How to Marry Keanu Reeves in 90 Days Page 3

  Dawn continued, “There are big things happening for you, woman, including your dinner with Daniel Lim. You can’t lose focus.”

  I sighed. The dinner tonight was one of the last things I wanted to think about. I wanted to focus on my art and on developing it as much as I could. Not dressing up to schmooze about it. Dawn knew this.

  “Don’t start,” she warned, most likely picking up on my skittishness. “You agreed. Now you have to wow him.” She gave me a quick up and down, taking in my loose cotton overalls and white tank. “None of your shapeless black sacks even if they are vintage. Daniel Lim is used to sitting front row at New York Fashion Week.” She gave a saucy smirk. “And often leaving with the show’s ending model.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If you’re so into this dinner and who he ends up going home with, then you should go in my place,” I said.

  “Yes, you should go, Ms. Agent,” True suddenly chimed in from by the kitchen sink.

  Dawn and I pivoted his way, surprised by his sudden outburst.

  “Really, Professor?” Dawn started. “Not that my business is your business, and not that I wouldn’t go, but he particularly wants to meet the artist to see if they get on.”

  True snorted, letting loose with the uncharacteristic show of emotion. “Yeah, I bet.”

  Dawn sighed. “Oh, come on. I know you and Daniel went to the same university and I know you didn’t get on with him, but who do you ever get on with?”

  True’s brow wrinkled, but he didn’t argue. Probably because Dawn had a point.

  “Besides, this is business,” she added with finality.

  He shrugged, then went back to his phone. What the hell were T and Aimee talking about that was so interesting?

  “I said my piece,” True stated as he continued to tap away.

  I could tell he was doing his best to hold on to his control, though. He was holding something back. But he stopped texting then and looked up at me and smiled. Not a full-on one, but still it was enough to get me. Like a mosquito bite. Unexpected and a total pain when it flared up later.

  “Hey, Dawn’s right, business is business,” he said. “Besides, none of us are the same as when we were back in school, yeah?”

  It took everything for me to crack a smile in return at that one. I gave him a weak half nod to let him know I agreed while my mind raced with stagnant thoughts of “speak for yourself.”

  True’s phone buzzed again. “Listen, I’ve got to go,” he said. “There are still some things I need to finish up, thanks to being a little too generous with some student extensions. I’ll have to catch you two later.”

  I pouted. “So soon. No fair. This is supposed to be our fun day.”

  He shrugged.

  There was no use arguing against that. I knew him, and, T and Aimee aside, he wouldn’t shirk responsibility. I sighed. “Well, before you go, take that box off the foyer table. I got you something.”

  True glared. “What did you do now, Lu? I don’t need anything.”

  My gaze went to his feet. “I beg to differ. And don’t let these get thrown in a corner somewhere like the rest of the things I get you. You are doing a lot of running if those sneakers are any indication. Your feet must be suffering. They’re just socks, but they have moisture-wicking technology for runners.”

  He sauntered my way and gave me a long stare, coming oh so close to my face once again before tapping my worktable firmly three times.

  “So they’re cotton socks?”

  I tried my best not to back up. “Just shut it and say thank you, smartass. What do you know about high-tech material?”

  He grinned, and it was another of those little shots. “Thank you, smartass.” He looked from me to Dawn, then back to me. “And don’t forget, your agent here does have a point,” he said, his voice all serious and deep.

  “Don’t I always?” Dawn blurted.

  For a moment I forgot about True, the boy who used to gawk at me on the sly as he hung around with my brother all those years ago. That True’s voice was nothing like this man’s. Hell, that True barely had a voice at all.

  He tapped the table again and I blinked.

  “You need to focus,” he said. “Don’t let this Keanu crap distract you. It’s you and your art. Everything else is just noise. Even investors like Lim.”

  “Um, that wasn’t my point, Nutty Professor!” Dawn snapped.

  True ignored her and continued. “But you have your meeting and make your own decision.” He glanced Dawn’s way, then back at me. “Hell, he may have changed from when I knew him, and you’re an excellent judge of character, so don’t listen to any voice but your own with this.”

  I frowned, and he shot me back a teasing, toothy grin. His smile was supposed to be goofy, but the joke was on him. It was fucking dazzling.

  “You’ve got this,” True added in a voice that for a moment made me feel like I could conquer the world. A spot about eight inches lower than my belly button clenched while my nipples hardened.

  I overcompensated for my body’s reaction by rolling my eyes. “What do you know about art?”

  True shrugged. “Nothing, but I know you,” he said, turning away.

  He snagged another bagel and ripped off a piece for Morphie. Only as loyal as his last snack, Morphie rewarded him with a jump and a spin before True was out the door.

  Traitorous dog. I don’t know why I kept him around anyway.

  Chapter 4

  Rabbit Rabbit

  True

  I will not worry about Lu. I will not worry about Lu.

  I fought the urge to put the declaration in my phone’s notes app. Why waste the energy? Of course, I’d worry about Lu. Worrying about Lu came second only to thinking about Lu. Shit, the amount of time I spent worrying over that woman made me no less ridiculous than her and Dawn with their fangirling over completely unobtainable men.

  I swiped away from Aimee’s text and put the one from the dean on the back burner too. I’d deal with the four students’ pleading emails when I got back down to my apartment. For now, it was more interesting to watch whatever was going on over by Lu’s worktable. I leaned back and stared at her, Little Ms. Never Grow Up. A Peter Pan in her own mind. When was enough going to be enough? Damn near having fits over men who didn’t even know she existed. And Dawn was no better, feeding into her mania when she could at least, if not as her friend then as her business partner, tamp it down.

  I stole another glance and caught the indecision in Lu’s eyes as she looked at her work in progress. The frustration as she pushed her wild curls back and worried at her bottom lip. Fuck. I hated it and at the same time was ridiculously revved up over the fact that she still excited me, that I still thought she was just as cute now as she had been when I first caught sight of her all those years ago.

  Fangirl? I was probably the ultimate fanboy at this point.

  But damn, shouldn’t every crush have an expiration date?

  “It doesn’t mean shit. You can’t let a stupid tweet bother you,” Dawn was saying.

  I looked down at Morphie and he back up at me with eyes that clearly said “And there’s your answer, dummy.” I shook my head. Lu’s damn dog was named after her crush of over twenty years, so obviously expiration dates varied widely by owner.

  I made a move to take another sip of coffee, but it mocked me too. Dammit. I pulled my hand back. Keanu was everywhere. On dishware, figurines, she even had a freaking bedazzled pillow. No wonder the tweet freaked her out. She’d essentially been living in a Keanu shrine. I shivered, then looked back over at her.

  Lu stuck her tongue out at me. Yeah, that’s mature.

  I went back to my phone and swiped on my emails, now actively looking for a distraction.

  Professor Erickson: I’d like to talk with you about my grade during your office hours.

  I don’t think a B takes into consideration my dedication to the project. You must have missed my total commitment. Yours, Viv Henry.

  Yours?

&
nbsp; Hell no with that shit. And I was being generous with the B I’d given Viv. Very generous. It was students like Viv Henry who made my job a pain in the ass and the offer from the dean to head my department that much less appealing.

  I considered quitting, but for the most part I enjoyed my job, and I didn’t see going back to corporate full time as a way out. I’d lived that life and knew it wasn’t for me either. Fending off eager students who felt they deserved an A over a B was a smidge easier than trying to advise the supremely rich how to invest their money. Or maybe it was that teaching just didn’t bore me to tears. But now that the dean was talking about this promotion, which would take me out of the classroom and into endless budget meetings, what was the difference from being chained to a cubicle?

  I heard Dawn saying something about Daniel Lim and inwardly cringed. I couldn’t believe that Lu was meeting him to talk business or that Daniel even had a business to talk about. But then again, of course he did. He always had everything handed to him on a silver platter—including me bailing him out for our statistics class in college. Still, I didn’t like the idea of him meeting up with Lu.

  “What do I care?” Lu responded, but in a way that indicated she actually did care. “But do you think the rumors about him breaking up with that Australian model are true?” Her and Dawn’s voices were suddenly lowered, and I was way less interested in my messages and more in what they were talking about.

  The dean’s offer was significant but not significant enough to compete with what Lim was likely offering her.

  I shook my head to try to clear it. What the hell was I doing? One had nothing to do with the other. Lu, Lim and Dawn for that matter were not my business. I personally had plenty of business to keep myself very occupied. For the moment at least.

  I knew a huge part of what the dean wanted was to get me locked in, thanks to my book, Economics and Cultural Sustainability, gaining surprising attention and a couple of morning talk show interviews. But why should I use that notoriety just for the benefit of the college? Maybe it was time to make a move for myself. I looked at Lu and Dawn once more. And it wasn’t like the college was the only game in town.

  But I couldn’t think of my own games or the offers I had lined up. The fact that Lu was going out with Daniel Lim tonight made me prickly. I knew Daniel from back in college and doubted he’d changed all that much. There was growth and then there were total transformations. And transformations only happened on scripted dramas and makeover shows.

  Daniel was about as scripted as they came and, back when I knew him, full of drama: classic entitled rich-kid frat boy basking in the glory without any of the grind. The only reason he associated with a scholarship non-frat kid like me was for my tutoring skills. He needed his MBA, and one “hard-assed”—at least in Lim’s eyes—professor who insisted Daniel do his own data analysis had been blocking that. But of course, the idea of “his own” meant nothing to Lim. Not when his parents paid his college advisor to craft an entrance essay and deliver him into university on a silver platter. He had a path to CEO already cleared. The degree was just decoration and cachet.

  Screw it. I should let bygones be gone at this point. At least I made good money—he paid me extra just to keep quiet about the fact that a lowerclassman was tutoring him. I looked over at Lu then, and still I couldn’t help but worry as I wondered what else Daniel might have on the DL.

  I flipped from my text app and went to my browser and looked up Lim’s company once again. DLIG was a subsidiary of his family’s multinational company, Lim International Group. They had their hands in boutique hotels, fashion and luxury goods and other assorted ventures. The DLIG division was doing so well that the business world speculated that Daniel was some sort of boy wonder, but I knew different. He’d had plenty of help from family money and influence. Lots.

  I glanced at Lu again. Wanting to warn her, but then again not. If this was a good opportunity for her, me bursting her bubble could ruin our friendship. She was talented and she deserved the world. I didn’t want to see her used or hurt. Besides, Lim would be lucky to partner with a rising star like her.

  “Mister Er-ick-son,” she said, drawing out my name in her Agent Smith voice. “Care to share what you have percolating in that little computer of a brain over there?”

  “Not at all, Lu, and don’t call me Mister Erickson.”

  She laughed and her damned eyes sparked. “You know you love it.”

  “I do not.”

  Or at least I’ll never admit it to you, silly rabbit.

  Chapter 5

  Devil’s Advocate

  Bethany Lu

  Crap. I already had the feeling Daniel Lim was a bit of a jerk and a lot of a show-off so…a jerkoff, I guess. We hadn’t even met yet. But come on. This wasn’t how a person started wooing a potential business partner.

  My hackles spiked from the moment Daniel Lim’s assistant insisted on sending a car to pick me up. The car wasn’t the problem, though I’d prefer to handle my own travel. The issue was how suspiciously evasive she was. I had to insist she also give me the place we were meeting, and she finally rattled off the address of a restaurant on the West Side. So when the driver ended up heading east through the park, I immediately went on alert.

  “Excuse me, shouldn’t you be staying on the West Side,” I’d said, quickly pulling out my phone, my emergency contact at the ready.

  He gave me a knowing and reassuring glance through his rearview mirror, and something in the man’s eyes told me he’d been through this game before. “Don’t worry, miss. It’s all fine. Mr. Lim just decided on a different restaurant. It’s public, popular and you’re safe. He wanted me to assure you that you’ll be more than pleased with his choice.”

  I frowned as I leaned back against the smooth interior, still holding tightly to my phone. How did Daniel Lim know what I’d be more than pleased with? I’d be more than pleased with a hot bath, high carbs, maybe a cream sauce and a Keanu Netflix binge right now. Anything but this dress and these shoes. The hell? Who did such a thing in this day?

  I let my mind wander for a moment to Keanu and the movie binge I was now looking forward to when I got home. The only question was whether I went in chronological order or by my faves, which was always dangerous since I was prone to getting stuck like an old record and tripping three or four times in a row over A Walk in the Clouds and Speed before even getting to John Wick 2.

  “Instead, I have an interview date with the devil,” I mumbled to myself, likening Daniel Lim to Al Pacino’s character in The Devil’s Advocate.

  My phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  Dawn: HAVE FUN. You’re a star. Focus. Go get that Bag. You can think about Keanu later. Love ya. Bye.

  I grimaced and stuck my tongue out at my phone. Shit. She was so in my head. Maybe I needed to break up with my best friend. She knew me too damned well.

  Me: Mind your business.

  Dawn: You are my business. Now go be fabulous.

  Me: Fine…begrudgingly.

  Dawn: I’ll take it.

  I let out a sigh. Dawn was right: This partnership could mean a huge boost for my career. There was only so much obscurity an artist of a certain age could endure. Shit. I wondered if that’s what Keanu was thinking? Was there only so much bachelorhood an actor of a certain age could endure before falling into obscurity?

  Was now my time to shine, or was this the beginning of my descent into obscurity?

  Most breakouts happened for young phenoms, not fortysomethings still figuring it out. On the surface it looked like I was doing well. I had commissions, work lined up. I even lived in a Manhattan loft with amazing space and light.

  But…my commissions barely kept me in coffee and canvases, and I only had my loft because my parents owned the building. I was hardly any better than the trust fund kids I balked at back in my old school days. Dawn often scoffed at my guilt, insisting I shouldn’t feel bad for hitting the rare family-fund lotto when so many other Black folks had n
ot. And I knew she was right.

  Of course, it wasn’t like anyone checked your bank account when it came to racial profiling. No, there was still the extra scrutiny, all the questions and assumptions they jumped to. And then came the apologies when people found out there might be something to gain or lose from knowing you.

  Still, even with all I had and the work I was doing, I felt like a disappointment at times. To myself? Maybe to my parents? Even though my father bankrolling my apartment didn’t hurt his finances a bit, and he said having me in one of his buildings gave him peace of mind that was invaluable.

  Focus, Lu. It was True’s voice now. He always came to me when I got like this, even when he wasn’t physically with me. So self-righteous. Mr. High Pride, of course he’d hate someone like Daniel Lim. It was a shock that he never looked down on me and Dawn and had stayed friends with us all these years. But I knew why. And for that reason, I’d endure.

  I snorted. As much as a fancy, high-priced meal with a bachelor hot-list CEO could be considered enduring. Still, there were sacrifices, and someone had to make them.

  It turned out the dinner destination for the night was Shio, an exclusive sushi place with private dining on the Upper East Side. The restaurant didn’t seat more than eight parties a night, so their prices were through the roof to make up for the astronomical New York rent. By the time the driver dropped me at the front door, I already had a chip on my shoulder that was weighing like a boulder.

  I was prejudging the restaurant, Daniel Lim, just the entire evening and it hadn’t even started. I’d let both the Keanu tweet and True get so deep in my head that they had permeated my spirit and ruined my whole mood. It wasn’t that Lim couldn’t afford the dinner—of course he could, and I doubt he’d end up paying out of pocket anyway. I knew how company dinners went. The more biggity the bigs were, the less they paid. Trickle-down was reverse psych at its finest.