Page 54 of Stay With Me

And in April, the time was right.

So he strode into his bank and strode out with a loan, which he took immediately to the office of a skyscraper downtown, and leased the space on the top floor.

With a few sweeps of a pen, San Jac’s was born. Three hundred sixty degrees of quintessentially Austin views, located in the heart of the city, right on San Jacinto Street, from which it derived its name.

Then, everything went from zero to sixty in two point five seconds.

The following four months were such a blur that he would have forgotten everything that had happened if he didn’t have it all meticulously recorded in his bookkeeping.

Opening night was set for August twenty-second and there would be a preopening cocktail reception the night before, mostly for members of the press and various big wigs from around the city, a few from Dallas and Houston. A perfect assortment of attendees to generate a buzz and underscore Nick’s status as a hot, young entrepreneur.

And every hot, young entrepreneur needs a hot, young woman on his arm while he’s schmoozing on his big night so once the date was nailed down he called Sammie to make sure she was free that evening.

“Hey you,” she answered with a smile in her voice. “How’s your day going?”

“Pretty great. I’m on my way to meet with the interior designer. I’ll be mulling over table linens and china. That should be exciting.”

He chuckled and then noticed Sammie was oddly quiet for a moment.

“Sammie? You still there?”

“You’re meeting with her right now?” Sammie asked, not sounding particularly amused. “It’s five p.m.”

He groaned. “I know. And traffic seems to be worse than usual for a Friday.”

“Honey.” She paused. “We were supposed to have dinner at six. At the place on the lake.”

Nick slapped a palm over his forehead.

Damn it.

He groaned again. “Oh no, sweetheart, I’m sorry. It totally slipped my mind.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’ll tell you what,” he offered. “I’ll make sure this doesn’t go past seven and then we’ll go to that tapas place.”

She loves the tapas place,he thought, knowing this would save him from being in the doghouse.

“Really?” she replied sounding pleased.

“Promise. And then you get to pick the movie tonight.”

“Then we’ll be watching the sappiest romantic tear-jerker in my DVD collection.”

“Anything you want,” he assured her. “And I won’t even make comments about the cheesy dialogue.”

She laughed. “Yeah right.”

“I mean I’ll try.”

She laughed again. “We’ll see about that. I’ll plan to meet you at around seven-thirty?”

“Yeah, that’ll be plenty of time.”

“Sounds good.”

“Oh wait, Sammie,” he interjected, remembering the reason for his call. “What do you have going on August twenty-first?”