Pawn of the Billionaire(48)

She looked over at me after a while, and to my astonishment when she turned back to speak to them, she dismissed them.

“I’m so glad that you talked to us. I really appreciate it. You’ve a great film there, and I’ll enjoy watching it again. Thank you.” She looked over at me. “I believe we have to go now. It was such a pleasure to meet you.”

They took the hint and said their goodbyes.

I turned to her. “I thought you’d invite them to stay for dinner.”

“Yes, I know. But you don’t want that. I could tell.” She smiled. “So I didn’t.”

I was interested. “How could you tell?”

“Never mind,” she said and she shook her head, and I realized that we were becoming attuned to each other. I grinned and took her through to the dining room, trying to push away the strange looming sense of loss. Nothing would go wrong. I had the means to make sure of that.

I watched her as she took a long time to decide what she wanted to eat. I tried not to smile. She was like a kid in a candy store, whatever she chose it meant saying no to something else. Eventually, she decided on the grilled sea bass, and when the maitre d’ turned to me, I ordered the steak and salad and he bowed away.

“Don’t they ask you how you’d like your steak?” Toni seemed puzzled.

“Lawrence’ll tell them how I like it.” I didn’t think how that sounded, but she looked shocked.

“So why isn’t he eating here? With us?”

I tried to rescue the situation. “Toni, if he’s in here with us, he has to spend the whole time trying to anticipate what I need. As it is, he’s on call, yes, but he can relax otherwise.”

“Oh.” She didn’t sound very mollified, but let it slide although I could tell she wasn’t really satisfied with my answer.

We began discussing work and the chess app launch. Then I let the subject move on to her own work. Warmed by the excitement of the evening and the wine, she began to open up a bit.

“It’s a compatibility app. You download it and the first six entries are free, and after that it’s only a dollar a month, so nobody worries about paying up.” She moved the salt cellar a fraction.

“You enter the way you react and feel to what someone has done from a list of choices, and then it works out your personality type and the more you enter, the more it fine-tunes what you’re like, and tells you who you’re compatible with.” She looked over at me. “And of course, if you unsubscribe, then you lose all your data, so you get scared to unsubscribe in case it finds your perfect partner.”

I nodded. It wasn’t a bad idea, commercially. But it would be the devil of a programming problem. “So what happens if they enter none to the reactions it offers?”

She smiled. “It sends you to a box where you describe it in words, and then the app psychologist chooses the right reaction.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So you’d have the cost of an army of psychologists?”

She scowled. “No. Don’t be silly. I’d start with one, and then if we need more, it’s because we’ve a lot of subs so we can afford it. Paul says it’d work with …” She stared over at me.

“I knew you wouldn’t be interested. I know it’ll work. You think it’s just feeble and you’re only doing it to placate me. Well, I’m going to surprise you. Paul says it’s not long before it’s ready and then you’ll see.” She lowered her head, and viciously speared a bit of fish onto her fork.

“Toni, I’m not thinking that at all. Really I’m not.” I tried to think of a way to placate her. “Look, we’re doing everything we can to make it a success, aren’t we? My own first apps were hopeless, didn’t take off at all. It all takes time. And you’ve got that time. The way to succeed in this business is to keep trying.”

Her eyes were dark pools as she stared at me. “I shouldn’t have told you. Paul believes in me, you don’t.”

Her words were calculated to hurt and to anger me. They worked, but I wasn’t going to show it. I’d been trained from childhood not to show hurt or anger unless I wanted to. She wouldn’t know.

“Let’s not argue. It’s been a good evening, I want us to enjoy our meal.” I smiled over at her and turned the conversation over to the Bond movie.

Inside, I was seething. Maybe Paul needed to be pulled off the work. Maybe I should get his internship transferred — Japan might work.

We got to the end of dinner.

“Tomorrow, shopping.” I kept my tone light. “Have you ever been to Fifth Avenue?”