tartness and a hint of sweetness from what she didn’t know. An aroma hit her senses in short order, bringing to mind a trip to Tuscany taken when she was a sophomore at Stanford. She felt a drop of liquid chasing over her chin, and opened her eyes only when she felt the scratch of stiff linen.

Rosalind’s gaze landed on Xavier, who was looking at her with concern, amusement, and something else she couldn’t quite grasp.

His voice sounded raspy as he said, “I’m guessing you like it.”

“I’ll just say that, if you did want to continue acting out the scene from the movie, I don’t think I’d be faking it.” She chewed enough to swallow, then met his gaze straight on. “Why don’t you bring women here any more, Mr. Hommes?”

“Because I realized that I didn’t want an endless string of meaningless women. I wanted… want only one who would mean everything.”

“And you haven’t found her yet?”

He shook his head and raised his glass. “Here’s to hoping we both find what we’re looking for.”

Black & White

“I feel like Bruce Wayne should be arriving any moment.”

Rosalind sipped at her champagne, so far the only good thing she’d encountered since arriving to the Firemen’s Charity Ball.

“Tell me about it,” Kamakshi added, overlooking the crowd of swirling black suits and pale ballroom dresses. “I used to think these sort of things were made up by Hollywood. They’re even less impressive in real life. I wonder what else Hollywood is lying to us about.”

“Next thing, you’ll be telling me people don’t really fall in love in a nice, sequential pattern set against a quirky situation with a bit of comedy relief on the side,” Rosalind added.

No one would ever guess, based on the current landscape, that San Francisco’s inhabitants were known for their bold fashion choices. Averaging out all the designer labels, the shade of the night fell into the gray spectrum. Only the music held any color; at the far end of the converted fire house, a big band blared out interchanges of swing and old standards. At random intervals, men donning tuxes and women in varying degrees of sparkles and shock stood in small groups, milling. To the casual observer, they engaged in nothing more than idle chatter, soaking in the decorations, or savoring the spreads of haute cuisine that looked almost as expensive and as well dressed up as they were. Rosalind understood, however, that as much money and influence flew back and forth in these conversations as did words, whether in the form of insider stock tips or pitched investment opportunities. Collectively, the funding secured, offered, begged, or borrowed this night could fund the government of Guam for several years.

So not her type of thing. Oh, she enjoyed making money. Correction: earning money, but she didn’t embrace the art of financial contortionism like some sort of high-stakes fantasy league so many of her fellow upper tax bracketeers did. Money was secondary in her career and focus. Little she aspired to, after providing for her necessities, was motivated primarily by the likelihood of riches.

Though she admitted, it was a convenient consequence.

Rosalind turned back to her friend with an appreciative eye. “At least you look great. I so wish I could pull off a red sari. Well, a red anything. But with my bisque skin, every time I put it on, I look like I’m impersonating a candy cane. Damn it, I wish I was ethnic.”

“You are: you’re female.” Kamakshi laid a hand on Rosalind’s shoulder. “Seriously, stop it. You look fabulous. Not everyone can pull off yellow and not look like either Big Bird or a dandelion. You look… elegant.”

“Ladies.”

They turned to find Prashant, dressed in his black sherwani with gold embroidery that made him the perfect match to Kamakshi’s more traditional Indian garb. He bore a prideful smile and more importantly, bite-sized chocolates.

“Kamakshi, have I told you yet how much I approve of your choice of a fiancé?” Rosalind quipped as she pinched a truffle between two fingers. “Any man whom comes bearing sweets when we only sent him to put our coats away is okay by me.”

Kamakshi giggled as she handed off the second drink she’d been holding. “I knew you would love him.”

Prashant leaned in toward Kamakshi. “I knew you would love me.”

At least their kissing was brief and by modern standards, chaste. Prashant scarcely made contact with Kamakshi’s lips with his own before he pulled back. The gravity that lingered between them as he retreated, however, signaled clearly that the brevity wasn’t due to lack of want.

“So, not the most exciting party ever, but still beats sitting at home and doing balance sheets,” he remarked as he turned back to the crowd. “And the food looks good. Thank you again, Rosalind, for inviting us.”

“Thank you for suffering through it with me,” Rosalind returned. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be at this shindig either if it wasn’t being thrown by one of my most loyal and early investors. I guess this is how I pay him back: three, thousand dollar tickets to his charity event.” She held up the glass of champagne for closer inspection. “Don’t you think they’d raise a whole lot more money for the Fireman’s Union if they served up some PBR rather than this stuff, though?”

Prashant bobbed his head. “My mother always said these sort of parties were a bad excuse to support a good cause with a great number of eyes.”

“Brings chocolates, and has a mom who has her head on right. You keep impressing.”

Kamakshi sipped her cranberry mocktail. “May your potential husband prove to be as good as mine.”

Rosalind pulled the flute to her lips once more. “From your mouth to God’s ear.”

Prashant turned a vacant expression to his fiancée. “What’s that?”

“Rosalind’s getting married.”

“To who?”

“The matchmaker hasn’t told her yet.”

The ivory skin of Rosalind’s cheeks reddened. “Still don’t believe I’m serious about it, do you?”

Kamakshi pulled back into Prashant’s side. “When have you ever been not serious? I’m just worried, is all. This works in India because the parents or someone else who’s really shown talent for making matches works it all out. I can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt if your improvised matchmaker screws up. Why can’t you just date, figure it out on your own?”

“Given the current divorce rate in this country, I can’t possibly imagine that going the traditional route would make the end product any more of a guarantee,” Rosalind answered. “Besides, I trust my guy to do his job. He’s already proven himself more than capable.”

“Well, then, cheers!”

Kamakshi held up her flute, tapping it to Rosalind’s and clinking it, providing a visual reference for the definition of cliché.

The moan of a clarinet hushed the room. The lights lowered, though the fractal beams cast out from a disco ball over the dance floor sent fingers of silver, red, and green flittering over the crowd.

Prashant placed his glass on the nearest highboy. “Kam, my love,” he said as he held out a hand. “May I have the honor?”

A look of concern clouded Kamakshi’s features. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

Rosalind knew Kamakshi wasn’t an experienced ballroom dancer, but she didn’t see how it could be dangerous. Perhaps Kamakshi knew something she didn’t about Prashant having two left feet.

Prashant slid his fingers over hers leading her best friend toward the end of the room where couples swayed in adagio time. “Love, I would never let you fall.”

“Enough charm, you silly boy. I’ve already agreed to marry you.”

Rosalind wasn’t such a hopeless romantic that she’d dare say something as corny as “as though they were made for each other,” but even she could admit the two looked, acted, and even moved as though they’d been together for years. Kamakshi took to being in love like a duck to water. Her friend glowed with happiness.

Had Rosalind not actually been so honestly appreciative and envious of that fact, it would have been sickening. Would she fall into love so easily as her best friend, as though falling into the ocean and surrendering to its pull? She doubted it. By nature, Rosalind Betters knew herself to be a contrarian. Besides, she was more than putting the cart before the horse on this. She didn’t even yet have candidates, let alone prospects. Hopefully, Xavier Hommes would have someone for her soon. She really wanted, perhaps needed, to feel that someone wanted her.

A pang in the pit of her stomach tightened imperceptibly. The heretofore alien sensation had lingered since the week before when Xavier Hommes’s eyes focused on her lips as she ate. It didn’t stay in her gut, of course; it spread throughout her limbs in good time, all the way down to the tips of her tingly fingers and prickly ear lobes. Rosalind had forgotten how a handsome man could do that to a woman, how with nothing more than a coy smile or an entrancing cologne, he could disarm all her self-trained detachment, and render her so completely female. To be in a man’s arms again, to feel the press of lips to her own, to have her breath hitch the moment she knew he was going to kiss her, and kiss her again, and that she would kiss him right back...

Her fingers danced over her lips, trailing a path down her jawline as her eyes fluttered closed, her mind’s eye conjuring a vision of an as yet faceless question mark.

Rosalind chastised her own immaturity, how easily she let the want of something so ridiculous overtake her. She glanced left and right, seeing if anyone had noticed her moment of indiscretion. Luckily, everyone else was too wrapped up in their own conversations or had their eyes fixed on the dance floor where another couple twirled like Fred and Ginger.

This was part of the reason she hadn’t gone out of her way to date the last few years. Distraction at this point in her career could hurt her in so many ways, the least of which was emotional. Still, she could have this, a partner, couldn’t she? So she’d just get married and get on with it… But why was the thought of getting married doing this to her? Why, without even a particular man to blame for such feelings, was she itchy and frustrated in her own skin? It wasn’t like she was heading in to a whirlwind romance; she was heading into whirlwind matrimony. Just like Kamakshi. Who was head-over-heels, deliriously happy.

“Ms. Betters, I would say you clean up nice, but I’ve never seen you the least bit less than perfect.”

Rosalind’s hand fluttered to her neck. When she turned, piercing silver eyes beamed at her from under a brim of black hair.

“Mr. Hommes, you’re the last person I expected to creep up on me in the dark and scare me half to death. Most of my contractors send me their bill to do that.”

“Sadly, my accounts receivable team has that pleasure, and they’re not here. But I do apologize.” He stepped in closer as the brass section of the band kicked up, layering the soundscape with audible fog. “How are you, Ms. Betters?”

“Surprised and confused at the moment. What are you doing here?” she teased, bringing him to raise a corner of his mouth. “You’ve outed yourself as a stalker after all.”

“Only to the extent required by my job, and only when on the clock,” he answered cheerily. “There’s no need for such formality at a function such as this. You can call me Xav.”

How he managed to come off as unique and genuine, not to mention strikingly handsome, amongst a sea of normalized mendacity was beyond understanding. Yet, Xavier Hommes stood before her, a Picasso among polka dots. His appearance enlightened her to how a tuxedo was supposed to make a man look. Suave, refined, classy, gentlemanly. And yes, for lack of a better term, sexy.

The sound stuck in her throat when she half-heartedly attempted it. Xav. Her addled brain pointed out that his nicked named sounded like someone had combined the words sex and safe. Yet, the inner disciplined business woman who had been grilled by a former employer on the pitfalls of sexual harassment reminded her of the terrible things that could happen when you mixed business and pleasure, even if that person was not technically your employee. Even more complicated if the duty of the one in question was to find you a spouse.

“I believe in formality, so I’ll stick with mister, Mister Hommes,” she finally managed to state in a tone bordering firm and gentle. Professional. “I’m surprised because this is an invitation-only event, and then comes with a pretty hefty price tag if one accepts. Do you know Mr. Trevors?”

“A client of mine as well, though I’ll admit I’ve never had dinner with him anywhere near North Beach,” Xavier informed her, taking a wide swath of the room under inspection. “Tip throws one hell of a party, doesn’t he?”

She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. Not knowing how to respond, she pulled the glass of champagne to her lips. “All for a good cause,” she muttered before tipping the flute back at a gentle angle, trying to draw the drink out as long as possible. As she found too often in life, there wasn’t enough wine.

“Indeed. I think the purchase of wine for this party alone is responsible for the livelihood of several Sonoma County vintners and possibly, one or two in the Loire Valley.”

Suspicion tugged at her. “And if we were to assign shares for the partaking of said wine…”

He cocked his chin. “You think I’m drunk.”

“On the contrary, I suspect you’re merely tipsy.”

His fingers pinched a small space of air. “But I assure you, I’m perfectly clear-headed. I’m at my peak performance when I’m a little loose.”

A sparkle from the disco ball caught in his right eye, drawing her gaze straight into his. She hoped she wasn’t wearing red in her cheeks now, but the heat she felt brimming beneath her skin suggested otherwise.

“Dance with me?” He held out a hand.

The invitation was so sudden, so out of the blue, she actually flinched. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea—”

“Nonsense.” He didn’t wait for her to finish. Instead, he took the flute from her hands and placed it beside Prashant’s discarded glass on the highboy. “Just follow my lead, and I promise, I’ll not step on your feet too much.” He glanced down at her Dolce and Gabbana heels. “Those are steel-toed, right?”

His joke disarmed her. She lifted the skirting of her dress slightly, giving him a better view of wiggling digits on her open-toed shoes.

He winked as he hooked his arm under hers. “That’s okay. Mine are. We’ll be fine.”

The counterfeit crowd clapped polite applause as the band finished out their number. A moment later, a sweet, almost symphonic melody wafted down from the risers as the music resumed. Xavier turned, pulled Rosalind close, and put his left arm across her back, letting her discover that a respectable distance between two bodies could still inspire illicit thoughts.

Xavier and the violinists must have been in cahoots. He swayed her as though the two had conspired to throw her off kilter.

“Are you always so tense? It’s not ballet, Rosalind. You don’t have to worry about keeping perfect form.”

“I said we should keep things formal, and I meant it, Mr. Hommes.” Just to showcase her self-control, she braced her grip in his, boxing her arm at a rigid angle and forcing their bodies apart.

Xavier exhaled and paused, moving his hand down her back and flattening his palm. He pressed her back against him insistently. Again her senses became overwhelmed with his scent.

“You said you believed we should keep things formal. I, however, am of a different bent, and I’m exercising my unalienable rights to my own beliefs.” He lowered his chin, his lips brushing against her ear. “We’ll talk business, just so others don’t get the impression that we’re enjoying ourselves, or Heaven help us. Now let me dance with you properly. Next time you’ll dance with someone like this will be at your wedding, and you need the practice.”

How incredibly easy it was to close her eyes and do just that. All she had to do was decide. Xavier coaxed her left and right in just the right measure against the music. Her feet ceased serving as booby traps meant to make her fall; a minor miracle given her history of failed attempts at anything resembling grace. She drifted with him across the floor under his command, the euphoria broken only when she began to hear him whisper in time to the band’s refrain.

“You know this song,” she said.

She felt more than heard the rumble of a chuckle. “Moonlight Serenade. One of my favorites. I have a thing for Glenn Miller and big band music the way you have for Mae West and Golden Hollywood.”

“So you shun the modern as well? We make quite the pair, don’t we?”

He pulled back and looked down at her, his eyes focused on her lower lip, his breath scented with red wine, making her feel intoxicated. “Yes, we do.”

She cleared her throat and moved her gaze to take in the crowd to the right, reminding herself that she had a working relationship with Xavier, nothing more. “Tell me, have you found me a husband yet?”

“You didn’t hire me to find you a husband.”

Her confused blinking against the twinkle of the lights made her dizzy. “I’m quite certain I did.”

“No, you didn’t,” he assured her. “You hired me to find you a pre-screened pool of potential fiancé candidates. And yes, I have some news on that front. I was actually planning on having my people call your people in the morning, as the yuppies used to say, so I could get on your calendar. I’ve decided since your work is such an integral part of your life, I would benefit from seeing you operate in that environment.”

“Why can’t you just talk to Jack? He already did a work up of me at my office.”

Xavier shook his head. “He was approaching the task from a different perspective. He wasn’t looking then for what interests me.”

“Well, I’m heading out to Japan for a week tomorrow, but I can have Carmen find us something for when I get back.”

“Good, I’m heading out to Singapore myself.” With a grace a swan would have envied, he dipped her and held her there.

“There’s no need to mock me. I’m not trying to avoid you. Now pull me back up.”

He did so slowly, carefully, tenderly. Teasingly. “I don’t mock. I have to go where the talent is. Believe it or not, you’re not my only client, Rosalind.”

“Just your most important?” she joked.

The end of the number and ensuing applause prevented his answer as couples around them separated and added in their approval. Rosalind began to pull away when Xavier’s grip tightened. His eyes stayed locked on her mouth.

“Are you…” He hesitated before turning on the crowd of milling millionaires and taking a wide survey. “Are you here alone?”

“Not to be curt, Mr. Hommes, but given what I hired you to do, you think I would be here with a date?”

Faltering, his hold on her began to loosen. “No, of course not. I meant… I didn’t mean anything. Just pleasant conversation.”

“Okay.” Rosalind crossed her arms over her chest and studied the shifting sands of Xavier’s expression. It then occurred to her that just because she was without a partner didn’t mean that he was. Feeling the pit of her stomach drop out, her eyes began to dart around the room, looking for a hostile glare from a gorgeous woman pointed in her direction.

Because, of course, Xavier would only pick the best possible date, Rosalind told herself. That was his nature. Plus, given how handsome he was …

Wanting to showcase the amiable relationship, Rosalind found herself prattling. “Actually, I am kind of here with someone. Two someones: Kamakshi and her fiancé.”

“The one who put this arranged marriage notion in your head?” Xavier asked. She nodded. “I’d like to meet her. Her engagement won my firm a huge commitment from the head of BetaHouse, after all. I feel like I owe her a finder’s fee.”

“It’s your lucky day. As a matter of fact, Kamakshi’s the CTO of a start-up herself, and might need your services in the future. Let me introduce you.” She paused on the edge of the dance floor, planted her hands on her hips, and began to sweep the room trying to identify her target. “Now where did she go?”

Xavier walked up behind her, just close enough so that if she stumbled backward it would be against the wall that was his chest, but not close enough to be touching her otherwise. “Is she about 5’ 6”, long black hair, wearing a beautiful red sari?”

“Yes, exactly. Where do you see her?”

His hand anchored on her shoulder, spinning her around as his other hand pointed to a couple retreating in to the shadows at the edge of the room, looking like they were about to single-handedly resurrect San Francisco’s now defunct Exotic Erotic Ball. A few other patrons of the party glanced at them askew, but then only laughed and looked away. Rosalind, on the other hand, stiffened. Kamakshi and Prashant had come as her guests, and their overly familiar behavior might come back to reflect on her. Though, seriously, for some parts of the city, the impromptu groping session was fairly mild.

That did nothing to soothe her jealousy, of course. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so wrapped up in someone that she’d throw herself at him in public that way. To be so consumed by emotion and desire…

When Rosalind felt the pinprick of a tear in the corner of her eye, she turned on her heels and put on her best business-ready, stoic face. “Perhaps another time. Seems she’s busy at the moment.”

Xavier’s hand on her shoulder tightened. When she turned to him, he moved his hands up to cup both her cheeks, holding her eyes locked into his.

“You’ll have that soon enough. I promise you.”

Rosalind gasped. “I didn’t say…”

“Shhhh.” The pad of his index finger fell against her lips, stilling her words but quickening her heart. “I can see it in your eyes. Remember, it’s my profession to read people for who they really are.” His gray eyes narrowed as his hand fell away. “I’m not going to let you down. I’m taking this assignment very seriously. I’m going to find you someone who will set your heart, and your body, on fire.”

“That’s not exactly appropriate,” she finally got out, though only after a successful go at a gasping fish impression.

He cocked his head to the side as his eyes flashed quickly to the swooning couple in the shadows. “Tell me you don’t want someone to kiss you like that.”

Her eyes closed. She didn’t know why it made her feel tight in her skin to admit this to, of all people, Xavier Hommes, the very person in charge of amending her single status.

His hands pressed into her cheeks, just enough pressure to cause her to open her eyes and stare into his with confusion.

“We all want to be kissed that way, Rosalind.” His lips were right against hers. When had he gotten so close? “I know I do.”

What was she doing? Was she leaning into him? Was he leaning into her?

Rosalind tilted her head and closed her eyes, not really sure why. Xavier’s breath mingled with her own; she could taste his essence, steely and masculine, on her tongue. Her senses drenched—sound, scent, touch—her being was deluged by Xavier’s existence. Especially touch

And then, nothing. Coolness fell over her as his heat evacuated her space. When she opened her eyes, he was already halfway across the dance floor, his back the only view his retreat afforded.

“Xav?”

Her plea went for nothing. His steps carried him directly across the couples twirling to a Count Basie number, past the bar, around the crowd, and out the door. Never once did he turn back, and never once did she take her eyes off him until he was gone.

Would That It Were

Xavier hailed a cab like his life depended on it, pushing past a blonde who tried the old pull-out-a-cigarette-and-look-around-for-a-lighter routine. The voices of the few high-rollers smoking outside the firehouse flattened when they noticed his agitated state. Even the blonde drew back with a “Oh, better not,” look on her face as he began to pace. The cab was only a few hundred meters away, but was moving much too slowly. He had to get away, had to put as much space between Rosalind Betters and himself as possible now.

As soon as the Black Ford Escape was curbside, he dove in to the trench of a back seat.

“Ashbury and Waller, please,” Xavier said, righting himself.

The driver turned on his meter and pulled into traffic. “No problem. Seat belt, if you don’t mind.”

“You mind if I make a call?”

The cabbie gave a chuckle. “Such courtesy. No, go ahead. Mi cab es su cab.”

As the line tried to connect, the silver screen of Xavier’s mind put on a mental news reel, replaying the last few minutes complete with mocking, corny voice over. Hot date, or date with doom? He cursed inwardly.

What the hell? What the bloody hell? No, he hadn’t actually kissed Rosalind, but he’d set the act in motion before coming to his senses. And, God, how he had wanted to kiss her. Badly.

Maybe she’d been right. Maybe being around her after having a few glasses of wine had been a mistake. Though, Xavier thought as the scenery flashed by, what self-respecting single man wouldn’t want to kiss her, sober or otherwise? Rosalind Betters was confident, successful, ambitious, and not afraid to do what it took to get what she wanted. In short, she was a lot like him. And beautiful; classically beautiful. None of that Silicon Valley, fake beauty-on-a-stick, with layers of makeup and dripping in designers routine. Rosalind possessed a timeless sense of elegance, a poise that few women of this era possessed. She did not falter, she did not deny her femininity, and yet she was fiercely independent, self-assured, and resolved. Though perhaps that would change if one pushed their professional boundaries a little too far.

Oh God, what if he had kissed her? It had been so long since he had self-elected to forgo seducing woman after woman and indulging in meaningless passion, but that didn’t mean he thought the playground was any less fun. Surely that deficit of intimacy must explain why his desire to press his lips to Rosalind’s tripped his good senses? He couldn’t remember ever having been so tempted by a woman.

“Hello?”

Better than cold water, the voice on the other end of the line woke him up to the reality: his assignment was to find her a husband, and the candidate pool was highly selective and didn’t include him.

“Good evening, sir,” he said, sounding as slick and normalized as if he wasn’t eating his own soul. “Xavier Hommes here. I wanted to follow up with you regarding the question you asked. Ms. Betters is a fine dancer.”

“Fine, as in exquisite? Or fine, as in, competent?”

He wanted to answer, like liquid mercury and as much in danger of poisoning me. “The former, sir.”

“I take it that you saw out this research yourself?”

Xavier nodded, though for whose benefit, who could say. “Yes, sir. I’m seeing to everything involving this placement personally and with the utmost discretion, as I believe it’s due. I didn’t want to muddy the waters by bringing in a third party.”

“Then tell me, Mr. Hommes. Did you lead, or did she?”

Confusion filled him, followed by heat. Determining the answer forced Xavier to relive the moments when he held her in his arms. “I did.”

“And what of that other task I asked of you?”

He swallowed, hoping the sound didn’t carry over the cell connection. “She would have, had I pressed her to.”

The voice on the other end was suddenly filled with suspicion. “But you didn’t though, right?”

I should have. “No, sir, I didn’t kiss her. I can only imagine how wonderful it would be to,” Xavier confirmed, then swallowed hard from his stupidity. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate. If I may return to the point: Are you satisfied, then? May I include your name in the candidate pool?”

A low rumble from the other side followed with a sly tone. “Yes, I would be happy to compete for the role of Rosalind’s husband.”

A Passing Bug

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Rosalind’s watery, bloodshot eyes met the driver’s in the rearview mirror. Looking like a not entirely unattractive corpse in the backseat of the town car, even she doubted her own words. “I’ll be fine. Just need some rest.”

His thick Pakistani-accented words flew by so fast she could barely catch them. “Says you. Says all your type. You think you control so much money, you can control every little molecule in your body. But, estafullah, last time I had a person looking like you in my cab, he died before paying the fare.”

Despite the fact that it hurt her ribs, Rosalind laughed.

“I’m not kidding,” he added, looking between her and the traffic he was whizzing by in turn. “He died right where you’re sitting. D-E-A-D. One minute it was, ‘Transamerica Building, please,’ next it was the city morgue. New definition to stiffing the fare.”

The rain, of course, didn’t help, yet seemed to compliment the aches and pains. By the time she’d gotten in to her building, her coat was drenched, her roller bag had become a portable water tank, and her hair looked like it had been styled by Picasso. It didn’t rain much in San Francisco in the spring, but when Mother Nature got the notion, she made it count. Top it off with the fact that her cell phone battery was dead, and the trifecta of blah was complete.

When she got up to her flat after an elevator ride that seemed to take twice as long as normal, she was looking forward to drying off, putting on some fuzzy pajamas, and curling up in bed with Strudel. No bounding, exuberant German Shepherd went insane to greet her when she came through the door, however. It was then that she remembered the dog walker saying that he wouldn’t pick up the pooch from Carmen’s to walk him and bring him back if it happened to be raining. Which, Rosalind decided was a good thing. A loyal pup sharing the blanket with you on a bad day was one thing; a damp canine and accompanying smell was hard to tolerate when you already felt like at any moment your head might explode and your stomach, turn itself on to existentialism. She had barely made it into her loft when she collapsed on the couch and promptly fell asleep.

Sometime later, Rosalind squinted, making out the time from the DVD player under her TV. She had a meeting in an hour, one that had been chaos for Carmen to pull together. Yawning, Rosalind got to her feet and stretched. Much to her chagrin, that simple act set the world on spin.

Taking measured steps and half bent over, Rosalind managed the distance to the kitchen, putting on the tea pot as she plugged her phone in to charge. She grabbed the cordless landline.

“Carmen? I’m back, for better or worse.” A sneeze of epic proportions sealed off the statement.

“You… don’t… sound so good.”

“I don’t feel so good,” Rosalind confirmed. “Sorry it took me so long to check in. I must have left my cell on when we took off from Narita. The battery was DOA at SFO. Then I fell asleep the second I got home. What’s up, anything urgent going on?”

“Nothing that can’t wait or that I can’t push back, except…” Carmen drew out the second syllable, imbuing it with foreboding. “Have you checked your emails yet?”

“No. I was too busy on the plane going over the patent applications. Sanchez has to pull in some more recent references or we’re going to run into problems down the line. Why? Anything a must-do-now?”

After a pause more pregnant than a reality show teenager, Carmen said, “I guess you didn’t see the one from Xavier Hommes, or get my text, then.”

“Damn, he’s supposed to shadow me at the office today.” With a jolt of panic, Rosalind ran to the bathroom and fetched out her make-up bag. She had to do something about the red blotches and bags under her eyes. “I totally forgot about that. Is it okay if he sits in on the strategy meeting, or do you think Bob Clark will think that’s too weird?”

“I’m sure Bob will be okay with it, but I’m surprised he’s not at your place yet.”

Rosalind’s hand stopped, levitating the wand of mascara. “What do you mean, he’s not at my place yet? Why would Bob Clark come to my house?”

“No, not Bob. Xavier. He said he wanted to meet at your place and ride over to BetaHouse with you, to know what your routine is from the moment you leave home. I told him to pick you up at three-thirty.”

“What, he’s… he’s coming here?” It was at that exact moment that she heard the doorbell. “This isn’t good. I look horrible. I feel horrible. One look at me and he’s going to run away. Unless he came dressed in a hazmat suit or has some crazy fetish for contracting contagious diseases.”

“Wow, with charm like that, the fact that some guy didn’t snap you up long ago is shocking.”

She could hear the smile in Carmen’s voice.

“Blame it on my tendency to snap back. Damn it. Okay, okay. I’ll just … I can do this, it’s just Xavier Hommes. I’m coming in for this meeting then I’m coming straight back home. I don’t think I can take that man looking at me like a monkey in a cage when I feel this terrible. I’ll see you in an hour.”

The doorbell harkened again, this time a double, insistent set of ding-dong, ding-dong. Rosalind held back a sneeze, literally pinching her nose closed, and opened the door.

“Mr. Hommes, good afternoon. I’ll be ready in just ah… ah… ahhhchoo!”

His eyes grew wide as he took her in from head to toe. What a sight she must have been: stringy locks of blonde hair lumped in random intervals like undercooked pasta, half made-up face, eyes red as Mars. Her jeans were still wet near the bottom, stained a darker blue by saturation. Though heat filled her cheeks and her head experimented with vertigo, chills racked her body, making her shake when the cool air from the hallway floated in with his scent.

He took two steps in without invitation. “You look terrible.”

“Just what every girl dreams of hearing a handsome man say to her when she opens the door.” She bit her tongue, as if her ill-intentioned compliment would erase if she could just draw blood. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. When I’m sick, the connections between my brain and my mouth short circuit and all kinds of things just… Wait a minute, how did you get up here?” Her head peeked out the empty door frame, surveying the hallway for evidence of a break in. “You can’t access this floor without a passcode or a—”

“Eight, seventeen, ninety-three.”

Now she was sure the room was spinning. “How the hell do you know my passcode?”

He jumped around her question as easily as he maneuvered around her body to hang his coat on the rack. “Has anyone ever told you how predictable you can be?”

“Answer me. Is part of your stalking hacking into my building’s security system? That’s illegal you know, not to mention highly unethical. I’ve only told it to Carmen, the dog walker, and my cleaning lady. Don’t tell me you now also place domestic staff and Linda is actually a mole.”

“If I’m willing to find potential mates, why would a housecleaner be such a stretch?” Xavier shut the door behind him, set down a briefcase, and took off his coat, shaking droplets off on the rug. “Last time I was here, I was standing right behind you as you plugged it in. I know you didn’t see me in the elevator, and I assure you, I didn’t mean to memorize it. Still, I googled it to see if I could find any significance to the numbers, to see if it might give me insight to your nature.”

She waited expectantly for him to continue, watching a rain drop slick down over an ebony twist of his hair and dissolve into his blue shirt. “And?”

“Like I said, you’re predictable. Most people either use someone’s birthday or their own. Sadly, finding out your code was Mae West’s birthday didn’t really tell me anything new about you.”

Her teeth ground. “I’ll have it changed. Just give me a few minutes to get ready and we can… Whoa.”

She felt like she’d just bungee jumped off the top of the Comerica building. The room twisted as Rosalind’s legs gave out from under her. Airborne. She was utterly airborne. Except that she was braced behind her shoulders and under her knees by something thick and strong. And that smelled divine.

Xavier’s eyes met hers as her head fell against his shoulder.

“Rosalind, you’re so hot.”

“And I said you’re handsome, so now we’re even,” she answered, trying to figure out what had just happened. How was she so close to him? And were they moving? They must be, or else the vertigo had come on for real.

“No, I mean you have a fever,” he admonished with a teasing smile. “God, you have to be running well into the thirties. Have you taken anything yet? You have any aspirin or acetaminophen?”

Her body flattened out as her back hit her bed. “I’m fine. It’s just a cold.”

“Like hell it is. Colds don’t include fevers.”

She tried to shoo away his concern. “I’m just weak. I haven’t eaten anything since waking up in Tokyo. The food on the plane… Even just the smell of it turned my stomach.”

Xavier’s hand flattened over her forehead. Even if what he said wasn’t true, she was pretty sure that that fact alone would have pushed the mercury up.

He sat with a sigh on the edge of her bed. “Of course it smelled bad. You were coming down with the flu. I’m sure if you had anything in your stomach, it would all be coming back up now.” His eyes drifted down the length of her body. “You landed a few hours ago. You didn’t have time to take off those clothes? We need to get you out of those damp things.”

Despite her dizziness, she shot up into a sitting position. “Oh, no you don’t, buddy!”

His hands flew out, palms forward and flat. “I wasn’t implying a thing. But can you handle it yourself? If you want me to call someone to come over to help, just let me know the number.”

She scooted to the end of the bed before wobbling to her feet. “Kamakshi’s in LA, seeing a woman about a dress,S and as she reminded me not too long ago, all my other friends have moved on with their lives. I’ll change myself. But could you… Would you do something for me?”

The look on his face was so earnest, it unnerved her. “Anything.”

She pointed vaguely toward the kitchen as she shuffled to the bathroom door. “There’s already hot water in the kettle. I keep the tea bags in a drawer under the coffee pot. Anything not Earl Grey or Lipton, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

She closed the bathroom door behind her and fell to her knees. She needed a minute to get herself under control. The room was treating her to an encore of vertigo. After a few minutes, she straightened. By the time she had managed to strip down, brush out her hair, and redress, a good ten minutes had passed. Her body’s temptation to make good use of the porcelain throne in every way it was possible thwarted any attempt at being swift. She kept her resolve about her and back-talked her body.

A steaming, earthenware mug sat on her nightstand when she reemerged from the bathroom, along with a note in script way too refined to belong to this century.

You’re far too sick to go anywhere. Put on some pajamas, get into bed. I called Carmen. She said she’d reschedule the meeting and to listen to whatever I say. Drink your tea and I’ll be back shortly. I took your keychain for the door, and I’ll let myself in. Just don’t change the code before then. -Xav

Xav. There it was again. She didn’t know why that simple name felt so good on her lips. Almost mythical, like it should be a character in Zelda.

The tea warmed her, deep in her chest where she had felt the coldest. Xavier couldn’t have picked out a better brew for her ailment; the balance of chamomile and peppermint in the herbal blend soothed both her stomach and her pounding head. Next to the note lay two small, white tablets. Xavier must have given her kitchen a thorough once over to fish those out of some remote corner of a cabinet. She paused before downing them; maybe they were already past their expiration dates. For better or worse, she’d take the risk to get rid of the timpani player on meth currently residing between her eyebrows.

Somewhere between sip three and four, her eyes grew heavy.

Breweing Up Trouble

The selection at the Stop & Shop paid tribute to Soviet Russia. Unless you wanted soft drinks, chips, or energy shots, that was, in which case even Amazon couldn’t compete. Varieties of soup, however, were more refined: a canned chicken noodle he knew from experience had the consistency—and taste—of baby food; an instant cream of mushroom with more salt per mouthful than the Pacific; and a pitiful, single-serve microwavable minestrone that could only look inspired by Wolfgang Puck when sitting next to the other two.

Xavier gnashed his teeth and thought about the dinner he had planned to ask Rosalind to after shadowing her at the office. A dinner in public, away from privacy that might tempt him. A strictly business dinner. Nonetheless, just because there was an agenda didn’t mean you had to sacrifice a culinary-respectable experience. The restaurant on the Embarcadero boasted a wine selection of which Bacchus himself would have approved, as well as a picturesque view of the Bay Bridge. Xavier had always found the less famous of the two San Francisco bridges far more impressive to his own eyes. The Golden Gate stood as a token to the city in its booming past, connecting the bustling port town to the great beauty of redwoods and mountains just past the Sausalito city line. The Bay Bridge, however, marked its domination in modernity, connecting the City by the Bay to Oakland and Berkeley, industrial and thriving in their own way, utterly rebellious to the nation’s general trend toward conformity.

Even if during rush hour that bastard backed up like nobody’s business.

And, unlike the GG, the Bay Bridge was so not romantic, definitely less likely to inspire loverly notions over quiche or chicken marsala. Which was important. Xavier Hommes needed to reestablish boundaries after his last encounter with Rosalind Betters. What amounted to a well-contrived fact-finding mission had almost transformed into something much more revealing. He needed to remind himself that their relationship was a business one, and they were merely involved in a transaction in which his role was ONLY to headhunt a husband for her.

Which he had agreed to do again… why?

Money, his inner ambitions reminded him. Connections. Reputation. If you can place something this unorthodox for someone so high profile, what can’t you do? You’ll be on top of the game in this city. Plus one year exclusivity with BetaHouse? Serious green.

Xavier found the cashier and suppressed the urge to run to the restroom to wash his hands. “I don’t suppose you have any produce?”

The balding, pot-bellied man behind the counter grimaced and pointed out the door. “There’s a holistic living shop in the alley between those two buildings. If you can tolerate the stench, they carry all kinds of organic crap.”

To not feel a total ass, Xavier threw a few items on the counter and bought a lottery ticket. No hope of winning of course. Lady Luck had proven lately what a tart she really was, and he didn’t expect more than his due.

Helen’s Holistic Hut smelled like it looked: herbal. As in, illegally herbal. Since the California electorate had created this loophole despite Federal law for weed, the green grocers had become the latest left coast craze in retail. It seemed as if there wasn’t a block in the city that didn’t host either a yogurt shop, a tattoo parlor, or retail reefer anymore. Not that he had anything against anyone who wanted to use marijuana in the privacy of their own home, it just didn’t appeal to him.

Xavier hoped the smell wouldn’t stick to his clothing. It certainly wouldn’t calm Rosalind’s stomach, the purpose of this whole endeavor.

A gray-haired woman whose wardrobe originated in the Nixon administration meandered out from behind a beaded curtain at the back. He could only assume this was Helen. “Can I help you?”

“Someone told me you might have fresh produce here.”

She grinned. “Well, that’s the first time I ever heard it called that. You got your card on you, honey?”

Nerves brought a laugh out of him. “No, I mean like onions and carrots and stuff.”

Her hands anchored on her hips as the brightness of her features dulled. “Ah, yeah. Got some of that, too. Over there, on the other side of the crystal display. Everything’s organic and locally sourced as much as possible. Only root vegetables this time of year. And blood oranges, if you care for them. I never did, but it takes all types.”

“Thanks.”

The selection was humble, both in terms of its variety and the size of the carrots, onions, and potatoes he snapped up for his cart. His rummaging through Rosalind’s kitchen told him he was unlikely to find the other ingredients he needed. He approached the dry goods display. Again, the quality left one wanting—obviously the store turned its black ink on its more profitable cash crop—but the basics of what he needed were there.

“What’s that?” Xavier pointed at the display of tiny brown bottles on a rack at the cash register.

The shopkeeper eyeballed a barcode, trying to get the scanner to register it. “Aromatherapy oils. Certain fragrances contain healing properties or have other...” Her frame shook with silent laughter as her head jerked back, indicating the safe behind her. “…effects.”

Wafts of lilac and mint danced in his memory. “Could it help with flu symptoms?”

“Could it help? Hah! Of course it can.” She leaned over the paisley-patterned linoleum-covered counter as her hand drifted over the bottles, cataloguing them. On the second rack from the bottom, her fingers wrapped around the neck of a bottle with a picture of a black cat on the label. The Egyptian-inspired text read FEVER, CHILLS, AND NIGHT SWEATS. She unscrewed the bottle and removed the dipping wand, holding it up for Xavier to sample. “Go ahead. Take a whiff.”

For all his eye rolling at the idea that something so benign could have such a benefit, whatever was in that little brown vial pleased him. “That might help her. What is it exactly?”

“Essential oils.” She replaced the cap and screwed it back on tightly. “This one has a bit of eucalyptus, lemon, rosemary, and lavender. Works best when added to a bath or an oil diffuser, but you can always use the drunk’s method.”

He bit back the urge to say, Don’t you mean the stoner’s method?

“Just add about ten drops to a bowl of freshly boiled water,” she continued. “Have your wife put a towel over her head, over the bowl, and breathe in the steam.”

“It’s not for my wife,” he assured her, pulling a fifty from his wallet. Thank God he had cash. No way he wanted a pottery’s line item appearing on any of his billing statements.

“Girlfriend then.”

“No.”

One of Helen’s eyes closed as the other targeted him contemplatively. “Boyfriend?”

“Just the change, please.”

“Hey, no offense. I don’t judge. The summer of love’s still in full swing, as far as I’m concerned.”

The rain had finally stopped by the time he got back to Rosalind’s building. From her bedroom door, she appeared to be sleeping peacefully. He resisted the instinct to tiptoe in and check her forehead with the back of his hand. It would take him a while to get the soup ready from scratch anyway. On the way to the kitchen area, he grabbed out the manila folder from the briefcase by the door and made his way to the cabinet where he’d spotted a stockpot.

The impression of a real kitchen could serve as the textbook example of how not to stock a galley where actual cooking needed to be done. Rosalind’s fridge played host only to butter, milk—expiration date one week prior—non-dairy coffee creamer, and a king’s sampling of to-go boxes and essential condiments. None of them appeared on the list of ingredients for his mother’s recipe except butter, and he’d limit that to keep Rosalind’s nausea at bay.

When all the ingredients were in the pot on a low boil, he grabbed the bag from the convenience store and took out the bottle of single serve wine from a vineyard he’d never heard of. Wine glasses were one of the few things Rosalind’s kitchen actually did supply. The red liquid swirled in the cup, its scent, combined with the earthy aroma of the soup as the ingredients began to meld into his mére’s best recipe, transported him home. Xavier closed his eyes, inhaled memory, and exhaled nostalgia. The only missing element, hints of his mother’s perfume as she’d drift between the kitchen and the herb garden outside their door in summer. Where reality lacked, his imagination filled in the gaps. Another deep breath, and the feminine wisps tickled his senses.

“Wow, whatever it is, it does smell good.”

He jolted when the unfamiliar voice intruded on his trip down memory lane. Luckily, he saved the Merlot from doom; only a drop trickled over the side of the glass with his jerk.

Xavier glared at Rosalind accusingly. “Why are you out of bed?”

“Why are you still here?” she huffed back. “Last time I woke up to find a handsome man in my kitchen cooking, it was breakfast and he was naked.”

“Well, in this case, it’s soup, and I charge extra for that kind of service.”

As though replaying what she had just uttered, Rosalind flushed. As her face reddened, he saw her body begin to sway. Xavier put the wine down and circled the kitchen island just in time to brace her from falling.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean... I mean, I’m sure your body looks great when you’re naked, but I... Oh, frick, no, I didn’t mean that either.”

“Shhh.” He guided her back toward her bedroom. “I won’t hold it against you.” He didn’t say specifically if he meant his naked body, or her statement. He told himself this wasn’t because later it wouldn’t trap him into going back on his word. “Lay back down. Soup’s almost done.”

A few minutes later, he reentered her temple to plainness and set the tray on her side table.

“Normally, I’d serve this with a hunk of crusty bread and a glass of red, but I think we shouldn’t chance your stomach’s temperament at the moment.”

He could tell by her furrowed brow she didn’t like to be babied. The fact that Rosalind Betters didn’t take naturally to being cared for was no surprise; he hardly needed to tuck the napkin over the neck of her T-shirt to learn as much. Xavier raised a spoonful of the concoction to Rosalind’s lips and waited. She glared at him.

“You’re treating me like a child,” she retorted. “I’m sick, not incapable.”

“I never implied anything but,” Xavier assured, pressing the rim of the spoon more insistently against her bottom lip. “The hardest thing a strong woman ever does is allow someone else to shoulder her burden. Believe me, though, it works out better for all involved in the end.”

Meekly, she swallowed the soup. “Who told you that?”

His smile brightened. “It’s one of my mother’s tried-and-true sayings. A truly impressive woman, much like you in spirit.”

“Ornery, high strung, and too ambitious for her own good?” Rosalind asked.

Xavier raised an eyebrow.

“It’s what my first college advisor said about me,” she replied, having lost all of ten years in her tone. “Said I was too determined and driven, and that if I planned to have any sort of career I had to learn to soften my approach or I’d be sidelined as someone who doesn’t work well with others, a loose cannon. He also told me if I wanted any kind of happy family life, I should lessen my goals.”

“American men,” Xavier huffed, adding an eye roll to compliment. “They never know what to do with a woman who is both smarter and more capable than them and beautiful. They think you have to be one or the other. I’m glad to see you didn’t take those words to heart.”

“What do you mean, ‘American men’?” she asked, accepting another spoonful of soup and his compliment, this time without protest. “Aren’t you American?”

“I’m Canadian, actually.” Xavier coughed a chuckle. “Well, naturalized now, of course. But by birth and by legacy, French Canadian. And my mother was originally from Lyon, so I guess you could even say French French Canadian. All that means is that I have an inclination to love hockey and to dislike the English.”

By the time he got her to accept a fifth spoonful of soup, her eyelids had begun to grow heavy, her frame relaxing back against the pillow. Which is just the conclusion his mother would have suggested. ‘A belly full of soup, and a night full of dreams, and you will be all better come morning,’ she’d have said.

“Okay, I can’t eat another bite. Thanks.”

“No, you’re going to finish this bowl,” Xavier insisted. “We need to weigh down your stomach enough to give it second thoughts of any kind of rebellion.”

Though he could tell she wasn’t happy about it, she acquiesced to down a few more mouthfuls. He was about ready to tell her she’d had enough when her question stopped him cold.

“Where did you run off to?”

Pausing with the spoon held high, it took him a moment to feign confusion. “I left a note. I told you I’d be right back. I ran down to buy the stuff for the soup.”

“No.” Rosalind turned her head away from the offering. “I mean at the charity party. One moment you were there, and the next, vroom. Gone.”

“I… saw someone I knew,” he lied. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye. By the time we finished catching up, it was time for me to leave. You looked beautiful by the way. You should wear formal gowns more often.”

A meek smile shone through the tired expression. “Sadly, other than the wedding gown, that’s the only one I have.”

His eyes instinctively went to the closet. “I forgot that you already have it.”

“You want to see it?”

She rose, despite Xavier’s insistence otherwise. He could tell from the lethargy she displayed it wouldn’t be long before she’d collapse back on the bed, asleep. Rosalind disappeared into her closet before reemerging a moment later with a clear garment bag through which the outline of a white gown could be made out.

“I’d take it out, but it’s getting old and I’m trying to minimize its exposure to the air until the wedding,” she explained. “It was my grandmother’s. It was meant to only be wardrobe, but she convinced the costume manager to let her buy it.”

Xavier’s eyebrow rose. “Costume manager?”

Rosalind returned the dress to its dark confines in the closet before crawling back in to bed and answering. “She wanted to be a star. Never really made it, but she was one of the Goldwyn Girls for a few years. Eventually she gave up, moved up to Capitola, opened a diner, and married my grandfather. They had been married for forty-two years when he died. They were,” she sighed, “so incredibly in love.” Her face fell, and Xavier could tell Rosalind’s mind had gone to another place in her memories. “Do you think I’m crazy with this whole finding a husband like this thing?”

He stilled. “You do realize I have a financial incentive to say no to that question?”

“I do, but honestly, am I insane?”

He pushed the spoon toward her mouth. “No, Rosalind. I don’t think it’s crazy to want someone to share your life with. And as long as you find him, who cares how?”

She smiled as he pulled the spoon back, and a tiny drop of the broth dribbled down her chin. He grabbed a tissue from the box on the night stand and pushed it to her face. Rosalind sighed and turned into his hand. Her wet eyes softened, and he barely stopped his thumb from grazing over her bottom lip.

The time had come for escape. “Wait, there’s one more thing.” He ran to the kitchen and returned with a tall bowl of steaming water.

Rosalind shifted a bit. “Is this where you go psycho and I tell the news crew later that I should have seen all the blazing red flags?”

The steam bowl filled the center of the tray. Xavier found a towel by the sink. He fetched it and wrapped it over her head. The fact that it made her look a little like a bride did not escape him.

“I’m not sure if there’s anything to this, but Helen’s Hut had two selections for your olfactory pleasure, and this seemed the better option.”

“All out of mary jane, was she?”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking. She leaned over the pot and inhaled, slowly, deeply, purposefully. As she exhaled, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“Lavender.”

“Amongst other things,” Xavier confirmed. “You don’t mind?”

She preceded her response with another inhalation. “No, I love the scent of lavender. And… hmm, I think lemon and maybe, pine? No! Eucalyptus. Yes, I love this. Thank you, thank you. This really does make me feel better.”

“Maybe I should swing by there and get some for myself on the way out.”

Falling back in to her pillows, her eyes fluttered closed. “Thanks, Xav. For everything.”

“You’re welcome,” he said as he crossed to the door and turned out the light. “Now, get some sleep. I’ll see you soon.”

Bait & Switch

Jack Colbon slapped down the stack of manila files on the desk like the piece of furniture had just insulted his mother, forcing Xavier’s eyes away from an email.

“What the hell are these?” Jack planted his hands on his hips and assumed his best I’m-being-serious-now pose.

With a wary motion, Xavier poked the pile. “Manila folders?”

“Don’t screw with me, Xav. You know what I mean. Your assistant just dropped these on my desk, saying they’re the Betters files for tomorrow night’s dinner meeting. We’re supposed to discuss the six profiles you already gave her. Six highly-qualified candidates. You and I have been working on these for weeks. A VP at Google, a self-made investment banker, a District Attorney… Those we agreed to push. Not this bunch of yahoos. Who the hell are these clowns and where did they come from?”

“You shouldn’t cuss, Jack. It’s so unbecoming in a woman of your temperament.”

Beets could not best the shade of red that Jack’s face became. “What is going on! Did you take me off this assignment and not tell me? Am I getting fired?”

Xavier closed his laptop. Keeping the hidden truth away from Jack’s honed perception would take all his concentration. There was a reason he considered Jack Colbon the closest thing he had at Hommes HQ to a first mate. Without Xavier’s background in education in psychology, the guy just had a way of picking up on the unspoken and predicting the undone. If there was one person Xavier would never want to see at a poker table, Jack claimed that title out loud and in Technicolor.

And yet, at the same time, he couldn’t let Jack think this confiscation of facts had anything to do with him.

“Close the door.”

“Close the…” The balding man’s fingers threaded through his remaining patches and pulled. “Oh, God, you are firing me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are, I know it,” Jack babbled. “You’ve been hiding something the last few days. You’ve avoided the subject whenever I brought up this assignment. We’ve been friends for years, Xav. Just… Just give it to me straight.”

“I bet that’s the only time in your life you’ve ever said that.” The corners of Xavier’s mouth twitched. “Now close the door and have a seat. Please.”

The quip threw Jack off kilter. He stared, huffing and wide-eyed, at his mentor. After a moment, his body came back to life, carrying out Xavier’s request. He eased himself in to the chair one vertebrae at a time.

“You’re right,” Xavier began. “I have changed my strategy on the Betters case. You’re also right that I’ve been keeping it from you. My apologies. I had planned to tell you this afternoon.”

“I have kids to support. You do remember that, don’t you?” Jack fretted.

Xavier waved away the comment with a swipe of his hand. “Oh my God, for the last time, I’m not firing you. Just listen, will you?”

Jack demurred, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Taking a deep, cleansing breath, Xavier started again. “I’ve been developing my profile on Ms. Betters over the last few weeks through several observation sessions. I have one more to complete this afternoon, but I’m fairly positive this is the tact we need to take. In short, I’ve come to the conclusion that Rosalind will not accept whoever we offer to her in the first round. She’s a learn-refine-hone type of person. Didn’t you say as much when you were headhunting Carmen?”

Jack’s gaze went blank as he searched his memory. “A bit. She did want to discuss with me the type of person I was going to find after I profiled her, and made a few suggestions.”

“They weren’t suggestions, they were kindly-worded demands,” Xavier said. “And for something of this nature, she’s going to be even more apt to reject the first lot. I never presented her with the original candidates, by the way. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. In hindsight, I see what a good decision it was.”

“So, we’re pulling out of the search?” Jack asked confusedly.

“No, we’re just being more mindful about the way we orchestrate it. We’re giving her this dummy batch at the meeting tomorrow. She will reject them immediately. Then we’ll solicit her feedback and present her in a few days with the candidates you and I decided on a week ago. Then she’ll find someone who will truly fulfill her desires. That’s the whole of it.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” Jack squinted one eye and cocked his head to the side.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

Jack leaned forward. “When you say sessions, just how many does that include?”

Xavier reopened his laptop. “One at her home, one over dinner, and a very brief encounter at a charity ball.” He supposed that nursing her when she was sick technically didn’t count.

“You didn’t visit her at BetaHouse?”

Xavier schooled his features, putting on his best poker face. “I was supposed to shadow her last Thursday, but she came down ill. That’s where I’ll be this afternoon, actually. In the end, this isn’t a workplace appointment, so I don’t think it matters really.”

“Xav?”

He flashed his eyes at Jack only long enough to acknowledge him. “Yes, Jack?”

“Are you falling for Rosalind Betters?”

It happened before Xavier could stop himself. His hand went to his chin, pinching it. A physical marker of a lying man; he was surprised how difficult it was to deny the instinct even knowing it would give him away.

Jack shot up to his feet. “Oh, my God, you are. You’re falling for Rosalind Betters. No wonder you’re trying to sabotage her prospects. What the hell, Xav? You told me yourself, BetaHouse is a huge fish for us. If you go off and screw that up by sleeping with the CEO…”

“Stop!” Xavier demanded, putting two hands up. “Okay, yes, I find myself… liking her. However, there’s no need to be concerned. I’m a professional, and I will see this through, the right way. No one said anything about sleeping with her.”

“But you want to, don’t you?”

Xavier’s eyes found a spot on the far wall, again giving away his answer. Running a hand through his hair, he huffed out his frustration. “Well, who wouldn’t? She’s beautiful, charming, funny, confident. Need I go on? Yet, I stress again, I will not jeopardize seeing this out. The commission on this is running well into the five figures. I won’t put that in danger for the company just to indulge a little crush. I don’t do the casual hookup thing anymore. The plan remains to get Betters a fiancé and to the altar in June. I have every intention of seeing that through.”

Despite the veracity of his tone, Jack still proved doubtful. “You know what they say about good intentions, don’t you?”

Projected Revenues

Xavier stared at the balding fifty-something on the couch across the way from him. They met eyes briefly, and quickly looked elsewhere. Xavier wasn’t that keen on talking at the moment, but when the man looked up again, conversation seemed inevitable.

“Here to meet someone?” the man asked, a jolly shine to his voice that made Xavier crack a smile.

“Yes, Rosalind Betters.”

The man pursed his lips. “Oh, Tyrannosaurus Sex herself, huh?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Xavier carefully kept his tone even.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that? Everyone in town calls her that. That, or Rosalind ‘Put Outs’ Betters.”

Xavier shook his head.

“Yeah,” the man continued, “she’s got quite a reputation for being a predator in the board room, but man, that body almost makes it worth it, you know. Just saying, I might not mind getting called into the boss’s office if she was the one handing out the discipline.”

Xavier closed his eyes and tried to gather his wits. He wasn’t sure what part of the man’s face he should slap first, he only knew it should hurt as much as possible. He drew a deep breath and cautioned himself not to scream.

“I’m sorry, why are you here exactly?” he asked.

“Job interview. I’m, um, Lazlo Spinner,” he said, extending out a hand, which Xavier shook only out a sense of social obligation. “But all my friends call me Les.”

The headhunter swallowed. “I can’t imagine why.”

Les’s vacant expression and start at a retort were cut off by Carmen’s arrival to the waiting room. She smiled at both the men, but directed her invitation to Carmen. “You can come in now, Xavier.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” Carmen led him through the door to the inner sanctum of BetaHouse. “This way.”

“Carmen?”

“Yeah, Xavier?”

He circled his fingers around her wrist and motioned her in close, keeping his voice low. “That man in the lobby, he’s not someone my firm sent over. What is he interviewing for?”

Confusedly, she searched the air for her answer. “A sales position, I think.”

“He’s a sexist pig. Don’t hire him.”

They exchanged the expected pleasantries as they walked to the far side of the third floor, where the executive offices were located. As far as layout of the workers went, it was the fairly typical fare. A large, open space had been populated with rows of uniform cubicles, creating a grid of worker hives from one wall to another. A few of the employees sitting in what he determined was the finance section, given all the bar charts pinned to the walls of their space, looked up as he passed with mixed curiosity. Most of the workers, however, either barked into phones or kept their eyes fixed on the screens in front of them.

“Things been busy since the big deal?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Carmen answered, leading him up a flight of stairs that led to a loft. “We’re getting ready to move to new offices, too. Need space to expand. Everyone feels in a rush to get as much done as possible before then. We’ll be offline for four days.”

“You mean Rosalind actually agreed not to work that long?”

Carmen chuckled. “I see you’ve grown to know her. She timed the move to overlap with Kamakshi’s wedding, otherwise she’d probably be on the phone the whole time in India.” The assistant sighed. “Actually, the move is good. Rosalind hates this office.”

“Hates it? Why?”

At the top of the stairs, Carmen indicated the view of the floor below the loft provided with a wide sweep of her arm. “This used to be a hat factory. Rosalind’s office was the owner’s suite. She says it has bad juju, like they’ll come to believe she looks down on them and thinks of herself as high and mighty.”

The philosophy would have thrown him for a loop given what he knew of her, but then Xavier remembered that she’d grown up in Santa Cruz, outside of the Haight one of the last hippie refuges. Surely a little of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo of that culture seeped into her blood somehow.

“Well, then, happy moving.”

Strudel’s ears steepled when Xavier and Carmen walked in. The German Shepherd didn’t exactly warm to him on their first and only meeting. Nevertheless, the pooch had seemed to wake up on the other side of the doggie pillow this morning. As Xavier sat, Strudel crawled out from under Rosalind’s desk and pushed his snout under Xavier’s hand. Rosalind, mid-conversation, only acknowledged her guest’s presence with a few flicks of her fingers signaling hello. Carmen mouthed “good luck” before taking her exit.

By the time Rosalind got off the phone, Strudel had curled up at Xavier’s feet and gone to sleep. Rosalind held up one finger as she keyed into her computer with another. When she hit enter, a little devilish grin passed over her face.

“What has you so happy?” Xavier asked playfully. “I can only assume it’s because I’m here.”

He wanted to punch his own gut the moment he heard himself say it. He’d only meant it as a joke. Yet, the blush on her cheeks made it difficult to be too regretful.

“Well, there is that,” Rosalind admitted through a grin. “But also because the new interface we’re developing is testing very well with our focus group. By the way, I never said thank you.”

“For?”

“The soup.” She turned back to her computer, though with mannerisms that led Xavier to believe it was as much as a distraction measure as a necessity. “And all the other stuff that went with it. You really didn’t have to do that, you know. Nevertheless, I have to say, I’m glad you did.”

“It was my pleasure, Rosalind. I should say thank you, too.”

“Thank me?” She passed him a screwed up expression. “For what?”

“Letting me take care of you. I understand how difficult that is for a woman like you.”

Her hands stopped over the keyboard. Her voice shrunk down to the level of a mouse’s. “For some reason, with you, it’s not as hard as it usually is.”

The devil perched on Xavier’s shoulder and prodded his good senses, trying to convince the tempted man to say something, anything, to tell her how he felt. Then his common sense kicked Beelzebub to the curb and reminded him of every true word Jack had said.

“Probably just because I’m only your friend, and nothing more,” he offered. “No pressure for any sort of quid pro quo between us.”

There was also the fact that, while there was indeed something squishy and emotional going on inside him, if forced to find a word that pinned down what he felt, Xavier wasn’t sure he could do it. He was fascinated by her, in awe of her, he desired her more than was appropriate. That hardly amounted to a large enough argument for him to betray his company’s financial interests, and Rosalind’s trust, and attempt to woo her.

Right, to keep things professional, then…

Xavier cleared his throat, making Strudel pick up his ears in his direction. He leaned forward in the seat and wiped the smirk off his face, transforming into the professional he held himself out as being.

“So, I know you did something like this with Jack Colbon, but I operate a little differently,” he began. “You have a meeting in twenty minutes. I will sit in on that, at the back of the room, not at the table. I’ll only observe. After the meeting, however, I’ll ask you a few questions about why you said certain things, or made particular decisions. I think just this brief observation will be sufficient. I don’t expect to learn anything new about you during this. I just want to be sure what I see is consistent with what else I’ve witnessed.”

Rosalind arose, taking a stack of papers with her. “Think you know me pretty well, then, do you?” She circled the desk and stood next to his chair, looking down at him, so close that he could touch her if he just raised his hand up.

“I could always know you better.” Mastering his temptation to run his index finger over the bend of her elbow, he put his hands in his lap instead. “But time is short,” he resumed, ironing out the husky quality of his voice. “You have a June date planned, so we’re just going to have to fast track the particulars.”

She moved to open the door and spoke to him over her shoulder. “Conference room C. I have to have a brief talk with my CTO before the AHOD meeting. I’ll see you there. Bring Strudel along, if you don’t mind.”

Before Xavier could inquire just how he would do that, she was gone. With twenty minutes and no ideas, he looked to the dog at his feet. Strudel raised his snout and glanced back, his expression communicating a sympathetic, I got nothing, man.

At the very least, Xavier couldn’t see the harm in looking around in the office for artifacts of her personality. Like Rosalind’s flat, the décor proved sparse, unless you included sticky notes and stacks of paper. Her small desk hosted a monitor and a phone, a cup full of pens, some paperclips, and more deployable sticky notes. A pin board was covered with reports, calendars, index cards with notes scribbled, and… wait, a moment.

Peeking out from behind a pinned paper torn from a yellow legal pad and filled with engineering notation that might as well have been in Swahili, was the corner of a photo. Three toothy grins framed by bleach-blonde hair met his eyes. On a chair was a girl of about nine, a popsicle in her grasp, orange streaks visible over her fingers. To her right and behind her, a woman who was practically Rosalind’s copy plus twenty years, right down to the sensible if dated business attire. To her left, an elderly woman whose blue eyes still managed to shine through her wrinkled expression with the intensity of a teenager.

It took Xavier a moment to figure out the girl was Rosalind. It was the careless way she held the popsicle that threw him. He couldn’t imagine her letting something that messy happen. Somewhere between this photo taken twenty some years ago and now, something changed her. She was protected, cautious. He suddenly wanted to find out why, to tell her she didn’t have to keep herself so guarded. To tell Rosalind that she could trust him.

Which… was not the direction he could go. That was the job of a confidant. Of a lover. Not him.

In short order, Xavier made another discovery. On the ledge of her window, in a brown, glazed cookie jar, were a stash of dog biscuits. Strudel stood to his feet and licked his chops before Xavier had even succeeded in fishing one out. The dog followed him down the stairs, across the floor, and into the conference room without even the need to say his name. Several employees were already seated within. They looked to Strudel, who no doubt they knew. Then to him, who they clearly did not.

“I’m filling in as the dog walker,” Xavier joked, unbuttoning his jacket and taking a seat. The rest of the people shrugged and resumed their chatter. Strudel had already polished off the bribe by the time his master arrived. To Xavier’s frustration, Strudel she petted, but Rosalind only gave him a passing nod.

He took a seat and watched. Rosalind maintained the helm in the form of the finest captain. Numbers flew around the room in lightning speed, terms landed on the table that made him feel like he was watching a science fiction flick in the wee hours of morning. Her diplomacy with her staff was truly impressive. If another company had come to him searching for a CEO or chairman of the board, Rosalind would definitely make the short list.

About ten minutes in, everyone’s attention turned toward the opening door. The tardy employee sluiced through the room before finding his seat in the back, opposite where Xavier sat. It took Xavier a few minutes to source the familiarity. His name was Ivan Kerchov, a nationalized Russian systems engineer. Three months ago, they’d met for lunch. Xavier had ordered halibut, Kerchov had ordered quiche.

Strudel actually was the one to notice when Xavier rose and left the room. Rosalind followed the dog’s line of vision just in time to catch the headhunter’s backside. Through the glass wall that divided the conference room from the hall, she saw him pull out a phone. One eye on him and another on her head of customer service, she balanced her attention like a belly dancer balancing a sword while swaying.

He returned quickly enough, however, and Rosalind refocused on the discussion around her. Their strategy for piping things to the next stage was beginning to take shape. Yes, the deal with Seatech brought BetaHouse to the forefront of the marketplace, but Rosalind knew taking the lead wasn’t the same as winning the race.

Forty-five minutes later, she led Strudel back up the hall. Like usual, the mutt made for his doggie bed under her desk as soon as he slipped past her. Rosalind was just closing her door when a hand snaked round the outside of it and blocked the action.

“Xavier.”

He made his way in without speaking, leaving the door open. He didn’t look at her, just kept his eyes on his phone as he looked to be scrolling for something.

“Privacy is such a critical thing in a business like yours, isn’t it?”

He chanced a flash of his silver-blue eyes over the edge of his screen. She felt the piercing gaze mix with the words into a toxic suggestion.

“Like it is in any business where there’s secrets to be kept, I’d imagine,” she replied back breathily. “You have secrets, right?”

“Yes, and I would really hate for someone to, say, discover something because I inadvertently left my phone setting about and they read it off my screen.” He set his phone on the edge of her desk and stepped to her, coming within inches of her frame. “You see what I’m getting at?”

Slowly, Rosalind nodded. “The men’s bathroom is down the stairs, second on the left.”

With a tip of his chin, Xavier back stepped towards the door. “Thanks for understanding that I just couldn’t hold this.”

The moment he was out, she spun. On the screen was the last few lines of a text conversation. The black bar with white text at the top named the conversation DAN BRYERS. Xavier’s line of text at the top of the view was cut off, but led the conversation.

-WORKING OUT?

-GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU. YES! IVAN’S AWESOME. HE’S ON SPEC PROJECT. THX.

-UR WELCOME. LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANYTHING ELSE.

Her nose crinkled as she put the few lines of text through her internal processor. Secrets, Ivan, Working Out…. And what did Dan Bryers have to do with anything? Last time Rosalind had heard anything about Dan he was trying to gather enough funding to transition from consulting to launching his own startup down in San Mateo. But that had been, what, a year ago? They’d even had a brief conversation at an industry convention around that time, but Rosalind had backed away when she got the feeling he was flirting just a little bit too much for her comfort and…

Secret. Ivan. Working Out. Dan Bryers.

Oh… Damn.

The screen went dark just as the door opened again. Xavier looked hesitant to enter, his eyes questioning. Without turning away, Rosalind snaked her arm around her back and felt out the corners of his phone. She palmed it, pulled it around, and offered it out to him.

“Mr. Hommes, you forgot your phone,” she deadpanned.

Xavier hesitated when reaching out. His hand circled around the cell, but reached a bit further, so that they were more shaking hands than exchanging anything. “Thank you, Ms. Betters. You can’t imagine how embarrassed I’d have been if someone was lurking around and found out something.”

“Corporate espionage is an ever-present concern in our field,” she acknowledged, shaking his hand. “It is however, one we deal with quickly and professionally. You needn’t worry that anything involving you would ever get out of this office.”

“Good to hear. I’ll call when I have some news for you. Until then, take care.”

“Xavier?”

He stopped in the doorway. “Yes?”

Her head shook from side to side, confusion marring her features. “Why?”

Xavier’s humor titled his features left. “When I’m faced with two evils, I tend to go with the one I’ve never tried.”

He said nothing more before leaving. Neither did Rosalind. She didn’t know what to say. Had he known the famous Mae West quote before? Had he been reading up on the platinum bombshell as part of the profile he was building on her? Was there another reason he might be trying to find out about Mae? Her thoughts suddenly flew to their conversation in the restaurant and the reasons he knew so much about a particular Italian dish.

But this wasn’t the time to indulge such thoughts. Rosalind had the receiver of her desk phone to her ear before the door closed all the way. A devious grin pulled tight the corners of her mouth when the party at the other end picked up on the second ring.

“Y’hello?”

“Hi, Dan. This is Rosalind Betters. You have a minute?”

Binders Full of Men

Six faces. Six names. Six terrible options.

Rosalind cycled through the profiles in measured reserve, keeping the short stack of manila folders leveled like a gambler’s hand, levitated over her bowl of gazpacho.

“Is something the matter, Ms. Betters?”

Xavier met her gaze across the table, a mask of confusion and concern on his face. In the chair next to him, Jack Colbon mirror-played the mimic.

“Um, no, just… Wow, I wasn’t expecting such… uniquely qualified candidates.”

Xavier reached out and tapped the top of the pile. The man pictured must have been sixty-five if not a day. The length of the gray hair coming out of his ears challenged that on his head. “Dr. Glambov was an Olympic champion, you know? Discus throwing. Won a silver for Yugoslavia. He also holds a PhD in electronic engineering.”

“Had we discovered electricity when he was in school?” Rosalind mumbled, bringing a bubbly giggle from Jack.

A scathing reproach from Xavier doused the outburst. “I assure you that I have reviewed each one of these candidates. Each meets your list of qualifications and what’s more telling, mine. Though I’m not in the habit of selecting men for such an intimate engagement, I assure you my standards are quite high. Jack also helped, if that reassures you at all.”

Huffing, she splayed the binder open on the table. “Maybe I should ask for his input then.” She raised a spoonful of soup to her mouth but hesitated, eying the perplexed man sitting to Xavier’s right. “Well, Jack?”

She had seen similar guffawing on television game shows when the contestant, formerly on a winning streak, suddenly found himself faced with a trivia question about which he was clueless.

After several moments of “uh” and “well,” Jack crossed his arms and grinned. “Actually, Rosalind I didn’t help with anything but an initial pool of candidates. Xav’s the guy that reached out and did the preliminary screenings. And besides, my man-hunting skills are a little rusty. I’ve been happily married for several years now.”

She appraised him with new eyes. “Ah, well, I find a married man’s opinion even more valuable.” She selected a file at random, opened it so the picture could be seen, and turned it around to them.

“Tell me, Jack, what is it about… Tzing Wu that Mr. Hommes feels would suit me? Is it the fact that he’s broken off engagements four times? That he’s rumored to be paying serious bank to the communist party to get preferential treatment for his shipments in to prime markets in China? Or do you think it’s the fact that he’s almost three hundred pounds?”

Xavier clicked his tongue. “Miss Betters, I would expect a woman to be more sensitive about size. Haven’t you ever been judged as something you weren’t just because of how you looked? Have a little sympathy.”

“A few pounds is one thing. But this… They didn’t name a district in Beijing after him. He is a district in Beijing.” As soon as the words left her mouth, shame tapped her on the shoulder and glared at her long and hard. With a sigh, she closed the folder again and reached out for her pinot. “I’m sorry. I know you must have put a lot of time into this, and I don’t mean to discredit your work. Only, I don’t know, I guess I just expected so much more than this. I expected…” Her eyes caught Xavier’s, and held him there. “…a higher opinion from you for someone meant for me.”

“I’ve let you down.” His compassionate tone accompanied his hand reaching across the table. “I do apologize, but you have to cut me a little slack. It’s my first time in trying to fill a roll like this. However, you’re right. I should have seen each of these men from your perspective as a potential husband, not mine.”

She straightened the pile of folders before handing them back across the table. “You’re welcome to call any of them you think are cute. No reason both of us should be alone in this world.”

Xavier smiled and ran the pad of his thumb over the back of Rosalind’s knuckles. “Let me give it another go. What do you say to a round two? I’ll compile a list and have it couriered for your perusal. We can talk once you have a chance to review.”

Keeping her gaze fixed on the circles he drew into the back of her hand, it took her a moment to answer. “Um, yeah. Okay. Yes, yes, please do.” There was a beep. Rosalind withdrew the phone from her pocket and awakened the screen. “I have to run. Speaking of large Chinese men, I have several on their way to my office right now. Can I ask you to pick up the bill and charge it against our ledger?”

He smiled. “Of course. I’ll be in touch with Carmen shortly. And Rosalind?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t worry. I promise I won’t let you down again.”

It took three-quarters of a second after Rosalind Betters was out of earshot for Jack Colbon to round on his employer. “I sure hope you’re right about this. And FYI: I so noticed you traipsing your fingers over one of her erotic zones. Did we not discuss that and why it’s a bad idea?”

The glass vibrated as Xavier placed it on the table with a little too much umph. “Touching the back of the hand is hardly seductive. I was only trying to create a sense of compassion so she’d trust me enough to try again.”

“You really think that?” Jack retorted, slamming his card down without even looking at the bill the waiter had just deposited. “A minute of that rub-a-dub-dubbing, matched with that seductive stare you were throwing her... You have the devil’s eyes, you know that? Back in college, we used to call dark peepers like yours sex eyes. Hell, you could have had me in bed with a package like that.”

Xavier’s chest shook with a silent laugh. “You’re really not my type, Jack, but thanks. Besides, I think your husband would have my head on a platter if I ever made a pass at you.”

“Stop it, this isn’t funny. I don’t get you. This is a huge opportunity. Yes, I thought you were crazy when you accepted it, but you did accept it. Now you got to deliver, or we’re going to be the laughing stock of San Francisco.”

Xavier sat back and inhaled deeply, drawing in the aromas around him: the pesto, fresh bread baked in a local oven, the lingering scent of lavenders…

“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Jack sighed as he signed off on the bill. “Lunches like this don’t pay for themselves, you know.”

A Selection of Tea

A fine line existed between fashion and sadism. On days such as these, Rosalind Betters felt she was tripping that line—sometimes literally—via her obsession for ridiculous high heels with higher price tags.

The meetings had started at 7 a.m. with a conference call to parties in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. They had ended at 8:30 p.m., with a sayonara to Mr. Akiko at NKH in Tokyo. In between, she’d assured, denied, reported, projected, and otherwise labored, all whilst strolling the floor in a pair of pumps that should have appeared in Clue! as a possible murder weapon.

If she’d been five years younger, Rosalind would have ended up at one of the chic wine bars in North Beach after work, ordering something with a little more zing. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in her twenties anymore. The concept of drinking alone didn’t exactly appeal, especially in public and especially in an area where one of her competitors or, worse yet, one of her employees might catch her. No, now at the end of a hard day, nothing sounded better to her than a cup of cinnamon apple tea, cut with cream, sipped while stroking Strudel’s ears and watching Mae West turn heads on the silver screen, alone.

So this is what it felt like to be a young, successful entrepreneur in the city.

The gray-browed pup nudged his snout under her master’s hand while Rosalind attempted to tap into Zen and the Art of Making Tea. It wasn’t until she had rescued the screaming pot from the burner and positioned it over her chipped Stanford logo mug that she realized she’d forgotten to get out a tea bag.

“Did you enjoy your walk today?” she asked her captive audience as she reached down to where she housed her selection. Strudel’s eyes glistened and he shuffled in place, knowing the pull-out drawer was also the sacred temple holding the chicken jerky dog treats. Actually, the door held a trove of random essentials cleverly thrown about willy-nilly to give the appearance of junk. Even though she didn’t agree with Xavier Hommes’s assessment that even her fortified tower was susceptible to intruders, a patch of prevention was worth a gigabit of debugging. Carmen had been instructed to squirrel away any small, important items into the unassuming door. Near its back and buried out of sight were an extra set of keys to her personal office at BetaHouse, a black book containing a backup of all her most important passwords and account information, her passport—borrowed away when needed for travel—and an emergency chocolate bar.

“Yes, sweetheart,” she cooed while blindly fishing for the plastic pouch. “I’m looking for them. I know they’re in here somewhere.”

Strudel perked up when the sound of wrinkling plastic emanated from within. Rosalind grabbed the corner of the bag to bring it forward, but it snagged on something. When she looked down, she saw a sliver of manila.

“Hello, what is this?”

Carmen hadn’t mentioned anything about dropping off a folder. Then again, Rosalind had had barely a moment to take a breath let alone have a conversation with any of her employees outside the series of meetings all day.

A stranger’s penmanship met her eyes when she opened the folder. Most of the documents inside resembled what one might expect to see while perusing a psychiatrist’s portfolio. Not … that she would know. She recognized its composition as resembling that of the disappointing portfolio Xavier had presented her a few nights prior. The selection in this particular collection, however, brought a sense of kindred anticipation bubbling up through her psyche.

He must have forwarded the file to the office, and Carmen, knowing the need to keep this particular assignment on the D-L, had wisely dropped the folder off for her to find. She had noticed that her assistant had added a dinner meeting to her calendar for Monday night; she should have guessed that this would be waiting for her at home.

Tea—and much to Strudel’s dismay—doggie treats forgotten, Rosalind rushed to the table and fanned out her discovery, splaying out the individual reports like a deck of cards. Not every candidate was as eye catching, but the first few presented a solid package. She examined each with a studying eye, not rushing through anything, but taking her time to let each introduce themself to her. Rosalind would admit, drastic improvement in quality had been made since the last round. Yet, though cautioning herself not to read too far into any, she found herself finding excuses for each one.

By the time she reached the final folder, her hopes sagged like melted mozzarella. Being that it was the sixth profile, she began to have vague memories of childhood confirmation classes and the jokes she and her friends would make about six representing the devil and all things evil.

With a sense of bold resignation, she fished out the final option, inhaled deeply, and prepared herself for the not-so-great-but-not-terrible revelation.

At first, she thought it must be a joke. Then, Rosalind was sure it was a set up. Lowering the folder, she rolled her eyes around the perimeter of the room, trying to pick out any heretofore unknown items that might actually be a planted camera, streaming her image.

“Okay, very funny, y’all can come out now?”

Other than the ambient city noises rising from below and sneaking in through the open window at the other end of the room, only silence answered.

Rosalind looked to Strudel. The resigned pup sat sprawled across the barrier between the kitchen and the dining area. His eyes focused on his master, though his chin stayed fixed on the floor, between his feet.

“This has to be a joke, right?” she asked.

Strudel’s head rose quirked to the side.

“I mean, there’s no way… no way Xav could have known. I mean, no one knew. I didn’t even tell Kamakshi or the others. But, how?”

If this had been any other job search, Rosalind’s next move would have been to phone Carmen or even Xavier Hommes himself to request an appointment. Given that Kane Kennedy’s digits stared back at her from the paper in her clutches made that step seem excessive. Then again, would it make her seem desperate, if it was she who made contact with him before one of her representatives?

Who the hell cared? Like most undergrads of the female persuasion at Stanford in her class, Rosalind would have passed out cold if Kane “More than Able” Kennedy had even flicked his pencil shavings in her direction. She’d bumped into his name in a few conversations over the years, enough to know that, like predicted, he’d come from his ranking near the top of his crop of MBAs and taken San Francisco’s financial district by storm. She’d even almost met him once when BetaHouse had been taking off and in need of capital. Kane’s money had found its way into more than one pool of capitalist funders. Unfortunately, one of those darned European debt crises had broken out, and his colleague met with her instead.

My, oh, my Mrs. Rosalind Kennedy… It did have a ring to it, didn’t it?

Strudel shot to his feet along with Rosalind. This time Rosalind made sure to fish out not only one treat, but two. She tossed them on the floor as she crossed the kitchen to fetch her phone off the charger.

Can I Make A Substitution?

Xavier’s hand reached out, keeping the overly eager attendant from topping off his drink. One glass of wine had unwound him. The second glass had emboldened him. A third glass in so short a time would make him an unpredictable fool.

Which he was doing fine with on his own, thank you very much.

“Perhaps she is not coming, monsieur?”

The waiter’s voice chided where Xavier thought a man who lived and died on tips may have shown a bit more compassion.

He looked back over his shoulder, examining the middle-aged man’s face. “Pensez-vous vraiment parler français?” This waiter wouldn’t be the first “Frenchman” he’d encountered with a fake accent meant to gloss over a less-than-impressive working competence of the tongue. The waiter’s tone was a little off; even though not a true Frenchman himself, Xavier could deduce that much.

The waiter’s eyes smiled. “Oui, monsieur. Je suis originaire de Strasbourg. Et vous?”

Ah, that explained it then. Natives of the border city, Strasbourg, spoke a peculiar dialect, a hybrid tongue that both melded and mocked its German and French ancestors, with a smidgen of originality thrown in just to piss off both sides of the dividing line.

Xavier turned his eyes back to the front door. “Quebec,” he said simply, then continued back in English. “How do you know I’m waiting for a she?”

“You keep looking at your hand, monsieur.” When Xavier’s confusion twisted his face, the waiter continued, “Your finger, in particular, as though you are thinking there’s something missing there. You’ll, how is it said, pop the question, tonight.”

That put a stopper on his admiration of the man’s insight. Yes, Xavier was planning on asking Rosalind an important question, but it wasn’t to marry him. It was simply not to marry someone else. Not yet, at least, until he had a chance.

“She’ll be here,” Xavier assured. “She doesn’t break appointments. Or at least, I would have heard from her assistant by now. Thank you.”

At that very moment, he caught sight of a dome of blonde hair pinned in intricate patterns atop a head that swiveled in his direction. Rosalind’s face erupted into a smile when his eyes met hers. He waved and tried not to grin like a gremlin as he watched her bounce across the dining room.

Xavier hastened a look at the brown leather-bound portfolio sitting on the seat beside him, preparing himself for the moment in the forthcoming conversation when he’d lean over to retrieve it. He maintained confidence that Rosalind would find round two of his candidate pool truly eye-opening. In fact, he had limited the refined second draft to a single profile.

“Ms. Betters, you’re looking fine this evening.” He rose, offering his hand. More than hyperbolic chit-chat, she exceeded his definition of fine.

“Not bad yourself, Xav.” She perused his suit, from his gray tie to his platinum cuff links, and nodded approvingly as she shook his hand. If he’d been a girl and fifteen, he would have blushed.

An arched eyebrow telegraphed his surprise. “Xav? I thought you were a firm believer in formality, and that is perhaps the most informal form of my name. ”

Rosalind shrugged. “I’ve reconsidered. I’ think after all you’ve done for me, I can make an exception. Shall we sit?”

“Um, yeah. Yes, please.”

His hand reached down cautiously to fish out the folder as Rosalind ordered a glass of Zinfandel. The waiter caught Xavier’s eyes, and some silent affirmation that this woman had been worth the wait passed between the two men. Xavier nodded, as though to say, “Yes, she certainly is.”

There was something different about Rosalind’s appearance. She… glowed. She looked like a child who had managed to squirrel away some secret joy, and he wanted nothing more than to learn what was fueling her giddiness. “You seem to be all bubbly and bold.” He tried to sound dismissive. He wanted to build up to his big reveal, and wasn’t about to push her over the top too soon.

“I feel…” Rosalind’s voice trailed off as her eyes rolled up, as though the proper term were dangling in the air for her to discover, “…resplendent.”

She looked it, too. Rosalind had always complimented his eye since first he met her several weeks back, but something about her tonight was beyond beauty. Her cheeks held a blush that could only come from too much smiling. Her eyes sparkled, as though on the edge of crying with joy. Her reed-like body swayed in the breeze of contentment.

God, how he wanted to embrace her, bring her to harbor against his chest, bring his lips to hers…

Xavier chastened his thoughts. Business, he reminded himself. Business first.

He started to reach down to his folio to pull out the manila folder when something Rosalind said stopped him.

“Can I ask, how did you know?”

His open hand stilled. “Know what?”

Rosalind leaned in, her voice hushed. “About Kane.”

“Kane?” He picked his brain for a clue, but the infernal and unreliable organ proved uncooperative. “Kane who?”

“Kennedy, of course.” Her humor-flecked statement accompanied a teasing eye roll. “After the first group of—and please don’t take this as an insult—bozos you pushed on me, I honestly thought you were off your rocker. But then I saw the file of the second group of candidates, and now I understand why you’re so high in demand. How in the world did you track down who I had a crush on back in college and recruit him into this search? Oh my God, Xav, you’re worth every penny.”

If the waiter had jumped on top of the table, stripped down to his boxers, and declared his undying love for the San Francisco Giants right fielder, Xavier could not have been more confused.

“Second group of candidates?” he muttered.

“Yes, from the ones you messaged over the other night.” Her matter-of-fact words fell over themselves to get out. “Carmen said she had a few things sent over, but with all the meetings I’ve had her coordinating lately, she didn’t get a chance to look through them herself. And when I saw Kane’s file, I just knew I… Oh! There he is!”

“Wait, what?” Xavier’s hands slammed on the table as he shot to his feet. When a wide-eyed and slightly panicky Rosalind turned toward him, he softened his expression, running his hands over his tie.

“Kane!” Rosalind resumed, jumping and waving like her favorite rock star had just wandered into the dining room. “Over here.”

It was easy to see why any woman could fall for Kane Kennedy just on his looks alone. Back when Xavier had been pursuing this placement with a proper amount of self-disinterest, he recalled having this thought. Like his unrelated and infamous namesake, Kennedy possessed a profile that could melt polar ice caps, and dressed like GQ had him under contract. With his blond hair crew-cut and a gray suit over a muscular frame that would have made even Jack question his own fidelity, he drew than a few glances as he approached.

He leaned into Rosalind, kissing her on the cheek. “Sorry it took me so long. Closest place I could find to park was two blocks away.” Then he turned his attention to Xavier, sticking out his hand and his chin. “So, I meet the infamous Xavier Holmes face to face.”

Xavier glared momentarily at fingernails perfectly squared and polished to a shine, wondering if it would be inappropriate to grip the manicured man-hands until he heard cracking. Schooling his irrationality, Xavier instead reached out and gave a moderated, firm handshake. “It’s Hommes, actually, Mr. Kennedy, and likewise. How do you do?”

“Kane, sit down,” Rosalind suggested, leading both men to take a seat. “I was just telling Xav about how brilliant he is.”

“One of my favorite subjects,” Xavier returned. Telling himself not to blow this over some silly momentary flutter of emotion—inappropriate emotion, at that—Xavier instead kicked in his cultivated professional air and set his mind on getting through this as quickly as possible. You didn’t get as far in the business world as Xavier had without learning how to wear shine on your face while your soul was drowning in shit. Luckily Rosalind was far too busy flagging down a waiter to notice if anything was off kilter. He turned serious eyes to Kane. “You didn’t mention knowing Rosalind when I phoned you,” Xavier said accusingly.

Kane Kennedy’s mouth rose in one corner. “You never asked,” he answered coyly. “Besides, technically I didn’t know Rosalind, I only knew of her.”

“But I knew him,” Rosalind jumped in, turning back toward the two men. “Maybe we never really hung out, but we had a few friends in common and had a few meaningless conversations. We were just laughing about it this morning at breakfast…”

Xavier’s eyebrow slanted, and he was positive the nerve jumping in his temple made it look like an alien was about to explode from his skull.

“We met for breakfast, Mr. Holmes,” Kane inserted. Seemed the step-in applicant for Rosalind’s coveted position was keeping close tabs on every mannerism Xavier failed to squash. “Rosalind didn’t mean to imply she’d slept over.”

“Oh!” Rosalind’s hands slapped over her mouth as the realization punched her in the stomach. “Oh, no, Xav. I didn’t mean, like ‘over’ breakfast.”

The hapless HR man’s hands flattened against the air. “It would really be none of my business if you had. I was only surprised because you, well… Again, none of my business. Mr. Kennedy, I wonder if I could ask for a few moments to speak with Miss Betters in private?”

“But he just sat down,” Rosalind argued. As though to further the statement, the waiter chose that moment to pour a glass of wine from the opened bottled on the table for Kane.

“It’s no problem, Rose. I need to make a quick phone call.” He rose to his feet, leaving his only recently unfolded napkin on the table and leaning over to Rosalind to plant a chaste kiss. “He just wants to make sure I haven’t gamed his system or somehow gotten to you through devious means. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Professional, calm, courteous. Xavier repeated the words in his head like a mantra, closing his eyes and collecting himself before he spoke once they were alone.

“You’re upset that I contacted Kane directly,” Rosalind jumped in before he could start.

Dark amusement coursed through his tone. “I knew you were aggressive. It’s why BetaHouse is so successful, but that’s really going after something.”

“Are you…” Her words hollowed out in the air. “I guess I just don’t understand why. Everything’s coming together perfectly.”

“Except for the fact that either one or both of you withheld information from me,” Xavier huffed. “Miss Betters, look: My methods are unorthodox, but they’re very finely tuned and very successful. They are also based on a premise that the two parties I connect have no prior relationship with each other unless I’m told otherwise. A past acquaintance, no matter how brief or seemingly trivial, throws off my calculations. If I had known you and Mr. Kennedy—”

“Is there something about what you know now that makes you think Kane and I aren’t compatible?”

Xavier ground his teeth, wishing he was a less ethical man. “No, but—”

“Then what’s the big deal?” she interrupted. “It’s like kismet. When I saw his name included in that folio, I just thought, you know, maybe it was a sign.”

Xavier still couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten a hold of that damned stack of files. He’d been unable to find it that day after he’d shown up at her flat and discovered her sick. It wasn’t anywhere at home or in his office, and he was damned sure he’d never had it sent to BetaHouse or …

Oh, no.

The last time Xavier recalled having the stack of files in hand had been at Rosalind’s loft, the night he’d gone over to see her after she’d come home from her trip. The night he’d made her soup and been rummaging around in her drawers to find some tea. The night when he’d came to understand his feelings for her were dangerously approaching love.

Wait! The tea. He remembered through cloudy recollections taking the folio to the kitchen while he made her tea. He’d left the package right where she was bound to find it sooner or later.

God, how he wanted to smash his hand into his forehead.

“I see,” he said instead, folding up his napkin and leaving it on the table. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Betters, since it seems the reason for this meeting is now passé, I really should be going. Please give Mr. Kennedy my regrets that I could not see him to say good-bye.”

Outside, Xavier caught Kane’s eye across the parking lot as he crossied the Embarcadero. They exchanged a nod, and though he couldn’t say if it was his departure or something during the telephone conversation that was the cause, Kennedy’s features took on an air of smugness usually observed on dirty-dealing bookies.

Somehow, Kane understood the bet Xavier had made with himself, and even worse, that he’d lost.

Referrals

Prashant had asked Kamakshi only the night before if she’d ever consider moving back to Mumbai. She admitted to having asked herself that same question on more than one occasion. After years in the States, she felt it was as much her home as the one she had shared with her three brothers and parents. When first she’d come to California, her goals lay before her like oh-so-certain mile markers: university, first job, startup, sell startup for profit, second job, etc. ... Even such a short time ago, thinking that path would lead back to India would have been unfathomable. A generation before, Indian students going abroad for education were in for a one-way trip; a good education could help you make your way in the world, just not your way back home. Now, the cosmos had shifted.

Answering Prashant, however, had not been difficult. “Not in a hundred years,” she had said, before thoughtfully adding, “but if you ask me in two hundred, perhaps my answer will be different.” Yes, the job market in Mumbai was wide open for a young, educated, and ambitious woman like her, but there was still a cultural gate which closed out so much more. Perhaps that was starting to change for some, but not in her family.

As she looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window of Xavier Hommes’s office, Kamakshi thought about something else you could do in America that proved more difficult in India: anything you wanted if you knew the right people and had the right number of zeros in your bank account. Ingenuity helped as well. Still, how Rosalind had gotten it in her head to come to a headhunter such as this to solve her single status, Kamakshi would never know. But, lo and behold, somehow the whole scheme had achieved its aim. If Hommes could find Rosalind a happily ever after, would finding Kamakshi a personal assistant prove all that difficult?

She turned her eyes away from the skyline and the boats threatening to brush the underbelly of the Bay Bridge when Xavier entered the room. He reached out a hand.

“Miss Pure,” he said, adding a smile. “Nice to meet you at last. Rosalind’s spoken highly of you.”

She returned both the smile and her hand. “Likewise. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

Fifteen minutes later, they had done away with most of the formalities of what she was seeking and why. Xavier explained his philosophy and, more importantly, his process, adding that Jack Colbon, who he was assigning to her search, would need to observe her in her office environment to complete the notes of his profile.

“I assure you, it’s all very non-intrusive. He’ll just sort of linger in the background and watch.”

“There wasn’t much lingering with Rosalind,” Kamakshi pointed out.

A flash of a grimace flew across Xavier’s face, though he seized his composure rapidly. “Well, Rosalind’s case was, you’d have to admit, unique.” His eyes fixed on the screen of his monitor as he assumingly scrolled across the week, looking for an opening. “Perhaps sometime early next week, then? Looks like Jack’s open most of Wednesday morning.”

She checked her calendar on her iPhone, and soon the appointment was set.

Xavier’s eyes turned to his screen as he cycled through bouts of clicking and typing. “By the way, how is she?”

“Rosalind?”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “Yes. I haven’t seen her since she and Kane got together, though I’ve heard plenty.”

“Really?” Kamakshi leaned forward and balanced her chin on her balled fist. “Where?”

The blushing man across the way waved dismissively in the air. “You know, here, there. She tweets a lot, or didn’t you know?”

“Of course I do. I was one of her first followers. Unfortunately, she hasn’t been tweeting that much the last few weeks, and it’s almost wholly about business when she does. Unless you count her complaining about the disheveled state of her tea drawer. She’s been too busy to do much more, thanks in part to your services.”

Her eyes narrowed as she took to silence, as though that action could squeeze from Xavier something of which she was growing suspicious. He, however, was far too polished to fall for the tactic she’d picked up from her mother.

When his countenance solidified, she continued, “Did you know I’m getting married in a week, Mr. Hommes?”

He deposited his folded hands on the desk. “I knew you were engaged, of course. Rosalind… Ms. Betters shared with me the impetus of her actions. I didn’t know, however, that it was so soon. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” Her suspicions sharpened further when she observed Xavier fingers twist around a stretch of flesh on his left hand, third finger. “Yes, my engagement and wedding came as quite a shock, I’m sure. Roz and I and our other friends had this saying back in college, ‘bras before bros, cash before cocks’.” His face brightened at the slip in formality. “But we were younger then, saw the world in black and white. It’s just taken Roz longer to start picking up on all the gray areas she’s neglected for so long, not to mention the ones full of colors. Mind you, I never would have suspected she’d leap to the task the way she did, but that’s her way. All in, or all out.”

Xavier’s eyes grew distant. “I could tell that from her bedroom.”

The sip of water Kamakshi had just taken did a one-eighty, creating aqua art on the clear surface of Xavier’s desk. He leapt to his feet as he whipped out a cloth handkerchief from inside his jacket pocket and began blotting the pools. Kamakshi assured him she was okay through red cheeks.

“You’ve …hack… been in Rosalind’s …cough… bedroom?”

“Only as part of my work, only in a…” His eyes searched the air for the correct term, making Kamakshi suspect whatever he said would be shaded with nuance. “… professional manner.”

“I see.” She drew out the acknowledgement. “Well, things with Kane are going great. You really did your job well. One might think they’re the perfect match, seeing them together.”

“All in a day’s work,” Xavier commented dismissively, though she didn’t miss the pained expression as his eyes focused on his hands. Smacking his tongue, he reached out for a bottled water that sat to the right of his monitor. He unscrewed the top and pulled the bottle to his lips.

“And now thanks to you, she’ll be engaged in a week.”

The table turned as his composure slipped. Or more appropriately, spouted. A gurgling cough led to a sputtering fit as drops of water trickled down Xavier’s chin. He fetched a tissue from the box on the table—the soaked handkerchief sat drenched nearby—and attempted to mask his display. “What?”

Ah, ha. “Normally, I would say it isn’t my place to share something like this, but as you’re the engineer of the situation… She’s going to ask Kane to marry her. She’s planning on popping the question in India, while they’re there for my wedding.”

“She’s going to ask him? I challenged her to, but after I learned what a traditionalist she was, I didn’t think she’d actually do it. I was positive she’d find a way to get Kane to ask her instead.”

“So you’ve picked up on her uncanny ability to engineer inquiry, have you? But, yes. All in or all out, remember? Did you think Rosalind would undertake a project like this and not keep the impetus of control?”

Surprisingly, that made him smile. No doubt Xavier admired that Sadie Hawkins approach to matrimony that was so characteristic of Rosalind Betters. Then, as though he realized the result of that action, his smile fell. “Well, then, I suppose I’ve earned my commission, haven’t I?”

“Yes, I suppose.” Kamakshi stood, taking her sleek canvas soft-sided case from the floor. “I don’t suppose you’d like to attend?”

“Rosalind’s wedding? I suppose it would be only appropriate to—”

“Not Rosalind’s wedding,” Kamakshi interrupted. “Mine.”

“In India?”

“I know it’s short notice,” she admitted. “But I know you’re always looking for recruitment talent in your line of work. It occurs to me attending may be in your professional interest. Many of my and Prashant’s classmates from university will be attending. You could probably even write it off as a business trip. And it wouldn’t hurt for Rosalind to have someone else there she knows, frankly. I’ll be busy with the wedding, and other than my family and Prashant, she doesn’t know anyone else. Some of our old friends will be coming, but they’ll all have their families with them.”

“But she’ll be there with Kane?” It came across as a question, a need for verification, like something had been lost in translation.

“Yes, she’ll be there with Kane,” Kamakshi confirmed. “And she’ll be asking Kane to marry her. Would be a shame if he said no, wouldn’t it? Though of course, he would need a reason to do so. Or… She’d need a reason to reconsider the plan to begin with.”

As Kamakshi beamed, understanding dawned on Xavier’s face.

“You said, ‘one might think they’re a perfect match’.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands raising to stroke the smooth shaven skin of his chin and jaw line. “You appear to me as someone who chooses her words carefully, Miss Pure.”

She nodded. “And I stand by that statement. I never cared for Kane at Stanford. He’s one of those people who know how to worm into your brain, make you think the ideas he has for you were yours to begin with, so you fall for his ploys unknowingly.”

“And how do you know that?”

Her eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Let’s just say –and please don’t ever share this with Rosalind- I’m intimately familiar with how he earned the nickname, Kane More-Than-Able.”

“Oh.” Xavier threaded his fingers in his lap, contemplation drawing down his expression into a straight line. After a moment, a grin spread across his face. “Yes, I would love to accept your invitation.”

The Mile Sly Club

At this point, Rosalind was certain the Swiss Guild of Watchmakers and Kane had entered into a conspiracy. At least, glancing at the mocking hands on her gold-plated time piece, she suspected there were plots afoot. Hadn’t she told Kane to pick her up no later than seven-twenty? At seven-forty, patience had ceased to be a virtue. At seven forty-five, it had also ceased to be a possibility.

Just as she reached for her cell, a sleek limo, midnight black and with windows tinted like a gambler’s soul, pulled up to the curb. Rosalind gave it only a passing glance as she searched her message log for her and Kane’s message history. Limos in this part of the city weren’t novel. Hell, they weren’t even uncommon. It wasn’t until she felt the weight of eyes upon her and realized someone was speaking to her that she looked up.

She tried to blink away the confusion. “I’m sorry?”

The pale skinned man wearing a warm smile leaned down and wrapped his hands over the handles of her bags. “I said, is this your only luggage, or is there more inside, ma’am?”

Confusedly, her phone still perched before her in squirreling position, she shook her head. The man leaned over and took her two bursting-at-the-seams carry-ons and maneuvered them to the trunk.

The passenger side window lowered and Kane’s sultry voice wafted out. “Will you be joining me, Miss Betters, or did you wish to walk to SFO?”

“What is this?” Her surprised tone still contained a tinge of ridicule. “I thought you were going to pick me up in your car so we could park in the short term lot? If I’d known you’d do this, I’d have had Carmen arrange us something a little more… modest.”

He sighed as he opened the door and stepped out, buttoning his black suit jacket as he stood. “A cab? Sweets, you are no longer of the cab class. It’s time to upgrade. You’re one of the big boys now.”

She suppressed her inner grammar Nazi which longed to interject, ‘Big girl!’, and cold-cocked her inner Feminist who sneered at her grammar Nazi and mollified her with a hissed “Woman!”

Kane continued, “You’re the founder of BetaHouse. Your name is surfacing in business reports around the globe. You’re the youngest female CEO in the Silicon Fortune 100, not to mention the most beautiful, and if I can be so immodest as to say so…” His hands worked at the knot of his tie, straightening it. “…your current boyfriend could make a nun weep with desire.”

Despite her best efforts, the corners of her mouth twitched.

“Forgive the cliché, but you’ve arrived. Nobody puts baby in the corner anymore, Rosalind.”

“Did you seriously just quote Dirty Dancing?”

Kane shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

“Oh my God, you may just be the sexiest man ever.”

He took the kudos by the horn and drew her in for a kiss, but if he thought the topic was settled, he’d was two eggs short of a dozen.

“It’s just, I don’t like big showy, you know, shows of wealth. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very nice car, and I’m sure…” Her hand reached out and motioned to the chauffeur waiting patiently curbside in case his services were needed.

“Sven, Miss.”

“Sven is an excellent driver, but a stretch limo? Couldn’t you have at least gotten a town car?”

Kane’s response involved putting his arm around her and guiding her to the door. Sven was quick with his hand on the handle, ready to cloister them as soon as Kane was able to get her to sit.

“Think of it this way. You’re not just Rose anymore. You’re Rosalind Betters, an up and coming executive who will not be trifled with. You represent not only yourself, but where you view yourself in your industry. If you don’t show yourself as someone who comes with a price tag and a certain expectation of class, your competition will assume you don’t deserve it. You are the one who determines the worth you will let others believe you have. Rosalind Betters goes to the airport in a limo.”

“Is this some sort of ‘What they don’t teach you at Harvard’ speech?”

“No, it’s me telling you not to undersell what you deserve.” And that’s when he slapped her on the ass. “So get it in gear and get in this car before we miss our flight, Betters, or you’ll really get what’s coming to you.”

The sting of his tease radiated through her, ebbing far too slowly. The limo circled through the city streets before finally making its way on to the freeway. She wasn’t sure if he had meant for his backhanded admonishment to be a turn on, but she wasn’t about to embarrass herself by asking. Her bedroom games playbook was a few seasons old, and she and Kane hadn’t had too many occasions as yet to run some scrimmage tackles. That fact had her more than a little anxious, and not just because it’d been a few years since she had a reason to throw her sheets in the washer bright and early in the morning.

She was dating Kane Kennedy, aka Kane “And More Than Able” Kennedy. He hadn’t garnered the nickname simply because of his smooth negotiating skills with people. His sensual proficiency resulted in a string of beaming, post-coitus coeds back at Stanford, and reports were he was worth the short-lived ride. Some had even made it a personal challenge to be selected as one of his hook-ups at all the Greek parties. Those who aspired to the task referred to success as “getting Kaned.”

“Rosalind?”

Her head spun back from her observation of the passing buildings. His eyes tracked down to her lap. White knuckles and red fingers clung to her phone like it would save her from the plague.

“Do you get nervous when you fly?” Kane asked.

“No, not at all.”

“Worried about the wedding, then?”

A squirm in her stomach turned her thoughts to her bags in the trunk. Had she remembered to pack the ring? Had he found out about her plans somehow? Should she be honest and give it away right here and now, or bluff?

Bluff, definitely bluff. “We’re only dating.”

His laugh cracked across his features, revealing the whiteness of his teeth. “I meant your friends’.”

“Oh, no, I just—”

His kiss kept the words at bay. As his mouth pressed to hers, filling her senses with the taste of his lips, his Armani Code cologne, the scratch of his stubble on her chin, all worry over the rusty art of passion fled her. As the cliché went, it was like riding a bike. And, oh, what a pretty bike Kane would be.

His licentious labors didn’t cease as the limo changed lanes, speeding her breathing and slowing her thoughts. From the corner of her eye, she noticed that they had left the highway and were entering the airport complex.

“Why do you value your time so much, Rose, and not yourself?” he asked between tasting her lips.

“Hey, I booked us first class, I’ll have you know.” She grinned as she pulled against the restraints of her seatbelt, her body longing to get closer to his.

The chuckle he let out surprised her. “That just proves my point.”

Rosalind pulled away and followed his gaze to the window behind her. Outside the view was both familiar and foreign. On the left, blue-gray water flowed over itself in a series of tribute waves. A row boat with a single occupant sat in the distance; a fisherman up before the crack of dawn. On the right, a white building that looked more like a car dealership than the five-story terminal buildings she was accustomed to.

“Where are we?”

Kane opened the door on his side. “SFO, of course,” he answered without qualification.

Her hands racing down to undo her belt, Rosalind opened her door and joined him outside. Signage revealed the business before them as Signature Services.

“Kane, I don’t know why we’re here, but we really have to go. We’re supposed to be at our gate for boarding in less than an hour and we still have to go through security, in the international terminal no less. We’re going to miss our flight.”

“Will there be anything else, sir?” Sven deposited Rosalind’s bags with Kane’s on a trolley he’d obtained from who-knew-where. It was only then that Rosalind noticed the man’s reticence to look in her direction, and then remembered with embarrassment how she’d spent the last fifteen minutes in a heated, oral exchange in the backseat.

“No, thank you.” No awkwardness in his demeanor, she noticed. Kane’s hands wrapped around the trolley and began pushing it toward the portico. “Don’t worry, Rosalind. When you’re the only passengers, the flight waits for you. Still, it would be respectful of us to keep on schedule for the crew’s sake.”

It took precisely three kid punches in the shoulder for her to drag the details from him. Kane hated flying. Hated he was quick to reaffirm, not feared. He avoided it whenever possible, and whenever not possible, he took advantage of his company’s private jet if it was available.

“But, Kane, a private jet to Mumbai? That must cost a small fortune!”

His fingers raised to tilt her chin up. He ran the pad of his thumb over her still-swollen lips. “Luckily I have a few of those.”

She knew he had money to spare, but that so wasn’t the point. “To waste it like this on a five-day trip to India just to attend a friend’s—not even your friend, but my friend’s—wedding … It just seems so … exuberant.”

Both his hands took anchor on her cheeks as he locked their gazes. “Rosalind Betters, you should know that I intend to lavish you with every comfort and desire that money can provide. You’re my girl now, and I intend to make sure you reap the benefits of that very prestigious position. Besides, there are certain advantages to a private plane other than the ease of scheduling.”

As his eyes chased down her profile, starting at her lips and settling on the top button of her blouse, she felt her knees threaten to go on strike. Rosalind’s breath hitched, something she couldn’t have done on cue if asked. As if sensing her loss of balance, Kane’s arms wrapped around her, holding her up.

“My, my, did you just swoon? And I didn’t even have to remove any clothing.” His smug mug made more than clear he could see what effect he was having on her.

Through a mouth suddenly as dry as a Mormon Tabernacle, she somehow managed to answer, “Maybe just a wee bit. Fine. I’ll be humble and let this go. I wish you would have told me though.”

“And miss the way your cheeks flush when you get angry? Never. I knew this would piss you off as much as it would please you. As much as you’re testing me, I’m testing you. We should be frank about that.”

Spiked with irrepressible insult, she bristled. “Keeping the truth from me was a test? That’s not frank, that’s deception.”

“My apologies, but the point wasn’t to see how you’d react to lying, though in my defense, if anything, this is merely lying by omission. No, I wanted to be certain you’re willing to be pampered.”

“And I passed?”

Something feral flashed through Kane’s eyes. “Well, I have more pampering planned for your en route.”

Oh, Lord and Taylor…

“I tell you what.” Kane clapped his hands and rubbed one over the other. “To make up for the surprise, I’ll let you choose our wine when we’re served lunch. Mind you, the galley aboard has a limited selection, but it’s very refined. My tastes always are. After all, I picked you.”

As they made their way up the stairs into the plane, Rosalind asked herself if she misremembered. As far as she could recollect, it had been the other way around.

Lobbyist

Xavier’s occupation required far reaching travels. From Bangkok to Brittany, he’d eaten at enough foreign tables, learned the small talk and currency of enough lands, and watched the sun crawl its way over enough horizons to fill a Frommer’s guide. Truth be told, however, the lobby of the Mumbai hotel impressed even his world-weary eyes. Persian rugs woven in earthen tones created a canvas on which furnishings befitting of royalty had been arranged in a stunning orientation between form and function. A double-edged thought flitted uncontrolled through his head; it would be a truly wonderful background to make an elaborate marriage proposal.

Xavier led his neck through one more rotation, trying to stretch and strain out the kinks. Business class on long haul flights was a luxury to which he’d grown accustomed, but the last minute nature of his booking left few options. He’d ended up in the very last row of economy, in a seat stuck permanently upright and that forced him to endure watching an endless parade of people queuing for the bathroom. It also didn’t help that he’d barely gotten a wink of sleep before his 8 a.m. flight. His subconscious had decided to nag him in the wee hours about the dangers of crossing professional lines with personal ones, especially when those lines resulted in hastily-arranged international travel.

“You were very lucky, sir.”

The hotel clerk’s thickly accented English dragged Xavier from his inner machinations.

The clerk accentuated each word with a swirl of his extended index finger. “The hotel is very, very full. Booked to capacity. You must have snagged a room by the grace of God.”

Xavier shrugged off the suggestion. He refused to give in to the seductive thought that fate or some other higher power had had something to do with it. “Must have been a last minute cancellation, I guess. Do you have wireless here?”

“Of course, sir. The information will be in your room, next to the telephone.”

After a few more minutes of typing, the clerk printed up a folio and asked Xavier to sign where necessary. Xavier took the small stack of papers, folded them, and stuck them in his jacket pocket, turning just in time to catch sight of Kane Kennedy approaching. The bastard’s smirk had just enough hint of suspicion to throw Xavier nearly off his groove.

“I thought that was you, Mr. Holmes, but I couldn’t think why you would be here. Rose said nothing about you coming.”

“Mr. Kennedy.” Xavier offered his hand. Keeping those professional lines in sight often provided a much needed lifeline in a moment of crisis. “I’m not certain Ms. Betters knew. I was invited by the bride just a few days ago. Kamakshi Pure has recently become a client of mine, a referral from Ms. Betters herself.”

“Well, how hospitable of her to invite you.”

Xavier moved quickly to dampen any indication buried in that statement. “Part of my compensation, actually. Access to the potential labor pool amongst her wedding guest.”

“Sir?” The same clerk who had helped Xavier now looked to Kane with equal enthusiasm. “Checking in?”

Kane gave a quick nod before placing his hand on Xavier’s shoulder, applying a pressure that served as well as if he decided to pee on the nearby potted palm as a warning. “Good to see you, Holmes. Maybe we’ll see you around, ey?”

“Indeed.”

Temptation pressed him to ask after Rosalind, about whether they were staying in the same room. Xavier’s teeth gnashed as he instead paced across the lobby and seated himself in one of the embroidered chairs. The implied conclusion of that thought made him simultaneously insanely jealous and ragingly self-critical. Why shouldn’t Kane and Rosalind share a bed? They were in a relationship, no matter how nascent, in an age where the physical aspect of romance didn’t require too much in the way of prologue. Moreover, it if was Rosalind’s intention to ask Kane to marry her in the next few days, then surely they had slept…

“Xav?”

Her voice revived him in a way almost holy. Xavier looked up from his clutched fist to see her brown eyes twinkling. Rosalind’s smile wiped away in a moment the weariness plaguing his body. Suddenly, Xavier felt like he could jump up and do laps around the vestibule.

“Ms. Betters, how are you?” Keeping up the pretense of professionalism made a liar of his intentions. Still, here in a crowded lobby with Kane Kennedy nearby was no place for him to leap into action.

She rolled her eyes as he stood. “It’s so good to see you, but what are you doing here?”

He thought someone had suctioned out all the air from his lungs when Rosalind leaned in toward him. She was so natural to hold, he noted as he encircled her in his arms. As though they’d been a long lost set of matching statues, she fit perfectly against him. The scent of her perfume tickled his senses, and it was at that moment he first realized how much he’d missed her presence about him.

She pulled back in a time that all but declared, I only see you as a friend. Xavier staved his desire to pull her back to him, keenly aware that Kane Kennedy had taken notice of their encounter. Already he appeared to be rushing the hotel clerk along.

“Kamakshi invited me,” he informed her.

“Now I’m jealous.” She wrapped a strand of hair around the tip of her finger. “How is it you’ve just met Kamakshi and you already feel comfortable enough to call her by her name, and somehow you’ve reverted back to calling me Ms. Betters?”

“What can I say? Kamakshi just rolls off the tongue, while saying Rosalind is a chore.”

“Just wait a few more days until her name is Kamakshi Radhakrishnan, then we’ll look at it again.”

“Ah, yes, but then you’ll soon be Rosalind Kennedy, so that will turn the tides right back.” He cocked his head to the side. “Or will you make it nearly impossible for me to pronounce your name at all and do that hyphen thing? Hey, what’s wrong?”

Rosalind looked as though she had caught a whiff of something foul. “Oh, my goodness, I hadn’t thought about that.”

“I wouldn’t worry. I heard hyphens look very divisive, but I’m sure they’re not that terrible.”

The corners of her mouth rose. “I meant of myself as Rosalind Kennedy. I mean, really, Rose Kennedy?”

“I doubt anyone will make the connection.” Well, probably so, but still. “Tell me, have you thought about children’s names? What do you think of the name Jack?”

“One of my favorites, actually.” Kane’s arm slithered around Rosalind, pulling her hard against her side. She almost fell, but he quickly diluted her confusion with a kiss that would make a hooker blush.

“What was that for?” Rosalind struggled to catch her breath when Kane pulled away.

“Just because I have the key to our room, and I thought you might like to go up.” He held the access card up and at angle that served as well as a middle finger as far as Xavier was concerned. “They gave us quite a suite.”

Kane leaned back in to press Rosalind’s lips to his once more, but she pulled away. “What do you mean, ‘our room’?” Her teeth meshed her words in to a frightening buzz. “I thought I was clear on the plane about… that? I had a room already booked. Do I need to check in separately?”

Xavier backed away just enough to appear as though he was respecting their space. Although he turned his back, he made certain to stay within earshot.

“You did, darling. You still do. This is the key to your room. I only thought that... Well, I had wanted to make this a romantic weekend, so a few days ago I had my assistant call Carmen and ask her to add my name to your reservation. Then I cancelled my own room. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Xavier could practically picture her balled up fist squaring on her hips as she shot back. “Oh, it’s a surprise all right. Kane, I wish you had asked me about that. I… I really don’t feel comfortable…”

Kane sounded like a wounded puppy. “Maybe I thought your feelings for me were the same as my feelings for you. Maybe I assumed too much. I thought we were…”

Don’t say it. Xavier jogged his memory for any recollection of the long ago abandoned prayers from his youth.

But Kane apparently didn’t respond to cancellation requests from the Almighty. “…falling in love,” he finally said.

“Ohhhh, Kane.”

Xavier turned just in time to see Rosalind rolling up on her tiptoes and pressing her lips to Mr. Wonderful. Kane kept his eyes open during their kiss, locking his mocking gaze on Xavier.

“However, I can’t stay in the same room as you,” Rosalind insisted in a more agreeable tone as she lowered herself down. “Kamakshi’s coming tonight with some of her hometown friends. We’re going to have a combination henna party and sleep over. You can’t be there for that. They’re very conservative here.”

Kane anchored his hands on Rosalind’s arms and squeezed. “You’re right, I should have asked. It’s no problem. I’ll get another room.”

“There are no other rooms.” This time it was Xavier’s turn to grin in salacious glee at his rival. “Sold out.”

“That’s just something hotels say to most people. There’s always a room available,” Kane sneered, “for those who can afford it.”

He spun on heel and paraded back across the lobby to the clerk. It didn’t take but a moment for him to lean over the counter and say something to the man, whose head shook in a quick response.

“It seems there are indeed no other rooms.” Xavier handed the key card to Rosalind. “Rose, perhaps I can come up with you and at least wash up and make a few calls around to find another hotel nearby.”

Rosalind clapped her hands together. “Or maybe you can just stay with Xavier.”

“What?”

“What!”

Both men gawked at the blonde in confusion.

“We’re going to be busy for the next few days, so all you’d be doing is sleeping there. Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t care, but Kamakshi’s family is very conservative and if they found out Kane and I were sharing a room, it might reflect badly on her. Please, Xav? Will you do it, for me?”

“It’s fine, yes!” Even he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth, but there they hung in vivid rainbow tones. Xavier sashayed around a clearly ticked off Kane on his way back to the counter. “I’ll just get another key then.”

Strange Bedfellows

“Imagine our luck that there’s no rollaway mattresses available.”

Though he tried, Xavier in fact could not imagine what Kane so ruefully suggested. Fate was really going to make him prove his dedication to seeing out this errand, wasn’t she?

The best he could hope to achieve in the face of the situation was nonchalance. Xavier sighed. “I think I should warn you, I’ve been told I snore.”

To his surprise, Kane made the first salvo.

“I know this is awkward for the both of us. We’re both adults and professionals. All we’re doing is sharing a mattress. Let’s just get some sleep.”

As though the gods had heard this western rendition of humor and wanted to join the party, a drumbeat in a slow and steady rhythm emerged from the wall behind their headboard. The thud-thud-thud adagio cadence measured out their neighbors’ intimate interlude. Both Xavier and Kane turned to each other, looking just as off kilter and dumbfounded as the other.

“Professionals,” Xavier agreed. “Which means we can choose to ignore that.”

“Yes, we can.” Kane rolled on his side, pushing a handful of the comforter under him to help block the view of his naked chest. “You have someone, Holmes?”

Xavier rolled up and matched Kane’s posture, causing a mirror image of poses across the king-sized bed. “I’ve told you over and over, the name is Hommes. Or just call me Xavier if that’s easier. And if what you mean is, do I have a woman in my life, the answer is no.”

Kane’s eyes became a slit of suspicion. “A man?”

“If you’re feeling me out for some kind of random hook-up because of the suggestive sounds of our neighbors, Mr. Kennedy, you should know I don’t swing that way.”

The corner of Kane’s mouth cracked, and even in the partial light, Xavier could see his roomie’s scowl. “Don’t play games with me. I know you’re still in to Rose. I recall a certain conversation we had at some point about you and a certain desire to kiss her. I just want to tell you, if you got any other garden’s you’re tending, you should spend your time there. You’re bound to harvest a better crop.”

Xavier had almost forgotten the admission he’d let slip out over the phone after the Fireman’s Charity Ball. The last thing Xavier needed right now was for Kane to be aware of his true intentions. He employed his best poker face. “That was a fleeting sensation, you needn’t worry. She is my client, nothing more. We’re amiable, but professional.”

“See that it stays that way,” Kane warned. “But I need to ask you something.”

Sighing, Xavier invited Kane to continue.

“You did your workup, mumbo jumbo thing on her, didn’t you? They say you’re famous for it, that you have an innate ability to figure out exactly what an employer is looking for, and find the perfect employee.”

Xavier gave as good a nod as one could while in his position.

“You understand what she’s hoping for, what would be good for her, then,” Kane continued. “And I wonder, why did you think it was me?”

Xavier lowered himself back to the mattress and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss the details with you. It would be exposing my trade secrets, and the key reason why my firm is so successful.”

“Right,” growled Kane through clenched teeth.

Xavier considered what to say that would both satiate Kennedy and not let out anything too revealing. “If it helps you to know, a good portion of it was Ms. Betters’s own determination.”

“But did she tell you to find me? I mean, specifically.” Kane seemed sincerely eager now, as though he had caught scent of something. “We knew each other at Stanford. Well, I mean, kind of. I noticed her, and I caught her checking me out more than once.”

“Yet somehow, the two of you never got together.” Xavier’s comment was meant matter-of-factly, but somehow it came across as mocking to his own ears. At the moment, the percussion section next door was joined by a vocal accompaniment. The tongue was foreign, but somehow Xavier got the gist without subtitles.

The man in bed with him took no notice of the intentional, but no less sincere, jibe. “I wasn’t really looking for a relationship then. At least, not the kind I could have had with her. Rose had a reputation. Guy I knew took her out a few times, said she was frigid.”

“I’ve already told you, I wasn’t aware of your prior knowledge of each other.” Xavier suppressed the urge to defend his client, but realized all too well anything said one way or the other might make certain implications. “She simply gave me a list of qualifications, and I used that as a basis—along with my own instincts and methods—for drafting a pool of candidates that met those standards. Out of those candidates, she chose you.”

“And outside of that candidate pool, you didn’t push her one way or the other?”

“No,” Xavier confirmed. He grinned when he thought about the mock portfolio he had presented to her for her first round of reviews. Technically, one might say that qualified her as pushing her some direction, though in retrospect Xavier couldn’t say if the intention had been into Kane’s arms, or on some subconscious level, his own. “If I make the decision for my client, they’ll never embrace the selection as their own. It could lead to the working relationship feeling forced and making the employer to wonder if there was a ‘what if’ person out there they never gave a fair shake.”

Kane rolled back, lacing his fingers together and putting his hands behind his head. “And do you think Rose will ever wonder ‘what if’ about the other candidates?”

“Of course she will. That’s what women do. And it doesn’t mean a thing.”

The climatic end finally arrived for the couple next door. A woman’s invocation to some divinity was quickly chased by a staccato section that culminated in a man’s groans. The symphony at last grew silent, as did Kane and Xavier. Finally, Xavier felt his lids begin to knit shut, sensed his awareness begin to drift.

“Can I ask you something else, Hommes?”

Xavier’s eyes shot open. His heart thudded, along with a pulsating vein in his forehead. “Since you’re so inclined to make pillow talk.”

“Do you think she really wants to be married, or that she’s just doing it because it’s a task she’s added to her to-do list?”

That had been the goal, of course. Even still, the words walloped Xavier’s lungs, wrapped around his heart and squeezed.

“You say that like it’s two different things with her.” His mouth went dry, and his words consequently came out through a cracked tone. “Look, she already has a dress and a date. If not you, she better get going on someone else. I know she would hate to lose her deposit.”

“Really?” Kane perched up again, scooting a little closer. “When?”

Instantly, Xavier dreaded having shared that tidbit. Obviously Kane hadn’t known that little fact, and knowing the exactness with which Rosalind made decisions, it wasn’t simply because it had slipped her mind. If she had wanted Kennedy to know there was a groom deadline, surely Kane would be in the loop on it. The date itself wasn’t that far away, what was she waiting for?

Maybe Kamakshi had been misinformed? Perhaps Rosalind wasn’t as sold on Kane as she seemed to think.

Hope glimmered and prospects teased as Xavier tried his best to fix up the faux pas. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to Rosalind that I let that slip. Given the method she went about to find a suitable candidate, you might imagine she’s quite eager to make a go of it. You should also know I don’t receive my full commission until she’s officially engaged, so I’m doing what I can to—unobjectionably, of course—hasten things.”

“Good.” Kane blew out a mouthful as he resumed a horizontal position. “Because we’re not exactly young, so we’d have to start putting things in place for children pretty soon.”

“Children?” They weren’t even engaged yet, and already Kane was concerned about pre-arrangements to expect? “I don’t think she wants to have children.”

“All the overly-educated women in the city say that, but it’s temporary. Sooner or later, instinct kicks in. At Rosalind’s age, the wait won’t be too long.” Kane’s tone left little room for doubt. “One day they see a friend’s baby or a Hallmark commercial, and then they’re all over you about it. All you have to do is plant the seed in her head.”

If there was one thing Xavier did not want to think about, it was Kane planting seeds of any type in Rosalind. “I understand where you’re coming from, that at our age in life we’re beginning to think it’s now or never. Thing is, she seems pretty dedicated to her career. Running a business like she does takes all one’s dedication. I wouldn’t be so sure that’s going to happen with her.”

“Yeah, well up until a few months ago she insisted that she’d never want to get married, either,” Kane answered.

On his side of the bed, Xavier nodded. “True.”

“Women like Rosalind… They’ve been sold on this bill of goods by the feminist agenda, think that motherhood and home making is inherently a demeaning process, that letting the man be the breadwinner and allowing him to take care of her is a roundabout way to suppress her,” Kane rattled on. “Don’t get me wrong. She’s been fabulous with BetaHouse, and I don’t doubt she’d succeed at anything she put her mind to, but I want to take care of her, the way a man should. Women like Rosalind, they’ve just never had a man come along who treats them proper. They need to be worked into understanding how things are supposed to be.”

Suddenly Kane’s odd request to him all those weeks ago to dance with Rosalind made more sense. “You think that because she let me take the lead dancing, that shows she’s able to cede control?”

“Exactly.” The mattress groaned as Kane pulled the blankets up under his chin. “It’s not that I want to dominate her, it’s just that I want her to let me guide her, guide ‘us.’ You see, Hommes, I have big plans for the two of us, but there can be only one driver in this car.”

Xavier wondered if Kane realized such an arrangement would insure that instead of the beautiful woman he thought he’d be marrying, he’d find himself hooked up with an Indy500 champion. He thought of saying as much, but saw the ticking time bomb of a presumption for what it was: his ticket to getting rid of Kane Kennedy.

A Marked Woman

Jamie slammed down the phone like it had just insulted her mother. “Son of a …” She left the insult open-ended and instead planted her balled fists on her hips. “It’s my first evening away from the baby in like, ever, and my darling husband is begging for mercy.”

Rosalind drew a sip from her wine glass. “And every one wonders why I don’t want children.”

Jamie dug her purse out from the heap of designer bags piled up in front of the television. “Trust me, Roz, kids are easy. Husbands are impossible.”

“The perfect thing to say at a bridal shower-slash-henna ceremony.” Nichole laughed at her own joke. She may have been just a little deeper into the bottle than the others.

Leaning over, very careful not to disturb the work of the mehndi artist weaving epic patterns over Kamakshi’s wrist, Jamie kissed her friend on the cheek. “I’m sorry I have to cut out so early. It was great having some girl time like the old days, but apparently I need to go change a diaper. Hopefully the baby’s. Night.”

Kamakshi tilted her face but remained stationed. “It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re here. I wish Lani and Liz could have come, too.”

“The directions all of our lives have taken the last few years, it would take a miracle to get us all in the same place at the same time.” Nichole turned eyes on Rosalind. “Then again, you pulled Rosalind away from her boardroom for four whole days, so miracles still happen.”

Nichole took a seat beside Rosalind, across the seating area from where a small collection of Kamakshi’s cousins, sister, and two of her childhood friends painted each other with crimson outlines. The “white” girls had been done first and stationed on the couch, supposedly to keep them from having to stay up too late; all three had just arrived from overseas that day. Rosalind wondered, however, if it might not be a case of getting them out of their way.

“This is good enough.”

Kamakshi’s shrunken mother, Nila, inspected the design woven in a dizzying patterns over her daughter’s hands and arms. The dark red paste doled out by the young woman in traditional yellow dress still glistened where thickest. The earliest laid lines no longer shone, indicating the dye had dried out two hours after the design had been piped.

Nila crossed her arms over her chest and huffed in the slight women’s direction. “Now convince my daughter that she should have her feet done as well.”

“Amma!” Kamakshi flapped her arms as much as she dared under the mehndi artist’s wary gaze. Fear and frustration erupted from her in a string of Hindi that could have sliced a melon in half. It stilled Kamakshi’s arms, but not her tongue. “I told you I don’t want to sit for that many hours! No one will see my legs when I have my shoes on and they’re hidden under my sari!”

“It is a treat for your husband to discover,” Nila argued. “Will you put no effort in to teasing his appetite? Ayyah! Here I was beginning to think you would never be married, and now I’m convinced you’ll ruin it before the wedding is over. Have your feet done. Just as the hands draw in his lips, so will the patterns on your legs draw him in to your—”

“AMMA!”

Mollified, Nila stopped, but her suggestive mannerisms sent the other girls bursting with coquettish laughter.

“I only don’t see how she could not want to have some surprises for Prashant on their wedding night.” Blank-faced, Nila looked honestly confused.

Preeti, Kamakshi’s cousin, laid a delicate finger upon her slight chin. “A little bird tells me there is little left for him to be surprised by, Auntie.”

Rosalind sought out Kamakshi’s reaction to the jibe, eager to evaluate based on her friend’s expression if she needed to, as they would say back in college, “cut a bitch.” Thankfully, Kam laughed away the suggestion while her cheeks blushed the same shade as the henna paste on her arms. “Preeti, as you’re so fond of discussions with birds, this one would like to talk with you.” Kamakshi lifted her arm from the table top and extended a prominent middle finger salute to the woman across the room.

“Ach! Child, put your arms down! Down!” Nila bounced forward, pushing two pointed fingers in to the muscles of her daughter’s upper arms. “If you smudge your henna, people at the wedding will say, ‘There goes Nila’s daughter, the impatient one!’”

Kamakshi shot her mother an epic eye roll before refocusing to where Rosalind sat on the edge of a sofa. “Why so quiet, Roz?”

Rosalind had felt for much of the night like a modern Panama Jack, trapped in a parallel reality where she was observing a foreign culture from behind a bush. A foreign observer amongst a sea of a dozen native women in the splendid rainbow of their indigenous garb, she’d kept mum while Nichole and Jamie had had a chance to catch up with the bride. Suddenly, Kamakshi’s question drew her back into the fray, and back in to the gravity of the matrimonial festivities. She was hyperaware suddenly of everyone’s eyes on her.

She shrugged as she tried to conjure up an explanation that would simultaneously be truthful and inoffensive. As she watched Kamakshi’s mother, a few cousins, a sister, and a half dozen lifelong friends buzz about the room brimming with energy pushing Kamakshi closer to the altar, her foreignness became so much more than an aspect of her nationality.

Rosalind looked down to her own arms. A simple pattern of henna swirls between her wrists and her elbows that had been painted by Nila herself stared back at her. She tried to imagine what her wedding would be like in a few months. There would be no mother there to caution her—needlessly—about expectations her husband would have on the wedding night. No retinue of friends and family to serve as witnesses to the preparations, except perhaps Kamakshi and Carmen. If she didn’t convince herself to bite the bullet and propose to Kane, there might not even be a groom. Living in San Francisco, Rosalind had been to her share of weddings of all varieties. She understood that a groom was a necessary element about two-thirds of the time.

“I’m just a little overwhelmed by all this, is all.” It was diplomatic and vague.

And utter bull shit, a commodity in which Kamakshi did not traffic. “Seriously, you want to sit there and pretend like I don’t understand there’s something wrong?”

Another of Kamakshi’s childhood friends entered the conversation with her diagnosis, “Whenever a woman has that look on her face, it is always due to a man.” She considered for a moment her statement, then added, “Unless she is a lesbian.”

Nila let out a huff of animated disgust.

“It’s just… Kane.” Rosalind sighed out his name like the problem would be obvious. “In my mind, I know he’s the perfect guy for me. He’s everything I told Xavier I wanted.”

“Xavier?”

Rosalind wasn’t sure who inquired, but she could tell everyone was thinking it now.

“Her matchmaker,” Kamakshi informed them, bringing understanding to the Indian women’s faces. Nichole sipped at her wine, so obviously forcing her tongue to stay still on the issue.

Nila cackled. “Good for you, Rosalind. You take some lesson from Kamakshi, no? He’ll find you a good husband, a good match.”

“I didn’t know Americans used matchmakers.” Preeti examined Rosalind with wary suspicion, like she had unearthed some unappetizing nugget from the bottom of a salad bowl.

“I did get the idea from Kamakshi, actually.” Rosalind motioned toward her Hindu Etch A Sketch-bearing friend across the room. “I mean, it shouldn’t be that hard, right? I made a list of what traits were important to me, of what qualities I wanted in a spouse, and boom: Kane fits them all. And it isn’t like there’s nothing there. It’s just…”

Kamakshi’s eyes narrowed into introspective slits. “Something happened with him.”

Rosalind’s focus went to the window, though the late hour meant there was nothing beyond the pane of glass other than darkness. “On paper, he’s everything I hoped he would be. And, holy cow, Kamakshi, Kane Kennedy. Kane-blasted-Kennedy. Do you remember how we all used to crack jokes about how hot he was? About how tempting it was to get Kaned? And now, he thinks that about me. There’s… I don’t know, a little thing. But I guess there’s little things in every relationship, right?”

“Of course, there are!” the wise Nila confirmed. “Kamakshi’s father likes to cut his toenails while sitting at the kitchen table. So unsanitary, but I’ve learned to live with it.” She placed her hands on her hips and pitched herself forward. “Does Kane cut his toenails in inappropriate places as well?”

The topic of personal hygiene hadn’t yet come up. For a passing moment, Rosalind wondered if not knowing Kane’s preferred nail-clipping venue wasn’t a more significant concern than it seemed on the surface. “Spark, Auntie Nila,” she informed, using the title Kamakshi’s mother had insisted on when first they’d met. “There’s no… spark there. There should be, shouldn’t there? I mean, on top of being everything I asked for, he’s well-respected in his field, independently wealthy, charitable, and drop dead gorgeous.”

Kamakshi and Nichole bobbed their head as if to testify to the fact.

“He’s a great kisser,” Rosalind continued. “And the things he whispers in my ear when we’re alone… But when it comes time to take things further, I just can’t find the motivation.”

“Maybe American girls are different,” one of Kamakshi’s cousins mused. “I know where the motivation would be. Between the belly and the knees.”

Kamakshi’s graffiti-ridden arm reached out as best as it could under her mother’s hawk-eyed glare. Rosalind crossed to sit beside her, careful to keep enough distance to not come within the hemisphere of the mehndi artist’s drying artwork or Nila’s ire.

“Roz, did Kane hurt you? Force you to do something?”

“No, of course not. Only, on the plane… Oh, yeah, he charted us a private plane, by the way. Didn’t tell you that.”

She stated the fact in a tone that made it sound like an accusation. All the women, however, oohed and ahhed.

“He said so we could be more comfortable,” she continued. “It was a corporate jet, so it wasn’t like there was a bed or anything. Anyway, there we were, making out, and I suddenly realized I was thinking about Gouda cheese.”

Kamakshi sucked in her bottom lip and appraised her friend. “You’re going to have to expand on that for me.”

“My mind was wandering, is the point. There I was, lip-locked with a sex god, who probably would have had me right there on the sofa at fifty thousand feet if I’d let him, and all I could think about was how good the Gouda I had from that organic market was. He just kept kissing me, and I sort of put my reactions on automatic. There was no feeling in it at all.”

Nila took a seat on Rosalind’s other side and tapped her on the knees. “You young people these days put too much importance on all the touching stuff and instant feelings. Love takes time to grow. If he is a good man, and he respects you and takes care of you, then love will grow, and with the—how did you say it—spark.” She put a finger under Rosalind’s chin and tilted her head. “That’s what it was like with Rahman and me. I liked him very much for a very long time. Then, one day, I realized I loved him. After that, oh so many sparks! Sometimes twice a day.”

Glassy-eyed, Rosalind looked back to Kamakshi.

“Do you love Prashant?”

To her surprise, Kamakshi looked perplexed by the question.

“Kam?” Rosalind persisted.

Kamakshi’s eyes fluttered closed as she sighed. Slowly, she stood and walked to the center of the suite’s seating area, making sure to keep her arms out and protected from smudging.

“Would you all excuse us? I need to talk to Rosalind in private.”

At first, no one moved. Kamakshi took her pleading gaze to Nichole and froze it there. Nichole coughed, squirmed, and stood. “Ladies, why don’t we head out on the balcony? The heat might help the paste dry, and I’m sure we all need some fresh air.”

“I will come as well,” Nila rose and shepherded the women along. When at last they were alone and the door to the balcony had been closed, Kamakshi turned to Rosalind.

“I need to tell you something.”

Assumptions

As the mattress shifted, Xavier rolled over. Kane pulled up his pants before reaching for a shirt from the back of a nearby chair.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

Xavier looked to the desk where a clock read out the time in red numbers. “It’s one in the morning.”

Kane buttoned his shirt. “I can’t sleep. Jet lagged, I guess. I’m going to go see if the bar is open. Maybe a few shots of something strong will knock me out. You want to come?”

Xavier yawned as he rolled back over and suppressed the urge to inform Kane that he’d had no such affliction requiring said medicine. “No, I’m good,” he said, then drifted back to sleep.

He wasn’t sure if it was a few minutes or a few hours later when he heard knocking. Xavier’s fingers went to work for the second time in so many hours, massaging his eyes open.

A second, more insistent knock served to throw him off his good humor. Seriously, it was one thing for Kane to forget his key card in the rush for a nightcap, but couldn’t he have the patience God gave the common man?

No, of course not. He was Kane Kennedy, and he was accustomed to having his whims and wants met at a moment’s notice.

“Fine, I’m coming. But you’re the one tipping housecleaning in the morning!” Xavier heaved himself from his perfectly firm bed and stalked toward the door. A more awake man might have realized he was in nothing except his boxers.

His hand searched out the doorknob as his eyes adjusted to the milky illumination given off by a nightlight. “You know, they’ll give you another key card at the front desk twenty-four seven. Unless you got drunker than…”

His tongue went on strike the moment he saw a frantic, hair-mussed and seemingly welted Rosalind on the other side of the door.

Neither spoke as they took in sight of the other. Xavier never knew the transition from groggy to aghast could happen so fast. His eyes raced to catalog each of the raised red lines crisscrossed over Rosalind’s hands and arms. No wonder she was trembling; someone with the devotion of an art major had had his way with her.

“Who did it!” Xavier growled, leading Rosalind to jump back as he raced into the hall and looked for a perpetrator. “Was it Kane? That rat bastard, I’ll kill him!”

The blonde’s expression transitioned from harried to confused. “What?” She followed his glare to her arms. “Oh, no! No, no one hurt me. It’s mehndi. Um, henna. You know, the traditional bride’s party? It’s paint, or something like it.”

The words seeped into the cracks of his resolve and soothed the boiling pot of anger under his skin. As Xavier commanded his fists to loosen, he closed his eyes and sucked in enough air to float a balloon. He let it out, along with the tension in his biceps, in a long stream through pursed lips.

And that’s when he caught on to the fact that Rosalind’s eyes had been sent out on a companion scouting trip over his body.

Xavier Hommes was not the type of man to find shame in the human form. He was, however, the type of man who believed one should never stand semi-al fresco in front of one’s own client.

“I’m sorry.” He found himself cowering back into his room, as though the light of day had found his Nesfaratu form and all its diurnal boldness. “I thought you were Kane. I wasn’t expecting...”

Without asking leave, she followed him into the room and closed the door behind them. Xavier rounded the corner to the en suite bathroom and fished a terry cloth robe from the closet. When he returned, Rosalind gave him an awkward smile.

“Sorry, I should have called down first. I’m looking for Kane,” she said.

Xavier ran his hand through his hair, attempting to make himself look somewhat professional. A difficult thing to do, indeed, whilst wearing a hotel-issued bath robe and little else.

“He went to the bar in an effort to knock himself out. That was…” He craned his neck to look at the alarm clock on his bedside table. “… about forty-five minutes ago. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. I can call down to the bar and ask if he’s still there, if you’d like.”

Holding her bare but be-marked arms out at ten and two and sitting on the edge of the bed, Rosalind looked like she was performing an impromptu comedy sketch in which she was required to drive a Cadillac in as straight a line as possible.

“Maybe I can talk to you then?”

Rosalind sucked the right corner of her bottom lip. He tried to ignore how adorable the action made her look. He understood well enough the danger to his resolve that line of thinking held.

“If you like,” was all he could say in response as he lowered into a chair a few feet away.

Rosalind echoed his cleansing breath and returned in a voice half its normal volume. “Kamakshi didn’t use a matchmaker.”

Not understanding the implication, he just blinked.

“I mean, she did, but she didn’t,” she continued. “Turns out she and Prashant met back in the city. They’d been dating for a few months, actually. She would have told me, but of course I was too busy with BetaHouse to pay much attention to what was going on in her life. And then they found themselves in a position where they had to get married. Neither one of them had told their parents about the relationship and weren’t sure how they were going to handle the whole truth of it so …”

Xavier’s mind didn’t fail to stitch together the implications. “She’s pregnant.”

“She’s in her first trimester still.” Rosalind confirmed the conclusion with a smile that suggested joy and pride.

“And their parents would have cried holy hell,” Xavier continued. He’d run into his share of traditionalist parents cutting off his recruitment efforts over concerns about Americans’ “scandalous ways.”

Rosalind’s head bobbed as her eyes drifted to the floor. “They bribed a real matchmaker to trick the families into thinking they’d gone through the process and used their so-called advanced age to rush things.”

He tried to make sense of her sudden self-smallness when it hit him. “And now you’re thinking that your search for a husband is based on a lie, and that it’s flawed.”

“Bingo.”

He drew himself to the edge of his chair. “But you know that’s not true, right?”

“Of course, it’s true!” she insisted, balling her hands into fists but restraining and apparent desire to flail in deference to the mehndi. “I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t gotten the idea from Kamakshi.” After a moment of silence, she eased herself. “I have to tell Kane. We shouldn’t go on with this.”

Concern carried Xavier instinctively to the bed, where he sat next to Rosalind. “Look, I admit that when you first came to me, I thought the idea was crazy, too. But even if Kamakshi lied, it’s not like she came up with the concept out of thin air. People have been using matchmakers for eons. Just because our culture has stepped away from the tradition doesn’t mean it’s without merit.”

She shook her head. “It seems so fake now. Contrived. And it is crazy. I mean, I hired a professional headhunter to find a spouse. I couldn’t even try one of those online matching services or, hell, Craigslist? Am I that pitiful and socially awkward that I can’t even ask someone out on a date over email? Do you even know the last time I went out on a date?”

Confusedly, he struggled to find the right words. “Not including your recent outings with Kennedy?”

Ignoring his question, she continued, “Then again, who would really want me? I mean, I am married already. To my job. I work seventy hour weeks. I travel half the time. When I am home, I’m either sleeping, playing with Strudel, or watching movies that are older than my nana. I don’t clean, and I don’t know how to cook. I don’t—”

“Why do you think yourself so unworthy, Rosalind?”

Her tongue stilled but her mouth gaped. “I… I… I’m not sure what you mean.”

He inched closer. “Among all my clients… Hell, of all the women I’ve ever known, no one has ever been as unable to see her own value as you. You’ve built a highly successful company up from nothing, but you didn’t feel like it meant anything until you got that big contract. You’re blessed to see your friends happy and pursuing their dreams, but that only makes you question your own. And you didn’t think you were desirable until Kane Kennedy came along. I know you’ve been with other men, though, and you’re no fool. You must have chosen wisely. So why didn’t they last? I have a strong suspicion it’s because you have a long history of sabotaging perfectly good relationships. For some reason, you don’t think you deserve one. Are you trying to kill another?”

The tip of Rosalind’s nose went crimson. “That’s not what’s going on here at all.”

“Then if things with Kane are good, why do you care that Kamakshi didn’t really meet the love of her life by going through a matchmaker? It doesn’t change the fact that you might have.”

“Who says Kane is the love of my life?”

He’s not, I am, his heart screamed. Boldness of that caliber, however, was beyond him at the moment. Rosalind had spent the last few weeks determined that Kane was the one. If he so uncouthly pulled that rug out from under her without first letting her know there was a safe place to land, he’d risk losing her. Not only her business, but her respect. She had to come to that realization on her own.

Until then, he must uphold that status quo. “You’re going to propose to him on this trip, aren’t you?”

Rosalind’s face went blank. “How do you know that?”

“Kamakshi.” His hand went to her chin, cupping it. “If he makes you happy, if he’s the one, please don’t blow it. People meet and fall in love in all kinds of crazy ways. God, I want to see you happy, and I’m not saying that because of the commission. I’m telling you this as a friend. Rosalind Betters, you’re a caring, compassionate, beautiful woman. You’re everything I would want in a wife and a partner. Why can’t you just accept that you’re worthy? Why can’t you just let someone love you?”

The glisten in the corner of her eyes picked up momentum as a tear collected and fell. Xavier caught it, moving his hand to the side of her face and rubbing the pad of his thumb over her cheek bone.

“Beautiful?” She repeated the term mockingly.

“Gorgeous, in body and soul. Most importantly in soul. Stop thinking that you’re lucky to have Kane Kennedy.” His left hand rose as well. He held Rosalind’s face, his eyes focusing on her lips, no matter the chastisement his brain was giving him. “He’s lucky to have you. Any man would be lucky to have you.”

She licked her lips. “Any man?”

“I know I would be.” He closed his eyes as he leaned his forehead to hers, his fingertips tracing down her neck, over her shoulders, to her forearms. “Don’t force me to prove it.”

They’d become so close he could feel her spoken words on his mouth. “How?”

“By giving you a reason to leave Kane. By doing... this.”

Barely had their lips met when they both heard the beep at the door as someone outside carded the lock.

Rosalind shot off the bed with an agility that could have put an Olympic gymnast to shame. She landed across the room with perfect form just as Kane’s voice peeked around the door.

“Holmes?” he asked. The slight slur in his voice wasn’t hard to pick up on.

“I’m here,” Xavier answered, seeing to his robe’s closing.

“You, um, alone?” Kane’s shadow fell across the room, but he still hadn’t been bold enough to enter. “I thought I heard a woman’s voice.”

Xavier looked to Rosalind as she labored to control her breathing, his eyes questioning. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for. An admission? But an admission of what?

She cleared her throat before speaking. “It’s me, Kane.”

Like a fisher pulling his catch, Rosalind’s voice netted a slightly staggering Kane into the room. “Rose, what are you doing here?” Kane’s eyes flashed to Xavier on the bed.

“Just… wanted to see if you were still up. Xav said you’d gone down to the bar and you might be back in a few minutes. I was waiting to see if he was right.”

Kane seemed to buy the ruse. His face oozed into a toothy smile as he opened his arms invitingly and took two steps toward Rosalind. “Here I am, babe. Maybe Holmes wouldn’t mind giving us a little time alone, we could pick up where we left off on the plane.”

As Kane stumbled forward, Rosalind stepped back and put a hand out to stop his advance. “Don’t touch me.” His confused, injured expression forced her to clarify. “I’m covered in henna paste. It’s still setting. You’ll ruin the patterns.”

He relented, but gave her a wink. “I could just focus on the places without henna.”

Rosalind dodged him all too easily. Whatever Kane had spent the last hour downing had done its due in getting him plastered.

“Maybe when you’re not so tipsy,” she said, opening the door to the hall. “I should get back. I left everyone up in my suite with a room service menu and an open invitation to charge anything they wanted. Good night, Kane. Xav… Mr. Hommes.”

As the odd bedfellows eased back into their shared king, Xavier heard Kane sigh. “FYI, Hommes, I have something planned for tomorrow that I’m pretty sure will fix this whole situation. Don’t worry, we won’t be bunking together much longer.”

The Descent

It wasn’t the first time Rosalind had ever donned a Sari. That event had happened on her first trip to India six years before to visit Kamakshi’s family. It was, however, the first time in a blue moon she’d dressed in head-to-toe pink. As she, Nichole and Jamie stood side-by-side in the full length mirror of the suite, they compared impressions.

“Have to admit,” Jamie said, looking over her shoulder in the mirror at her backside. “Saris do an awesome job of covering one’s less-than-perfect ass. Don’t ever have kids, Rosalind. It will ruin your figure forever.”

“Don’t worry.” Rosalind wrapped the matching scarf around her neck and shifted it, trying to determine if it should flow forward or skirt over her back. “Time will have its way with me soon enough. I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore. In my coop, it’s clearly mid-July.”

Nichole drove bobby pins into her up-do like she was trying to secure a tent in hurricane-force winds. “Is that why you’ve suddenly decided to get married? Afraid the merchandise will fail to attract new customers for much longer?”

Jamie coughed a laugh. “Nichole, you know our mantra, ‘What time taketh away, plastic surgery doth restore.’ Rosalind’s got enough money to throw aging in to full reverse, if she wants to start down that path. Only, please Roz, if you do, stop before you get to the perma-surprised face stage.”

“I’d never be able to take away enough time from the company to do anything that serious.” She clipped on her Bollywood-worthy, dangling earrings. “No, I just realized that I wanted what you guys have.”

“Stretch marks?” Jamie asked.

“A drinking problem?” Nichole added.

“A loving partner, someone to come home to at night,” Rosalind said. “You guys are making me worried. Is marriage really that terrible?”

“Not really.” Nichole swooped back and seated herself on a nearby chair. “Everything has ups and downs, I suppose. Then again, none of us married Kane Kennedy. Oh, my God, Rosalind, how did you ever manage to bag Kane-more-than-able?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “And is he still, you know, more-than-able as he used to be?”

“Having never slept with him in college, I’m lacking a reference point.” She wasn’t about to tell her clamoring formerly close-as-kin friends that she didn’t have any reference point, college-era or otherwise. “I don’t know how it happened. Somehow Xavier just crossed paths with him in his search. He didn’t even know I knew him.”

“Must be destiny,” Jamie remarked. “Xavier … He was that dashing, Christian Bale-looking guy you said hello to at dinner last night, right? He’s not exactly bad looking himself. Why didn’t you just snap him up?”

She hoped neither of her friends caught the flush that reddened her cheeks or how she was sucking in her lips to keep herself from jumping into a downward spiral of denial. Dinner last night had been long before the almost kiss. Rosalind was still turning over the events in her head, wondering if she was more ashamed she’d almost let the kiss happen, or regretful that she hadn’t.

All in all, she concluded that Xavier Hommes really was as gifted with human insight as he said, right down to proving his theory true. Yes, looking back, there were more than a few short-lived romances in her past she’d managed to push into an early grave one way or another. When things got serious, she got suspicious, but it wasn’t exactly for the reasons Xavier supposed. “No, not bad looking at all,” she finally agreed through a sigh. “Well, we better get downstairs or we’ll be late. Traffic here challenges one’s sanity.”

She let Nichole and Jamie keep up the conversation on the plusses and minuses of matrimony into the elevator. The numbers began their slow, methodical descent, working from her fortieth floor suite down to the thirties, into the twenties. They’d have gone faster if they were scuba diving in a vat of molasses.

Rosalind looked at her hips with horror. “Damn it, I forgot my purse.” She shoved the call button for a floor just a few down from their current descent. “You guys go down and meet the car. Tell Kane I’ll be along in a minute, okay? I’m going to jump off here and run up on the other elevator.”

“Will do.”

At the sixteenth floor, she got out and crossed the concourse, and soon was inching up to her room at the elevator’s leisurely pace. Luckily she’d slipped her access card in to the pocket of her pants. Her bag, of course, was right where she left it, on the bathroom sink. She didn’t even really need it except for carrying one item. As her particular sari didn’t have pockets, she couldn’t think where she’d keep the engagement ring she’d so far successfully concealed.

The elevator on the way down just couldn’t move quickly enough. Somehow the edges of the day were folding in on her. She had to get through, had to see through this task before she lost her conviction.

She didn’t notice the elevator had stopped on the twenty-eighth floor until the doors opened. She looked up to see Xavier Hommes, black suit, green tie, looking at her in wide-eyed disbelief.

She went stiff. He didn’t move. Finally, when the doors automatically began to close, she stuck out her hand to stop them.

“I can take another car down,” he offered.

She clicked her tongue and pushed open the door. “For God’s sake, Xav, we’re both adults.”

“So I’ve heard.” He looked unsure, but he accepted the invitation and stepped in. When the door closed again, he rounded on her. “Last night—”

Rosalind held out a hand, but refused to look him in the face. “I want to tell you something. My mother was,” she sighed, “the most amazing woman I have ever known. She raised me on her own, all while running her own accounting firm. She always told me how proud she was of me, how much she hoped for me to live a life even better than hers. I knew what an impressive human being my mother was. I knew my father didn’t deserve her, that no one would ever deserve her. And I doubted anyone would ever deserve me, either, because I was going to be damned certain I became every inch the success she hoped I would be.”

“So what I said was—”

“Both completely right, and the complete opposite of the truth,” Rosalind supplied. “I’ve lived all my life knowing no one would ever be good enough. And by proxy, those I care about. You see, I don’t throw the term ‘friend’ around loosely. Yet, time after time, I’ve seen them fall in love with men that I had to admit, were stellar people and deserving. Suddenly, I realized that by keeping my heart reserved thinking no man would ever deserve it, I was in fact making myself into someone who didn’t deserve anyone. I don’t think I realized that until last night.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” he declared.

They were both looking at the shrinking numbers of the elevator’s indicator with impatience and a tiny bit of wariness. This hotel had to have the slowest moving elevators in all of Mumbai.

“You didn’t,” Rosalind said. “In fact, you brought me clarity. When you said prove it, I thought you were trying to kiss me just because you wanted to kiss me. It wasn’t until later that I realized you did it to prove to me you were right; I have sabotaged many relationships. If I had kissed you last night, even if Kane hadn’t almost walked in on us, it would have given me enough reason to send one more romance to the guillotine.”

His astonishment dissolved into an awkward smile. “Um, yeah, that’s what I was doing. I was making you come face to face by … But we didn’t kiss. And now you know, Kane must be the one.”

“Yes, he is,” she agreed. She finally turned to meet Xavier’s gaze just at the doors opened out on to the lobby. “And you were right: he’s very lucky to have me.”

Folding

Kane caught sight of Rosalind stepping off the elevator and grinned like a dunce. She was so utterly beautiful, so striking, he actually felt his breath rush from his lungs as well as if he’d been walloped on the chest. He always knew the woman he’d end up marrying would be a divine specimen of female glory. He’d never have imagined, however, that she’d also be an exceptional human being in her own right: intelligent, witty, hardworking, and with goals that mirrored or complemented his own. So what if she was a little … reserved with her passion. She was old-fashioned that way. While he thought at first that would have been a strike against her, Kane found instead the anticipation building a refreshing thrill.

“Where are Nichole and Jamie?” she asked when she’d made her way to where the town car stood by.

“I hired them a taxi,” he informed her as he bent to kiss her on the cheek. Jasmine-scented perfume filled his senses. “I wanted a few minutes with you alone. I’ve barely seen you since we arrived yesterday.”

He felt himself blessed when, instead of her typical argument to the contrary, Rosalind’s features lit up. “That’s so thoughtful of you.”

Without further ado, Kane circumnavigated the chauffeur who stood at the ready and opened the back door of the car. Rosalind nodded her head in thanks, leaned over, and ducked in. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Xavier Hommes negotiated flagging down a taxi with the porter. It crossed Kane’s mind that maybe he should offer him a ride; it seemed a gesture-in-kind for sharing a bed, but then he’d have to wait even longer before getting Rosalind alone.

Kane allowed the driver to close the door after he had gotten in. Immediately, his hand reached out to take Rosalind’s. Then, through a slightly inebriated memory of the night before, he found cause to pause.

“Is it okay to touch you now?”

She followed his gaze to her arms. “Oh, yeah, it’s fine. I washed the paste off after I got up to the room last night. The dye lasts a couple of weeks, I guess, but how many times am I going to get a chance to go to a wedding in India as one of the bride’s honored guests?”

The patterns were indeed, simple, yet elegant. He pulled Rosalind’s hand to his mouth and pressed a tender kiss to her knuckles before holding it out to examine more closely. His fingers traced the crisscross of lines over the back of her hand, up her wrist.

“It is quite extraordinary,” he admitted. “How long did it take for all this?”

“The painting part? About a half hour. Nila put it on. It was the drying that took forever.”

He turned over her wrist. Near the crook of her elbow, a blotchy imperfection on the edge of the smooth pattern caught his attention. The flaw was faint, but still noticeable.

“And what happened here?” he asked, rubbing the spot. “Did she smudge?”

Rosalind’s nose wrinkled. “No, she didn’t smudge anything. She…” Suddenly her tongue stilled. Her mouth hung open. “Oh no, I… must have… brushed against… something last night. Luckily it’s on the inside of my arm, though, so no one will see it. One small flaw, no big deal.”

“Nothing about you is flawed.” He watched her cheeks blush over. “There’s only divergent perfection.”

He pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist, then open his mouth just enough to lick the spot. From heavy lidded eyes, he looked up at Rosalind and caught sight of her tongue darting out to wet her lips.

His hands went to her face and pulled her close. “Please, let me do that.”

First he pulled her bottom lip between his and sucked, then moved to kiss her full on. To his surprise, he felt her body shift. Rosalind pulled her legs up under herself and propped forward, intensifying the depth.

“You cannot do that here!”

Their driver took turns cursing noiselessly at traffic and glaring at them via the rearview mirror. His bony finger shook with the intensity of each word. “I do not have tinted glass. You will get us pulled over for indecency.”

With a dejected sigh, Kane lowered his hands to Rosalind’s hips and guided her back down in her seat. “Soon.”

“Tonight?” she asked.

“You sure about that?” She nodded. “What about needing to keep up appearances? I thought you didn’t want Kamakshi’s family to catch on that we’d be… Gasp, sleeping together before we’re married.”

Rosalind fixed her seat belt. “I think they’ll be a little too busy today with the wedding to worry about my shenanigans. And more importantly, I want to. I think I’ve been nervous because, well… frankly you had a reputation for being phenomenal, and me, not so much.”

“You’re scared I’ll break things off because of bad sex?” He almost laughed when she shyly nodded. “Rosalind, don’t worry about it. Even if it does go badly – which, by the way, I don’t think it will – it’s not a one-time only thing. We’ll work on it, make it better. There’s no rush for everything to fall into place right away.”

No artists in the world could ever hope to capture the way she lit up at his statement.

Kane flexed his thumb over the back of her hand. “Just relax today, and tonight, I’ll prove it to you.”

Xavier’s hand hesitated on the car handle door, his shoulders tight, his teeth gritting. Through the back glass of the departing town car, he played dumb witness to Kane and Rosalind’s groping.

Well, okay, groping might be an exaggeration. But he was touching her, and she was clearly allowing it to happen. At this point, the fact that it was consensual was enough to send him reeling.

What was the matter with him? There she’d been, within arm’s length, his lips right against hers, and somehow, he had blown it. Moreover, sharing his little theory on her history of gone-wrong relationships right before he tried to kiss her backfired in epic fashion. At the very least, in the elevator, couldn’t he have told her the truth?

Yes, he could have, and cost his firm one hell of a commission and future client. Not to mention, what would she think of him when she found out? His whole business was based on his reputation for insight and his well-established professional demeanor. True, the search he’d conducted for a spouse was confidential and would never enter in to the public domain, God willing. But if she reacted poorly and withdrew the contract for one year of exclusivity, the rumor mill would grind. It could bring down not only his career, but his whole company. All true and undeniable facts that refused to bow down to one unrelenting truth: he loved Rosalind Betters.

To hell with it. Xavier Hommes was a man whose talent was matching up a client with the best available candidate for the position. If he didn’t do just that, he’d never be able to have confidence in anything he ever did again.

“Sir?”

The taxi cab driver looked back, his right arm stretched over the top of the seat, his fingers cycling through successive taps.

Xavier nodded. “I think I forgot something in my room. Would you be willing to wait here for about ten minutes while I run up?”

The cabbie huffed. “You’re at the Crown Mumbai. I know all about that elevator. Unless you’re on the bottom floor, I better be willing to wait fifteen.”

“But will you?”

He pushed the red button on an instrument panel on the dash. Immediately a blinking light flashed and a slow climb of numbers shone.

“Thank you! I’ll be right back.”

Xavier peeled through the lobby of the hotel as though dogs were nipping his heels. Yes, he was going to give Rosalind a demonstration of how seriously he took his job, and her future.

Red-Handed

Kane wore confusion on his face like a five o’clock shadow. He’d gone wide-eyed as soon as they’d entered the temple and had barely caught his breath since he noticed the symbolic fire pit the bride and groom were to sit before. Rosalind knew that a man of his occupation didn’t easily let it be known he was outside of his element, and loved seeing a more vulnerable side of him.

“Your first Indian wedding, I take it.” Rosalind hooked her arm with his and led them through the huddle and into the reception hall.

“Is it so obvious?”

“Only if someone looks at you.” A smile danced between them. “It’s okay, I get it. This is my third one, but even still, I’m a bit overwhelmed. I had no idea Kamakshi’s would be so extravagant. This all must have cost a fortune.”

“Well, when you get married, you should do it right, right?”

There was something peculiar in his tone. Kane spoke with a tinge of nerves. She hoped he wasn’t upset by the tight confines needed to pass through the doors to the inside. Or worse, that he had caught on to her plan.

Rosalind could not have been prepared for the splendor the reception hall held. Four hundred could easily fill the space. Looking at the mass of people in front and behind them, that’s about how many they had invited, too. Near the head of the hall, a dais on which thrones contoured of red cloth and bearing gold embellishments sat, over atop which a white canopy laced over with freshly cut jasmine vines had been erected.

“I think maybe the reason that the divorce rate is so low in India is because people can only afford one of these each lifetime,” Kane said. “That also sort of makes the reincarnation thing make sense, too. The only way you could pull off something this big more than once is to live more than once.”

To the side of the tables a half dozen poster boards mounted on easels sat at irregular intervals. They approached one near the back of the hall and scouted. Rosalind’s finger traced over the plan until finally she found R. BETTERS and K. KENNEDY at a table near the bride. Jamie and Nichole were at the same table, along with Kamakshi’s Stanford advisor and a few coworkers back from San Francisco. It seemed this is where the foreign contingent would be hosted. And that included ...

“X. Hommes,” Kane read aloud the moment she said the name to herself. “I didn’t realize he was so close to the bride and groom.”

“Me neither.” She shrugged in her effort to thwart all the butterflies in her stomach the memory of her lips against Xavier’s set off. Which, she told herself, was unnecessary. Xavier had set up a test for her perfectly and she’d passed. She didn’t send her and Kane’s future to the galleys by kissing the helpful headhunter. And they’d sat together at a table and had dinner before, so what was the difference now? Getting so worked up over his proximity was silly.

Kane tugged her insistently. “Shall we then?”

For the next thirty minutes, they rounded the room and stopped every so often to introduce themselves. A few of Kamakshi’s relatives recognized her from her last visit, though Rosalind was ashamed to admit that only their nameless faces had stuck in her memories. She was certain there were a good number of fill-in-the-blank-anans, but she couldn’t recall. Finally, a low hum arose from near the doors. Looking back in that direction, they saw a tunnel of people forming right before the house lights lowered and drum-driven Indian music filled the air.

Kane yelped as Rosalind grabbed his hand and yanked. “Come on, I want a good view of this!”

“Why, what’s going on?”

“The entrance. I’m not sure what they’re doing, but Kamakshi said I was really going to be wowed. I want to be close.”

Indian wedding receptions, Rosalind knew from experience, were not mundane, humble affairs. The reception in particular was not only a social function, it was considered by many to be an opportunity for an entertainment extravaganza. The pulsing beat over the speakers set the room buzzing. All about her, the crowd clapped and hollered. The doors opened, and Kamakshi’s parents made their way through the aisle of humanity, dancing in a jaunty, rehearsed routine. At the end of the line, Kamakshi’s father buried his head in his wife’s chest and shook, sending out a round of wolf whistles by those who could see. Nila played off the act with a frisky slap. Another, more elderly couple followed—Prashant’s parents, Rosalind concluded—who also did their best through stiff joints to give the ensemble a little joy and tiny laugh. Kamakshi’s cousins and other members of the wedding party were next. This youthful group of ten stopped in the midst of the crowd and proceeded to break out in a full-scale, choreographed routine worthy of the cinema.

“Wow!” Kane encircled Rosalind from behind and spoke against her ear, following his exclamation with a peck on her cheek.

“Told you so.” She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek. The beat had infected them both. They bounced in time, Kane occasionally taking opportunity to press his lips to her neck.

The routine ended with the men picking up the women and throwing them over their shoulders, dragging them off into the crowd. Except for one couple. The woman dressed in a voluminous purple sari feigned frustration as her milk toast male partner tried unsuccessfully to heave her up. Finally, she ended the bit by leaning over and taking him up into her arms, whisking him away into the hooting onlookers.

When Kamakshi and Prashant finally entered, Rosalind understood her friend had not lied. Prashant came first, a golden cord in his hand. Parading into the hall, he pulled the rope along until eventually, it ended tied around the railing of an open air litter. Four men walked in perfectly matched cadence, each with an end of the litter’s two poles on their shoulders. Kamakshi’s red clothing made her look like a sacred fire burning on high as they passed. She threw flowers from a basket clutched to her chest. It wasn’t until they’d cleared the crowd and lowered the litter to the floor that Rosalind realized she recognized one of the bearers.

“Xav?” she asked when their eyes met.

He saluted with two fingers flicked off his right eyebrow while his left hand stayed wrapped around the pole on which the litter rested, which in turn sat on his shoulder. With the fabric of his shirt pulled tight by his labor, Rosalind remembered the sight of his well-defined chest, normally obscured by layers of business attire. Xavier wasn’t particularly a muscular behemoth, but he certainly couldn’t be shelved under scrawny. She felt butterflies awaken within her, a fluttering sensation in the least businesslike areas of her body.

Unbidden, her mind ran away with the contemplation of what those muscles would look like as they strained to hold up his body, of how she’d like to see those biceps tense as his hands planted in to the mattress on either side of her head, of how it would feel to bear the weight of his frame on her own…

Kane pointed a finger and an accusation the headhunter’s way, breaking into her thoughts. “You’re one of the bride’s best friends, and you weren’t in the wedding party. How did he manage to sneak in?”

Luckily, his eyes were trained on Xavier, letting Rosalind recover herself from her breath-stealing daydream. “I have no idea how he sneaks into a lot of things.”

Like her fantasies...

Rosalind used her hand-sized hang bag as a stand-in fan and cursed Xavier for putting her face-to-face with the truth now, of all times. And it was true. Look at her, standing here drooling over him while she was almost literally waving her plan to pop the question to Kane in his face. As the team of carriers lowered the litter and the crowd fell in to shake Prashant’s hand or rub Kamakshi’s head, Xavier turned against the flow and walked to a nearby table. He rescued his jacket—someone must have brought it in for him—and a folio from the table.

So, he was armed and prepared to work. The realization that Xavier was able to remain all business while she was dizzy and flustered just from watching him kicked her in the proverbial ass. God, why did he have to tell her how he’d diagnosed her so perfectly? Hadn’t he ever heard that ignorance was bliss? Now she’d become hypersensitive to every possible traitorous thought.

“Rose? Rosalind, are you okay, sweetheart? Your cheeks are red as cherries.”

“Just… Um, overheated.”

Kane wrapped an arm around her, leading her away from the hubbub. “Come on, let’s go outside for a few minutes.”

“I’m not really sure cooling off by going out into the hot, humid, and crowded street is really a good solution.” Rosalind tried not to sound like an ass, but somehow her efforts didn’t achieve much.

To her astonishment, he chuckled and continued to lead her toward the door. “All the same, the fresh air will do you some good.”

They had just about achieved an exit when Nila caught Rosalind by the arm. “Ah, here she is, the girl I was talking about. Rosalind, this is my brother Kunal and his wife Mina.”

Kane ceded to the matron’s insistent tug only after Rosalind told him to go outside, that she would be along in a moment.

He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “I spotted a little tea garden just up the street when we were walking in. Turn right when you come out. I’ll grab us a table and something refreshing.”

Inwardly, Rosalind sighed, but was resolved to stay gracious. After all, Nila had more than been hospitable to her on her visits.

The old woman grabbed Rosalind’s arm and turned them over to the expectant eyes of her relatives. “You see this? Such pale skin, but how bold the pattern is because of it.”

Nila’s sister-in-law looked down her nose. “And you did this?”

Nila nodded.

“And this?” The accusing woman’s finger traced the outline of the blotch on Rosalind’s arm.

As though someone had just pointed to a fly in her curry, Nila snapped up Rosalind’s arm and drew it to eye level.

“It wasn’t there last night.” Nila’s expression begged Rosalind for an explanation. “Did it smudge when you washed off the mehndi? Wasn’t it dry enough? Still, it would take a few minutes to set, then why …”

“Rosalind.”

They turned in unison when Xavier spoke from behind them. Taking two steps toward the party, Rosalind about passed out when her French-Canadian headhunter began to spout Hindi. He pressed his hands together and saluted Nila and the other two elders while he prattled on saying God only knows what.

Rosalind wanted to pick her chin up off the floor, but she found herself entranced.

Perhaps for Rosalind’s benefit, Nila moved the conversation to English. “Well, it is very delightful to meet you, Mr. Hommes. Thank you for coming all the way from San Francisco to assist in this matter.”

“Matter?” Rosalind’s eyebrow quirked. “I thought you were here to scout for candidates for placement?”

“Actually, I’m here to see through one placement in particular.” Xavier reached out a hand to Nila in offering. “Mrs. Pure, may I steal away Miss Betters for a moment? I need to speak to her urgently.”

Nila’s eyes fixed on Xavier’s hand before she finally blossomed into a cat-that-got-the-cream grin and reached out to take it. “Of course.”

Xavier’s hand went to the small of Rosalind’s back as he began to guide her toward the door, sending a bristle up her spine that she had to admit, was not entirely unpleasant. It was, however, completely in appropriate for a woman engaged to another. Or about to be engaged. Whatever, she believed in rounding up.

“I didn’t know you spoke Hindi,” she said as she fixed her pace to pull away from him.

She saw the corner of his mouth quirk. “And French, though you know where I’m from so that probably doesn’t surprise you. I also speak Italian, as you know, and some basic Mandarin. That’s important, but we’ll get back to that later.”

Good, she thought. That certainly opened the pool of candidates he’d have an edge with during any future searches she threw his way.

“And what’s so urgent? Is it about work? I was just stepping out to… do something”

“No, I’m afraid not. We have to talk now.”

To her surprise, he took a right and moved her into a staff staging area. All around, waiters set up trays of food, preparing to move to the floor as soon as Kamakshi and Prashant had taken their seats at the front of the hall. It was as though they were mist amongst minstrels; no one paid them any heed.

“Okay, but is there a reason we need to go into hiding, though? Is there some corporate takeover afoot you’re aware of and want to let me in on?”

He stopped and turned. She realized suddenly they were masked from sight, standing behind a potted palm at the side of the room.

“Before all else,” he began, standing face to face with her. “I want to apologize.”

“For last night? It’s okay, you were right. And I understand what you were saying.”

“No, I don’t think you do. And no, for this.” He held up his left hand and wiggled his fingers. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she realized that something about those digits was very off. As though he were wearing a glove, which of course, he wasn’t. Colors took on meaning as it dawned on her.

“They’re red. Oh my God, the mehndi! You smudged it. And Nila, she … She saw that, didn’t she?” Rosalind pricked his chest with her finger. “Did you tell her something, Xav? In all that Hinid-Bindi you guys were just doing, did you tell her what almost happened last night?”

“No, I didn’t have to say a thing.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t have to say a thing. How else would she know unless you said something?”

“Something she said just now. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the henna was on my fingers until this morning. I was so … distracted last night, I didn’t notice.”

“Well, we have to tell her there’s nothing going on. Nila’s got many fine qualities, but keeping secrets isn’t one. Now, tell me what this is all about so I can go cut her off before the news reaches Bombay and Bermuda.”

He swooped the folio out from under his arm and presented it to her. Rosalind eyed it suspiciously, as though expecting it to explode or transform into a bunny rabbit.

“A weird time to present me a bill,” she deadpanned. “I haven’t even popped the question yet.”

“Good.” Xavier pushed the folio more insistently toward her. “Because you should look at this before you do, so you can make a truly informed decision.”

Her hands began to rise, but something in the way the movement made his eyes light up gave her pause. Her hands began to rise, but something in the way the movement made his eyes light up gave her pause. “What is it?”

“You don’t love Kane,” Xavier declared. “You’re wrapped up in the fantasy that you’re falling for him. But I see now, you’re only falling for him because you’ve misconstrued what it is you deserve. As did I, and for that, I’m sorry. But there’s still time, We can fix it. Just, please, look at this file instead.”

“Are you crazy?” Rosalind coughed out a laugh. “Don’t presume to tell me what I feel and don’t feel. Now, please, I have to go talk with Nila before it’s too late. I swear, Xav, if the little maneuver of yours last night or anything you just said ends up costing me Kane, you can kiss your commission good-bye.”

“You are an obstinate woman sometimes, you know that?” Her breath whooshed out when he moved his hands to her hips, letting his unclaimed folio fall to the ground. He dug his fingers in and anchored his grip. “But if this is the only way to get it through to you, then fine.”

“What are you doing?”

His lips lowered to hers as he pushed her against the wall with his body. “Kissing my commission good-bye!”

And kissing her is exactly the way he did just that.

Uniquely Qualified

She must have slipped on her way out of the reception hall and knocked herself out cold, for reality and Rosalind were no longer on speaking terms. Xavier Hommes couldn’t possibly be kissing her. Xavier Hommes who, mind you, was not a bad kisser, but had just convinced her the night before that pursuing Kane Kennedy was in fact still a good idea despite the false example it was based upon. And she especially could not be kissing him while clutching a handbag that contained the engagement ring she’d bought to propose to Kane. No way. Impossible.

As she felt her head tilt and her lips caress his, however, reality went red rover and finally succeeded in breaking through.

“Stop!” Rosalind couldn’t back away; Xavier had her pinned. His eyes lingered on her lips. When she put her hands flat against his chest and gently pushed, however, he ceded and opened a small space between them.

“Rosalind, don’t.”

She glared. “Don’t what, exactly? Don’t keep my wits about me? Don’t let myself get tricked by your ‘test’ to prove to me how good you are at diagnosing people? Don’t let you pull me into a dark corner and kiss me?”

“No, I’m all for you doing that last one.” He exhaled heavily. “And I’ve never ‘tested’ you. I don’t know what you mean by that.”

Her hands flew to his wrists, arresting his attempted advance to pull her back to him. “Yes, you do. That whole ‘any man would be lucky to have you’ and ‘you sabotage relationships’ spiel you were on last night. I thought you were saying all that to get me over my doubts about Kane. And the near kiss … your way to show me that I might tend to sabotage, but I didn’t have to.”

“You think that’s why I tried to kiss you? To sure up your ties to Kane?” Xavier hitched his elbow on the wall over her shoulder and flexed back his arm to run his hand through his hair. “Rosalind, that is so not the reason.”

“You mean you were actually going to kiss me just because you wanted to?” He nodded, she huffed. “So you like me, and you’ve waited until now, literally moments from when I’m about to propose to the man you found for me, to say anything?”

“It’s scomplicated.” Xavier let out a groan. “Because I feel too much for you.”

“Well that makes about as much sense as a wheelchair for a tuna fish.”

“I was trying to stand back and let you be happy. And I didn’t know how to get you to admit your feelings for me without making you feel guilty about Kane.”

Her fingers threaded her hair and yanked. “Oh, God, this isn’t happening. It can’t be. Kane is… You even picked Kane out yourself. Don’t dare tell me now that you think he’s a mistake.”

“He is my mistake, not yours. You’ve done nothing wrong. He’s just not the best man for the job. I am.” His elbow dropped as he coaxed Rosalind into easing down her arms. His lips returned to hers and he leaned in, but he hesitated. “I see what’s hidden beneath the surface, you beautiful creature. I understand what will compliment it. I understand you.”

She couldn’t stop her eyes from rolling. Rosalind ducked out from under his arms. “Oh, puh-lease, you’re not the Rosalind Whisperer. Just because you can track down a great CFO that everyone grooves with doesn’t mean you know what’s in my heart. You couldn’t possibly know that I have feelings for you.” Her arms crossed over her chest.

A smile danced in his voice and raised a corner of his mouth. “You make plain your truth, milady.” As he pushed off the wall, Xavier leaned over and swooped his fallen folio from the floor. “You’ve just acknowledged it without meaning to. ‘That I have feelings for you,’ is an affirming statement spoken by your heart, proving you do. If you can’t be honest with me, at least be honest with yourself. Things have happened with him that have made you doubt, haven’t they? When you found out about Kamakshi’s secret last night, that just lit on fire the tinderbox you were already carrying around. Tell me, had you any niggling doubts?”

“My doubts don’t niggle.” If he thought she was going to give him an inch in this conversation, he was crazy. Even if what he was suggesting were true, all relationships carried with them a smidgen of concern. Didn’t they? It proved nothing.

“There should be doubts, because he’s not right for you. I never would have paired you with him.”

She turned, confusion marring her features. “But he was in the folio you left at my loft.”

“Accidentally left. You never should have seen that folder without my giving you a proper introduction to its intent. If I knew now what I knew then, you wouldn’t have seen it at all.” He could tell by the look on her face—those arched eyebrows, those fretting lips—that she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. “Look, do you remember that dinner we were supposed to have the night you brought Kane with you?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I was going to tell you that night, but I guess I forgot the files of the second group at your loft the night you were sick. If I hadn’t, you never would have phoned Kane, and you’d already be wearing my ring. Besides, my methodology is skewed in the case of Kane Kennedy, because of your prior relationship with him—”

“There was no prior relationship,” Rosalind interjected. “We never dated at Stanford. Hell, we only said hello to each other a handful of times. I never would have …”

“Dated someone like him back then,” Xavier completed for her. “Yeah, I know. And until what you told me in the elevator this morning, I thought it was because you thought you weren’t worthy of him. I thought you were trying to correct that past sense of inferiority by proving you were worthy of him now. But you know what, Rosalind? You’re not worthy of him.”

As though someone had just whacked her on the back with a Louisville Slugger, Rosalind felt all the air in her lungs perform an emergency escape. “Excuse me?” she finally managed to cough out.

“You are not worthy of him,” Xavier repeated the pronouncement in a slow, measured tone. “That night I intercepted you at the charity ball? I was on assignment from Kane. He said he had heard rumors that you were haughty and superior, he didn’t want someone who wouldn’t be willing to step back and let a man have some say. He had me to devise a pre-screening to see if you had the ability to bend.”

“Oh, my God, the dance. It was a dominance assessment, wasn’t it? I mean, wow, I see it all so clearly now. To be led in a dance is nothing,” a tart tinge of bile danced on her tongue, “but to woo me so I wanted to kiss you. You were seeing how susceptible I was to seduction and suggestion. Xavier Hommes, I may have thought too much of you.”

“That’s how it started, but as we spoke I found I wanted to do it anyways. And I’m not a closeted sexist, Rosalind. Don’t give me that look, I can see in your eyes that’s what you’re thinking. At the time he was the candidate I was considering for you because he represented the fantasy: rich, powerful, slightly domineering, and how shall I say … in demand?” Xavier shrugged. “I would have explained this all to you if you’d just have asked me instead of tracking him down yourself. He wants someone with a strong head, but not as strong as his, and that’s what I mean by you don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve to be controlled in that way. He sees you as a project, and mark my words, the moment you don’t meet his expectations, you’ll lose him. And the moment you do, you’ll lose yourself.”

Stunned into silence, Rosalind suddenly felt a chill creep across her skin, despite the fact that in a semi-tropical climate and standing in a room next to the kitchens, the air was anything but cold. Maybe she didn’t have Xavier’s ability for insight into the human psyche, but damn it, she knew Kane well enough. That’s not the kind of person he was at all. He cared for her. He was interested in her day, her dreams, her ambitions. He took time out of his busy day just to call to say he was thinking about her. He sent her flowers for no other reason than he missed her, even if they’d just seen each other the night before.

“You know that, Rosalind, and that’s why you’re doubting. Don’t do it. Don’t let go everything you are, in the hopes of becoming something you’ve never been. Don’t marry Kane.”

This couldn’t be true, just couldn’t. “I don’t believe you.”

To her surprise, Xavier put his hands on her upper arms, pressing his folio into one side. “Good. Don’t believe me just because I say it. I haven’t earned that yet. Go discover it for yourself.”

“And what now?” she asked. “Break up with Kane and be with you? You realize that if this gets out, how it will make you look? For my part, they’ll I was just a woman being silly and hormonal. It’s amazing how often they overlook our bad judgments as the consequence of having ovaries. But if anyone ever found out you put yourself forward as a candidate for a job you were hired to headhunt—”

“Then we’ll just have to make sure no one finds out, mon coeur.”

His lips pressed to hers, and Rosalind felt her insides shift. Deep within her, a long forgotten flame kindled to life, heating her. Xavier deepened the kiss, pulling their bodies together. She felt herself moan into his mouth, felt him intensify his movements.

All too suddenly, she recognized the storm within her for what it was: spark.

“I wouldn’t have you do anything,” he said at last when he pulled back. “I’ll support whatever decision you make. If you truly think you love Kane and you’ll be happy with him, I wish you joy. If you don’t however, and you still feel the need to fill the position …” Xavier pecked again at her lips. “If you must marry, marry me.”

Pulling away, she nodded slowly, though if there was anything she truly understood at the moment it was how screwed up this had all become. What the fido had happened? Rosalind pursued this whole gambit because she didn’t have time for this wishy-washy, woo-you-wobbly romance mumbo jumbo. She just wanted a partner, a friend, a spouse … She had never considered that she could have all those things and love, too.

But it was too late. She’d set out her path already, and she was far too long down the road to change course now.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered as she withdrew from Xavier’s embrace. “I can’t.”

She backed herself to the exit, trying to keep from breaking down. She refused to entertain any thirteenth hour negotiations by a third party. She knew her mind, and she knew her plan. And gods be damned, she knew her own heart. It was like Nila had said, “In time, love will grow.” All relationships had give-and-take. No, Kane might not be perfect—Rosalind knew there would be some minor things in her future she’d have to bend on (as would he, a little voice in the back of her head snickered), but he was perfect enough for her.

Rosalind caught Kamakshi’s concerned gaze from across the room as she paced from the service hall and into the reception area. The music’s rhythm drove the crowd on, but something still managed to float across the width of the room between them. Rosalind wondered if perhaps Nila had found the opportunity to tell her daughter something, some suspicion she’d cobbled out of a collection of odd circumstances. She held up her hand bag, the very small ring inside feeling much heavier than it had ten minutes ago, and waved. To her surprise, Kamakshi grinned, then winked. Only when Rosalind looked over her shoulder did she see that a disheveled and muss-haired Xavier, who had followed her into the hall, was actually the one her best friend had spotted.

It had been so long since she’d sent Kane ahead, Rosalind worried that he might come looking for her soon. The moment he entered the room, he’d be a target for any wannabe eye-witness reporters. She had to get to him first, or else all these weeks of courting him and letting herself be courted would be for nothing.

Straightening her sari, Rosalind turned on heel, ramming Xavier with her shoulder as she did so, making a grand show of it. Rosalind cast one more glance over her shoulder as she pressed the door open. On the far dais, Prashant kissed his wife’s hand with a tenderness and awe that was almost palpable. She wanted that. She wanted to have an opportunity to inspire in someone that kind of awe.

She had someone willing to give it to her.

Rosalind had a gown and a ring. It was about time she got a groom.

Matrimony & Mergers

Kane had found them a secluded table on the far side. She wouldn’t have found him at all if the maître d’ hadn’t recognized her bewilderment and identified her as the “beautiful young woman who that tall, dark man was waiting for.” Though nothing more than a wide alley between buildings that had had plants and vines coaxed onto anything that would hold them, the urban garden held charm. Each table was nothing more than a raised platform about the size of a full bed, overlaid with cushions and beset with a tray on which cups, spoons, and a sugar bowl sat.

“Isn’t it spectacular?” Kane held out his hand to help pull her up on the platform. Rosalind kicked off her flats and followed, her handbag clutched tightly under her arm. When she had settled down next to him, Kane put his arms around her and drew her near, planting a kiss on her temple. Rosalind breathed in his scent—a mix of spicy aftershave and debonair cologne—closing her eyes as she let both sensations overwhelm her. “I was starting to get worried. Did something happen?”

Rosalind sucked in her bottom lip. The term “liar” didn’t sit well with her. Still, there was no need to upset Kane with Xavier’s crazy ideas and actions. “Nila just sort of…” Her hands made a running on motion she hoped filled in enough words.

Kane leaned to take up a tulip-shaped cup. He brought it to her hands and rested her back against his chest. “Ah, yes. Well, take a few minutes and just relax. To tell you the truth, I was getting a little anxious in there, too. So many people, so few familiar faces.”

“You don’t like being around strangers?” She smacked the bitter, lukewarm brew on her palate. “How odd for someone in your profession.”

“You think so?” Kane asked with amusement. “Finance is very true to its image as an old boy’s club. Sure, a handful of people come and go with any new deal, but there tends to be consistency in the principals. Me? I’m a fan of consistency. I like to know who I’m dealing with. History builds trust with me. I’m always suspicious of anyone sneaking in to take what’s rightfully mine.”

Guilt punched her in the gut, making her sputter.

Kane dotted her mouth with a napkin. “You’re just going to force me into the doting boyfriend role today, aren’t you?” he joked.

“Sorry, I …cough… got something …hack… stuck.” Well, so much for creating a romantic environment. She should just get on with it before anything else went wrong.

Rosalind turned her torso toward Kane, laying her hand on his chest. “You do fill the role very well.”

He brought her hand to his lips and pressed her knuckles with a kiss. “You’re welcome.”

“Kane?”

“Rosalind.”

The rest of her body twisted around as she brought her knees underneath her and her other hand to his. “Do you… like being in the boyfriend roll?”

A devilish grin cracked across his lips. “For now,” he answered, adding a wink. “Is this where you spring it on me that you’re into role playing and you want to see me in a Dolce & Gabbana gown? Or, maybe, see me out of it?”

“What? No!” She couldn’t help but giggle. Levity filled her, and the light-hearted feeling brought with it confidence. “Would you, I don’t know, consider moving out of that roll?”

Suddenly, Kane’s eyes went wide. “Are we breaking up?”

“Oh, God, I’m really screwing this up, aren’t I?” Her hair felt slick in her hands, making Rosalind wonder how many times she’d palmed through it from all the nerves. “No, Kane, I didn’t mean that at all. What I mean is… Argh, you and I, we didn’t get together in a way most people do.”

He suppressed a laugh. “Maybe back home, but we are in India. Kamakshi and Prashant were matched after all, weren’t they?”

Rosalind felt her insides twist as she recalled that she’d never been able to tell Kane the truth the night before. “Seems to be working out okay for them,” he added, sending her liver into an Olympic-worthy gymnastic routine.

“Sure seems so, doesn’t it?” Her handbag had fallen into the crevices, making Rosalind feel like Gollum seeking the one true ring between two red cushions. She reached one hand deep. Damn it, where is that bag? “I think things between us are going pretty well. And I just wanted to be sure we’re on the same page.” Where was it!? “So I was wondering if… That is, would you consider… What would you think about—”

“You want to marry me.”

Rosalind’s spine snapped straighter than a needle to north. “What?”

Kane answered her only with a grin. He reached down into his inner pocket and fished out a creamy white, silk pouch. “You’re asking if we’re on the same page, and I’m telling you, yes. Hommes contacted me to see if I was interested in being a candidate for nothing less than matrimony. I knew the position for which I was being interviewed.”

“Only,” Rosalind interjected, “it’s usually the employer who makes the job offer.”

As a ring with a diamond just large enough to be showy but small enough not to be obscene slid from the sack into Kane’s palm, he looked questioningly to Rosalind. “You want to be the one to propose? All right, let me hear your offer. You should know, though, I might want to negotiate terms and I play hard ball.”

“We’ll see about that.” She leaned forward, her own ring forgotten, and balanced on the balls of her hands. “But first, I have one question. Why me and why now?”

An amused eyebrow arched. “Technically, I think that’s two questions.”

“Kane, seriously. Out of the dozen or so people I was presented, I picked you. You picked me back, even though every attempt I made in college to grab your attention failed.”

“You got my attention back then, don’t doubt that at all.” He hesitated. When the stolid manner Rosalind adopted endured, he continued, “You were the kind of girl who I suspected only did the long-term thing, and I wasn’t that type back then. One thing I think you should know, however, is that I’m still perfectly gifted in the art of Kaning.”

Her cheeks stained crimson.

“Just want to make sure I’m disclosing all assets of the property, is all. I’ve still thought about you from time to time.” He sucked in a deep breath as he reached for Rosalind’s hand, pushing the tip of her finger to the circle of gold. “Then, out of nowhere, I get a phone call from a man who says to me, ‘Mr. Kennedy, I represent a client who is looking to fill a very high profile, long-term position. Before anything else, you should know that she’s the single most intelligent, ambitious, and passionate client I’ve ever worked for. While her request is a little unorthodox, I can promise you that the man she hires will be envied for his good fortune.’ It… intrigued me, so I asked more. I admit, I was amused when I found out exactly what the position in question was, but then he told me that her eyes shone like gems, that her smile could turn back a storm, and that she was going to change the world one way or another. He asked me if I thought I deserved a woman like that. I said yes, and when he told me your name…”

She couldn’t stop her hand from snapping back.

“Rosalind?”

Her breath felt heavier than lead. “Xavier said that?”

Kane’s mouth curled into a smile. “Pretty good salesman, isn’t he?” He reached out and brushed over her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Not that I was a hard sell when it came to you.”

Kane reclaimed her hand and finally succeeded in pushing the ring on to her finger. “Please, Miss Betters, ask me to marry you.”

The diamond winked up at her. Rosalind swore she wasn’t going to get overly emotional about something so anticipated, so perfectly executed according to plan. Despite all her self-lecturing, it did no good. She felt tears welling, saw the world go blurry.

“Oh, Kane … I planned for this all,” she choked out. “I wanted everything to be exactly like this. Everything I possibly could have hoped for, has come true. Every detail has fallen in to place. And yet, there’s one part of all this that I never could have anticipated.”

“What is that?” Kane hung on her every sigh, just waiting for the crest so he could take her into his arms.

“I don’t think I realized until now, I was in love.”

Kane’s wall fell. Leaning in to her, trying to capture her kiss, the words began to fall from his lips. “And I love… Rosalind, what are you…”

She had scooted off the cushions and was back up, maneuvering her feet into her shoes, before he could blink. As Kane’s expression flattened into confusion, Rosalind wrapped her fingers around the band of gold and pulled it off.

The ring between her fingers, she held it out to Kane at arm’s length. “I’m so sorry, Kane, but—”

“It’s not me.” Understanding filled his long face. “You fell in love, but not with me.”

Rosalind had never known guilt could weigh down the body as well as the soul. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Confused, Kane swung his head in wide strokes. “You fell for Hommes. I knew he loved you. I could tell it that first day I met him with you in the restaurant, but I didn’t think you felt the same.”

Pressing the band into his palm, Rosalind gasped. “I didn’t love him, until today. He told me that I don’t deserve you. I guess he was right.”

His trembling bottom lip disappeared beneath his teeth. Kane looked at her bemused. “I wouldn’t say that.” Then, turning away into the distance, he asked, “Does he know?”

Woefully, Rosalind shook her head.

Kane gave a grunt as he slid from the platform chair and on to his feet. He leaned in and pressed his lips reverently to her cheek. “You should tell him,” he said as he withdrew. “He deserves to know.”

“I agree.”

Kane gave her smile which died quickly on his lips. He turned and moved in the direction of the exit. A few steps on, he paused and looked back. “Just so you know, I would have taken good care of you.”

“I know, Kane. I believe that completely.”

“But given the circumstances,” he added, “I hope you’ll understand that you’ll have to find your own flight home.”

Reclassification

He’d done everything he could; told Rosalind he loved her, begged her to break things off with Kane. And now, all that was left was the fallout. In the best case scenario, the only other thing she could do now was fire him. Which, all in all, was probably a good thing. After all, would he really be able to tolerate watching her start her life with another man, a man he’d been responsible for finding? Not even someone as practiced in the arts of professionalism from a respectable distance as Xavier Hommes stood a chance.

With a sigh, he relaxed his fingers and allowed the folio to fall to its death in the rubbish bin.

It was done. Maybe in a few years Kane would even succeed at canoodling her to change her mind about children. He projected the break up point at forty-eight to sixty months out, and that was being generous. She’d never marry again. She wasn’t the type. Rosalind would spend the rest of her life consumed with her work, occasionally looking back with regret at not listening to him that day he warned her that this would happen.

A chiding voice within said he could hang around and wait, to be there to comfort her on that distant day when her matrimony project flat lined.

The water on his face awakened his senses. He’d had just enough time to take a shower and pack after calling the airline to move up his flight. As horrible as everything was, Xavier knew the only thing that could make today worse was seeing Kane Kennedy wearing Rosalind’s ring.

Xavier slipped on a pair of jeans and a white tee. Far more plebian that his usual dress, but he’d take comfort anywhere he could find it right now. The knock on the door came perfectly timed just as he polished off packing.

“Just a second.” His toothbrush and contact lens case fell into his toiletry bag. His hand wrapped around the handle of the door. “Thanks for coming up so quickly. I really need to… Oh, Rosa… I mean, Miss Betters.”

He tried to read her emotions, but for the first time, came up short. No pouty lips or dull eyes, no slow mannerisms or twirling fingers. She was, frankly, all business.

“Mr. Hommes.” She dipped her head.

How could she be so stoic, like he hadn’t just admitted he loved her and asked her to marry him two hours before?

She seemed to notice the luggage piled up behind him. “Are you leaving?”

“I think it might be best,” he admitted. “Given that we…” His voice trailed off.

“I understand.” Putting her henna-painted hand over her mouth, she cleared her throat. “Well, I won’t take up much of your time then, but can we speak for a minute? It’s business-related.”

Awkwardly, he stood aside and motioned her in. Unlike the night before, Rosalind stayed on her feet and on her game, giving a dictionary-worthy performance of the term unflappable.

“There’s no need to fire me. I know I stepped over the line and I could understand how my professionalism is in question in your eyes. I will accept fully the consequences. I’ll notify my staff when I return that we’re no longer taking orders to fill positions at BetaHouse. I only ask that you keep the details private. My staff are dedicated and hard-working, and it wouldn’t be right to jeopardize their livelihoods because I messed up.”

“Fire you?” Rosalind looked perplexed. “On the contrary, Mr. Hommes, I need your expertise more than ever. You see, there’s a very critical and urgent position of which I just became aware, and I need to be certain I find the best candidate ASAP.” Her eyes shot suggestively to the hotel-branded note pad on the nearby desk. “Perhaps you’d like to jot this down?”

With a sigh of resignation, Xavier shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his eyes to the floor. “Ms. Betters, I’m not sure this is a good time. I have to get to the airport soon, and I—”

“I’ll double your standard commission.” Arms crossed over her chest, Rosalind looked down her nose at him expectantly. “Despite what happened today, don’t think I’m about to discredit your work because of anything you’ve said to me.”

Xavier blinked, then straightened while he took up the notepad and a pen. “Very well, but I hope you’ll understand that when I get back to the office, I’ll be transferring management of the BetaHouse portfolio to Jack Colbon.”

Rosalind made no comment to that, only began to ramble out the details. “The candidate needs to be able to start work immediately. That’s very important. Make a note of that and underline it twice.”

“Yes, Ms. Betters. Qualifications?”

She balanced her chin on her index finger and sucked in her bottom lip. “Truthfulness, commitment, compassion, and I shouldn’t have to mention that I value intelligence and education.” She looked at him pointedly. “Just curiously, Mr. Hommes, where did you go to school?”

Exhaling at the need to discuss himself, he answered, “University of Toronto for my undergrad, then Purdue for my masters.”

“Really?” she asked as though he had just rambled off that he knew pi to fifty places. “Both really good schools.” Turning, she continued, “Anyhow, I also value language, and would prefer someone multilingual.”

He almost rolled his eyes. “Any particular language?”

“Hindi is most useful, but I would really like someone who speaks French as well.” With a grin, Rosalind planted her hands on the edge of the desk behind her, arching her back and looking as coquettish as a teenage crush. “Oh, my, you speak both those languages, don’t you?”

His breath halted. “Rosalind?”

“Answer the question, Mr. Hommes.”

“Indeed, I do. I might also add I have a working knowledge of Italian, born of my love for the Opera.” Xavier ceased scratching his notes and put the pen and pad of paper down. “May I guess the rest of your qualifications?” He took one step toward her, but didn’t dare too much, too soon.

Her smile broadened. “Do.”

“A sense of humor, a disposition toward professionalism and discretion,” he said. “I might mention here the fact that I’m a man living in one of the most technologically-innovative places in the world, and yet I share your preference for the classics when it comes to movies and music. Some might say that carries a bit of humor. Is that good enough?”

Her face brightened. Rosalind straightened, putting one fist on her hip and giving him her best Mae West impersonation. “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

“Also,” he continued, “I think my professionalism has been evidenced on more than one occasion, if not so much today. As to discretion, I would note that I made sure we were alone in a dark corner without prying eyes before I kissed you, and I plan on being equally discreet when we make love for the first time. We’ll be somewhere that we won’t disturb any one and more importantly, that no one will disturb us for a very, very long time.”

She stared blankly in the air, nodding slowly, as Xavier stalked her like a lion to prey, advancing on her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Yes, you’re really taking what I say to heart. Oh, there’s also the condition that the candidate be male. You’ll excuse my asking, but after all we do live in San Francisco and I’ve learned from experience one cannot always assume: are you male, Mr. Hommes?”

Xavier looked down at the small distance left between them. He leaned down and cupped his hands under Rosalind’s knees, pulling up her legs and pushing her back to sit atop the desk. Stepping between her legs, the skirting of her sari hitched up. When she arched back and pivoted her hips forward, clear thoughts became impossi-ble. Need overrode concern. Xavier moved his hands around her hips and pulled her flush against him, bringing a gasp that he felt sinking into his skin, reawakening the desire he’d put in cold storage for too long.

Rosalind grinned as her thighs anchored on his hips and she felt empirically the answer to her question through the thin cotton that separated her from his button fly. “Oh, you are indeed very male.”

“More so by the moment.”

When he kissed her, it wasn’t with the awkward, nervous restraint he had the first time. Xavier devoured Rosalind, pressing his mouth to hers, taking pride in the way she moaned as he tasted her. His fingers laced behind her back, and he felt himself instinctively move with her, his body wanting to demonstrate to her the fact his heart had already declared and which now fell from his lips unbidden.

“Je t’aime.”

Rosalind pulled back, her breath shaky and her pupils dilated. “Et je te désire.”

He paused on her lip. “I didn’t know you spoke French.”

“You never asked.” She grinned up at him.

“And Kane? He said no?”

“Kind of. He asked me to ask him.” Xavier’s confused expression forced her to clarify. “I said no.”

“But…” Xavier couldn’t help the nervous guffaw from bubbling out. “You seemed so set, so determined. What changed?”

Rosalind tilted her head to the side and threw her arms around his neck, pulling his head back to hers. “I realized that I already had everything I wanted, and everything I wanted was you.”

He swept her from the desk and had managed to carry Rosalind halfway to the bed before there was a knock on the door. In a blind head-on collision with reality, Xavier suddenly remembered that he was, in fact, sharing a room with Kane Kennedy, who had already demonstrated a profundity for bad timing. In an exchange of glances with Rosalind, he could tell this same thought was going through her head.

He lowered her to the floor with a groan. “How do you want to handle this?”

Rosalind examined her sari, smoothing it back down over her legs and throwing the long accompanying scarf back over her shoulder. “With professionalism. I’m sure we can still manage to eke out a little bit of that between the two of us.”

Xavier laced his fingers through Rosalind’s and squeezed as he leaned sideways to plant a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be here.”

She winked as she made her way to the door. “I’m planning on it.”

Both she and Xavier were relieved, however, to find it wasn’t Kane, but the valet on the other side.

“Someone asked for help with luggage?”

The thin-as-a-cracker man looked confusedly between the couple. Xavier reminded himself that the bellman at a hotel likely had seen his share of post-coital couples, and no doubt they looked the part. He wanted to get rid of the man as quickly as possible so he could earn the status.

Xavier cleared his throat and indicated the suitcase, garment bag, and laptop carrier behind him. “Yes, those are the bags.”

The bellman flicked his head and made his way into the room, totting his cart behind him. “Going to the airport, sir? Do you need a cab?”

He looked to Rosalind, interrogating her with his expression. “Do I?”

“No, you don’t.” Rosalind reached for her handbag and pulled out some obscene denomination of American greenback. The valet’s eyes bugged from his skull as she handed it over. “These bags will all be going to my suite.”

“Mon trésor, are you sure?”

Rosalind pushed two fingers to his lips, stilling his words. “Absolutely. We have a wedding to plan, after all. We should get to work on it immediately.”

“Really?” Xavier laughed. “Because the way you’re acting, I think you’re much more concerned in making sure we’re ready for the honeymoon.”

A serious look flattened out her smile. “You are going to marry me, aren’t you?”

Leaning over, he planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I deserve as much, if not more. I didn’t know it back when we met, Rosalind, but I think this whole time I’ve been looking to find everyone’s perfect match, what I was really looking for was my own. My whole life, what I’ve been hunting for is you.”

“Then I have only one other thing to say to you, Mr. Hommes.” Rosalind leaned in, her lips flush to his, as she coaxed a band of gold on to the ring finger of his left hand. “You’re hired.”

Epilogue: Cordially Invited

“Eleven-thirty?”

“Yeah, that should… No, wait. I have a conference call starting at eleven forty-five.”

“Can’t you get out of it?”

Rosalind double tapped her iPad. “No can do. It’s with Sheila and Michelle. It’s easier to win a Nobel than get their two calendars to line up.”

Xavier scrolled down the screen on his phone. “All right. I’m free after two.”

“And I’m free after two-thirty, so maybe we could plan for four? I’ll be coming from the Peninsula, though, so it will take me a while to get there.”

“I don’t know about that, I got you there pretty quickly last night.”

Rosalind batted Xavier’s arm before remembering what she held in her hand. They both inspected the wounded bouquet with a mixture of concern and amusement.

“Be serious for a second, will you?” She turned her attention away from her tablet on the counter top and removed one daisy with a broken stem from the arrangement. “You don’t need to constantly remind me what a Lothario you are.”

“You’re right, it’s unnecessary to remind you of what you’ve come to so intimately understand from experience. Especially since that would give me an excuse to demonstrate to you again.” He leaned in and kissed away her frustration, a rushed visit of affection that she’d come to learn was Xavier’s opening bid to win her undivided attention.

She pulled back before he could take things any further. “Enough. We’re going to be late if you start off down that road. Let’s ink it in. Four o’clock, then?”

“And… inked.” He maneuvered his phone back into his breast pocket on the inside of his jacket. “Four on the fourteenth. Should make it easy to remember.”

The doors opened just as Rosalind managed to store her tablet away in her bag. Carmen glared at them both with a squinty eye before charging full on in their direction.

“Those weren’t devices you were just using, were they?”

A play at innocence spoiled when they both were unable to wipe the amused guilt from their faces.

With a huff, Carmen crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip. “You two are incorrigible. Promise me that there’s nothing in your pockets that’s going to be squawking, beeping, buzzing or vibrating when you get out there.”

Rosalind held her arms out wide and threw herself against a wall, legs in an open stance. “Frisk me, I’m clean. I swear it.”

“Ha ha. And you?” Carmen turned her instigation on Xavier.

“Check, chief. We’ll reserve any additional squawking, beeping, buzzing or vibrating for when we’re without an audience.”

“Hey,” Carmen said, holding her hands up in surrender, “what you two get up to on your own time is your business. I’m just here to keep this event on schedule, so hand it over.”

He crumbled under her attention. Her eyes followed with a knowing keen as Xavier’s hand snaked inside his jacket and withdrew the damning evidence. Carmen snatched the device from his grasp and quicker than a squirrel with an acorn, had the contraband locked up in a drawer.

“Be good, and you’ll get it back afterwards.”

“You know,” said Xavier, “I think I need to have a talk with Jack. This drill sergeant quality of yours doesn’t appear anywhere in your profile.”

“Tell me about it.” Jack came through the door without knocking. Xavier could tell that his second in command was laced up tighter than a tympani in the pin-striped suit. “She put Javier through crowd-control orientation. I assured her that my husband has actually had experience dealing with large numbers of people before.”

“Carmen?” Xavier drew her name out long as taffy. “You do realize Javier runs one of the most renowned restaurants South of Market, don’t you? Hospitality is his bread and butter.”

“Yeah, well running a tight ship is mine, so no lip, Hommes,” the petite Latina replied. “Now, it’s just about go time, so let’s do a check list. Rosalind: check. Xavier: check. The notes on what you guys are going to say when you get out there?”

Xavier gave a crooked smile and held up a piece of folded paper. “Check.”

“Great, then I guess the only thing left is for the two of you to make it public.” Carmen turned back towards the door. “You know what to do. And put those flowers in some water before they wilt. My god, I think that man might be responsible for the black lines of every florist in the city.”

With a flick of the wrist, Rosalind presented her PA a full military salute. Carmen swept out of the room on the wave of an eye roll, taking Jack with her.

Sweeping around, Rosalind reached for Xavier’s hands. “I guess it’s time.”

“It is.” Pulling her near, he drew his lips to hers. “Unless you want to change your mind about who you want to carry this out with. I still have a few other suggestions I could make if you’re interested in options.”

A play slap on the chest served as his final and only warning. “No, you are, without a doubt the only one I’d ever do this with.”

When the doors into the reception room opened, the few dozen invited guests swiveled in their direction. Xavier led the way, leaving Rosalind waiting for the moment of her appointed entrance. At the top of the aisle, Xavier turned to face the congregation, pulling his paper from his pocket.

“Thank you all for coming.”

Reverb hit the speakers as everyone’s hands shot to their ears. Xavier took a step back and tried again in a softer tone.

“We’ll make this brief so you all can take off for your Labor Day weekends. We have called this press conference to announce the official partnership of my executive and employment recruitment service, Hommes HQ, with the user-driven application-authoring launch pad, BetaHouse. Our partnership will develop an application that will marry, if you will,” he chanced a wink towards the back of the room, “my firm’s personalized approach to matching a future employee with the BetaHouse application’s proficiency at allowing the user to drive the building blocks of their own personal portfolio. The joint partnership will operate as a new entity called Betters Hommes.”

A little chuckle arose from the audience.

“We’d thought you’d like that. The new division will be under the direction of Jack Colbon, who will give a short statement in a few moments. Further details will be released at our demonstration at the Silicon Valley Tech Fair next month. Also joining me today to help answer any questions you might have is BetaHouse’s CEO, Rosalind Betters.”

With strides long a purposeful, Rosalind took to the stage in just four paces. She wondered if the press noticed how Xavier’s hand moved to the small of her back to guide her towards the mic. It wasn’t as though they had decided to lie about their relationship; they had simply decided to ease into it slowly.

Unfortunately, it was too late to cancel the deposit for the winery’s chapel. Considering she’d been luckier that a lottery winner to get it on such short notice to begin with, Rosalind had decided to just cut her losses. It was Carmen’s brilliant idea to use the forfeited booking as the prize in an impromptu promotional campaign. During the three weeks between when Rosalind had come home from India and the original planned date of the wedding, BetaHouse’s “Build your Wedding with our App” contest drew over three hundred entries of couples vying for a Napa valley dream wedding and the attention of more than a few media outlets.

After her remarks, Carmen bounded to the stage to field questions from the crowd. She paused and leaned in to her boss.

“Did you two decide?”

Rosalind sucked in her bottom lip and looked to Xavier, but he was focused on Jack, who was taking his turn at the mic. “The fourteenth at four.”

“Great, I’ll be there,” Carmen assured her. “But I don’t think it’s eloping if you plan the date and time you’re going to take off for Vegas a week in advance. I’ve always been led to believe it’s supposed to be a spur of the moment type of thing.”

“We’re far too busy a couple to be spur-of-the-moment.” A smile hiding a deeper meaning crept across her face. Rosalind’s eyes scanned her fiancé’s backside. “Well, about anything we do in public during business hours, anyways.”

Carmen flinched. “TMI, Rose. TMI. Now, let’s get this press conference wrapped up so we can get you to your next appointment on time.”

Rosalind jumped inside her skin. “Oh, I almost forgot about that. Is the present in the car?”

“Yes, I had it brought from your flat this afternoon. Kamakshi’s going to love it. The baby will look adorable.”

With that, Rosalind took to the mic and opened the floor for questions. Xavier fell in line beside her, snaking his pinky around hers. The giddiness that soared within her from a simple, innocent act astonished her each time, and not because of the physical sensation it caused to emanate through her. Though Xavier, it had turned out, was expert in causing physical sensations. It was because she realized, no matter the crazy way it had all come about, she had exactly what she’d set out to have. Not only a partner in life, she and Xavier would be partners in business too, building together a future they could both share. A future she knew would have its dark moments, but in which they’d both be with the person with whom they truly belonged.

And in another week, married.

Assuming she could reschedule the six o’clock sales meeting she’d just remembered she had scheduled on the fourteenth.

About the Author

Killian McRae would tell you that she is a rather boring lass, an authoress whose characters’ lives are so much more exciting than her own. She would be right. Sadly, this sarcastic lexophile leads a rather mundane existence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She once dreamed of being the female Indiana Jones, and to that end she earned a degree in Middle Eastern History from the University of Michigan. However, when she learned that real archaeologist spend more time lovingly removing dust with toothbrushes from shards of pottery than outrunning intriguing villains with exotic accents, she decided to become a writer instead. She writes across many genres, including science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction.

You can learn more about Killian at her website: www.killianmcrae.com, or by following her on twitter: @killianmcrae.

Other titles:

The Pure Souls Series

Book One: Pure & Sinful

Book Two: Once You Go Demon

A Love by Any Measure

12.21.12

Acknowledgements

Always and firstly: to Mary Ellen. I would be nothing without her.

To my kids: for their patience with me, and their ability to make the simple, simpler.

To the Fraternity of Pi, for encouragement and, where needed, well deserved ass kickings.

To Angie Stanton and Nichole Chase, for reading Gown in its earlier stages and telling me she had good bones.

To Sarah Hansen and Okay Creations: For dealing with a socially-awkard author and still giving her a banging cover.

To Andrea Kuduk: For assisting me to better understand Indian weddings.

Contents

Dedicated

The Deal

Left Column, Right Column

The Hunt

Dinner & a Date

The Onus of Crazy

Copycat Sydrome

Black & White

Would That It Were

A Passing Bug

Breweing Up Trouble

Bait & Switch

Projected Revenues

Binders Full of Men

A Selection of Tea

Can I Make A Substitution?

Referrals

The Mile Sly Club

Lobbyist

Strange Bedfellows

A Marked Woman

Assumptions

The Descent

Folding

Red-Handed

Uniquely Qualified

Matrimony & Mergers

Reclassification

Epilogue: Cordially Invited

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

Dedicated

The Deal

Left Column, Right Column

The Hunt

Dinner & a Date

The Onus of Crazy

Copycat Sydrome

Black & White

Would That It Were

A Passing Bug

Breweing Up Trouble

Bait & Switch

Projected Revenues

Binders Full of Men

A Selection of Tea

Can I Make A Substitution?

Referrals

The Mile Sly Club

Lobbyist

Strange Bedfellows

A Marked Woman

Assumptions

The Descent

Folding

Red-Handed

Uniquely Qualified

Matrimony & Mergers

Reclassification

Epilogue: Cordially Invited

About the Author

Acknowledgements