Vibrizzio (18 page)

Moving to the hot tub, Lyssa rolled her sweats to above her knees and lowered to her towels while Hayden settled into the water, sitting on the bench across from her. He raised his arms to his sides and rested his elbows on the ledge while one hand gripped the beer Lyssa had given him. As she dipped her legs into the warm water, she couldn’t help but notice the way its tiny waves lapped at the flat, firm planes of Hayden’s chest, licking his stiff nipples and spilling over his smattering of dark hair. Keith’s chest had been completely smooth, so it’d been a long time since Lyssa had raked her hands through a lush, manly thicket.

She didn’t realize how lost in that train of thought she was until Hayden broke her out of it.

“My dad loved my mom,” he said. “Correction: my dad
still
loves my mom.”

“That’s … nice?” She wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

“No, that’s horrible.”

“Why?”

“Because my mom doesn’t love him. When I was eight, she left my dad for another man. I think that guy might’ve loved her too, not sure because he wasn’t around very long before Mom gave him the heave-ho too.”

Lyssa watched Hayden take a long drink, and it finally clicked in her brain that he was embarking on his soul spilling. When he swallowed and clinked the bottle onto the dry tile next to him, she ventured, “So you take after her, and that’s why you can’t settle on one woman?”

He gave an ironic grunt. “I wish. I take after my dad, and letting my mom into his heart practically destroyed him.”

“Aha, you think that was his fatal mistake, and you’re determined to not repeat it.”

“Eeegh!” he exclaimed, imitating the sound of a game show buzzer when a contestant answered wrong. He brought his bottle back to his lips, the signs of a cocky smirk twitching the corners of his mouth.

Lyssa flicked her foot out of the water, sending a light cascade of drops splashing onto him, and he laughed, nearly spitting out his beer into the soothing, chemically treated water. “Would you please get to the point?” she shouted.

“Okay, so you’re half right—I’m determined to not repeat his mistake. But his mistake wasn’t letting a woman into his heart. It was letting the
wrong
woman in.”

“And you think Roni’s the wrong woman. That’s why you don’t want to get serious with her?”

His shoulders lifted in a prolonged shrug. “I dunno. Tough to say, but so far I haven’t seen or felt anything to make me certain she’s worth the risk.”

“So you’ll continue spreading out the risk with other women until one stands out and proves herself worthy of more—oh my God! Like the wildcard investor pool! So … this whole idea is based on the schematic for your love life?”

He chuckled. “Never thought about it like that but yeah, looks like it is.” Lyssa took a long swig of her beer, congratulating herself on the breakthrough. While she swallowed, Hayden crooned, “Quid pro quo,” and the carbonation burned its way down her throat.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“I said lady’s choice.” He reached his bottle forward as if to toast her, so she braced her toes on the watery bench beneath her, stretching forward to tap the mouth of her bottle against his.

“I say we kill these, open another, and then we’ll see which confession I land on,” she suggested.

“Deal.”

They chugged what they had left, and Lyssa hopped up to bring two more bottles over. She twisted his open and handed it to him before resuming her seat and taking a sip of her own drink. “Since you’ve let me in on why you choose to date so many women, I’ll tell you why I choose to date none. Men, not women.” She giggled, giving away the fact that all the alcohol she’d consumed that evening was starting to hit her.

Hayden tapped the bottom of his new bottle on the surface of the water, tilting his head and watching her.

“Okay, so, why Keith—the programmer—and I broke up.” Nerves caused her to push her calves straight out in front of her and splashy-splash as she fidgeted. “I’d become rather … er, fond of Andre Agassi, and Keith was intimidated, I guess. He told me to make a choice—either him or it. I chose it.”

She’d been watching the bubblegum pink of her enameled toenails but now raised her eyes to Hayden’s. She saw something tender in his gaze with not a hint of the teasing she’d been prepared for.

“The thing is, I wanted to choose Keith. I wanted to tell him I’d gladly chuck the stupid plastic into the trash and be his. But the way he was glaring at me, so determined, I could see it—he was seriously ready to throw me aside over something so stupid. And that’s when I changed my mind. If he was so ready to dump me over something so silly, then he couldn’t possibly have cared for me as much as I’d thought he had.” She pulled her shoulders up sharply and gripped the ledge, clamping her eyelids together to hold back the senseless tears that unexpectedly sprang forward. “So I told him to take a hike. And I’m better now, steadier. I really am.”

“But you’re still choosing double A over real men.”

She opened one eye and looked at him. “Yeah, because real men are always going to choose their egos over me.” She opened the other eye and reached unsteadily across the water to toast, but Hayden didn’t return the gesture, so she pulled her bottle back and sucked down half of what was left.

“You said he had a name.”

“What?”

“Andre. You said he,
it
, had an actual name.”

“He does.”

Hayden had lifted his bottle and now held it to the side of his mouth, keeping his gaze steady on her as he tilted a healthy dose of beer into his mouth.

“Vibrizzio. His name’s Vibrizzio.”

“Because he—”

“Vibrates. Yes. Not the cleverest of names, I know, but there it is.”

“And he’s also Italian, apparently.” She could see that Hayden made a genuine effort to not laugh, but he didn’t succeed.

“Hey!” she shouted, kicking her foot out and lobbing a deluge of water onto him. “I didn’t laugh at your bared soul.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’re right.” He held his free hand out to her. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” And then he started laughing again and his outstretched hand sank below the surface.

Giving up, she pulled her heels all the way back against the wall of the tub, failing to keep the smile from rising to her own lips even as she tried to scowl at him.

He eventually recovered, apologizing again, and said, “I guess we’re both fucked up in our own way.”

“Yeah,” Lyssa said, lifting her bottle and saying before she poured, “But your
fuckeder
.” She made the mistake of laughing at her own joke a few seconds too late, and the beer bubbles rushed up her nose and out, stinging her membranes the whole way and sending her into a sputtering cough.

“Yeah, baby!” Hayden howled. “That is sooo sexy. Where are those bar bitches now?”

Lyssa threw her hands to her face, letting her pain and embarrassment calm before muttering, “Shut up.”

They exchanged teasing splashes, and Hayden announced that he was pruning. He rose from the water, and this time, Lyssa let herself surreptitiously enjoy the view while he toweled off and walked across the room. With the towel wrapped around his waist and two bottles in hand, he returned and sat next to Lyssa, dropping his calves back into the water. While he twisted off the beer caps, he said, “Here’s where we are now—where do you see yourself in five years?”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Lyssa said, “Still hurts too much to talk. You go first.”

“Okay. In five years, I hope to be managing portfolios with an investment firm.”

“Sounds doable.”

“Yep. And it almost happened far earlier than expected.” He lifted his bottle to his lips, giving Lyssa a sneaky sideways glance, which she responded to with a questioning look. Lowering his drink, he explained, “When Carlo called from Boston that afternoon, it wasn’t just to tell me that the Bell Funds team had split. He offered me a job.”

Lyssa’s eyes opened wide, and her mouth fell open.

“Yeah, that was kind of my reaction too. The position he offered was as an analyst with the intention of moving me up to portfolio manager within two years. My dream job, essentially.”

“Why didn’t you take it?”

“The sting of betrayal. Loyalty to DH. Not wanting to screw my bright, young protégée out of the chance to learn from me.” He winked, and she leaned her shoulder into him for a teasing nudge.

“What about personally? How many women do you suppose will be in your harem in five years?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Hard to say. But you seem to be perfectly able to talk now, so your turn.”

Lyssa twisted her lips and watched her toes, considering the question. She wasn’t one to make long-term career goals, just worked hard and took opportunities when she saw them. “I wouldn’t mind still being in consulting, I guess. As an associate, of course. But investment management could be interesting too.”

“Flexibility. That’s good. But you know, having an MBA will help you along no matter which route you take.” When her only response was an eye roll, he asked, “What about personally?”

“In five years … I don’t know. But in ten I might want to be married, have a couple kids.”

“That’s going to be pretty difficult to do without a man, isn’t it?”

She shrugged. “All I need him for is fertilization and financial support so that I can maybe stay home with the kids while they’re little. Perhaps I’ll find me a nice airline pilot—he’ll come with the added bonuses of being gone all the time plus free flight benefits.”

“Nice. That’s all women need men for? Sperm, a paycheck, and free flights?”

She turned to him, her lips spread wide. “Yep.”

“You don’t believe that.”

She sat her bottle in her lap and picked at the corner of the label. “You’re right—I don’t need the free flight benefits. I’m racking up enough frequent flyer miles on my own.”

He pulled his eyebrows together and frowned.

“Oh knock it off,” she said. “What do you care about my stance on men, anyhow?”

He tilted his head and lifted one shoulder. “You’re a good catch, and I think it’d be a shame if no guy ever got to enjoy that. You’re like the good-looking priest my mom and aunts used to call Father Whatawaste.”

She blew out a laugh. “And I suppose it’s because I’m such a good catch that you were so adamantly ‘not interested’ on our first trip together?”

“That was only because we work together.”

Tucking her chin, she raised her eyelids to give him a
puh-lease
look. “Um, Sabine?”

“That’s different. You and I are partners. I hardly ever see her at work.”

“What about before we became partners?” she challenged. “Did you ever even look at me twice?” He’d certainly won her notice whenever they’d crossed paths in the hallways.

“We worked in different departments,” he said. “I never even saw you until Beecher introduced us that day.”

The temperature of the water hadn’t changed, but to Lyssa it felt as if it had iced over. Why couldn’t she have left it a “good catch?” Why did she have to push for confirmation that his compliments were empty? She pulled her feet from the water and stood, reaching down for her towels. “Well, I saw you plenty, and I rest my case—no man on this earth is going to lose any sleep because Lyssa Bates is off the market. They won’t even notice.” She turned away from him so she wouldn’t have to see the pitying look she was certain graced his face and started walking toward the exit.

“Bates, stop.”

She didn’t. There was nothing he could say to change the facts, and she was suddenly very tired. “G’night Hayden.”

Chapter Sixteen

For the next couple of weeks, Hayden stayed fully clothed in front of Lyssa, and the two of them continued as usual, understanding each other a little bit better. On a Tuesday morning, they sat in DH’s Chicago office for a video conference with Shep and the senior managers at Zinnia Management, Roni’s firm. The company had an “exciting announcement” and was informing its largest clients before sending out a press release.

The connections were made, greetings exchanged, and then Richard Zinnia got down to business. “In this increasingly global world, it’s become vital to keep a constant eye on the international operations of the companies we invest in. As you know, we’ve stepped up our foreign visits in recent years, and we’ve learned how important it is to understand varying cultures as well as business operations, so we’ve taken a big step and opened up a brand new office in Malaysia.”

A graphic popped onto Richard’s screen with images and bullet-point bios of the five professionals comprising Team Malaysia. Roni Wexman was the team leader. Lyssa tilted her head just enough to slide her eyes toward Hayden. She expected him to be looking back with a smug twist to his lips—he had to have known from Roni that something like this was in the works. But his eyes were focused on the piece of paper in front of him, onto which he appeared to be scrawling notes. His expression was stone, giving no hint of any emotion whatsoever.

Out on the sidewalk after the meeting, Lyssa stood back and watched him as he reached his arm out to hail a cab. Two had passed by already occupied and when it happened a third time, Hayden swore and stalked back onto the sidewalk. “Let’s try around the corner.”

Without waiting for a response, he took long strides in that direction, and Lyssa hurried to catch up. On the adjacent block, Hayden again focused intensely on cab hailing. Lyssa stepped up close to him. “Why didn’t you say anything about the new office? Did Roni have you sworn to secrecy?”

He took a half step further into the street and waved more vigorously as a cab approached with its roof light on. “I found out when you did.” The taxi rolled to a stop in front of him, and he held the back door open for Lyssa.

As she scooted across the seat to the other side, she gave the taxi driver the address of F&K’s office building. Barely waiting for Hayden to sit and slam his door shut, she said, “You mean that you found out the details when I did, but surely you knew
something
was up before then.”

He settled his briefcase on the seat, leaving it standing upright like a little wall between them. “I didn’t.”