“Oh, Easton, that’s gotta hurt,” Nolan calls out, chuckling.
Not-Daisy stops abruptly as if she heard him. Maybe that’s my cue.
I catch up to her and lay a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me take you home. Apologize properly for the bet,” I say. With my tongue. All over your body.
She meets my gaze, mask through mask. “You’re so determined. Why?”
Her question could have so many answers, from the complicated—this is my life now—to the simple—I want what I want. But the truth is even easier. “We have chemistry.”
Sometimes chemistry is the only reason you need, and I haven’t felt it this intensely in a long while.
We complicate affairs of the heart when they’re often simply affairs of the nervous system.
Dopamine rules.
She tilts her head, wetting her lips as she watches me. But then she shakes off her thoughts and my hand from her shoulder. “It would be . . . too complicated,” she says, then turns away, sailing off into the New York night.
This time, I don’t chase her.
I don’t know what’s so complicated, but the last thing I need in my life right now is a problem.
So, goodbye, Daisy.
I head back to the festivities, stopping to refuel at the bar. “Just a club soda this time,” I tell Spencer.
My cousin fills a glass. “By the way, I knew you were Gatsby.”
“You’re like his identical twin,” Nolan adds. “But it’s fun to wind you up.”
“Appreciate the sentiment,” I say, but it’s hardly a consolation that my costume is good when the woman I want has disappeared into the New York night.
Spencer sets down the glass. “Better luck next time.”
“Indeed.”
I take a drink then do my best to shake off the encounter, focusing instead on why I’m here—meeting people to invite to my next party.
Finding people to bring together matters most to me, for so many reasons.
Most of all, to balance the cosmic scales of the past.
4
Bellamy Hart’s Planning Notes for A Million Frogs . . .
Thanks, Fate.
I finally score an invitation to a Carpe Diem gala, and it turns out Mister Sex in a Suit is none other than Easton Ford, host of the most coveted parties in New York.
That damn mask.
I better not have screwed my chances before I can scope out the man properly and make my request of him professionally. If I’m lucky, he won’t recognize me at his fête.
A man like him meets a million women. All he has to go on are the glass slippers of my lips, and there’s so much more to me.
I’ll have to convince him of that when we meet again in a few weeks’ time.
5
The Keeper of My Secrets
New York City is not for the fainthearted.
Good thing mine is made of iron, forged in a blacksmith shop, and ready to do battle with anyone, including my own sister.
I’m determined to win her over. She’s the best, and I want the best for my parties.
A week after the masquerade at The Lucky Spot, I catch the tail end of my sister’s set at Stella’s Comedy Attic in Chelsea. Rory owns the stage, spotlight on her freckled, innocent-only-on-the-outside face.
“And then this guy said to my friend, Are you Ariel? Because we were . . . mermaid for each other.”
The audience groans.
She groans too.
“Right? I had to pull the emergency pretend-to-almost-gag-all-over-him card.” She points her thumb at her sternum. “I don’t let my friends go home with guys who use bad puns. Standards and all.”
I chuckle as Rory finishes her set, thanks the audience, and weaves through the crowd to join me at the bar.
She bumps my shoulder with hers and teases, “If it isn’t the old school matchmaker of Manhattan.”
“We all have our callings,” I say. “Apparently, yours is to keep your friends from dating twits with low standards in humor.”
She flicks her blonde hair off her shoulder with a certain flair. “It’s a very important job, thank you very much.”
“And somebody has to do it.”
She’s done for the night, so we leave the club, walking along the tree-lined block in Chelsea on a late-summer night. Time to try again with my little sis. If she’ll perform at next month’s party in the Village, I can lure just the right guests. Hell, she might put me one step closer to hitting my gamechanger goal—enough matches to put the sting of the Coupled business behind me.
When the app I’d started turned into a huge hit, I was the king of online dating. For a while there, money and ad dollars flowed into my company’s coffers and then some. I went on the speaker circuit, talking at conferences—that’s how I heard firsthand that online dating isn’t a golden age of romance after all. Women came up to me at events and told me stories of terrible matches, dick pics, and men who scorned them for not looking like their profile pics—no matter that the guys were a ways from the college life photos they posted.
These ladies felt like trading cards, and they were tired of the online dating merry-go-round with its risks and mismatches.
There had to be a better way.
I sold Coupled to a tech giant that repurposed its platform for online commerce, and with the proceeds, I started Carpe Diem, combining an elite list of single people in a high-end setting. Everything from the drinks to the food is highly curated by me—including the entertainment. “So, what do I have to do to convince my own sister to do a set at one of my parties?”
She barks out a laugh. “Can you even imagine what people would say if I did?”
“That you have the best taste in New York venues?” I suggest. “And that I attract the top talent, from singers to comedians.”
She grabs my arm. “Dude, you are so wrong. You have this overinflated idea that every decision you make is dipped in gold, tossed in platinum, then sprinkled with diamonds.”
Huh. Sisters. They really do exist for a purpose—to put you in your place. “Well, aren’t they?”
She stares at me, dead serious, when we reach the crosswalk, and says, “Everyone would say I was there because I’m your sister.”
Straight up with no sarcasm chaser.
“I disagree,” I insist. “They’d say you were there because you’re the most talented comic in all of New York City. They’d be enthralled because you’re funny, and truly, laughter is a great way to open the doors to the heart.”
“You’re cute if you think that will work on me,” she says. “I’m immune to flattery, and I’m definitely not impressed. I remember when you were in tenth grade and stole my cucumber lime body wash before your first date with Jenna Salisbury. Used the whole bottle too.”
Sisters are the devil.
Rory taps her temple. “I’m the keeper of your other secrets too. Like the time you said you were watching a science show on PBS, but you had the kiss scene from Wild Things on repeat.”
Damn. Her memory is steel. “Point one. Denise Richards and Neve Campbell—I have no regrets. Point two. I also know things. I know you didn’t watch High School Musical for the songs like you told Mom and Dad.”