“Hot damn. Is it Pretty Woman theme day? I didn’t get the memo, but I am loving this hooker look.”
Taylor was opening and closing every drawer in the Oxford break room when the sound of a gravelly masculine voice gave her something to be irritated about besides the fact that she couldn’t find any freaking Scotch tape.
Great. Just what every girl needed in this moment. Her archnemesis.
She turned around, unsurprised to see his gaze lingering unapologetically on her ass before meeting her eyes with a bored expression. “Ballantine.”
Nick grinned, slow and cocky. “Morning.”
Gross. Only he could take an innocuous greeting and make the lone word sound like it had just rolled out of bed with a wink and morning wood.
He stepped into the kitchen and plunged straight white teeth into an apple.
She narrowed her eyes as she gave him a once-over. “What’s with the suit? You covering for one of the regulars again?”
He watched her as he chewed. “Don’t look so pissy about it. Thought the stuffy-suit vibe made your skirt fly up.”
Her eyes narrowed further, but she didn’t deny it. Nothing wrong with liking a guy in a suit. No shame in appreciating pressed collars, the tidy knots of silk ties, the look of prestige and success.
Normally.
But on Nick Ballantine, the suit was…well, not out of place, precisely. She’d occasionally seen him wear one before. And if she was going to give credit where it was due, the man wore the suit exceptionally well.
He was just so different from Bradley.
Her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend?—was all sexy dimples and easy charm.
There was nothing easy about Nick. Not a year ago, not six months ago, and definitely not now.
As usual for him, his dark hair was always a couple of weeks past an ideal trim. The stubborn jaw was not quite sporting a beard, but not clean-shaven either, as though he meant to shave and just didn’t give a crap.
Or more likely, he knew exactly how good the slight scruff looked on his jaw, and left it there to taunt her.
It wasn’t that Nick was more masculine than Bradley. Nick was just…rougher. Less predictable.
“I thought we had an agreement. You warn me when you’re going to show up,” she muttered, turning back to her hunt for the tape.
“Why, so you can put your best panties on?”
She gave him a withering look. They’d always been antagonistic, but it had gotten worse in recent months.
Starting with that day in her office when he’d…
She didn’t like to think about that day. Not ever. For many reasons.
Still, it never failed to annoy her that she never knew when he was going to show up. He was still doing the contractor thing, dodging Cassidy’s request that he join the team for real. So far he’d stuck to his flighty lifestyle: part-time writer, part-time bartender, full-time ass.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked in a bored voice, taking another bite of apple and propping his feet up on a second chair.
“Talk about what?” she snapped, still digging around for Scotch tape.
“What’s got you extra snippy this morning. The dress cutting off circulation?”
Another woman might have glanced down nervously at the dress, maybe smoothed a self-conscious hand over the fabric tightly skimming a curved hip. Taylor wasn’t one of those women.
She knew the dress fit like a glove. She also knew she rocked it. Eat your heart out, Bradley, she thought, faking confidence she no longer felt.
Taylor had convinced herself that she was likely to come into her office today to a bouquet of apology roses, Bradley begging her to forgive him for his hasty mistake.
Nope.
She hadn’t even seen the guy.
The coward was hiding.
She’d expected a bit more balls from the man she was in…love with.
And since Bradley wasn’t here to snap at, she directed all that frustration at someone who most definitely deserved it.
“You checking me out, Ballantine?” she asked, giving Nick the side-eye.
His smile was slow and wolfish. Sexy, if you liked that sort of thing. Which she didn’t. She wanted predictable. Nick Ballantine didn’t qualify.
“Always,” he said. “Your body’s the best thing about you.”
Taylor rolled her eyes, resuming her rummaging through the drawer. Her fingers touched Scotch tape. “Aha! Victory!”
Taylor pulled off a piece, then picked up the flyer she’d printed from her work laptop earlier that morning and marched to the refrigerator.
“What’s up, Carr? You lose your dog?” Nick asked, finishing the last of his apple and neatly hurling the core into the trash can at the opposite end of the room.
She crossed her arms and turned to face him. There was a taunting note to his words, as though he knew perfectly well what she’d lost.
He lifted his eyebrows, waiting. When she didn’t reply, Nick gave a weary sigh, letting his feet hit the floor as he stood, crossing toward the fridge and setting a hand on her waist to move her aside.
She batted at his hand, resisting the urge to block the flyer from his view, to prevent him from seeing that her life was just a tiny bit less than perfect.
Nick held her aside easily as he read the flyer. “Roommate needed. Gorgeous prewar two-bedroom, original crown molding—”
He cut her a look out of the corner of his eye. “The original, you say?”
She refused to engage, and he returned his attention to the flyer.
“Available immediately, month to month, no deposit required.” He whistled. “Sounds like a desperate situation, Carr.”
Taylor had just opened her mouth to tell Nick that her situation was not, nor would it ever be, his business, when he glanced over at her again and did a double take.
Before she could dodge, he reached out and gently touched her face as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
She batted at his hand even as he brushed a thumb gently over the spot on her jaw where the cork had thwacked her. “What happened here?” he asked quietly.
Taylor wrinkled her nose, even as she cursed the Sephora girl who had claimed that the thick-as-mud concealer would cover up anything.
“Nothing.”
“Taylor.”
“Nick.”
Their eyes held in a silent battle of wills, interrupted only when someone else walked into the break room.
Taylor glanced over, then sent up a silent Really? to the heavens when she identified the newcomer.
The very man she’d been waiting to get alone all morning was here, just as Nick Ballantine had his hands all over her face, with her desperation posted as a backdrop on the refrigerator door.
No, not desperation, Taylor reminded herself. Pragmatism.
Karen would remind her that there was nothing wrong with being financially responsible. And finding someone to shoulder some of the hefty rent was definitely responsible.
Bradley froze when he saw her, and she was pretty sure she saw the urge to turn and run flicker across his face.
Again she felt a stab of disappointment. In him. And in herself for apparently having misread him. She’d thought he was better than this.