by Lauren Layne
Throughout the night, he’d made a couple of facetious remarks, and the sarcasm had gone completely over her head. Conversely, there’d been a handful of times when he’d mistakenly assumed she was being sarcastic when she wasn’t. They’d laughed their way through the awkward misunderstandings, but a love match it was not destined to be.
But the date itself hadn’t been Hunter’s mistake.
No. That would be going out with a woman who lived in his building.
Thus a date that should have ended, as most of them did, with an easy parting of ways outside the restaurant was turning into something altogether more complicated. Instead of him ushering a woman into her own cab before departing in a separate one, he and Haley were headed to the same destination.
Ergo: shared cab. And if the way she was leaning against him was any indication, she had every intention of suggesting the proverbial nightcap invitation.
Shit.
Hunter was good at a lot of things. Extricating himself from the expectations of women was not one of them. He wasn’t a pushover in his professional life and not with his friends. But when it came to a pretty woman, he was terrified of hurting her feelings. Terrified, even more so, of tears, because what man wasn’t?
Not that he’d peg Haley as a crier, but they didn’t seem to be on the same page in terms of their incompatibility.
Her hand found his knee. Shit.
Either she thought the date had gone a lot better than he had or she didn’t care how the date went and was just looking for a one-night stand. Which normally he’d consider, if the woman was interested and the mood was right. But again, it came down to that pesky proximity issue. Though they didn’t live on the same floor of their apartment building, they were likely to bump into each other while checking mail, in the stairwell, or during the odd fire alarm when the elderly woman on the first floor burned her toast again.
Those casual encounters would be much less awkward if they hadn’t seen each other naked.
The cab pulled up to a stop outside their building, and as Hunter paid the fare, he tried to remember his friend Lincoln’s advice for getting rid of a woman gracefully. Before he’d met Daisy Sinclair, Lincoln Mathis had been one of the city’s most liked and most nefarious playboys. The two qualities should have been mutually exclusive, but Lincoln had made it work. His reputation for letting women down easily, and in a way that had them adore him more than ever, was legendary.
So once, after a couple of cocktails, Lincoln had given Hunter a script of sorts. Something about letting the woman think she was in on a secret vulnerability of yours. Or was it figuring out what the woman’s vulnerability was . . . or . . .
Damn it. Hunter couldn’t remember a damn thing Lincoln had told him.
Haley was waiting for him on the sidewalk and flashed a seductive smile as he closed the door to the cab.
“How gentlemanly of you to escort me home,” she said. Her giggle as she said it let him know that it was a joke. At least in her mind.
Hunter smiled. A tight, polite smile, but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, Haley stepped closer and tilted her head up. “It’s early yet. I have an incredibly expensive bottle of cognac I got for Christmas from my boss that I’ve been dying to share with someone.”
Hunter reached out and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Did he tell her no now, or did he do the polite thing and accept the offer of a nightcap? But if he did that, he’d merely put off the moment when he had to let her down for real. . . .
Why did he do this to himself? Earlier in the week, when Haley’s grocery bag had exploded in the lobby and he’d helped her pick up an ungodly amount of green leafy shit, why had he not dodged her suggestion of dinner then?
He could have claimed a busy week at work. Or travel. Or the flu. Or a girlfriend! Damn it, that would have been an easy one. He could have claimed he was seeing someone else, and . . .
“Um, Hunter?” The female voice came from behind Haley, and the tone was incredulous, maybe verging on outrage.
He scanned the darkness, noting a female form in the shadows of the corner of his building, where the smokers tended to congregate around an ugly potted plant.
It wasn’t a smoker, though. And the voice and walk of the woman were wonderfully familiar.
Brit emerged from the shadows, and her face, now illuminated by the city lights, was livid.
“Who is this?” Brit said in a low, dangerous tone before Hunter could greet her.
Um. What?
Had she been drinking? Brit was a friendly, welcoming sort. Not at all the type of woman to be, well . . . weird.
“Brit, this is Haley. Haley, my friend Brit Robbins.”
Brit’s laugh was brittle. “Friends? Is that what we are? We didn’t feel like friends when you had me pinned against the wall of your apartment. We didn’t feel like friends when we blew off brunch to stay naked in bed all day. We didn’t feel like friends when I let you flip me over and—”
Hunter let out a startled laugh and held up a hand to stop the crazy nonsense she was spouting. “What the hell—”
Her blue gaze snapped from a nervous-looking Haley to Hunter, and though Brit didn’t lose the crazed look, she added something else, just for Hunter. A wink.
Ah. Got it.
Well, hell, now he felt like a moron for not seeing her plan earlier.
It was hardly the first time Brit had extracted him from an unpleasant dating situation by pretending to be his girlfriend, or, whatever, but usually he was in on the plan. And usually her methods weren’t so . . . graphic.
“Did he tell you any of that?” Brit asked, turning back to Haley. “Or that he’s taking me out tomorrow? Or that after last weekend, I could barely walk straight—”
Jesus. Hunter choked back a horrified laugh and decided to put an end to this. For Haley’s sake as well as his own.
He stepped away from Haley and toward Brit, his fingers wrapping around her upper arm. “Brit. Sweetie. Let’s just go up to my place and talk a little bit.”
“Sure, ‘talk,’” she said, putting air quotes around the word. “We all know—”
He tightened his fingers in gentle warning. Enough with the weird sexual references; you’re creeping me out.
He gave Haley an apologetic smile. “Haley—”
She shook her head and stepped backward. “Forget it. I knew you were a player, but . . .” She shook her head again. “See you around, Hunter.”
He and Brit watched until Haley disappeared into the building.
Then Hunter looked down at her without releasing her arm. “Happy now?”
She beamed up at him. “You’re welcome.”
He gave an incredulous laugh. “I can’t say gratitude is my first emotion right now.”
“It’ll come when you realize I saved you,” she said confidently. “Don’t try to tell me you weren’t freaking out trying to figure out how to get rid of her.”
“She wasn’t that bad,” Hunter grumbled, feeling guilty for wanting to be rid of Haley as much as he had.
“No, she seemed okay,” Brit agreed. “But you weren’t into her.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because you were doing your scratch and lean.”
Hunter blinked. “My what?”
“Scratch and lean. Whenever you’re uncomfortable in a situation and wish you could get out of it but don’t know how, you scratch the back of your neck and lean slightly away from whoever you’re dealing with.”
“I do not.”
She shrugged. “Do too.”
“Okay, maybe I do,” he said, because he really had no idea if he scratched his neck, or leaned, or whatever. “But we’re not calling it that. We’re not turning it into a thing.”
“You should be grateful for the quirk. Without it, I’d never have known to rescue you!”
“Yeah, thanks for that, I guess—wait.” Hunter released her arm but looked down at her sharply. “How did you know to rescue m
e?”
“I told you, the scratch and lean—”
“No, I mean why are you even here?”
“Because we’re best friends?”
“Best friends don’t lurk outside each other’s apartment buildings.”
She linked arms with him and started toward the front door of his building. “They do if they have a favor to ask.”
“Isn’t that what texts are for?” he asked warily. Brit had been to his place dozens of times, maybe hundreds, but rarely did she simply show up without warning.
And Brit asking favors was even more rare. Not that he’d have minded if she asked for more. He’d do just about anything for her. But generally speaking, Brit wasn’t the type to need favors. He’d always thought of her as entirely self-sufficient.
“Believe me, you don’t want to hear this request in a text,” she said.
That had him curious. And more than a little wary, especially given their conversation from yesterday.
Hunter dug his keys out of his pocket, used the electronic fob to open the door to his building’s lobby. He held it open for her, and she stepped inside.
His Upper West Side building wasn’t a fancy one. In fact, it was the very first building he’d moved into after arriving in New York a decade earlier, fresh off the plane from Missouri. At the time, it’d been all he could afford. The pre-war mid-rise had a doorman, but in a cost-cutting measure he worked only nine to five, Monday through Friday, rather than the round-the-clock coverage of fancier buildings. There was one elevator, and though it had to serve only eight floors, Hunter found it quicker to take the stairs to his sixth-floor unit unless dealing with groceries or luggage.
The lobby, while probably deemed lavish at the building’s opening in the twenties, had a decidedly dated feeling, and not in the intentionally retro-glamour style of the renovated pre-war buildings in the area.
When he’d gotten the job at Oxford a few years ago, Hunter’s first thought had been that he could move to a newer, nicer building, only to realize . . . he didn’t want to.
The Enclave was home, and Hunter didn’t want to live anywhere else. Instead, he’d applied the increased income to renovating his unit. With the landlord’s surprisingly indifferent permission, he’d gutted the kitchen, creating an open floor plan, with all new appliances.
The bathroom too had gotten a makeover. Goodbye ugly wallpaper, and hello to a new showerhead that worked all the time, instead of when it was in the mood.
Most other things, though, he’d left alone, preferring to let the character of the old building show itself in the high ceilings, the old-fashioned windows.
He’d have left his furniture alone too, but by then Brit had wiggled her way into his life and insisted that he ditch the frat vibe. She’d sent his secondhand sectional with the duct tape on one of the arms to Goodwill and replaced it with a comfortable brown leather couch that he liked more than he’d ever admit to her.
She’d also picked out his coffee table, lamps, and all the other shit guys didn’t really care much about, but she’d taken care not to make it fussy. As a result, his home was, well, home. Or at least a pretty good temporary home until he found his way back to Missouri, which he’d always thought of as the endgame.
Hunter started toward the stairs, and Brit groaned. “You know that if you go to the gym every day you don’t have to take the stairs, right?”
“Well, since you don’t go to the gym every day, consider this your cardio,” he said, planting his hand on her back and shoving her up the stairs.
She trudged ahead of him, the wedge heel of her boots clicking on each step. “You don’t treat your dates like this, do you?”
“Definitely not.”
“Oh, that’s right. Because you try to get rid of them before they have to do the StairMaster portion of the evening.”
He reached out and pinched her side. Brit gasped and whipped her head around. “You did not just pinch my muffin top.”
“Your what?”
Her eyes narrowed before she resumed her climb. “You know full well what a muffin top is, and you know you just pinched it.”
“I think it’s cute.”
“Shut up, Hunter.”
He grinned as she stomped harder up the stairs until they reached the sixth floor.
“You owe me water. And wine. In that order,” she said, her chest heaving just slightly as she waggled her finger at him and then followed him down the hallway.
“No problem.” He pushed his key into the lock. “I’ve got an open bottle of red from last night. There might be a bottle or two of white in the fridge, if you want me to open that?”
“Whatever you’re drinking.” She shrugged out of her jacket and hung it up herself in his coat closet. She pulled out a second hanger and wiggled her fingers for his coat.
He handed it to her, barely registering that it was his apartment and thus he should probably be hanging up her coat. But, then, they were long past that.
“What I’m drinking will depend,” he said, scratching his chin and studying her.
“On?”
“This favor you have to ask me. Is it the type of favor that I can hear while sipping water? Should I pour myself a glass of wine? Or is it the type of favor where I’m definitely going to want whiskey?”
She chewed her lip and considered. “Whiskey.”
Hell.
“For me too,” she said.
Double hell.
Brit rarely drank whiskey. Only when she really needed liquid courage. Which meant . . . whatever she had up her sleeve?
He wasn’t going to like it.
Chapter Four
Brit was nervous, and that was weird. She was never nervous around Hunter. He was her best friend in all the world, the guy who was so much like her brother that she didn’t even mind—much—when he’d pinched the extra few pounds of holiday weight lurking around her middle.
But now, standing face-to-face with him, she realized the monumental hugeness of what she was about to ask him.
Could she ask him?
Should she?
She tried to tell herself that this was what friends did. She saved him from his gentlemanly inability to hurt a woman’s feelings even when he wasn’t into her, as Brit had just done with the Haley situation outside, and in return he . . .
Crap. How had she not thought through the phrasing of this before coming over?
Hi, can you teach me how to seduce a man?
Can you show me how to be sexy?
Can you coach me on what men want?
It had sounded so simple when discussing it with the girls earlier that afternoon, but now . . .
“Put some music on, would you?” he called, going into the kitchen and pulling two glasses out of the cupboard.
“Sure.” Brit pulled out her cellphone and connected to his fancy sound system the way she had a bunch of times in the past.
What had always been a mindless, easy task suddenly felt monumental.
Did she play something sexy, to set the mood for the request?
Or something decidedly non-sexy, so he didn’t misinterpret the request?
“Oh, by the way,” Hunter said, setting the glasses on the counter and going to the shelf he used as a makeshift bar cart of sorts, “you have lipstick on your teeth.”
Oh for Pete’s sake—Brit rolled her eyes and rubbed a finger across her two front teeth. She looked at the pad of her finger, noting the smear of her go-to pink lipstick.
Yeah. Somehow, she didn’t think there’d be much chance of Hunter misinterpreting her request as anything sexy.
The day he started seeing her as anything other than his best friend with lipstick on her teeth and love handles was the day he stopped doing the scratch and lean, and she knew that wasn’t ever going to happen.
Sometimes Brit wondered if the man actually had an allergic reaction to commitment. Because it seemed to her as though the very thought of settling down with one woman instead of keeping his
options open made him instinctively scratch and lean away from the offending allergen.
“You’re not going to make me listen to Taylor Swift again, are you?” he asked, adding an ice cube to her glass without asking because he knew that was the only way she drank whiskey, if at all.
Perfect. Taylor Swift it was.
She selected one of Taylor’s earlier albums, full of twangy teenage vibes and guaranteed to keep the mood from getting too weird when she launched the Plan.
Hunter set both glasses on the coffee table, blatantly disregarding the coasters she’d bought him for Christmas, and then plopped down on the couch, stretching his arms along the back of it before nodding to the spot beside him. “Sit. Tell me why you look ready to barf.”
She did sit, pulling one leg beneath her and turning to face him, her elbow on the back of the couch, her head resting on her hand. “So, how was the date?”
“Well, seeing as I . . . what was it? Itched and rolled?”
She let out a laugh. “Scratched and leaned.”
“Right. Since I did that, surely you know it must have been not so great.”
“Yeah, but how was it not so great?” she pressed.
Hunter gave her a curious look. She rarely expressed much interest in his dates. Even if she wanted to, there were too many to keep up with. Hunter was a strange type of playboy in that he seemed to truly enjoy dating women, just not for very long. Unlike the other legendary Oxford bachelors, who’d been determined to sleep with women but never date them.
It was as though Hunter consistently forgot that he didn’t actually want a relationship when he asked out these women. That, or he was just a serial dater of sorts, enjoying the process of it without wanting it to go somewhere.
Truthfully, she didn’t know what his deal was. She wasn’t sure that he did either.
“Um, okay,” he said with a laugh. “It was just sort of . . . boring. Haley was nice, interesting enough, but our senses of humor were a little mismatched. Not a big deal, I didn’t have a bad time, but I didn’t really see it going anywhere.”
“But she did,” Brit said. “I could tell by her giggles and the way she looked up at you.”