Page 92 of The Business of Love Box Set 1: Books 1 - 4

JACKSON

“ T he construction will be done in another couple of weeks,” I told the twenty-something-year-old I was interviewing. He had a head of unruly black hair and glasses with lenses so thick they made his eyes appear to be the size of golf balls.

His name was Drew and he’d arrived to his job interview fifteen minutes early, as most responsible candidates did.

I was in need of an assistant now that my business was expanding, and my New York apartment was still a mess, so I’d opted to have the interviews at my soon-to-be office instead.

I enjoyed being able to walk around and picture what my everyday workday would look like in my mind’s eye.

“It looks like it’ll be a nice place,” Drew said. “What used to be here?”

“Nail salon.” I tapped the side of my nose. “Sometimes, I can still smell the chemicals.”

Drew shrugged. “Smells fine to me. Like sawdust and drywall.”

We stopped at the open archway of the room that would be my personal office.

It had no door, not yet anyway, so we stepped through and I invited him to sit in one of the two old dining-room-style chairs.

I was working with what I had at the moment, and these had been left behind in the break room at the nail salon before my construction crew took over.

They would do for now.

“So tell me why you want this job, Drew.”

Drew shifted a little nervously in his chair.

He wasn’t a young man with presence. He was one of those guys who kind of blended into the background.

I suspected he was a little shy, but that wasn’t a dealbreaker for me.

He had to be personable and have good intuition.

Those two things were crucial. And he couldn’t be above running food errands every now and then.

Some days required pulling long hours, and as Hailey was always first to point out, I had a tendency to spiral toward “hangriness” if I didn’t fuel my body on those long days.

I had never and would never utter that cursed word in front of another soul, other than Hailey.

It didn’t bode well for a grown man to rub his belly and complain about hunger pangs while lashing out at innocent bystanders for looking at him funny.

Hailey. I missed her. God, I missed her.

I missed her goofy laugh and the way she always peered at me out of the corner of her eyes like she was simultaneously judging and admiring me.

I missed the smell of her shampoo when I took her out for evening drives.

I missed her tough love, coffee visits, movie nights, yard sale weekend adventures—all of it.

And it hadn’t even been three full weeks yet.

I tore my thoughts from Hailey when I realized Drew had started answering my question and I’d zoned out.

“I find satisfaction in being useful to a person or a project,” Drew said.

“I’m motivated by work with clear, distinct markers for success.

It helps me be able to look back and see what I accomplished.

I have a tendency to feel like I’m adrift at sea if that part of my work is lacking and I don’t think that would be an issue here.

What better way to see success with your own eyes than to see two people coming together in love? ”

“How…” I trailed off and tried to find the right word. Rehearsed? Planned? Kiss ass-y? “Thoughtful.”

Drew smiled and mentally patted himself on the back for impressing the boss man in a half-renovated old nail salon. “Thank you. I think you and I would be a good fit, too.”

“What makes you say that?”

“We click, man. You’re new to New York and so am I. I could help you run your empire and we could learn the streets together.”

It took a good deal of effort not to let my eyebrow arch like it so desperately wanted to.

Learn the streets together?

For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if he was trying to impress me or trying to seal his fate that he would not get the job.

Drew was the eleventh person I’d interviewed since I moved to the Big Apple and he was just as disenchanting as the others. He didn’t have that special something I was looking for. What was that special something? Well, it beat the shit out of me. But Drew definitely didn’t have it.

We spent the next fifteen minutes covering generic questions I didn’t care to hear the answers to. Drew was pleasant enough and I shook his hand when we stopped outside the open front doors. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and told me he was looking forward to hearing from me.

“I’ll let you know sometime next week how things are looking,” I said.

“I appreciate that. Have a good day, Mr. Smithe!” Drew waved, turned away from me, and walked with a chipper pep in his step down the block.

I felt a little bad for not considering him for the position but I knew it wouldn’t work. I needed someone to keep me on top of things, who wasn’t afraid to warn me if I was dropping the ball. A good kick in the ass was necessary sometimes.

Hailey had always been good at that.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Why couldn’t I get her out of my head? I needed to just bite the bullet and set her up with Ambrose. I hadn’t mentioned anything further to him about the girl I suspected would work for him, and even though I was in denial, I knew I was getting cold feet about setting him up with Hailey.

She wasn’t mine to protect. Ambrose was a good guy. They’d probably hit it off.

That’s the scary part.

I mentally kicked myself.

Since when was I a possessive asshat who wanted his best friend to stay single for his own comfort?

“Fuck it,” I said. I fished my phone out of my pocket and messaged Ambrose, asking if he was free on Wednesday evening.

He replied right away like I knew he would.

Serious men always did. He told me he was free, so I shot a message to Hailey—my own feelings about it be damned—telling her there was a great guy who wanted to meet up with her on Wednesday.

She didn’t message back right away.

I sighed. Our friendship hadn’t been the same since I left and I was worried about the emotional distance growing between us.

Emotional distance, I scoffed at myself. You’re starting to handle yourself like you handle your clients.

I knew just the right way to try to make it up to Hailey. She’d probably already burned through that W. Parker book she lifted from my bookshelf before I moved and she was always itching to dig into another one.

So I called my best W. Parker source.

My sister answered after a few rings. There were birds chirping in the background and I knew my sister was at the resort. “Hey, Jack. What’s up?”

“You got a minute?”

“I’m actually on my lunch break. Good timing. What do you want? If you’re calling to ask for the guest list to get the name of that girl you ran into when you were here, you’re barking up the wrong tree. You know I’ll never share client information.”

“I’m not calling about the girl. Don’t get your morals in a bunch.”

Katie made an unimpressed sound in the back of her throat. “What do you want then?”

“I was wondering if you could get your hands on some new W. Parker books. I want to send some copies to Hailey. Pretty sure she’s hit the bottom of her reading pile and—”

“You want to send her some to compensate for how guilty you feel about leaving her behind?”

I frowned. “No.”

“Uh huh. Sure. Lucky for you, I have four signed books with Hailey’s postage already on the envelope.”

I didn’t know how my sister pulled it off, but she did. W. Parker was a well known and successful romance writer with an elusive pen name that allowed him—or her—to hide behind the anonymity of it. Nobody knew whether W. Parker was a man or a woman, let alone any personal details about them.

But my twin sister did.

Apparently, the writer spent a lot of time at her resort hunkered down in a nice, quiet suite. Katie claimed it was a great place for weekly writing retreats because there weren’t many distractions and the accommodations were still luxurious and it wasn’t a long flight to get to it.

I’d been trying to get more information out of her about the writer for years but she’d never bend. They had an unspoken agreement and she was sworn to secrecy.

“What does this mysterious W. Parker give you to keep you so quiet anyway?”

Katie laughed. “Isn’t it obvious? Free signed books, Jack. That’s more than enough to buy my loyalty.”

“Fair enough.” At least Hailey benefitted from this little arrangement as well. “So you’ll send her the books?”

“Of course I will. I was already going to. I have some spares if you’d like me to send some to Kim, too. She’s a fan, right?”

“Aren’t all you women fans of romance and smut?”

“W. Parker does not write smut,” Katie said.

“These are deep love stories, Jack. You should read them. You work in the love business, after all. As do I. Sometimes to stay on our toes, it’s important to see life through a rosy haze of love again, even if it’s just between the pages of a book.

We don’t have time to find the real thing. Or we overlook it.”

“What does that mean?”

Katie laughed softly. “Nothing. I’ll send Hailey the books.”

“Thank you.”

It wasn’t much, but I knew Hailey would appreciate it, and I hoped when she got the books, she would know I’d been thinking about her.