Meanwhile, it was time to get on with my day and do something productive for a change.

As I reached for my phone, apart from usual let’s-get-a-drink messages from my buddies, I saw there was a message from Jared.

Finally!

He wanted to meet for a drink. Let’s make it casual, it said. Did that mean that I had gotten what I wanted? I couldn’t really tell what he thought about my prospects after we reminisced about his mom and Charlie.

“My people will be in touch with you,” he’d said, when the interview had finished.

Yes, I remembered that he used “my people” and I’d thought it had not sounded good. So why was he sending me a message himself? Whatever it was, it was better than no news. I sent a few messages back canceling some appointments, which also were going to include alcohol consumption. Let’s get a drink with the son of our former cook who was a hundred times richer than me. Drinking was something I wasn’t too bad at. However, I needed something more to take the edge off. It was an important meeting, and I did not want to cock it up.

Just as I was about to get into the shower, my phone rang. The screen showed Natasha.

“Hey, gorgeous,” I said. “How are things?”

Natasha Cunningham and I had been having a relationship for a year, which one could describe as “occasional friends with benefits.” She was one of the most beautiful women I’d evet met, a real head turner when we’d been out together. Natasha knew how to dress to stop other men breathing. She had made a wise decision not to look like a clone of all those celebrities who were famous for being famous. She went for Linda Evangelista type of chic, kept her beautiful hair short and looked gorgeous in everything. She liked glamor and being at the center of attention, which suited me because I kind of liked those things myself – they were good for my business projects. Natasha was a pragmatic lady, maybe a bit too pragmatic for her age. She was twenty-five. Started as a hostess in a fancy restaurant when she was twenty year old, Natasha developed a slew of extremely useful connections with people who kGOlnew people with titles and money. She quit being a hostess, read Dostoyevsky and Dickens to educate herself, became a socialite supported by some generous gentlemen and moved on to more ambitious projects.

Natasha had heard about the Montagues and the beautiful estate with a single heir who had been available for the taking and had arranged to bump into me at some event “by accident” and we had some more “bumping” a bit later in my apartment. Our almost-twenty-year age difference didn’t bother her much. She had a goal of getting an old and titled last name with lots of money. She had neither of those things yet, but she was incredibly determined and had kept me as one of the possible candidates to fulfill her dream. What I liked about her was that she had never lied to me about it and hadn’t minded my little adventures “on the side”.

“I’m well, Sasha,” she said. She liked to use a Russian diminutive for Alexander. She thought it sounded sophisticated when we had been out but didn’t speak one word of Russian. “So, I called Christopher to see if he was still on for tonight and found out that you aren’t going with us. I thought you’d make more time for your friends and me in your extremely busy schedule.”

I detected sarcasm in extremely busy schedule but decided to let it pass. I had not been known for being terribly over occupied. Besides, it was somewhat unusual for me not to participate in a drinking outing with my university mate Christopher Deven who apparently was on Natasha’s speed dial these days. It sort of made sense because he was also one the “aristos,” which had made him a person of interest for Natasha. As far as I knew, she hadn’t made any moves towards his estate yet. Natasha had just enjoyed being seen surrounded by people who had coats of arms over their entrances. Be that as it may, I made a mental note about Christopher being mentioned but let it pass as well. “Right, I have a