Page 94 of Fifth Avenue Flirt

I didn’t even ask how long he was in Colorado. He might be there all week. Worth is getting impatient about investing his money. I need Ben to pull through for me and I need it to happen fast. I pull out my phone and open up our messages. I could call him, ask him how long he thinks things will take. I’m not even quite sure what he’s going to do.

But I don’t want to interrupt him. He’s in Colorado, doing…I have no idea. When he first told me, I assumed it was for business, but the reason I wasn’t able to sleep was because I couldn’t shake the feeling that business meetings don’t take place very often on a Sunday night.

Had he flown to the Colorado Club for a date?

He made the Empire State Building light up for me and we’re not even dating. Flying across the country for dinner doesn’t sound like too much of a stretch. But that’s fine, right? It makes sense he would choose to have dinner with someone he was actually dating over some girl who made a bet that she wouldn’t fall in love with him. I’m using him, like he said. I want something from him. Of course he’s going to choose a date over me.

“You’re early,” Poppy says, as she gets into the office. “You look terrible.”

I throw her an are-you-shitting-me look.

“I just mean you look tired. Are you missing the penthouse view?” She hangs her bright red winter coat on the coat stand and takes a seat.

“Terribly. I can’t sleep so close to sea level anymore,” I say.

“So you’re back home now?” she says.

“Yes. How was yesterday with your finance buddies?” I ask, not wanting Poppy’s focus on me right now. “Did you swap Excel hacks all night?”

“How did you guess?” she asks. “Don’t tell anyone what a geek I am.”

I grin, grateful that she didn’t take offense at my poking.

“So, now that you’ve proved Ben East wrong and not fallen in love with him…” She pauses like she’s just about to go off on a tangent, but then she resumes her original thought. “What happens now? He ends up getting you the Boston site?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. That’s his reputation, right? That he can pull off any deal. But I’m not expecting miracles. I just want to get in front of the seller and make our case.”

“So you’ll be traveling up to Boston together?” she asks.

“No,” I say, a little more sharply than I meant to. “Why would we do that?”

Poppy shrugs. “To meet with the seller.”

My heart tumbles in my chest at the idea that I’d be traveling to Boston with Ben. I kinda assumed Ben would give me a name and number for the seller and the rest would be up to me. “I actually don’t know what happens now. Ben had to fly out of town unexpectedly yesterday, so we didn’t have a chance to discuss it.”

There’s a knock at our office door and Adesh comes in with an envelope. “A courier just dropped this off for you, Avril.” He hands me a brown bubble envelope.

“Thanks,” I say, pulling open the package absentmindedly. I turn back to Poppy. “I guess we’ll speak next week.”

I peer inside the package. It’s just a bunch of papers. I pull them out and they’re marked EastHouse Inc. I scan the documents—and I can’t believe what I see.

It’s a report on the Boston site.

It sets out the objective and the problem with the seller disappearing. It lists the seller’s company name and then the shareholder in that company—Patrick O’Leary. It lists his address, then all the times Ben has reached out to him. At the bottom of the page is a line that says, “Proposed Meeting”, and the date is Thursday of this week in Boston.

I stand up in shock. “Oh my god,” I blurt.

I scan the pages and look at the dates again. Ben’s been working on this all week. He was always going to help me.

So why did he go through the entire rigmarole of me moving in with him? The dates? It doesn’t make sense.

“What?” Poppy says. “Is it bad news?” Poppy always assumes everything’s going to be bad news.

“The opposite,” I say. “It’s really good news. It’s from Ben. He’s found the seller. I’m meeting with him on Thursday.”

I glance up at Poppy and she looks as shocked as I feel.

“That was quick,” she says.