She pats it. “It’s shorter.” Her tone is succinct, observational.
“I like it this length.”
A soft smile plays across her lips, seemingly against her better judgment. “Thank you.”
“Then again, I liked your long hair too.”
“Hunter.” It comes out like a warning.
“But that said, this new look is pretty much the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.” I can’t help myself.
A small gasp seems to escape her lips. Then she purses them shut.
“Presley,” I say, my voice going low, raspy, the way she used to like it.
“Yes?” Hers seems to catch again.
“You look so . . .”
How do I even begin to fill in how she looks? More beautiful than I remember? Her eyes seem to be full of stories. Her lips look just as kissable as they used to, and the tiniest of crinkles around her eyes makes me want to know what she’s been up to for the last ten years.
“You look beautiful. I just wanted to say that.”
“Thank you.” She swallows, glances at me, then smirks. “I see the years have been hard on you.”
I act affronted, but this time I know she’s teasing. I recognize the tone. “Hey. What do you mean by that?”
“I just mean it seems like you’ve seen your share of adventures.”
I continue to pretend I’m indignant. “Are you trying to say I look old?”
“Well, you are thirty-seven.”
I shoot her a look. “Thirty-seven is not old.”
“Not that old,” she says, as if correcting me. “But if you’re, say, twenty-five, then thirty-seven is ancient.”
“You’re not twenty-five, woman. You’re two years younger than I am. That’s it. Two years.” Then something dawns on me. “Wait. Is that your way of saying you have a twenty-five-year-old boyfriend?”
Her smile widens with naughty delight. “You think that’s what I meant?”
“Well, yeah.”
She laughs. “You want to know if I have a boyfriend?”
I lean forward. “I’m dying to know.”
Her brow arches. “Are you sure you want to find out?”
“It’s all I want.”
“Like, it’s driving you wild with curiosity?”
“You know it is.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to take the fifth.”
“Presley.” There’s a note of desperation in my voice that surprises me. This fact feels vital. I must unearth it. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“What if I have a husband?”
“Do you?” I won’t tango with a taken woman.
She fires back. “You don’t know?”
“I looked you up. I tried to find you. You don’t leave much of a trace on the internet.”
“And you wanted to find a trace of me?”
I didn’t for the longest time. I’d sliced her out of my life. That worked until I heard her name and saw her again. And just like that, now I need to know her status. “So, are you single?” I ask, trying again.
“I’m not married.”
This news thrills me more than I imagined it would. “Good. What about a boyfriend? Fiancé?”
“Why does it matter?” She’s making me work for it, and that’s hot. But as I hold her gaze, the flicker in her eyes tells me the past isn’t entirely in the past. It tells me she might like the present too.
“It matters because . . .” I lift my hand, moving a strand of hair from her shoulder.
She trembles, then smooths her hands over her jeans, stands, and gestures to the door. “I need to go. I have someplace to be later.”
I doubt that’s true, but I also don’t want to push her. “I’ll walk you out.”
Once outside, I wait as she hails a cab. “I’ll see you on-site. But don’t bring your boyfriend, okay?”
She shakes her head, amused. “You’re hilarious when you don’t get what you want.”
I make one last-ditch effort. I can’t help myself. “You could just tell me if you’re involved with someone, and then I’d know whether it’s safe to flirt.”
She wiggles an eyebrow, stands on her tiptoes, and drops a kiss to my cheek. “Don’t worry, Hunter. Even if you’re tempted, I’m not, so whether I’m involved or not doesn’t matter.”
Ouch.
But when the cab arrives, I open the door for her, bend down, and brush her cheek with a chaste kiss. “Don’t worry, honey. I know I’m not the only one tempted.”
The signs come in a rush.
The telltale gasp.
The hitch in her voice.
The way she shivers.
I let my lips linger on her cheek, then I murmur, “You smell better than last time. So much better that I have to wonder how your lips taste.”
Her lips part the slightest bit. Another sign.
On that note, I say good night.
8
Presley
Achievement unlocked.
I breathe a twelve-ton sigh of relief, because holy hell, did I really just pull that off?
Me?
Mild-mannered art historian goes full coy vixen?
Then again, I’m not truly mild-mannered. But hell, it was fun to amp up the mysterious factor times ten.
As the car weaves through traffic, I grab my phone, reporting back to Truly, as ordered.
* * *
Presley: Apparently, all I needed to do was mention the age twenty-five and he assumed I had a twenty-five-year-old boyfriend.
* * *
Truly: Brilliant! Also, how the hell did he jump to that conclusion?
* * *
Presley: I’m honestly not sure. We were joking about age in general, I made a comment about twenty-five being young, since I was twenty-five when I met him, and somehow he leapt to the conclusion that I have a twenty-five-year-old boy toy in my apartment.
* * *
Truly: Like, in a cage? And you have to get home to let him out and feed and water him?
* * *
Presley: Please, I’m a benevolent sugar mama. My apartment boy toy is fully free-range.
* * *
Truly: How enlightened of you. But tell me more about how Hunter reacted to your imaginary boy pet. I need all the details!
* * *
As the cab slows at a light, I picture Hunter’s face, the furrow in his brow, the flicker of envy in those deep, dark irises. God, his eyes.
They melted me from the beginning.
The biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen were the first thing I’d noticed about him the day I met him at the museum. Warm and welcoming, they said Trust me, talk to me, look into my soul.
And tonight they seemed to say You’d better not be taken.
A shimmer of heat runs through me at the memory. I liked his jealousy. I wanted his jealousy. It felt good and right.
And so did the way he stared at me like he wanted to eat me up.
I shake off the little shudders.
I tap out a reply, keeping my answer objective.
* * *
Presley: He kept asking me if I had one. And by “kept asking,” I mean about fifty times.
* * *
Truly: Whoa.
* * *
Presley: Men are so silly. Such pointlessly territorial creatures, right?
* * *
Truly: That wasn’t what my “whoa” was for.
* * *
Presley: What was your “whoa” for, then?
* * *
Truly: “Whoa” means tell me more about how the whole night went before I give you my diagnosis. And tell me now!
* * *
As the cab whisks me to the East Village, I give her a quick summary, including the way he touched my arm, my hair, my cheek. Whoa indeed. He did touch me a lot. Then I relate the boyfriend convo, how he called me “honey,” and the teasing.
I lean back against the seat, smiling out of nowhere as I recall his words—You look beautiful. I just wanted to say that—and h
ow they sent shivers racing down my spine.
But he’s just being a guy. It means nothing.
I give Truly the unfiltered tale of the night and wait for her conclusion.
* * *
Truly: Whoa . . . as in it sounds like he has unfinished business with you.
* * *
I stare at her note. She can’t mean that.
Unfinished business? No way.
His reactions were surely less about me and more about his persona. His rugged, hypermasculine persona, which was irked by my power play.
That’s all. Nothing personal.
The cab stops at my apartment, and when I reach for my wallet to pay the driver, he waves me off. “Your boyfriend paid for it.”
I shoot him a surprised look. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
The man smiles. “He’s quite generous. Maybe consider him.”
I step out of the cab and stand on the sidewalk, amused by the cabbie’s sudden interest in my romantic life. And admittedly a little delighted by Hunter’s generosity.
I call Truly as I walk up the stoop. “Hunter paid for my cab. Secretly.”
“And he was obsessed with whether you’re seeing someone or not?” She sounds like she’s adding up facts to make her point.
“Yes, and I didn’t give away a thing to him. I was rocking the evening,” I say, unlocking the front door.
“Good girl.”
“But do you actually think that means he has unfinished business?”
She laughs. When she answers, her voice sounds a bit more echoey. “Yes! Because he was touching you. Because he was asking you questions. Look, I’m not the only one who thinks this.”
“I completely agree with her,” a cheery voice chimes in, letting me know she’s put her husband on speakerphone. Truly is happily in love with her brother’s best friend, a charming Brit who adores her. If she weren’t my closest friend, I’d hate that pairing on account of it being a textbook rom-com scenario.
“Truly! You sneak attacked me with a man.”
“Well, Jason does understand men, and I wanted a guy’s perspective.”
“And it sounds like someone isn’t quite over you,” Jason adds. “Just as my brilliant wife said.”
But that doesn’t compute. “I don’t think that’s the case,” I say as I climb the rickety steps to my apartment, enter, and flop onto my couch. “He’s been out of my life for ten years. He’s had a ton of women. He dates models and actresses, not struggling art historians who auction off love letters from has-been Goobers! stars.”
“Yet he touched you, put you in a cab, made sure he had your number, and tried to find out if you had a boyfriend,” Jason points out.
“Yes,” I admit, a little begrudgingly.
“Also, Goobers! was a great flick.”
“I did love Goobers!” Truly agrees. “But more importantly, how was it for you seeing Hunter?”
That’s a great question.
And I have the answer already.
Hard.
It was incredibly hard.
I’d love to put off talking to him as long as possible, but I still have to thank him for paying the cab fare.
That’s the right thing to do. I can’t start this project on the wrong foot with him. Manners matter, so later that night I send a text thanking him.
The second the text hurtles into the ether of the cellular network, I turn my phone to silent, because I can’t bear wanting a reply.
I know what it’s like to want a reply from him.
I won’t get it, and I definitely shouldn’t expect it from a simple thanks.
But even so, it’s best to stay busy.
I strip out of my jeans and Truly’s top, and pull on exercise pants and a sports bra. Determined to keep him out of the endcap display in my mind—because he’s as tantalizing as the packs of M&M’s at the checkout counter—I rap on my neighbor’s door. Company will take my mind off craving the dopamine hit of him.
Francesca answers with a killer eyebrow arc as she regards my workout outfit, a fat glass of red wine in her hand. “Please tell me you aren’t here to attempt the impossible.”
I give her a playful arm-punch. “You know you want to go for a run with me.”
She scoffs, dragging the long red nails of her free hand through her wild mane of black curls. “I despise running.”
“That’s only what you tell yourself on days you don’t want to run with me.”
“Like today.” She gestures to her clothes—a red cami and linen pajama pants. “I had the longest day of absurd client requests, plus I already showered to get the scent of crazy off me.”
“It’s only eight. It’ll be fun, and just think how good that wine will taste after a run. Plus, you can tell me all your crazy client tales.”
She growls. “You are evil with your enticements.”
“I’m terrible. I also know how you love to tell me work stories.” I jerk my head toward the hall. “Now, come along. I want to hear everything.”
Sighing heavily, she takes a slug of the red before setting it on the kitchen counter. “I’ll walk. No running. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say, since I want companionship more than hard-core exercise.
She changes into yoga pants and sneakers, and for the next thirty minutes, we meander through our neighborhood while she tells me about her latest client requests. She runs an art gallery in SoHo that caters to collectors with eclectic taste, including a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright who requested that the new abstract painting he’d purchased be wrapped in old parchment paper and blessed three times by a shaman before he brought it home.
When we return to our building, the stairs groaning loudly, she tells me she’s staging an exhibit this weekend that I might like. “You should come by. One of the artists makes sculpture solely with wire, and it’s fascinating. It makes your brain bend as you try to figure out where and how all the wires connect.”
That does sound insanely cool, and I do love brain twisters. “I can try, but my sister wants me to Skype her to help decorate her walls with kid photos.”
“And is she going to administer her subtle pressure on you to procreate too?”
“Isn’t that what all happily married parents do? But seriously, Holly’s not like that. She’s just sort of . . . grotesquely happy.”
Francesca gags. “I can’t tolerate grotesque displays of happiness.”
“Because you’re a malcontent.”
“And happy to be one. Also, come by Friday night. Surely your disgustingly delightful sister won’t require you to Skype her on a Friday night. Have I mentioned there will be interesting single men at the exhibit?”
I flash her a smile. “Now who’s evil with her enticements? And thanks for making time for me, Miss Malcontent. I owe you wine.”
“I will always cash in on that kind of IOU.”
She returns to her wine and I return to my tiny abode, shutting the door, locking it, and breathing a sigh of relief.
It worked. I barely thought of . . .
Wait.
Single men.
Is Hunter even single?
With all his rapid-fire questions about my relationship status, I didn’t glean even a hint about his.
He’s probably involved.
He probably has a girlfriend.
He probably wanted to know if I was with someone just for his own amusement.
Grabbing my phone from my pocket, I turn off the “do not disturb” setting and immediately see his name on my screen.
Willpower, I tell myself.
Also, who cares if he’s involved? You’re not getting involved with him, so it doesn’t matter.
For a full hour, I pretend his name isn’t on my phone as I research ideas for Beatrice, combing through articles on less-frequented sites of art whodunits, hunting out new theories.
But heists don’t interest me right now. Nor do Francesca’s single men. Oddly enough, my mind wanders to Corey Kruger. Did he mean what
he said in his letters to Lily? Did he want her back at the time?
What does he want now?
And more importantly, what do I want?
I close the laptop, head to my bed, open my nightstand drawer, and find a well-worn envelope. I slide my finger inside, taking out a flimsy sheet of lined paper.
* * *
I’m sure when I’m halfway around the world, waking up in that in-between state where I don’t yet remember where I am, I’ll imagine I’m still with you. I’ll blink, rub my eyes, and my heart will fall when I recall how very far from you I am. But for a few delirious seconds, I’ll be lost in time and space. How long will that last, I wonder?
* * *
I don’t think it’ll end.
* * *
He slipped this into my purse one morning after he spent the night, leaving a kiss on my forehead and saying, It’s not for now. It’s for later. And know this—I’ll see you tonight. We still have another night.
I close my eyes, wishing all his words, both the spoken and the written, didn’t kick off a huge swell of emotions, didn’t make my throat hurt.
But they do.
And that’s why I can’t lose myself to the ridiculous notion of unfinished business.
Hunter Armstrong is the past.
The only part of him I can allow into my present is the professional side.
I need to write a fabulous proposal and do a stellar job cataloging the estate. Maybe something from Valentina’s collection will inspire me with something more marketable than a deep dive into art heists. That’s what my focus will be.
PS It's Always Been You Page 7