by Maggie Riley
Roommate Romance
Maggie Riley
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
After We Fall by Melanie Harlow
Room Service by Poppy Dunne
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2016 by Maggie Riley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To that sexy roommate I had in that one apartment I always wished had been a one bedroom instead of two. Thanks for the inspiration, buddy.
Chapter 1
ALLIE
My best friend Liz always said that on my best day, my singing voice sounded like an off-tune cat being strangled. She wasn’t wrong. Which was why I was strictly a shower singer, tormenting only myself. It was also the reason I hadn’t had a roommate since college. I wouldn’t put someone through that. It was too cruel.
Because there were just some days when a girl needed to sing in the shower. And today was one of those days.
Everything had started out going exactly to plan. Because that’s what I did. I planned. I was Allie Lawson, wrangler of schedules and queen of to-do lists. My phone had at least five different list-making apps and at any given time I was usually working from two dozen separate lists. And that didn’t include my master lists. Lists like: Allie’s Favorite On-Road Snacks (chocolate-covered pretzels and gummy worms), or Allie’s Top Ten Reasons to Always Carry Duct Tape (need an emergency hem? Duct tape that sucker!), or Allie’s Celebrities She Would Never Meet But Would Totally Bone (Channing Tatum, Channing Tatum, Channing Tatum).
I never did anything without a list. Without several lists. This current life change had come after several weeks and several dozen lists. I had weighed the pros and cons, I had ranked my personal and professional needs, and I had reminded myself of all of the reasons I missed New York. Bagels had ranked high on the pros list.
My ex-boyfriend had never liked my lists. At first I had thought it was because he was someone who liked to go with the flow, liked to live in the now. It turned out, he just didn’t want me to be in control.
It had been three years since I had lived in New York. Three years since I had lived anywhere for longer than a week. And while living life out of a suitcase was manageable—especially if you were organized, which obviously I was, I couldn’t deny that I had begun to crave stability. And bagels.
Plus, there was nowhere for me to go in my job. Right out of college I got a job as an assistant stage manager with a tour of Cats. I had jumped around from production to production and ended up as the stage manager for the official touring company for Wicked. And I was damn good at it. Needless to say, my ex didn’t think much of it. He told me time and time again that no one liked being bossed around by a girl, that I should move into the ‘creative’ side of theater where I could relax and where less responsibility would rest on my shoulders. But I didn’t want to relax. I thrived on wresting order out of chaos, lived for the adrenaline high of opening night. In the end, I kept the job and got rid of him. Though I hated to admit it, part of the reason I was so driven to succeed now was to prove to him (and anyone else who doubted me) that I was born to do this job. Lists and all.
But I was tired of traveling. And I wanted to stage manage a Broadway show. On Broadway. I was twenty-five. I was ready. So armed with my to-do lists, I made plans. I saved up a safety net, set up several interviews with potential shows, and—as if it was a sign that I was making the right decision—Liz agreed to let me sublet her apartment for cheap when she got cast in a show in Connecticut.
Everything would work out perfectly. Because the universe and I had come to an understanding. If I had a list, I was in control. Things would be fine.
Except they weren’t fine. Despite my lists and my planning, the last twenty-four hours had been a complete and utter disaster.
I got to the airport two and a half hours before my flight. That always gave me enough time to get to my gate and find a seat near the outlet. Some people (cough, cough, Liz) felt that getting there five seconds before the gate closed was a perfectly acceptable alternative. She was wrong.
But this morning, the airport was crazy busy and delayed flights had crammed everyone into terminals like sweaty, exhausted sardines. You might ask: if I was such a good planner, how had I not known about the delays? I did! Of course I did. My flight was originally set for the night before, but I had checked ahead of time and managed to spend the evening in my hotel room instead of in the airport.
However, when I called in the morning to check on the status on my flight, the woman on the other end—who I have to assume was drunk—assured me that there would be no problems with the new schedule.
Instead, I spent the next eight hours waiting for my flight. A flight which was then re-routed to Dallas—the opposite direction of where I was going. Then I spent six hours in the middle of the night in Dallas (where everything was closed and I couldn’t get anything to eat) before getting on the next flight out to New York. A flight which should have landed at JFK. Instead, it went to La Guardia, the most inconvenient of all airports. Number three on my list of good New York airports.
One bus and two subway transfers later in the middle of rush hour, I finally arrived at Liz’s Brooklyn apartment, dragging the duffel with all my worldly possessions up three flights of stairs because the elevator was out of order. At that point, my plans had been revised so many times that my favorite list-making app had actually quit on me twice and had required me to restart my phone.
I was exhausted, starving, and covered in the grime of the thousands of New Yorkers I had rubbed elbows with on the subway. All I wanted was a nap, a pizza, and a shower. Not in that order.
Liz’s apartment was a typical Brooklyn one-bedroom. I had braced myself for a messy whirlwind, as was my best friend’s general state of being, but found the place to be surprisingly neat. There weren’t any clothes on the floor or overflowing recycling bins. It actually looked like it had been recently cleaned.
But besides the lack of mess, it looked exactly like Liz’s room had looked when we shared a place in college. The walls were covered with theatre posters, the bookshelf stuffed full of scripts and playbills. There was a small TV and a lumpy sofa and lots of twinkly lights decorating the window frames and door frames. It looked like the home of an eccentric fairy.
The apartment itself was nice, but small. Tiny kitchen (not as if I was going to use it to cook, but one needed a place to store take-out food and menus), decent-sized living room with most of the furniture likely rescued from the curb, and, most importantly, a bedroom with a queen-sized bed.
I wanted to faceplant on it. But while on the subway, I had revise
d today’s plan (for the seventeenth time) and determined that while I was so tired I almost fell asleep on some strange guy’s shoulder, I knew I would feel much better if I showered first. So that was the plan. Shower, sleep, eat.
So I stripped off my clothes, shoved them into my duffel with the rest of my dirty laundry, and headed off to the shower to serenade myself. Rock concert: party of one.
SHANE
I walked into the apartment and was greeted by the sound of someone murdering a chicken. The shower was running, but the water was not loud enough to drown out the sound of someone positively butchering that song from The Bodyguard.
“And I-ee-i-ee-i will always love yooooooooo-ou-ou.”
Christ.
If I had a glass in my hand, I was pretty sure it would have shattered on that note.
And while I could appreciate the enthusiasm behind the singing—and there was plenty of it—the last thing I wanted to do at the moment was deal with the fact that there was a stranger in my shower. A tone-deaf stranger.
Pulling out my phone, I dialed Liz’s number. Of course, it went directly to voicemail. Not that I should have been surprised. I should have known my scatterbrained tenant wouldn’t have left town without leaving some sort of problem behind. She was like the world’s tiniest, blondest hurricane, always leaving disaster in her wake.
And I’d had the pleasure of meeting more of Liz’s friends. They were like her—actresses—which often meant they were beautiful, but flaky as hell. The last thing I wanted right now was to deal with some flighty actress-type who didn’t have her shit together. I had a hard enough time managing my own life, I wasn’t in the mood to figure someone else’s out.
I should have known this whole situation was too good to be true. When I found out that Liz was going to be out of town for a few months, I had jumped at the opportunity to stay in the building again. Even though I owned it and used the bottom floor as my studio, the place hadn’t had any vacancy since I moved out, and it wasn’t right to clear out an apartment just so I could be closer to my workshop.
Besides, up until this point, I couldn’t have lived here even if there was a vacancy. I had been taking care of my younger sister, Megan, since she was fourteen, which had meant moving upstate until she finished high school. Her wellbeing had been my priority, and even though I had been a stupid twenty-two-year-old who had no idea how to talk to his teen sister, let alone become her guardian and stand-in parent, I somehow managed to make it through those years without killing her. It was currently my proudest accomplishment.
Now Megan was starting her first semester at NYU, and it made sense to move back to Brooklyn where I would be able to start up my furniture-making business again and stay close to my sister. But not close enough that I would be “cramping her style.”
Liz had agreed to let me stay in her apartment—which had been my apartment before I moved out—and for the past twenty-four hours it had been nothing short of heaven. It had been so long since I had any kind of privacy, and I had already been making plans to take advantage of that. Plans involving women. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been on a date, let alone the last time I’d been able to have some quality naked time with a woman.
And when I thought about the quality naked time I was looking forward to, it didn’t involve listening to someone warbling off-key in my shower. Pulling my damp shirt away from my chest, I eyed the closed bathroom door with longing. I had spent the entire afternoon downstairs in my workshop, hauling lumber and cutting pieces down. I was tired, sore, and, despite the fall chill in the air, sweating like a pig. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a housing crisis. Especially with someone who was clearly making it her life’s mission to make sure I would never, ever want to watch a Kevin Costner movie again.
Mercifully the song ended, the singing stopped and the shower turned off. Crossing my arms, I leaned up against the kitchen counter, wondering who was going to step out of the bathroom.
Steam poured out of the bathroom as the door swung open, and a short brunette wrapped in a towel came out. She was gorgeous, no mistaking that, her skin soft and pink from the hot water, her body all luscious curves and her mouth full and lush. Her damp hair was spread across her shoulders, her incredible hips swinging as she hummed along to another song. Still off-key. Her eyes were closed.
“Hey there,” I said. My voice was lower, huskier than I intended, but it had been a long time since I had seen a half-naked woman. Especially one that looked like her.
At the sound, her eyes shot open, and she screamed. And dropped her towel.
Chapter 2
ALLIE
I wasn’t sure what was worse—that I was standing naked in front of a complete and utter stranger, or that I was wishing I had shaved my legs first. Because whoever this stranger was, he was goddamn gorgeous. Under other circumstances, naked might have been a good thing. At the current moment, it was a perfect ending to an already awful day.
The strange man winced at my ear-piercing scream and reached for my towel at the same time that I frantically grabbed for it. My forehead knocked against his, and I dropped to my knees in surprise, my hands covering everything they could.
“Here,” Mr. Handsome and Fully Clothed said, handing me my towel.
I snatched it away, both relieved and disappointed that he averted his eyes as I tied it tightly around my still-wet body. Just to be safe, I kept my arms wrapped around me. I wasn’t going to risk flashing him again. This had already been embarrassing enough to fuel several nightmares.
“You must be a friend of Liz’s,” he said, crossing his arms. He really was attractive, tall and broad-shouldered with muscles for days, all clearly outlined in his tight gray shirt. He wore a pair of well-worn jeans, and he had dark brown hair curling over his forehead. It would have given him a boyish appeal if not for the days-old stubble darkening his perfect jawline. Instead he looked rough and masculine and completely delicious. My entire body hummed. It had been a long, long time since I had been this close to a man in any stage of undress. I was not prepared for it at all. And I needed to be prepared.
Someone like Liz might have taken advantage of the situation. Might have let the towel stay on the floor. Might have struck a pose even. But that was not my style. I kept that towel tight against my body. Because I wasn’t someone who was wild or bold. I didn’t take risks or make reckless decisions. I made lists and plans. I liked order and control, and while all those things made me a really, really good stage manager, it did absolutely nothing to help my love life. Which had been absolutely non-existent for years.
And would probably continue to be so. If I was successful at finding a Broadway job—and I refused to entertain the possibility that I wouldn’t be—I’d be working long, odd hours and constantly on call. In my limited experience, guys tended to dislike taking a backseat to work. Not that I wasn’t tempted to climb into a backseat, or any kind of reclining situation, with this guy.
He cleared his throat and I realized that I was staring.
“Friend of Liz’s?” he asked again, and this time his words penetrated my exhausted brain. Because that was the only reasonable explanation for why I was acting like a total weirdo.
“Friend of Liz’s,” I confirmed quickly, holding the towel even closer to my body. Clearly I had done something to anger the universe. The first cute—presumably straight—guy I’d come in contact with in months and of course I had to be naked and unprepared. Literally my two least favorite states of being.
“Maybe we should have this conversation with more . . .” The stranger gestured at my towel. “Clothes on.”
My face hot, I grabbed for my duffel and ended up whacking my elbow against the wall, right in my funny bone. Pain shot through me, and I dropped my bag and clutched the injured body part. Of course, I then dropped the bag on my foot, causing myself even more pain, and I was barely managing to hold onto my towel and avoid giving Mr. Hot Stranger another free show.
“Goddammit,�
�� I moaned, naked, unprepared, and in pain.
“Come on, Kelly Clarkson,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders and gently leading me to the sofa where he sat me down. “Let me see,” he took my arm and examined my elbow. His fingers were rough and calloused and my body was enjoying his touch way too much. Now I was aching in a completely different place. Quickly, I pressed my knees together.
“Kelly Clarkson?” I asked, trying to focus as he touched me.
“I caught the end of your concert,” he told me, shooting me a smile.
My eyes widened as I realized that he had overheard me in the shower. Yep. The universe was definitely punishing me. I dropped my head into my hands.
“Don’t worry about it,” he teased, leaning back on the sofa. “I’m sure dogs are a huge fan of your work.”
I glared at him through my fingers.
“So.” He crossed his arms. “Should we figure out why we’re both in Liz’s apartment?” He glanced over at my duffel. “I assume you think you’re staying.”
My mouth dropped open. “Of course I’m staying.” I ignored my sore foot and elbow and stalked over to the counter where I had put Liz’s keys. I held up her sparkly pink butterfly keychain. “Liz gave these to me.”
Reaching into his pocket, the stranger pulled out a pair of identical keys, only this one was on a sparkly purple butterfly keychain. “And she gave these to me.”
I sagged against the kitchen counter.
“Dammit, Liz,” I muttered.
“Yep,” the stranger agreed, running his hand through his hair. “Dammit, Liz.” He held up his cellphone. “I tried calling her, but it went straight to voicemail.” He stood. “I’m guessing, in typical Liz fashion, she forgot that she promised the place to both of us.”
“I’m her best friend,” I told him. At the very least I must outrank him in the Liz hierarchy. “Who are you?”