By our third game, my shoulder ached, and the bloodlust in Sophia’s eyes turned into a satisfied simmer. We place fourth overall in the tournament. She doesn’t want to stay for the after-tournament drinks, or to collect our prize, and I couldn’t agree with that decision more.
We won against her ex-husband, and that was victory enough. So we leave the club together. The early September air is still warm but lacks the sting of heat the summer had carried. I won’t miss that.
“That was such a rush,” she says as we start to walk downtown. “I feel like I’ve just graduated high school, and won the lottery, and maybe, it’s also Christmas morning and I’m eight years old.”
I laugh. “I take it you’re feeling good?”
“Absolutely amazing. I think I could do anything right now,” she says, her ponytail bouncing. She’s thrown a sweater on, but she’s still bare-legged beneath it, long legs easily keeping up alongside mine in the afternoon sun. “God, I love that sport.”
“Did you start playing recently?”
“A few years ago,” she says. Then she laughs. “Percy got me into it, but then he started to hate how seriously I took it. I found a great trainer and started spending two evenings a week with her, and he thought that was too much. You know, on top of my incredibly packed and unnecessary work schedule.”
“Your work schedule?” I murmur.
She shakes her head. “Yeah. But it doesn’t matter, ultimately. Thank you for making it here and for being on my team.”
I nod and think about the unmistakable anger written in every line of her ex-husband’s body. “Looks like he took it pretty seriously back on the court.”
“He hated seeing you there with me, I think,” she says. Then, she gives me a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I don’t think it’s personal or anything.”
I chuckle. “Percy Browne hating me,” I say, “doesn’t feel like much of a problem.”
“No, I don’t suppose it would. So you played growing up?” she asks. “What was your childhood like?”
“Interesting question,” I say, and she chuckles again. I don’t think she’s laughed this much around me before. It must be the adrenaline, the excitement. The thrill of victory.
“Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious,” she says. “So, you grew up playing tennis with a trainer?”
“Yes. My parents made my brother and me try a bunch of different sports to see if we had a natural aptitude for any of them.”
“Let me guess. You were great at team sports, and he did better at solo ones?”
“Yes,” I admit.
She smiles. “But you weren’t just any old team player, no—you preferred the role of team captain. Am I right?”
I look at her for a long moment.
“What?” she asks. “Am I off base?”
“No, you’re a little too spot-on.”
She chuckles. “Okay, so you played a lot of sports. Was winning important in your family?”
“At times,” I say. “It depended on the sport and the time. What mattered to my parents was that we always gave a hundred and ten percent to whatever we chose to pursue. Anything less wasn’t acceptable.”
“I can imagine that,” she says. “Your father must have been busy while you were growing up. He was the head of the Winter Corporation before you, right?”
I tug at the rounded collar of my T-shirt. “Yes,” I say. “He was. But he wasn’t as involved as my grandfather was before him, or like I am now.”
“No?”
“No,” I say. There’s no need to elaborate on that. My father is who he is, a man with good stewardship skills but no vision. Life happened, and he became the CEO; and when life allowed him to, he stepped down.
But I find, to my surprise, that I want to tell her more.
“My aunt was actually supposed to take over after my grandfather,” I say.
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. She was his eldest kid, and she had a real knack for the business,” I say, and then I chuckle. “You know, she drew up these wild expansion plans for the hotel when she was fourteen and presented them to my grandfather one evening. They were so unrealistic that it became a running anecdote in the family. Rooftop pools and underground valet parking in every hotel. But it showed spirit. It was assumed she would be the one to inherit.”
“Wow,” Sophia says, and then her voice softens. “What happened?”
“She died at thirty-six while she was working as my grandfather’s right-hand woman at the company.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Isaac.”
I had known her only a little, being a small kid when she passed, but her story is so ingrained in my family that it’s like she’s a living legend. “My father was my grandfather’s only other child. He took the job.”
Her voice turns curious and a tad cautious. “Was there ever talk of hiring someone else? The family doesn’t technically have to run it, right? You could just be on the board.”
My lips twist into a half smile. “People suggested it, yes, and my grandfather threw them out of the room when they did.”
“Oh.”
“He was a man of hard-held beliefs.”
“Did he expect you to present your ideas to him, too? When you were fourteen?”
“No,” I say. “But I did it, anyway, when I was sixteen.”
There’s a smile in her voice. “I can almost picture that. Did you impress him?”
“Mine were less visionary,” I admit. “More numbers-based. But I think he enjoyed them. He was less impressed and more… content. Happy that the family legacy would continue, and that my generation wouldn’t be the one to sell out.”
Sophia gives a slow nod. She doesn’t say anything, and I’m glad for that, too. Because I can hear how it sounds when it’s spoken out loud.
“Is he still alive?” she asks.
“He died almost a decade ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “He sounds like an extraordinary man.”
He had been. And as blasphemous as it is to think, it’s easier now that he’s gone—when he’s a legacy to live up to rather than a difficult person to appease. It had been hard to deal with his opinions when he visited the Winter Hotel in his eighties, and hard to handle the phone calls when he was disappointed with some aspect or another.
Now I can honor him and the generation that laid the groundwork before him without being beholden to them all.
But it’s not a thought I’ve ever spoken aloud.
“Tell me about your family,” I say. “How proud are they of your career in the big city?”
Sophia doesn’t seem to mind the abrupt change of topic. “Not very. No, that’s unfair of me. I think they are, but they don’t understand it or why it means so much to me.”
“Right,” I say. “Seeing as they’re trying to get you to move home and marry your high school sweetheart and all.”
“Gosh, yes. Apparently, the cure to a case of post-divorce blues is a solid few months living in my childhood bedroom.”
“With a rebound and some family time,” I say.
“Exactly,” she says. “They mean well, but leaving New York… maybe that’s the right move for me. But I can’t see it yet, anyway.”
I make a low humming sound. She feels like the city. Pulsing with energy, sharp and smart, and always well-dressed, with a hunger that’s clear in her eyes whenever we talk shop.
“The city would be worse off if you left,” I say.
She’s quiet for a long moment, and when she speaks again, the words are unexpected. “There’s a place up this road that makes the best ramen,” she says. “Do you want to grab some? I’m starving.”
I know what my answer should be.
But I can’t bring myself to say it, not just yet.
“I live on this block, so we can eat at my place. But I understand,” she says, “if you want to go home. You just got back from an overseas trip, after all.”
So I did, and just in time. Perhaps that’s why I have no resolve. The last of it slips away, not even leaving rings on the water in its wake. “I’ll come with you.”
We end up in the short line for ramen. She looks at me over her shoulder once, and then again, longer this time.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says with a smile. “It’s just… you’re here. It feels like I’m living in a parallel universe. You, in casual clothing, here—at my ramen place.”
“Well, I don’t always wear a suit.”
“You know, somehow, I knew that was true intellectually, but I didn’t really believe it until today.”
That makes me smile. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, I’m not disappointed,” she says. We’re close, standing in line like this, and my eyes flick to her lips. I know exactly how they feel against mine.
“The miso ramen is the best one,” she murmurs. “It’s not made by a Michelin Star chef, of course, but it’s… good.”
I fight the urge to brush a tendril of hair back from her forehead. “I trust you.”
We order, pay, and head to her apartment. The building is anonymous and simple, but it looks recently renovated, complete with a double-code system for entry.
“My place is pretty bare,” she says apologetically. “And I hope you’re not allergic to cats.”
“I’m not,” I say, and I wouldn’t turn around now, even if I was.
As if I even could at this point.
Her apartment is bright and neutral. It’s neat, but not clinically so, and little parts of her are sprinkled across the surfaces. It’s there in the sweater hung over the back of a kitchen chair and in the book tossed on the sofa with a bookmark sprouting from its pages.
She sets the takeout down on the kitchen counter. “It’s a bit messy, I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s not. You have a lovely place.”
She reaches up to tighten her ponytail, and her skirt rides up another inch. “Thanks. I figured Milo would come and say hello, but he’s probably hiding. I haven’t had a lot of visitors since I got him, you know. He’s not used to company.”
“Makes sense,” I say. But all I hear is the implication that she isn’t seeing anyone, not even casually.
This feels like the evening we spent in the penthouse suite when I sat opposite her, with her wet hair and bright eyes, sharing a drink and making conversation. Behind a closed door, the veil of professionalism melts away, and it’s just the two of us. It makes it too easy to forget myself.
Only this is worse than the hotel because there are no reminders of work here. She’s everywhere in this apartment.
“Hungry?” she asks.
“Starving,” I say. We eat at her kitchen table. It’s small, and beneath it, our knees brush against one another. The silence feels heavy. Not because it’s uncomfortable but because it’s not, and there’s something even more significant about that.
I clear my throat. “How was your marriage?”
She pauses, chopsticks in hand. “Where did that come from?”
I take another bite to gather my thoughts. Sleep deprivation, exercise, the desire to crush her ex into a pulp… and now this—prolonged exposure to her—has thrown me off-balance. I’ve lost all sense of propriety. “You mentioned that he didn’t like your career. I’m curious.”
“He didn’t. Well, he did in the beginning, but the way he was raised made itself known soon enough.”
I frown. “How so?”
“His mother is very… traditional,” she says. “She was a stay-at-home mom; but also a homemaker, a philanthropist, on the school board, organized charities, and ran three households. So, I think he expected the role of wife to be a full-time job.”
“I see,” I say, because I do. She had a hunger for a career, for advancement, and for things bigger than a country club social ladder.
“I love my job,” she says, “and I think I’m good at it. It took me years and a degree to get to where I am, and to think I would give all that up? He wasn’t planning on giving up his golf or squash or ski trips with his friends, or his job, for that matter, even if he never liked it that much.”
Fuck, I think. I’m in so much deeper than I thought. Miles deep, with no way out, because every word she says rings true for me as well.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to get so heated.”
“It’s a topic worth getting heated about.”
“He’s not,” she says, and takes a big bite of her ramen. “Don’t think I won’t ask you about your past relationship some day.”
I lean back in the chair with a groan. “Must you?”
“Yes,” she says. “That’s how you and I work. We’re strictly quid pro quo.”
“I can think of a lot more fun things to apply that to.”
Her eyes flick to mine. The innuendo just slipped out, and it hangs in the air between us. “Maybe so…,” she says, “but that doesn’t get you out of this.”
“Maybe not today,” I say. “But I’ll answer your questions eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“Yes. Let’s put a pin in that topic.”
Her eyebrows rise. “How many business negotiations have you been in where you’ve used exactly those words?”
I grin. “A few.”
“Fine, eventually. But I have an excellent memory.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“You know,” she says, raising her chopsticks high, “you’re more interesting than I think you give yourself credit for. I can’t think of a better man to fake date.”
I snort. “Well, that’s a compliment I’ve never gotten before.”
That makes her laugh, and fuck, I should say it now. That our mutually beneficial fake dating needs to come to an end. It’s run its course, and I can’t have these situations happen again and again. The temptation is too much.
And yet, the words won’t come.
When we’re done, she grabs my bowl and hers, walking to the sink. My eyes track the short skirt and her bobbing ponytail, the graceful lines and the fierceness that radiates from her.
I shift my focus to the clock on the wall instead. The second hand ticks with steady, unyielding movements.
Time stops for no one.
“I should leave,” I say.
She takes a deep breath. “There’s something I’d like to say first, though, if that’s all right.”
“Yes?”
“I know you said never to apologize for kissing you, and you also said that you always mean what you say. But I feel like I should apologize, anyway. I need to make sure that I haven’t… broken anything or messed up what we have going on here—being the pretend dates. Or worse, injured our professional relationship. I’m sorry, Isaac.”
She’s looking at me with caution and hope, the brilliantly blue eyes clear with honesty. I can’t remember the last time I was close with someone who spoke their thoughts and feelings this freely.
My hand clenches into a fist at my side. “I don’t think we should do it again, even if it would help the pretense.”
Her smile disappears. “Of course! It’s probably for the best. I’m sorry I ever did, really, and I hope you don’t feel like I took—”
“No, Sophia… Don’t,” I say with a sigh. “The problem is that I liked it too much. More than I should.”
Her face goes perfectly blank. “Oh.”
I get up from her kitchen table. She’s only a few steps away. But so is her front door. “I don’t mix business with pleasure,” I say.
“Well,” she says softly. “I don’t date Upper East Side men.”
There’s a long, heated silence between us. I’ve got one foot in either direction, and she’s there, leaning against her fridge, looking painfully beautiful and present.
“I have leftover tiramisu in the fridge,” she says. “Want to stay for dessert?”
It takes me a moment to nod, just once, and she sighs. Like she’s relieved. The sound travels through my body, so when she turns around, when she takes out the box from the fridge and sets it down on the counter, I cross the distance between us.
It’s impossible not to.
I look over her shoulder, down at the dessert in a takeout container, and feel the softness of her ponytail brush against my neck. Her hands fall flat on the counter. “Oh,” she says again. And just as slowly as I’d come up behind her, she leans back against me.
“I liked kissing you, too,” she murmurs. “More than I should’ve.”
The long line of her neck is right in front of me, bared by her ponytail. I lean down and touch my lips to the skin. Once, twice, following the column up toward her jaw.
“I’m sweaty,” she murmurs.
I smile against her skin. And I’m not? The idea of breaking this magic spell because of something so mundane feels like heresy.
“So am I,” I say against her skin. She exhales shakily, her head dropping back to rest against my shoulder.
“Wow,” she breathes.
My hands wrap around the curve of her waist, my fingers stretching to find the press of her hipbones through the tennis skirt. Just this, I think. Just let me have this moment with her.
Sophia lets me explore her neck, lets me listen to her breathing becoming rougher. And I’m fine to do just that, to stay like this, but she has never been anything but an equal partner in the games we’ve played.
She turns in my arms. “Hi,” she whispers. Her lips are only inches from mine, and all the reasons why I shouldn’t do this feel like driftwood against her current.
“I can only do things a hundred and ten percent,” I say. Maybe it’s a warning. Maybe it’s a question. My hands tighten on the smooth skin of her thighs.
Her lips lift in a smile. “I remember.”
I kiss her.
Surrendering to the moment feels like the easiest thing I’ve done all week. Sinking into Sophia is effortless.
She kisses me back, lips soft and open, and achingly smooth. Her hands find my shoulders and then my hair, and her tugging sends a ripple of sensation through my body. I kiss her the way I’ve wanted to since the beginning. The way kissing her should be done, in private and thoroughly, not like our kisses in front of others. Those had been brief and performative.
This? It’s just for us.
I lift my head. “I’m not a math teacher,” I say. “Don’t think I ever will be.”
“Good thing I’m not ready to date again, anyway.”
“Mmm, yes. There are so many reasons why we’d never work.” I look down at her legs, splayed on either side of me. The short tennis skirt has risen up along her tanned thighs. My hands grip them of their own accord, and I lift her up, setting her on the counter.
“Yes,” she murmurs. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun together.”
Have fun together. My fingers dig into the soft flesh of her thighs, and I look down, focusing on the skin rather than the soft mouth in front of me. “I should at least buy you dinner first.”
She chuckles. It’s a breathless sound, and something about it, about Sophia unbound like this, makes my chest ache. Her bedroom is only a few strides away. It would be easy, so damnably easy, to ruin it all.
“Well, you bought me ramen,” she says and kisses me. Her arms tighten around my neck, the edge of the counter digs into my lower stomach, and I yearn to be closer still. Her mouth is warm and familiar, and fuck if I don’t want to do all kinds of things I know I shouldn’t. My fingers inch the skirt upwards, sweeping across the smooth skin of her thighs.
But then, I encounter tight fabric.
I look down. “You have shorts on?”
“Yes,” she says with a little laugh. “They’re built-ins.”
“Clever,” I say and wrap my hands around the outside of her thighs, minishorts and all. “Did you see us doing this?”
“Definitely not.” She braces her knees on either side of my hips. With her hair up, there’s nothing to distract from the beauty of her features. I can’t look away from the freckles and the fierce eyes and the soft mouth. “Not complaining about it though,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. “High praise.”
She chuckles. “I’ve never been very good at giving praise. I’m much better at constructive criticism.”
“Really?” I say. Conversation is good—conversation distracts. “The members of your team must love you as a boss.”
She knees my side. “Hey, I make it a point to only work with people who like clear communication.”
“You’ll have to tell me where you find them,” I say.
Her hand slips beneath the collar of my T-shirt, and warm fingers brush over my shoulder. “Well, I have two team members. How many employees do you have?”
“Don’t know the latest count.” I rest my head against her neck and take a deep breath. “Sophia…”
“You think too much,” she murmurs. “We both do.”
“I’m not thinking at all right now,” I say and kiss her again. It’s deeper this time, longer, and I sink into her loveliness. I slide one of her sleeves off her shoulder, revealing tanned skin and the harsh line of a sports bra strap. The elastic looks almost bruising.
“Wow. You’re very…”
“Locked in?” she says with a smile. “I know. I dressed to win.”
“And win you did,” I murmur. Her skin beneath my hands is a live wire I can’t stop touching, electrifying my entire body.
“Come,” she says and slides off the kitchen counter. Hips to hips, and chest to chest.
“Come where?”
“We should shower,” she says and backs away from me. There’s a crooked smile on her face that speaks of recklessness and confidence, of pleasure to come, and intimacies to be shared.
I close my eyes. “Sophia,” I mutter.
But she reaches for the hem of her top anyway.
