Page 2 of Trust Fund Baby

One guy leaned in, a watch that cost as much as one of my largest commission checks shining on his wrist. “So, what do you ladies do?”

Hallie gave me a look that said, please help. I took pity on her.

“I sell art,” I said as the bartender set down a matching glass of wine to Hallie’s in front of me. “Hallie writes about dating finance bros like you.”

Both found the comment cute, chuckling at it while completely missing the warning.

The guy with auburn hair and a bad comb-over glanced at an open table in the bar’s far corner. “Do you want to share a table with us? It’ll make us look less like assholes hogging the whole thing to ourselves.”

Hallie shrugged, seeing this as her only chance to get what she needed for a great article. The four of us exchanged names as we claimed the open table. Mr. Comb-over was Eli and worked for BAT down the road, and he seemed to have eyes only for Hallie tonight. Leaving me to entertain Seth, a financial analyst who had just moved to the city to chase the dream that New York promised young men dressed in well-tailored suits. His attention was clearly on his phone rather than me, and I found myself unenthusiastically responding to his half-baked questions.

You are here for Hallie, I reminded myself as I downed a good portion of my wine.

As the night continued, it seemed like Hallie might walk away from this evening with something to write about for the first time in a week. That changed when the waiter brought Hallie a glass of Riesling and subtly indicated the man at the bar who’d sent it to her.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me …” I heard her say under her breath. I followed her gaze to see who could have possibly sent a glass of wine that made Hallie react like that … only to see James Rossi sauntering toward us.

Oh, fuck.

Just when I thought tonight was going to end up boring.

“Who’s that from?” Eli asked, completely oblivious to the shit storm that was heading our way.

A few weeks ago, I brought Hallie to my client’s home for a dinner. There, she had met James Rossi—a tall, dark, and handsome eligible man whom she thought she had hit it off with. Only for him to leave the dinner party early without asking for her number. It turned out that James was the quintessential finance man. The very kind that Hallie had told him she loathed with every fiber of her being that night as she detailed her new work assignment from her boss. Now, James was making it his mission to ruin Hallie’s chances of putting out an entertaining exposé on dating men in the financial sector of New York City.

“Oh, it’s no one,” she replied in her best attempt to play it off, but Hallie Woods had met her match in James Rossi.

“Harsh, Hal. I would think you’d save a little more importance for someone you dated for four years.”

Finally. It was about time this night got interesting.

“What are you talking ab—” Hallie tried, but it was too late. James had already claimed Eli’s attention.

“You guys dated?”

James took that question as an invitation and slid into one of the remaining open seats at the table with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Oh, yeah. We go way back to college, when we both were at …” He let the sentence hang, anticipating Hallie’s response, though in truth, their familiarity was limited, and he was only kidding.

I was surprised when she grumbled, “NYU.”

“Yes, NYU! Hallie here was studying journalism, and I was studying finance.”

Our dates’ gazes bounced back and forth between James and Hallie during their duel. Neither of them knew James was lying through his teeth. James and Hallie had never dated. This was just all part of James’s attempt to undermine my best friend and ruin her chances of writing her article. Classic sabotage.

Eli had almost completely forgotten about Hallie at this point. “Finance? Where do you work now?”

Hallie’s face fell as she realized just how quickly tonight was slipping away from her. “Just down the street at Berkeley Williams. Don’t you work at BAT?”

But before Eli could reply, another voice cut into the conversation.

“Excuse me, everyone. I figured I’d join the party since my friend here so rudely ditched me at the bar.”

For a second, my entire world tilted as a man with green eyes that used to haunt my dreams stepped into view. I thought that I’d imagined him until he slid into the last empty seat next to me, his arm draping casually over the back of my chair. His fingers brushed my shoulder, and my muscles clenched.

It was like seeing a ghost.

The ghost of Sebastian Whittaker.

Flashes of perfectly manicured green lawns, sneaking out my window in the middle of the night, rushing toward the harbor with a green-eyed boy who always seemed to know how to get his hands on a bottle of liquor he wasn’t supposed to have. His sailboat waiting at the dock, deck cushions that smelled like salt and sun, and his grin in the moonlight.