Page 11 of Valentine's Day Daddy

We laugh as I follow her down off the stage and through the knots of people still milling about, socializing. I almost think there are more connections being made in the event’s after-party than there were during the event itself. Mimi leads me through a door that opens up into a long corridor. A couple of turns takes us to a door. She uses a keycard to unlock it, then holds it open and allows me to step inside.

“Such a gentleman,” I crack.

“And don’t you forget it.”

A hundred boxes holding the three-by-five notecards from the event are lined up on the table in front of us. My eyes drift over the numbers attached to the boxes—each one corresponding to the tables that had been set up in the ballroom. I find box number sixty-three then step forward and pick it up. There are probably more than fifty white cards inside the box—the white cards denoting the male participants. Ashton was apparently very popular with the boys. The pink card—her card—is blank. She hadn’t written down a single number on it. Not even mine.

“What are you doing?” Mimi asks.

I take out all the cards then set the box down and start shuffling through them all.

“Seriously, what are you doing?” she asks again.

I find the card with my number on it and put it back into the box with hers. Mimi snatches the rest of the cards out of my hand and waves them at me.

“I am changing the rules of the game,” I say.

She smiles at me with a mischievous glint in her eye. “So, there was a love connection out there tonight, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say love connection,” I tell her. “More like I said before—a curiosity.”

“A curiosity so strong you’re willing to break all the rules of this game and deny all these men the chance to meet this saucy little tart,” Mimi says and waves the cards at me again.

“I’m sure most of the guys in that stack have cards in all the boxes,” I say. “They aren’t going to miss out on one. They’ll just assume they didn’t make a match.”

“Meanwhile, this girl who…” Mimi looks at the pink card in Ashton’s box and laughs, “will wonder what in the hell is going on since she didn’t write down one match. Not one.”

“Well, we can’t have her missing out on the best of the lot, now, can we? Who would we be if we let her deny herself such a golden opportunity?”

“I don’t even know how to respond to that level of ego,” she says with a laugh.

“She didn’t match with any of the other guys, so technically, no rules are being changed,” I say. “No harm, no foul.”

“But by the same token, because she didn’t match with anybody else, she wouldn’t be expecting to get an email with your contact information either.”

“This is why it’s good to be the boss,” I say with a smile. “I can make this sort of unilateral executive decision.”

“Ehhh… not really,” she says as she pulls a face. “But tell me, what is it about this girl that has you actually bending the rules and going out of your way to meet her? I mean, just five minutes ago, I thought you were devoted to the celibate monk life.”

“Things changed.”

“That quickly?”

“That quickly.”

She laughs and stares at me for a minute. "Okay. I'll play the game with you… only because this is the first woman you've shown any sort of interest in that I can remember. I mean, it’s been a long time.”

“Like I said, just a curiosity.”

Mimi purses her lips and looks at me. She’s sometimes intractable and bending the rules isn’t normally in her nature. I know how much the reputation and the integrity of the company mean to her. Mimi is good like that. It’s just one of the many reasons I hired her in the first place. I know she takes it personally. But this is in one of those gray areas where there’s a little bit of wiggle room.

“It’s not like I’m asking you for her personal information. I’m asking you to pass mine on to her,” I say. “And if she’s not interested, she doesn’t call. Again, no harm—”

“No foul, I know,” she finishes for me and pauses for a beat.

“Come on,” I say. “You know I can get the information myself if I really wanted it. I’m just trying to do things the right way here.”

“Right-ish.”

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