“I do rehab lots of buildings, and all of them have stories.” She looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged. “I’m kind of partial to buildings, and the ones I buy—versus the ones I don’t—is a combination of a business decision and a heart decision. Sometimes I feel like I have to rescue these buildings.”
She stopped and stared, slowly putting down her fork. “Say what?”
He shrugged. “Nobody said I had to be completely logical all the time. Anybody who tells you that these kinds of business decisions aren’t also emotional at some level is lying. Whether they lock down that emotion and make it fit some parameter, or whatever they’re doing, they’re still using their emotions to buy properties. Either because they think they can make money, and that makes them happy, or because they think they can turn it around and steal it from somebody else, also making them happy. In my case, I like to turn them around and make them useful again after years of abuse. And that makes me happy. So it’s emotional.” And, with that, he picked up a chunk of meat on a skewer and pulled off a piece. “Do you know what this is?”
She looked at it and shrugged. “No, I was waiting for you to try it.”
He laughed. “Here goes nothing.” And he took a bite off the end of the piece in his hand. His eyebrows shot up immediately, and he smiled at the piece remaining. “I think it’s chicken, but, wow, is it ever flavorful.”
She immediately picked up her skewer and took a bite. She looked over at him, nodding. “I don’t know where you got this from, but it needs to go on my Redial list.”
He grinned. “That’s only if you’re nice to me. Otherwise I’m not telling you where it is.”
“That’s okay. I’ll go talk to Harry myself.” His jaw dropped, and she laughed. “Do you really think I’m not on a first-name basis with him by now?”
“Are you bribing my doorman?” He leaned forward, waggling his eyebrows. “And, if you are, maybe it’s me you should be bribing.”
“I don’t have to bribe you, and you should always be friendly with the doorman because they know a lot. People treat servants and staff and the hired help like their slaves, but they don’t consider who these people are with at the end of the day and what they have to deal with. You should treat them better than your own family because already they’re doing a job for you that they probably didn’t want to do in the first place.” She pointed her fork at him for added emphasis.
“Hey, I treat mine great,” he said.
She glared at him suspiciously.
“I’ll have you know that I gave Harry a wonderful bottle of wine today for his anniversary.”
“Yeah?” She suspiciously gazed at him. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because it’s his anniversary.” He looked at her in astonishment.
“Yeah, I get that, but why that bottle of wine?”
He frowned, and then he chuckled. “Because it made me happy?”
She looked at him sideways. “Feels like there’s more to it than that.”
“And here you go being the detective again. Can’t you just leave it as the simple fact that I wanted to give it to him?”
She hesitated and then shrugged. “Since you brought me dinner tonight, I guess I can limit the questioning.”
“I’ll tell you anyway. Caitlyn sent it to me.”
At that, she chewed on her mouthful, as she studied him. He picked up another skewer of meat and eyed it, as if it were a specimen. Or maybe it was Caitlyn he was eyeing. Kate knew of her and knew a bit about that prior relationship of Simon’s but not a whole lot. She wasn’t sure if jealousy was supposed to come into this or if it was a nonissue, but she felt her heart sinking a little bit. That made her realize that, as much as she tried to appear disaffected, he really was affecting her, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. She frowned, as she studied her own plate, for lack of anything to say.
He looked over at her, smiled. “She’s trying to get back into my life, and I’m avoiding it in a big way.”
“Why is that?” She tried to detach her own emotions from this discussion.
“I can’t trust her,” he said.
She stopped, looked at him, and nodded. “I guess that’s a big one for you.”
He looked at her in a challenging way. “Isn’t it for you?”
She stopped, thought about it. “It’s kind of everything, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he said simply. “If you can’t trust people to do the best for you when they can and to not blackmail you or to cheat or to lie or to do all kinds of other shit that Caitlyn has pulled,” he said flatly, “nothing is there. If you can’t close your eyes and trust that you’ll be safe, there’s really nothing left.”
“And yet this is a new phenomenon for you, isn’t it?”