Unsurprisingly, Daniel’s not terribly inept. Bailey slices the vegetables and Daniel tends to the stove, and in about fifteen minutes, the stir-fry is ready. They skip making rice - it’s too late for carbohydrates.
They both turn to me with expectant faces when I taste the food, and I stifle a laugh. “It’s not bad,” I tell them. I wink at Bailey. “You, I might hire. This guy, on the other hand…”
“This guy owns half your restaurants,” Daniel retorts with a grin. “Okay, how about an hour of work before we go to bed? I do have some emails to read and respond to.”
“I’m surprised you held off as long as you did,” I say over my shoulder, as we head back to the living room. Daniel used to be like Juliette, huddled over his phone when he wasn’t playing pool. Nowadays, he actually puts his phone away when he gets to the club, and doesn’t reach for it until we are done for the evening. A definite improvement.
Bailey pulls out a stack of papers to grade. “No fooling around,” she warns us sternly, as we settle on either side of her. “I need to get this done.”
“How’s the writing going?” I ask her. She’s working on a paper with some kind of anthropology super-star, but she’s been unimpressed with the experience so far. From the sounds of it, she’s doing all the heavy lifting and her co-writer is coasting on his celebrity.
She makes a face. “Don’t ask. He was supposed to send me twenty pages. Instead he sent me two paragraphs. Two paragraphs of rambling text with not a single source. Kill me now.”
Daniel shakes his head. “Poor Bailey.” He pulls up his laptop and starts typing. “Seb, you going to be bored while we work?”
“Can you guys concentrate if I watch TV?”
They both nod. “In that case, I’m good.”
We all do our own things for a while, and it feels extremely intimate. Daniel’s fingers tapping away at the keyboard, Bailey’s pen scratching at the papers she’s correcting, with the sound of Sports Centre in the background. I’m tired from an extremely long day at the restaurant, and my eyes are beginning to shut, when I hear Daniel clear his throat.
“Bailey?” He sounds hesitant. “There’s a big company gala coming up next week. Would you like to come?”
I look up. Daniel has been more relaxed in the last couple of weeks, but as far as I know, all the restrictions about not courting publicity still apply. His deal is moving along at a steadier pace now that he’s lit a fire under Cyrus, but it’s not done yet.
Bailey looks surprised as well. “Really?”
He looks uncomfortable. “I don’t like that fact that I have to hide you,” he says. His wave encompasses me as well. “What the three of us share is important to me.” He makes a face. “I have an obligation to my company and I can’t acknowledge you publically as my girlfriend until this deal falls into place. But I would like you to be there.”
“And you?” Bailey’s looking at me. “Are you going to be there as well?”
“Daniel’s assistant Sophie likes me,” I grin. “I get invited every year.”
She stiffens at that, and I put my arm around her. “There’s only one woman I can’t take my eyes off,” I scold her softly. “Only one woman that matters. You should know that.”
“I still can’t believe it,” she says. “I mean, come on. You two are among the city’s most eligible bachelors.”
“That sounds like the Post talking,” Daniel replies. “If ‘eligible’ is a calculation of our net worth, then yes, I guess we are very eligible. But we work all the time, and we’d probably make terrible boyfriends. I don’t think you could drag Sebastian into a dance club, even if you dangled a third Michelin star in front of him. I mean, look at us now. One of us is working, the other has no energy to do anything other than watch Sports Centre.”
“That’s a lie, baby, don’t listen to him.” I wink at Bailey. “I have plenty of energy for what matters.” I put my hand on her thigh and move it up toward her sweet, sweet pussy, and she giggles and brushes my hand away.