“Okay, boys. Let it drop. I’m not dating anyone, Jared. You have nothing to worry about. However…” She turned her attention to me again. “Since we’re on the subject of relationships, can you explain why you’re attending this wedding without a plus-one, Tommy? I assumed you would show up with some fine young thing on your arm.”

“Well, I’m—”

“Tomás doesn’t date,” Jared interrupted. “He’s practically a fucking monk.”

“—not dating anyone,” I finished, cringing at the way he just blurted out the details of my personal life. “I just don’t have the time right now. I’m focused on my business.”

“Gorgeous, successful guy like you? Seems like you wouldn’t have to make time because you can have whomever you choose, whenever you choose.”

It was hard not to preen when she called me gorgeous, but somehow, I managed not to puff out my chest.

“And he does. This man once had a woman break into his apartment, tie herself to the bed, and wait for him.”

“She didn’t break in,” I corrected. “The doorman let her in—”

“Either way, she was naked in your bed, and you just sent her home.”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t interested.”

“A woman got naked and tied herself to your bed, and you weren’t interested?” Darcy asked.

“He’s not telling the whole story—”

“You’re right. Maybe she needs a visual,” Jared said, pulling his phone out. He did what I presumed was a quick internet search then handed the phone to Darcy.

“Uh…wow,” she said, both eyebrows arrowing upward. “Chicago’s sexy weather girl was naked in your bed, and you sent her home?”

“Not exactly? There’s more to the story.”

Marlowe Thompson and I had met at one of those black-tie events where you bought a plate of rubbery chicken and mushy salad for fifteen hundred dollars just to be in the room where it happens. I was wearing a rented tux and had bought my seat at the table with new money. I was young and brown, and I felt inconspicuous in that room. Marlowe, an outgoing and well-connected woman, spotted me and attached herself to my side. She was gorgeous with dark skin the color of warm roasted walnuts and brown eyes that caught and held the sunlight. She should have been it for me.

“That woman stalked you for months, and you never pulled the trigger — not even when she conned her way into your bed.”