“How many people touch that every day?” he asked.
“Probably thousands.” I shrugged. “It’s not going to kill you.”
He didn’t look convinced.
I laughed and grabbed his hand, placing it there for him.
“You can wash your hands when we get off.” I paused. “I thought you said you used to be poor.”
“I was,” he said. “Too poor to buy a metro card. I begged at all the metro stations for change, though.”
“Okay. Whose rags-to-riches sob story did you steal?”
“It’s mine.” He looked at me. “I’m forty-six years old… I snuck on the buses to get around when I was a kid. I went from those to cabs, to what I have now.”
“Oh.”
That was the first thing he’d ever said that made him sound remotely human.
“You don’t believe I used to be broke, do you, Chloe?” He inched closer.
“Not at all,” I said. “But I’ll play along until you admit the truth.”
“I’ll prove it another day,” he said. “In the meantime, don’t move from that spot until we get to where we need to be.”
“Why?”
“Because for some reason, you seem to think a goddamn skirt is equivalent to the pantsuits I begged you to wear, and I don’t need anyone else seeing the effect it has on me…”
I blushed. “Sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’ll be later…”
THE CEO
DANTE
The Avon Complex was the first apartment building I’d ever bought in this city.
With its twenty floors, trailing English ivies that clung to its bricks, and Juliet balconies that overlooked the street, it was once one of my mother’s favorite places to stop and admire.
Before today, I’d never been able to make myself come back and see it.
Then again, from the way the trailing ivies were half-dead and the balconies’ iron was rusted, perhaps my resistance was for the best.
Making sure I wasn’t imagining things, I glanced at how this place looked online. Then I looked up at it again.
Hmmm.
I held the door open for Chloe and headed straight for the leasing office.
Just like it claimed online, the doorplate announced the manager as a “Mr. Daniel Kline.”
I didn’t bother knocking.
This place belongs to me…
“We’re not open right now.” The woman behind the desk didn’t look up from her salad as I entered. “Come back in an hour.”