Page 14 of Denying Davis
She glanced at her watch again. “Late. After nine.”
“Let me take you to dinner once you get off work.”
She knitted her eyebrows together. “What? That late?”
“Drinks. Dessert. Whatever you want. There must be a place in Palm Beach County open at nine o’clock on a Sunday night. And I want to take you there.” I stepped forward, closing the space between us. “Please,” I begged. “It’s just dinner. An hour of your time, if that. Nothing permanent.” I gave her a sheepish smile. “And we’re old friends, right? We have a lot of catch up on.”
She studied me for a long time, but her expression was blank, and her face unreadable. “Okay,” she finally said. “Let’s meet at The Hamburger Stand on Flagler Drive at nine thirty. It’s open late.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, and I couldn’t hold back my gleeful smile. Ten years was a long time to go without her smile, her friendship, her kiss. I should have moved on—up, some might have said—from her, but I’d once lived for her yeses.Especially when she said yes to my kiss.She’d been my best friend, and when she left so suddenly, I’d been devasted. Alone.
And now she’s here.
I shouldn’t have agreed to meet Davis after work. I knew that. No question. Life was a series of decisions, and this was a bad one, no doubt. This would get me in trouble. It would risk placing me in violation of the agreement my mother and I had signed all those years ago. By spending time with Davis, I’d potentially opened my mother and me up to a lawsuit. The legal agreement we’d signed was still intact. It had no sunset clause whatsoever.
But he’d been so hard to resist, even after all this time.
I mulled over Davis’s request again as I sat at the front desk at Royal Palm. It was mindless work, centered mostly on making sure deliveries made it to the apartments of the well-heeled, no one entered the building without permission, and residents had everything they might require, from directions to concert tickets. It was the kind of work that could have been done by almost anyone, and I know without a doubt I was replaceable.
It was also the one of the best-paying jobs I could find.
That night, between saying hello to the residents and answering their questions, I used the front desk computer to google Davis Armstrong. I’d purposely kept myself from doing that for the last decade, making sure I didn’t scratch that itch, until it faded away from memory. Right after Mrs. Faniz asked me to make reservations at Steak Grille and breezed out of the building, I did the first of what I knew would be an extensive search on the boy I’d once loved. What I read made my heart skip a few beats.
He’d just graduated Harvard Business School with his MBA, and he’d done it with honors. They considered him one of their most distinguished graduates, and he’d been profiled more than once by Harvard’s newspaper and a few other business publications. Davis was also already rich on his own—he’d made two million by developing a travel app he’d sold to InterTech, a company in California, a few years earlier.
I found pictures of him in the Hamptons. Snapshots by Getty Images photographers of him at galas in New York, Los Angeles, and Palm Beach. He had a myriad of famous friends who called presidents, moguls, royalty, and celebrities’ parents their friends. And in every single photo, Davis stood out from the rest of them. There was something about his natural confidence that set him apart from the others, even when he wasn’t the best-looking person in the group. He had a way of capturing the attention of the lens and making it seem like he was the only person in the photo.
“Samantha?”
The sharp enunciation of my name made me yank my attention away from the computer screen. Howell McDougal stood on the opposite side of the desk with his arms crossed. I cringed inside.
“Yes, how may I help you, Mr. McDougal?” I managed. I needed to pull myself together and quit thinking about a man I could never have.
“Do you know how many times I said your name?”
I shook my head. I had no idea. I’d been too focused on the Google search of Davis to notice Howell, or anything else.
“Five times. Five. That was the fifth.”
“I’m…I’m sorry. I was distracted. Didn’t see you there.” I gave him a weak smile. “Do you need something?”
“Just wanted to say hello.”
“Well, I’m glad you did.” I closed the computer browser. Then I sighed. “I’ve just got a lot of things going on at home, Mr. McDougal.”
A short laugh escaped his lips. “You don’t have to call me Mr. McDougal.”
“Well, I’m supposed to…the condo board…”
“Screw the condo board. They’re all too uptight.” He motioned between us. “We’re friends, Sam. Or at least, my wife thinks of you that way.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“After last month, when she had the emergency—”
“It was nothing.” I waved away his praise. “I was on duty that night, that’s all.”
He braced one arm on the desk lip. “Know what? You’re one of their best desk assistants.” He glanced around the empty lobby, the lowered his voice. “I don’t think they pay you enough here. I saw the budget and—”
