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Suze was starting to enjoy herself.

Chapter 16
    The meeting had been called for 9:00 p.m., and they had been very clear about not being late, but Janey had a good excuse. She’d interviewed for a job at a well-financed new production company, landed it in the room, and been taken out for a celebratory dinner. (It helped that two of the three executives she met with had been colleagues for years.) Anyway, there was no way she was going to cut short a great moment in her actual life for a mystery man. He would just have to wait. You know what? Janey told herself. If I’m disqualified for having priorities, then I’m not the right woman for the job.
    When Janey got home from the meeting, she tapped on the window of the car that was already waiting outside her bungalow.
    “Give me half an hour,” she told the driver.
    Janey was tired and exhilarated from the meeting. She threw on a gray silk dress, going for pretty but not trying too hard. Hurriedly, she applied makeup, then headed for the door. She closed the door behind her, then realized she’d forgotten lipstick.
    Whatever, it doesn’t matter, she said to herself. Then she stopped, standing still in front of the door. No, it does matter. Not the lipstick. Sure, a guy should be able to love her without sultry red lips. But love. Love mattered. Janey spent ten hours at the office every day. Her commitment was the reason she’d had so much success in her field. But didn’t she want a boyfriend, a husband, one day a family, just as much as she wanted to be intellectually fulfilled? And yet she devoted almost no time to that desire.
    It does matter, she told herself again. It’s random and crazy, but who knows where love lies? For all her talk about making a reality show of this strange man’s vetting of potential wives, Janey wanted the fairy tale to come true. She hoped against hope that the mystery man would somehow prove to be her prince, and she was willing to make an effort. She unlocked the door and rushed back in to grab a lipstick from the powder room.
    By the time they rolled up to the Bel Air mansion, it was 10:05 p.m. Janey rang the doorbell and waited. No response. After a couple of minutes she rang again, and one of the women who had interviewed her, the one with blue glasses, opened the door. She seemed like she’d rushed to the door, but she greeted Janey like an old friend.
    “I’m so sorry I’m late,” Janey said. “You told me to be on time, and I respect that. But I have a good excuse—I got a new job! Today! Right now!”
    “Well, congratulations! You said you wouldn’t be jobless for long. Clearly your confidence was justified,” the woman, who introduced herself as Alicia, said with a smile.
    “Full disclosure, I am also a notoriously bad judge of time. It’s 100 percent true that I just got the job and had dinner with them and came straight here, but I want it on the record that I’m always fifteen minutes late. Reliably.”
    Alicia chuckled. “Good to know,” she said. “In the grand scheme of things, what’s fifteen minutes?”
    “ Thank you!” Janey said. “Let’s put that on a T-shirt and retire.”
    Alicia led Janey out a set of French doors, through a courtyard, and down to a patio with a tiled infinity pool. “You can’t see it now, but there’s a view of the ocean straight ahead. On a clear day it looks like the infinity pool flows right into it. Here, have a seat,” she said, directing Janey to a small table with votives and a vase of flowers.
    “You had me at ‘infinity pool,’” Janey said.
    Janey was happily drinking a mint tea when she was joined by a man who introduced himself as Rory.
    “I know this is a strange way to meet—” he said.
    “You think?” Janey said.
    Rory had an easy laugh. “I can see you’re not shy.”
    “Nope, sorry. Being shy is a waste of energy, right? I mean, love isn’t about being careful to say the right thing. It’s just luck of the draw. Chemistry. You like me, I