by Noelle Adams
He blinked at her, clearly surprised by her abrupt question. Charlie and Jane were talking about teaching on the other side of the room, and he’d been vaguely listening to the conversation.
When he didn’t reply immediately, she waited, a smile pasted on her face. She wasn’t going to let him get away with not responding.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, I guess it will be all right.”
“That doesn’t sound very positive. Don’t you like Abingdon?”
“It’s okay.”
She wanted to roll her eyes, but she managed to refrain from the impulse. “You were in Blacksburg before? Is that right?”
“Yes.” Vince looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.
She was momentarily struck by the possibility that Emma had suggested—that he was shy. Maybe that was why he looked like he wanted to escape.
That idea cast a much more sympathetic glow on his reluctance to speak, so her expression softened as she said, “I’ve been to Blacksburg a couple of times. It’s a nice town. Did you like it?”
“I did.”
“It’s too bad you had to give up your job there.”
“Yes.”
“But it’s nice you were able to come back and help your mom with the store.”
“Yes.”
Okay. This couldn’t just be shyness. Most shy people she knew—including her own sister—appreciated people who took the time to talk to them and draw them out.
Liz had been right from the beginning. This man was just rude.
He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be talking to them. His friend had dragged him over, but he wasn’t going to be friendly.
She normally would have given up on a conversation that was going so badly, but Vince didn’t deserve to be let off the hook and allowed to sit in silence.
So she pressed on. “So how do you like working at the store?”
His gray eyes were focused on her face, and they were quite unnerving. Deep. Observant. Intelligent. Completely unsmiling. “It’s fine.”
“I guess you were already in college when your parents moved to Abingdon.”
“Yes.”
Liz gave him a bright smile as she tried to hide her exasperation. “So what’s your favorite thing about working at the store so far?”
Vince was saved from answering the question when Anne stood up. “I’m sorry to break up the party,” she said, “but I’ve got an early start, so I better be getting home.”
Anne lived with her sister and brother-in-law in a unit on the ground floor, and she traveled a lot for her work.
Vince practically jumped to his feet as well. “We better be going too.”
Charlie stood up much more reluctantly. He’d seemed to be really enjoying Jane’s company. “I guess we have to go. It was great to meet you all.” To his credit, his smile made the circuit around the room, including all of them, although his gaze lingered longest on Jane.
They all assured him it had been great to meet him too, and it wasn’t long before the two men and Anne had left through the front door.
“Well, that’s settled,” Em announced. “Jane and Charlie.”
Liz glanced at her older sister and saw that she was blushing. “Yep. Jane and Charlie. That’s a done deal.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jane said.
Em replied, “We’re not being silly. We all saw what was going on between you two. He might need some time to get over his breakup, but it will happen as soon as he’s ready. And his family is loaded, so just think about how much that will help. Maybe if you marry him, you won’t always be talking about selling this place.”
One of the first things Liz had suggested when she found out the reality of her family’s financial situation was that they sell off this condo in Pemberley House. The mortgage payments were very high, and they certainly didn’t need this condo. It had been one of their mother’s extravagant, impractical purchases. But their mother wouldn’t hear of selling. It was a point of pride to her that they owned one of the condos in Pemberley House. But Liz still kept the possibility in the back of her mind and mentioned it occasionally when she was particularly worried about money.
She loved this place. She wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But if it was a choice between her family business and the Pemberley House condo, the condo would have to be sacrificed.
“I’m not going to marry anyone for money!” Jane’s lovely face was outraged.
“I didn’t say you should marry him for money,” Em replied blithely. “Just that if you happened to fall in love with a rich man, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. So that leaves Vince for Liz. His mother is convinced he needs a wife, and he clearly needs one with a lot of backbone. No one has more backbone than Liz.”
“You can forget about that right now.” Liz was pleased that her voice was cool and reflected none of the flustered exhilaration she was feeling. “I don’t want the stuck-up asshole.”
“I saw you torturing the poor guy,” Jane said with a reproachful smile.
“I wasn’t torturing him, and he isn’t a poor guy. I was trying to have a normal conversation with him, and he simply refused. I’m surprised he didn’t just yawn in my face and get it over with.”
“Give him a chance. If Charlie is his friend, he can’t be that bad.”
“Charlie is obviously like you and sees the best in everyone, but I’m not like that. I gave Vince Darcy a chance, and he blew it. I don’t like him.”
“He is good-looking,” Em said.
Liz rolled her eyes. “His hotness isn’t enough to make up for his personality.”
“So you did think he was hot.” There was a lilt to Em’s voice that Liz knew very well. “I knew there was something there. I’m never wrong about pairing people up.”
“You were wrong! There’s nothing there. Don’t even start thinking like that.”
Despite the vehemence of her voice, Liz knew that her cheeks were visibly flushing, and she knew her friend was going to notice.
But there was nothing she could do about that.
Meeting Vince still felt like finding that Chippendale, and her body didn’t seem to care that he was a jerk.
VINCE WAS DISPLEASED with the world.
He knew he had nothing to genuinely complain about. Compared to most people, his life was blessed. His family had a lot of money from two successful businesses. He was healthy and physically capable of doing anything he wanted to do. He had good friends and a family who loved him—even if his mother’s love was often channeled into fussing over him. He had a great place to live now with a college friend who only rarely got on his nerves.
But he was feeling grumbly anyway, and he’d just made an unpleasant discovery that made his mood even worse. Evidently his mother had been throwing out hints that he needed a wife to anyone of the female persuasion who happened to be around.
It was embarrassing.
He’d been perfectly happy in Blacksburg. Life had been easy, and nothing had troubled him much.
Then his father died—which was more painful than he could have imagined—and he’d had to move to a town where he didn’t know anyone but his mother and Charlie.
It felt strange. Uncomfortable. He’d been shy and withdrawn growing up, so he’d never had a lot of friends. He’d thought he’d gotten over that time in his life, but Abingdon was making him feel that way again.
Even sitting in Liz and Jane’s living room, he’d felt like an awkward outsider.
So he was in a bad mood when he woke up the next morning at just after seven o’clock, and an early call from his mother had only made it worse. Charlie’s family’s condo in Pemberley House was incredibly nice, but it had been sitting empty for years. There was quite a bit of work that needed doing to make it comfortably habitable. Plus he needed to unpack all his stuff.
None of that sounded appealing to him as he made himself a cup of coffee and opened the french doors that led out onto the terrace to let in some fr
esh air.
He stared outside at the wide lawns and flower beds and walking trails of the estate. Despite how large it was, it wasn’t that far from Abingdon’s downtown area, so it was only a short drive to the store.
He could hear birds singing from the trees outside. The sun glinted around the edges of a big white cloud to the east.
This was a beautiful place.
He was an ungrateful ass to whine about it.
This realization didn’t make him feel any better.
“Hey,” a voice came from behind him. It was Charlie, walking on the hardwood floors in bare feet. Like Vince, he hadn’t yet dressed for the day and was still wearing what he’d slept in.
“Hi.”
“Still in a bad mood?” Charlie made a beeline for the pot of coffee Vince had made.
“Eh.”
“It won’t be as bad as you think.”
“What won’t?”
“Moving here. Getting to know people.”
Vince didn’t like people to know that he used to be shy, but Charlie was an exception. “I know. It’s fine.”
Charlie came over with his cup of coffee to look out through the open doors the way Vince was. “Our neighbors seem pretty nice.”
“Uh-huh.” Vince’s voice was dry, partly to disguise the surge of interest he experienced at the thought of a pair of laughing green eyes and a very female body.
Charlie was a nice guy, but he wasn’t much for picking up on subtleties. He didn’t see what Vince’s sardonic response was hiding. “I thought they were great.”
“Kind of silly with their pink champagne and pink walls and all that giggling.”
“I didn’t notice them giggling.”
“You wouldn’t since you immediately claimed the pretty one for yourself.”
“They were all pretty.”
“You know who I’m talking about.”
Charlie gave a sheepish smile. Sometimes Vince wondered how it would feel to be as unguarded as his friend. “I don’t think I’m ready to dive into a relationship yet, but she is gorgeous, isn’t she?”
“Yes. She is. And she seems mostly sensible, which isn’t true of all of them.”
“Don’t be that way. There’s got to be one of the other three that you could like.”
“Why does there have to be one I could like? You’ve already claimed the pretty one, so that leaves me with Robert’s old girlfriend, the bossy one, or the annoying one.”
“The annoying one?” Charlie was frowning now, obviously trying to sort through the women with Vince’s descriptions of them to figure out who was who.
Vince had found Liz annoying—both yesterday morning and in the evening—but mostly because she hadn’t let him think about anything else since he’d first laid eyes on her. He could still vividly picture the smile twitching at the corners of her lush mouth, like she was secretly laughing at him. He could see the graceful arch of her neck and the way her top had shifted occasionally to give him varying glimpses of the curve of her breasts.
He wasn’t sure why the picture of her in his mind had his blood rushing this way. He’d been attracted to women before. Many times. The attraction had never left him feeling like this.
Strangely helpless.
And annoyed because of it.
He’d known exactly what she was thinking last night as she kept asking him irritating questions. She was trying to goad him, make him talk. She was having fun with him.
Vince wasn’t good around people he didn’t know, but he was usually better than he’d been yesterday evening.
From the first time he’d seen her approaching at the estate sale with her confident stride and her direct stare, he’d been fascinated with her. Then seeing her again with all the flowers, as he was stepping off the elevator, had been like a shot of adrenaline, waking up everything sleeping inside him.
Annoying.
It was the only word for it.
“You don’t mean Jane’s sister, do you? Is she the Annoying One?” Charlie was still trying to work it out.
“Yes. Liz.”
“I didn’t think she was annoying.”
“You didn’t talk to her.”
“I didn’t need to. She seemed nice and smart and friendly. Man, you really are in a bad mood, aren’t you?”
Vince took a deep breath, feeling even more like an ass than ever. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t nearly as nice as Charlie was, but he was usually nicer than this. “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll get over it soon.”
He went back to drinking his coffee and staring outside while Charlie sat down and putzed on his phone for a few minutes.
A noise from outside interrupted his reverie. It sounded like humming, so he turned his head toward the sound.
Liz. Walking out onto her terrace. She was obviously dressed for work in a pair of snug capri pants, high-heeled sandals, and a top that emphasized the roundness of her breasts. Her brown hair was thick and wavy, hanging down around her shoulders. She had a watering can in her hand, and she was humming as she watered the flowers in pots on her terrace.
Vince was hit with another wave of attraction, so strong it took his breath.
Then he was hit almost immediately following with a realization of how easily sound traveled from her terrace to his.
Surely she couldn’t have heard what he and Charlie had just been saying. She hadn’t been outside at that point. Even if her french doors had been open like his, she wouldn’t have been able to...
“Who is that?” Charlie asked, jumping to his feet and coming over to the door.
Vince knew he was hoping to see Jane, but Charlie’s smile was genuine as he stepped out onto the terrace and said, “Good morning.”
Liz turned to look at them with a bright smile. It was the same kind of smile she’d been giving Vince yesterday evening. Intentional rather than truly genuine. “Good morning,” she said brightly. “How’s the move going?”
“Slowly. All our stuff is still in boxes.”
Needless to say, Charlie was the one to answer. Vince was still standing like an idiot, staring at Liz and trying to judge how far a normal speaking voice would travel.
He’d heard her soft humming very clearly from inside.
“What’s that you were humming?” Charlie asked.
Liz laughed. “‘Pink Sunglasses.’ I didn’t realize you could hear me.” She shifted her eyes suddenly so her gaze met Vince’s without wavering. “I hope I wasn’t annoying you.”
With another blithe smile, she waved and walked back into her condo.
Charlie turned with an intake of breath to look at Vince.
Charlie might not be the quickest mind in the world, but he was nobody’s fool. And he knew the truth as well as Vince did.
Vince’s voice had traveled when he’d been talking to Charlie earlier about Liz and her friends.
He felt a heavy twisting of his gut and a warming of his cheeks as he processed what it meant.
Liz had heard.
She’d heard.
Three
“ARE YOU SURE YOU HEARD him right?” Jane asked, her pretty face and dark eyes concerned as she met Liz’s eyes in the mirror above the bathroom vanity.
Liz raised her eyebrows as she combed out her hair. It was too thick and wavy to do much with. She pulled it back into a low ponytail for work and just left it hanging loose otherwise. It had a tendency to frizz, so it usually looked messy, no matter how many expensive hair products she experimented with.
Jane and Riot’s hair was straight and silky. She’d always wished hers was so easy to manage.
Jane was working on her mascara, but she saw and understood her sister’s expression. “Don’t give me that look. I’m not being naïve. Maybe you didn’t hear the whole conversation and misunderstood something.”
“I heard the whole conversation, from the moment Charlie got up and said good morning. I didn’t misunderstand anything.”
Ever since she’d overheard Vince’s conversati
on yesterday, Liz had tried not to stew about it. She didn’t like Vince. She didn’t care what he thought about her. It shouldn’t matter in any way that he’d spoken of her so disparagingly.
That he’d called her the Annoying One.
But she couldn’t seem to let it go. It twisted in her gut, even when she wasn’t consciously thinking about it. She hated that it bothered her so much, but she couldn’t forget it.
She’d told Jane but nobody else. She didn’t want her friends constantly dissecting it, as she knew they would.
“But why would he think you were annoying? He’d only met you for a few minutes and you were perfectly friendly.”
“He’s clearly one of those guys who’s too full of himself to appreciate normal friendliness. And remember we met at the estate sale Thursday morning, and I got one of the Brandt paintings he was after. He’s probably used to girls swooning all over him, and I didn’t. He was snooty about all of us—as if there’s anything wrong with pink champagne. Our paint isn’t even pink! It’s a very sophisticated dusty rose.”
“I don’t think that’s really the point.”
“I know. The point is he doesn’t matter. I’m totally fine with being the Annoying One if the judgment is coming from that arrogant jerk.” She gave Jane a casual smile. “I’m not going to let him spoil the party for me.”
Em had decided on the spur of the moment to throw a party tonight—partly to welcome Vince and Charlie into the building and partly because she loved throwing parties. She’d invited the other residents and a few of her other friends from town, so there would be no more than thirty people there and it wasn’t likely to get too wild or unruly.
Liz would have been looking forward to it had it not been for the fact that Vince would be there.
She hadn’t seen him since their eyes had met across the terraces yesterday morning. He’d been wearing a pair of dark sleep pants and no shirt, and he’d looked obnoxiously sexy. But he’d also looked stricken, so she had no doubts that he realized that she’d overheard him.
Good.
She hoped he was embarrassed. She hoped he felt bad.