The Yellow River was packed. Being one of the most popular after-work hangouts in Upper Manhattan, it always was. On Friday nights, the crowd of Wall Street bankers and well-paid white-collar workers gathered here for dates and drinks. Conversations about the New York Stock Exchange and the currency market flowed as fluidly as the cocktails.
Ashley drummed her fingers against the wooden table. The Corona was fresh on her tongue, with barely a sip remaining in the glass. Her reflection swam in the residual golden liquid that was the shade of her hair.
The chin-length bob caressed the top of her bare shoulders, the spiky edges scraping her sensitive skin. She’d hoped it would grow out sooner, after she’d impulsively cropped it six months ago as a symbol of independence.
That had been a stupid decision, for now she had to put up with her hair prickling the back of her neck after a run. She was already lax with exercise and it only gave her another excuse to not get sweaty.
A couple in business suits kissed discreetly under the shadow of a flower vase. They looked successful, smart and in possession of well-paying jobs. The kind of job she longed to have. Ashley cast her eyes down, unable to continue watching them.
Turning away, she spotted a tall, dark figure striding towards her.
With his piercing gray eyes and his face proportioned in the golden ratio, nobody would accuse him of being ugly. He was too perfect, though. Ashley didn’t like perfection. It stripped the humanness from a face.
Storm clouds gathered in her belly when he came to a standstill in front of her table.
The stream of radiance from the circular lights overhead illuminated the planes of his face, darkened by a faint stubble. Even the roughness lent by the stubble was just the right amount—not too rugged, not too soft. He turned to her best friend Bella, who, after overdosing on beer, was rambling to Kat about the dog she’d lost when she was eight.
Bella knocked over her margarita in disbelief, coughing, as her eyes captured Mr. Perfect’s face. She tried to get hold of the glass before it flooded the wooden table, but some of it had already made a damp spot on Ashley’s skirt. “Oops.”
“Still defending your title as clumsy Bella?” he shot in his smooth baritone.
Heat pulsed through Ashley’s belly. That kind of sexy voice was one in a million.
“Andrew,” Bella slurred. “You’re really late. I gave up waiting for you an hour ago.”
“Sorry, I had something to do on the way.”
Ashley got a closer look at his skin when he swooped lower. It had the faintest golden tinge. A fading tan. She saw the first trace of human flaw in him—under-eye bags.
“You’ve been working since the day you were born. Take a break.” Bella turned to Ashley and Kat. “Guys, this is Andrew. The number one guy on my teenage hate list.”
He frowned. “You really hold grudges, don’t you?”
“No woman can forgive the guy who embarrassed her in front of her teenage crush.” Bella gave him a light smack on the shoulder. “Sit.”
Andrew inched over to Ashley’s side and occupied the chair adjacent to hers. His jeans scraped against her legs, bared by her skimpy white skirt. Feeling slightly sympathetic when Bella forgot about him and resumed retelling her dead dog’s biography to Kat, Ashley moved closer and introduced herself.
“Hi, I’m Ashley.”
“I’m Andrew,” he said, keeping his tone casual. “You seem like the most sober one here.”
“Don’t know how much longer I’ll be sober.” She crossed her right leg over the left. “Bella told me that you graduated from Columbia last July. I graduated from NYU last year, too.”
His arm carelessly touched her shoulder, which was exposed by her sleeveless top. A calculated move, no doubt.
“What did you major in?”
“Economics,” he said.
He didn’t ask her about what she’d majored in, but she was in a talkative mood today, so she volunteered the information.
“I got my degree in business.”
“That makes us both believers in capitalism.” His tone became friendlier. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Not unless you want to take me home.” Oops. That came out wrong. “Drive me home, I mean. To my house. Because if I drink any more, I won’t be able to be steady on my feet.”
He smiled before passing a cursory glance to Bella and Kat, who were now arguing about something trivial.
“Don’t worry; I wouldn’t leave three inebriated women alone in a bar at night. Especially when one of them happens to be my childhood friend who lured me here for the purpose of driving her back.”
Bella’s aquamarine eyes turned to him for a second and then she got up and decided to buy herself another drink.
Ashley leaned closer to Andrew and took in the woody scent that radiated from his crisp, ironed shirt. It was one of those fragrances that she would describe as ‘classy’. A guy who wore perfume. That turned her on. He wiggled his arm, which was stuck to hers due to the lack of space. Intimacy must be making him uncomfortable.
“I was thinking of getting a Bloody Mary,” she said, deciding to take up his offer of a drink.
“It’s on me.”
He walked up to the counter and she ogled his granite-hard back secretly. Not that she could see too much of it through his shirt, but just the outline promised something. Okay, she might have been too harsh on him in her first appraisal. He was pretty handsome from this angle.
A blonde circled around him, trying to strike up a conversation. She bit her nail, waiting for his reaction. It shouldn’t matter. But she was relieved when he brushed the woman off with a polite smile.
Ashley’s head began to thrum with a vague sense of haziness when he handed her the Bloody Mary. She was dangerously close to going over her alcohol threshold. One more glass and she was going to smash her reputation into tiny fragments by the time this night was over.
Nevertheless, she sipped it and let the intoxication shoot straight to her head.
“So, what are you doing these days?” she asked Andrew, wondering whether he’d gotten a job after graduation.
“A lot of things.” He fingered his phone absently. He didn’t text—which she appreciated. There was nothing more off-putting than a guy who couldn’t pay attention while she talked and there were more than a few of these guys in her generation.
“Such as?”
“Starting up my own business with my classmate.”
“What kind of business?”
“Still figuring that out.” He shrugged, with a smile. “But it’s gonna be big.”
“So, are you working somewhere while you plan this business?”
“No, the business is my focus. I think it’s important to concentrate on one thing if you want to get anywhere. Running my own company is what I’ve always wanted to do.”
“What about money?”
He couldn’t be making a lot of money off something that wasn’t even off the ground yet.
“It’ll come. I’m not thinking too much about it. I’m in business to create something, not make money.”
“That’s brave.” She felt the need to drink in order to calm the anxiety that she was feeling for his future. She was the kind of girl who couldn’t tolerate one second of uncertainty in her life and here was somebody who was ready to gamble away the security of a job that a Columbia degree could buy for a dream.
“Courage is the only capital a startup needs,” he mused. “But we plan to get some liquid capital soon.”
The rationalist in her wondered who would lend to a guy like him. Some real poker player that would be.
“Haven’t you thought about getting a job? I mean, you graduated from Columbia. I’m sure a lot of companies would love to hire you.”
“I don’t want to work for someone.” There was a hard edge to his tone. She sensed some history there.
“Have you tried?”
“Yeah, and it’s not something I’d like to repeat. But I assume you’re looking for a job?”
His insight hit the bull’s-eye. “Did I sound that desperate?”
A slight upward curve of his lips hinted at his amusement. “No, but I’ll take that as a sign that your job search isn’t going too well.”
It wasn’t her fault that her frustration crept onto her face whenever she talked of her job hunt. She’d been applying to every job she could find for six months now, and she had not obtained a single interview to date. Trying to tap into her limited network had not yielded anything either.
Being jobless in this economy was petrifying. Especially after she’d slaved to get a degree, hoping it would provide her the secure future she had envisioned for herself. Unlike Bella, a graduate degree was out of question for her—she had neither the stamina nor the will to take on more debt. She wanted to enter the real world. Get a job. Make money.
Being an optimist, she was still hanging on to the belief that her dream job would come her way. She was living with Kat while waiting for that elusive first interview, since her parents’ home was in Greenport, a fishing town a hundred miles to the east of New York City.
“I can hire you. You wanna work for me?” The hint of playfulness in his eyes caught her by surprise.
“Didn’t you say you were still mulling over which business to start?”
“We’re still trying to find our business model, but the company’s already a year old. We inked it last year.” There was an unmistakable hint of pride on his face. A quarter of new businesses failed in their first year, so crossing that hurdle must mean a lot to him.
Her contempt morphed into admiration. Part of that might have to do with her bias for action-oriented, initiative-taking guys.
“You managed to grow a business while keeping up with the course load for final year? That’s impressive.” Another stream of red liquid eased down her alcohol-soaked throat. “Columbia guys are a different grade, I guess.”
“It’s easy to find time to do something you love.”
He sounded like a successful person already. Didn’t they all say the same thing he’d said? Do what you love, follow your passion.
She found that every bit as fascinating as the unusual gray hue of his eyes.
The veins in his neck strained against his taut skin when he became aware of her gaze on him. She wet her mouth with some more Bloody Mary. If something had to happen tonight, it wasn’t going to happen until she was drunk.
“To be fair, though, I should give you an honest description of the job and the company. Our balance sheets are in the red as of now and will likely remain so for the next two years, at least. There’s always too much work and not a very clear demarcation of roles. The only thing I look for in employees is the willingness to work sixteen-hour days and handle anything. Up for it?”
The pull of his job offer was strong, and so was the pull of what was starting to sizzle between them. She wouldn’t mind working for a startup. She wouldn’t mind working for someone like him. He’d captivated her with his charisma already. And they’d been talking for—she looked at her watch—only an hour.
“You know, Andrew, you can pretend to be all nice and grown-up now, but I still remember the sandbox incident from when we were ten…” Bella ranted, her volume rising in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol in her bloodstream.
“I think it’s time you called it a day. Bella is going to start dishing out the unsavory details of my life any minute now,” Andrew said to Ashley.
Ashley tried to get Bella to let go of her glass and stand up. Andrew was right. More time here couldn’t be good for any of their livers.
“Come on, Bella. Let’s go home.”
“I don’t want to.”
Kat threaded her spindly arm around Bella’s neck and both of them tottered towards the exit. Ashley gathered her shiny silver purse into her arm and tried to catch up.
“Let’s get a cab,” Kat said, sounding very drunk.
“I’ll drop you back, since you made me come all this way.” Andrew shoved his hands into his pockets, looking for his car keys.
“No, Bella and I aren’t going home. The night is young,” Kat mumbled. “And there is this place I still have to check out.”
“Whatever place it is, I’m sure they are closed by now. It’s past two already.”
“This place is open twenty-four seven.”
“The only place that’s open twenty-four seven is CVS.”
Kat snorted. “You’ve never lived the night life, have you? That’s why you’re so unimaginative.”
Bella moved quickly and hailed a cab, which was a pretty mean feat since this was New York city, where cab shortages were chronic. Bella and Kat got in, but before Ashley could get in too, Kat shut the door, let out a scream and drove off.
“Bella! Kat!” Ashley called after the departed cab. When the red taillights became part of the dark horizon, she let out a sigh. “You can’t leave me alone here.” She stomped her stilettos on the hard cement in frustration. “Really!”
“Come on, I’ll drop you back. I owe you a ride after buying you the drink anyway.”
The thought of him and her in his car didn’t imbue her with comfort. She was starting to find him… hot. Proximity and heat led to only one thing—explosions. And explosions and alcohol were not the best of buddies. But she couldn’t refuse at this point, or she’d have to stay here all night.
Gingerly, she nodded.
“My car’s a short walk from here.”
“I’m sorry for your bad evening. You came out here expecting a drink and some fun, but ended up babysitting three drunk women instead.”
“That’s a better bargain than a drink.” He winked.
Not when you didn’t even get laid. If she was him, she would have been disappointed.
Lost in thought, she almost lost her balance. An unsteady mind did not go well with high heels.
Andrew’s arm came around her in a protective embrace. Her skin buzzed where his jacket touched her. Her heart picked up pace. There was something comforting about being protected by him.
“New York’s dangerous at night,” he said, when they passed a gangster on the street.
“It’s also incredibly stunning.”
“Agreed.” He grinned, looking at the sky.
They paused a minute on the sidewalk. A brilliant view of the Manhattan skyline chopped up the inky black horizon. It was perfect, like a picture postcard.
He opened the door of his modest white Accent for her. The beige vinyl seat cushioned her spine. She inhaled. The scent in here was the same as the one on him.
She pulled the seatbelt over her chest. It cut into the valley of her breasts, pushing them out to the sides. Andrew turned the keys, causing the engine to roar. The first spark of ignition made the inside of the car vibrate.
“How many employees do you have in your company?” she enquired. “I’d hate to work in a company where I’m the third employee.”
He chuckled. “You don’t have to worry about that. We have fifteen full-time staff. You can be number sixteen.”
Double digits. That was a good sign.
“I’m seriously considering your offer.” Any job was a good job in a depressed economy. “What’s the company called?”
“Dracosys.”
She’d look it up tonight. She wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise.
“Does that name have a meaning?”
“It’s a portmanteau of ‘dragon’ and ‘systems.’ My business partner has a thing for dragons. He wants the company to be the dragon of the industry—the fire-breathing monster every other company is terrified of. And we’re in the business of computer systems, so Dracosys.”
She laughed, but he didn’t.
When they stopped at a red light she observed his still profile against the dark sky with a full moon. So beautiful. So devastatingly beautiful.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” She regretted it the minute the impulsive words left her. He’d be her boss if she ended up working for him.
Thankfully, he didn’t take offense. “No, I don’t.” Then after a pause, he added, “Why do you want to know?”
Something about him had been clawing at her since she’d laid eyes on his face. He was magnetic. She wanted to know more about him. It was odd to feel such a pure, unadulterated curiosity for a man she’d just met.
“I’m interested in that position, more than any other at your company.” She had no control over what rubbish she was spouting, nor over her intense feelings for him.
He didn’t move a muscle.
“Shocked?” she asked, trying to think up of a joke that would relieve the pressure. She was no expert at extricating herself from weird and embarrassing situations.
His answer defused the tension much more efficiently than any half-baked joke could have. “Yes, but I like direct women.”
His eyes paced the length of her from her blonde hair to the toenails painted in neon pink peeking out from the open wedges. She had left nothing to his imagination, with her figure-hugging silver top and white miniskirt.
“You know I’m being crazy, right? I’m usually not this… uninhibited.”
“Keep being crazy. I like where this is going.” His eyes were on the road, though his mind was definitely on her.
“It’s going to Kat’s apartment.” That was where it was going.
“Yep. And here we are. Kat’s apartment.” He said it in a matter-of-fact way and she had to wonder if the chemistry from a second ago had been a mirage.
He pulled up at the corner of the street where the apartment building was, and penetrated her with his gaze, drawing out all the audacity that had lain dormant in her since sixteen.
Being the object of his smoky gaze made her blood rush faster. He had eyes to die for—heavy-lidded, mysterious and utterly delicious.
His lips were pursed so tight that she wanted to open them up. Lick them and then dive into this interesting stranger she had met. Ashley leaned closer to him, until her eyelashes fanned his jaw.
“You’re a risk-taker, aren’t you?” she asked, tilting her head upward. “Wanna take a risk tonight?”
“Depends on the return.” The coldness of the gray vanished. She had never thought of gray as a warm color, but now she did.
His body language was clear. He was up for this. Their eyes met and confirmed their intentions.
Then her tongue darted to his lips, licking along the outline of them. He had a warm mouth, smooth enough to make her slide easy, yet rough enough to make it exciting. When she relented, he drove his lips into hers and suckled them, not even allowing her a breathing break.
Rapture stung her lips. Andrew probed into her, conquering her mouth with his and making her squirm with emotions she couldn’t control. The teasing of his tongue tantalized her lips. She clenched her groin and pulled her legs together to contain the currents that were rocking her lower half.
The fragrance of him mingled with the heat of their kiss, setting her nerves on fire. His hands roamed free over her shoulders, exploring her skin. He grabbed her thighs and kneaded the flesh with his hands while bombarding her tongue with a sensory explosion.
“Want to come in?” she asked.
All she knew about him was that he was a good driver. Yet she wanted to sleep with him. When had she become so reckless?
At least you know his name and what he does.
“I don’t do drunk girls. We’ll have to wait till you’re sober.” He had more sense than her, which was always a nice quality for a man to have. “You might feel differently about this night tomorrow. And then you’ll blame me for having taken advantage of you.”
She didn’t argue. It was the first time in her life she had kissed someone so impulsively. And the first time she had felt so satiated with just a kiss.
“I’ll see you again, though, won’t I?” she asked. She tried to find the chit of paper with her number in her purse, which she’d saved, in case a lucky encounter like this happened.
“Not unless you’re up for midnight dates in my office. I’m fully invested in my business right now. It’s a twenty-four seven thing for me.”
Dates in the office sounded romantic, in a corporate sort of way. It would be a new experience, if nothing else. She’d identified the type of guy he was—workaholic, ambitious and focused—the minute she’d met him. She was attracted to him precisely for that reason—he was what she was not.
Andrew let out a sigh. “I’m sorry if I led you on. I was just acting on the attraction I felt for you. My first commitment is to Dracosys. You’ll have to live with that if we continue seeing each other. Can you?”
“I find your dedication very admirable. And dates in the office sound incredibly kinky.” She licked her lips.
That got his eyebrows up. “You’re the first girl who’s said that to me.” His finger trailed over her cheek. “Think about it carefully.”
In response she bit his bottom lip. When she was sober, she was definitely going to regret this move.
“Here’s my number.” She shoved it into his jeans pocket, getting a good feel of his sinewy limbs in the process.
“I’ll text you mine. You know, if you change your mind tomorrow, you can always tell me. I’ve made more than my share of stupid mistakes after getting drunk.”
She freed herself from the seatbelt and opened the car door.
“I am a steadfast woman.” She placed one high heel on the sidewalk “Once I’ve made up my mind, that’s it.”
“You’re ticking more and more boxes on my perfect girl list.”
“You have a list? I thought only women made lists like that.”
“My list is mental,” he said. “And I keep forgetting half the qualities on it, which defeats the whole purpose of a list.”
She shut the door and waved to him, walking to her apartment. He waited until he saw her enter the building before zooming off.
Touching her lips, which were still moist from the kiss, she couldn’t help but feel exhilarated. There was something about him. Something about Andrew Smith that sent every atom inside her into a nuclear explosion.
Shaking her head, she keyed in the code to get the apartment door to open.
What a crazy night.
