“Look, people have disapproved of me for over a decade. You know what the best recourse is?”
He shrugged helplessly. “Ignore them?”
“Make every single person who rejected you want you instead.”Naomi smirked. “We’re going to bring in so many members, the board’s gonna beg me to stay.”
Ethan’s brows rose. “You’re not worried about the fact that we’ve had... shall we say... modest turnout thus far?”
“Nope.” Naomi reached into her bag and pulled out a notebook.
“But I thought... what about what you were saying a few minutes ago, about being too busy at work?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Naomi uncapped a pen with her teeth. “Thanks to your pal Jonathan, I’ve got a renewed sense of motivation.” Her desire to make people eat their words had always outweighed her insecurities.
“Oh.” Ethan looked slightly dazed. “So, what do we do?”
Naomi crossed her legs. She had an idea. It was either great or terrible.
“I’d like to bring in a PR consultant.”
Ethan shuffled through the ink-stained papers on his desk, letting out a triumphant little “aha” when he uncovered a spreadsheet. He frowned at the numbers he found there. “I’m not sure we’ve got the budget to cover that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Naomi said. “I know someone who will do it pro bono. She owes me.”
“So, we’re just going to...”
“Prove everyone wrong?” She smiled. “Yeah. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Chapter Seven
“OKAY.” NAOMI TIGHTENEDher hands on the steering wheel of her Prius. “I’m allowing you to grant me this favor, but only under the strict stipulation that you make a conscious effort not to embarrass me.”
“Turn right up here.” Clara held up her phone to the windshield, as if that would make Google Maps more accurate.
They’d arranged to meet Ethan at a coffee shop downtown, and as the passenger, it was Clara’s responsibility to navigate.
“Also”—Clara lowered her phone and fiddled with the A/C, sending a blast of frigid air directly at Naomi’s face, making her eyes water—“since when do favors come with qualifiers?”
“Since you’re doing one for me, Connecticut.” Naomi’s favorite and most benign nickname for Clara was the one in reference to her home state. You could take the girl out of Greenwich, but you couldn’t stop her from crossing her legs at the ankles and referring to Manhattan as “the city” even though she’d lived in L.A. for almost three years now.
“I’ve spent my entire life trying to minimize embarrassment,” Clara bristled. “I think I can make it through forty-five minutes of coffee without saying anything uncouth.”
Naomi grimaced at the reminder of Clara’s family—bluebloodswith enough scandals to rival the Kennedys, though with fewer political aspirations.
“He’s not a normal rabbi.” Sure, Ethan had all of the qualities rabbis were supposed to possess; he was kind and smart, a good listener, thoughtful. But he was also— “You’ll have to check that impulse you have to literally run from the room when confronted with an extremely hot person.”
Clara tipped up her nose. “I have gotten much better at that in the last three years. As you know, I am, in fact, set to marry an extremely hot person.”
“Obviously, after a steady diet of vitamin D”—she shot Clara a knowing look—“you’ve built up an immunity.”
Covering her eyes with her hand, Clara groaned. “Sometimes you are a true nightmare.”
Mood considerably brightened by torturing her friend, Naomi adjusted her sunglasses. “But seriously, Ethan is hot in a different way than Josh.”
Clara squirmed, adjusting her seat belt where it bit into her neck because she was so short. “Okay. So describe it.”
“He’s disarming.” Naomi never brought the right armor into battle against him.
“Disarming how?” Clara lowered her sunglasses and peered at Naomi over the top of them.