Ivan said, “Well, with me being a guy and everything, we don’t always think emotionally like women do. Sometimes we do things because the opportunity is there. And right now I feel like I want to do a lot of different things with you.”

Jacari felt butterflies unleashing themselves throughout her body. She looked down at their hands and grinned in her girlishness.

Ivan said, “But I don’t want to hurt your feelings when I tell you that I can’t be that everyday guy for you.”

Jacari stopped her smiling with a nod, and she began to stare at Ivan like a grown woman. She said, “I understand. You got a lot of things that you do. But…I’m not gonna be around that much, either.”

She stopped and left it at that. Ivan would have to read between the lines.

He read her quickly and asked, “So, what if you see me with someone else?”

That was a harder question for her to bear. She looked downward and took a deep breath. Then she looked back into his eyes.

“I will always care about you anyway, for everything that you’ve done for me,” she told him. She said, “I heard you talk tonight about loyalty in business. Well…”—she pulled her hand away and placed it across her chest—“my heart will always be loyal to you.”

Damn! Ivan thought. She’s killing me with her softness. That’s that Indian-girl shit from the movies. Pocahontas.

He started smiling about his thoughts. He was even ready to make a joke about it to loosen things up. But instead, Jacari held his head in the palms of her hands and started to kiss his lips, and she kept going with it.

Ivan stopped and told her, “You don’t owe me anything because of the website. Somebody was gonna find you eventually anyway. Like I said, you’re beautiful.”

Jacari responded, “Ivan…this is not because I owe you anything. I kissed you because I want to. And I want to be here. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be. Like I told you last night, I can take care of myself.”

And she backed up to take her clothes off.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK in San Diego, Ivan called a conference-room meeting at his office, gathering all of the key members of his staff.

He spread the business cards from his trip to New York across the conference table and sat at the head chair. He told everyone, “Over the next few months, our new goal is to document every possible way to expand the company into a national brand identifier. And what that means is that, instead of us just talking about San Diego’s restaurants, we identify the best restaurants nationally. Instead of just talking about San Diego’s parties, we talk about the hottest parties in the country: East Coast, West Coast, South, all of that.”