Chris joined him at the window and nodded. “Nice. I’ve seen her at the gym.”
“Do you think she knows I’m here?”
Chris lifted a brow. “Only one way to find out.”
Reluctant to consider that risky proposition, Matthew walked over to the shelves to set the Shakespeare text next to The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne. Would she forgive him if she learned the truth? He took a deep, cleansing breath and faced his friend.
“Want to go out for lunch?”
Matthew glanced at his colleague’s tweed blazer and starched khakis. He brushed at the dust clinging to the front of his old NYU T-shirt and rubbed his hands on his faded jeans. “To-go from Uptown Deli all right?”
“Works for me.” Chris surveyed the office. “Looks good in here.”
“Did I make it stuffy enough, with a hint of British sophistication?” Matthew joked, grabbing the keys off his desk in the corner.
“The cherry furniture and coat of pale blue paint on the walls says a lot about you, but for a full analysis, I’d have to charge you,” his colleague countered, his expression deadpan.
Matthew snorted and lifted the large cardboard box filled with junk from his inherited desk. Following Chris into the hallway, he paused to lock the door behind them.
“Kidding aside,” Chris said, clapping him on the back, “that promotion couldn’t have happened to a nicer, more deserving guy.”
“Thanks.” Matthew started down the dim hallway with his friend, and as always, the whiff of must mixed with old plaster reminded him of Etta and her books, the ones she’d read to him and later had given him, many of which were now housed on the shelves in his new office. He’d have to take a photo to show her when he visited her tomorrow. “I’d man hug you if I didn’t have this box in the way.” No need to go down memory lane when Chris was around. His friend might joke about charging him, but he suspected nothing involving human emotions ever got past the guy.
And he didn’t need that kind of help. He needed to figure out how to exit the building and traverse the quad to the parking garage without Lexie spotting him.
They rounded the hallway and descended the stairs. He shifted the box, his palms sweaty. If he suggested an alternate exit, Chris would make a big deal about it, so he didn’t bother. Hopefully she’d be gone or distracted by her writing like she’d been last night.
They crossed the foyer. Chris reached the entrance first and pushed open one of the heavy double doors, then waited on the steps while two giggling undergrads entered the building.
“There are days I feel like I’ve aged fifty years,” his buddy remarked, his eyes on the young women’s backs.
“I hear divorce can do that to you.” Matthew glanced out the door.
Lexie was still writing, her forehead resting on one palm. Heaven help him, but she was an angel, her dark hair burnished gold by the sun where it filtered between the tall oak’s branches.
Hustling down the white marble steps, he prayed for some divine intervention that would allow him to slip across her line of sight unnoticed.
“Bet you’re wishing you had an invisibility cloak about now, huh?” Chris teased, a man whose colleagues never let him forget he was a dead ringer for the character Harry Potter.
“Yeah—for you,” he retorted.
“Come again?”
“I’ll explain later.” It had sucked having to ask his friend for a little dating advice, but if Lexie recognized Chris as another trainer from the gym, he’d have no choice but to share all the sordid details.
He reached the bottom of the endless steps and started across the cement walkway. The woman who’d crawled beneath his skin was sitting less than twenty feet away. His heart pounded. As much as he wanted to see those eyes sparkle with recognition and those lips tilt upward into an irresistible smile, he knew it could very well ruin their future together if she glimpsed him.
So he sped up.
And she looked up.
He bit off a muffled curse.
“Hi.” Her voice held surprise.
“Hey.” Matthew stopped and grinned back at her, that part of him that had wished for her attention thrilled by the unfolding events. The rest of him prayed Mr. Psych Professor had managed to put two-and-two together and had the sense to keep right on walking to the parking lot.
“Hey,” Chris said.
Matthew whipped his head around to find his colleague standing next to him with a glint in his eyes—like he was mentally collecting data for another article on the human condition. He muttered another curse and snapped his attention back to Lexie. “Nice day.”
She nodded, but her eyes had shifted to Chris. “Do I know you? You look awfully—” She shut her notebook, stood, and pointed her pen at him. “You work at the gym. Right?”
Aw, shit. She’d made the connection, was on the right road and barreling toward the truth.
“At J&C, yes.” Chris glanced between the two of them, playing ignorance to the hilt. “Is that where you know this guy from?”
“She’s my client.” He cringed at the strain in his voice.
“He’s my trainer,” she responded, eyes still glued on her target. “You’re a professor here?”
Chris nodded helplessly.
Her eyes narrowed with concentration. “And Matthew’s helping you—”
“Sorry to cut you short.” Matthew jingled his car keys. “But I promised I’d give him a lift to the deli before his next class. Want anything?” Why was she staring at Chris’ ass?
She cocked her head. “Brought lunch, thanks.”
Matthew began walking for the parking garage. “Well, we’re in a hurry.” He signaled for Chris to follow. “It was good to see you.”
“Uh. Bye?” She twitched her nose in confusion.
He didn’t blame her. “Keep walking and don’t look back,” he ordered, hoping his colleague could hear.
Chris caught up to him as he reached the Jeep. “Why’s she asking about my job?”
“Long story.”
“We’ve got twenty minutes,” Chris replied, getting into the vehicle. “This time, don’t leave anything out.”
Once they were on the street and headed north, he glanced toward his eager passenger. “You cannot tell anyone, or it could affect Lexie’s job, and I refuse to have that on my conscience.” Okay, so maybe there was more to his growing feelings for the woman than that, and he was pretty sure he could’ve asked his godfather to help out in a different way—like ensuring Lexie didn’t lose her job—if it had come to that. He’d never been a huge fan of playing Monday morning quarterback, but perhaps this game hadn’t been his smartest move.
“I can keep my trap shut.” Chris removed his glasses and cleaned them with the tail of his button-down, which had come untucked during their hasty exit.
“Lexie thinks you’re the guy she’s been texting while she’s pretending to be her boss.”
“Why would her boss text me?”
He slowed to make a left turn. “Her boss is Sylvia Swann.”
“Oh.” That one word showed Chris wasn’t totally shut off from the world of women.
“She knows the guy’s a trainer at the firm and that he’s a Brit Lit professor here.”
His friend looked him in the eye. “That’s you. Oh… Gotcha. Now I’m putting it all together.”
Matthew focused on the road again, navigating the next few blocks and debating the possible ramifications of telling Lexie the truth.
He’d parked the Jeep across from the deli when Chis broke the silence. “You can’t do this.”
“What?”
“She’s a nice woman. It’s obvious she likes you. You can’t play head games like this with her. It’s not healthy for either of you.”
“I’m not playing. Not since that day I almost kissed her in the street.”
Chris threaded a hand through his mop of black hair. “We talked about that approach. It’s not going to fly with a woman like that—at least, not until
she trusts you.”
“I know. I asked for your opinion because I think she’s special. I don’t want to mess it up, but I’d committed to the texting situation by the time I realized how I felt.” He opened his door. “C’mon, let’s get some sandwiches so you’re not late.”
Ten minutes later, they were back in his Jeep and stopped at an intersection on their way back when Chris brought up the subject again.
“You had the perfect opportunity to tell her the truth,” his colleague pointed out. “You can still lay it all out. Maybe she’s there and you can show her your office.”
Matthew swallowed the bite of ham and cheese in his mouth. “If I told her, how do I know she’d give me a chance to make it up to her?” He rolled the Jeep forward, waiting for pedestrians to cross before crawling to the next intersection. “Like I told you, she seems to have a pretty jaded view toward relationships.”
“I wonder why.”
The light turned green, and he stepped on the gas. “Kind of deserve that, I guess, but in my defense, I was trying to find a way to help everyone involved. I’ve zero interest in hooking up with her boss, but I don’t want to hurt Sylvia either.” He threaded a hand through his hair, Chris’ silence freaking him out to no end. The guy was like some Jiminy Cricket, making him uneasy. “Okay, so maybe it’s a fucking no-win situation. I play along, and I’m lying to them both. But if I own up to it, Lexie probably won’t forgive me. In fact, I can just about guarantee she wouldn’t, based on the little I know about her so far.”
“Let me get this straight. You agreed to date her boss, but you want to date her?” Chris shook his head.
“Yup.”
“You can’t hook up with the girl’s boss, then tell her you did it for her.”
“At least I got that part figured out. I agreed to the date, but I’ll never go on it.”
“How’s that, Romeo?”
“Sylvia Swann’s going to get a special assignment that causes her to cancel our little rendezvous.”
Comprehension dawned on Chris’s face. “Your Uncle Neil?”
“My godfather’s always looking for his new partners to prove themselves. I asked him if he’d give Sylvia a project the same night she planned to meet me.”
“The game’s going to end sooner or later.”
Matthew nodded, refusing to think negative. “Yeah, and when it does, I’m counting on Lexie caring enough at that point to at least hear me out. I’m already in kind of deep where she’s concerned.” He pulled into the parking garage. Scary deep.
Chris gave him a thoughtful look. “One last question before I go. Which guy will she fall for? You, or the guy she thinks she’s texting? The guy, by the way, that she now erroneously believes is yours truly.”
“Both of us.”
Chris rubbed the side of his temple. “You and me?”
He laughed. “Nah, me the trainer, and me the professor.”
“You’re twisted. I really should charge you.”
“I’m romantic.” Matthew grinned.
“You’re still going to go through with those other ideas we talked about, even after today?”
“Yup.”
“Good luck.” Chris climbed out of the Jeep. “Thanks for the lift and the drama. It’s nice once in a while to hear my life isn’t the only one that reads like a case study.”
Matthew snorted, waving good-bye before he drove around to his reserved parking spot, a huge perk of his new position. Case study? He killed the engine. Staring through the opening between the cement pilings that faced the quad, he watched two mourning doves playing in a birdbath. The creatures didn’t have a care in the world, totally focused on each other.
A few minutes later, he leaned across the console and grabbed a sealed envelope from the glove compartment.
She might still be there.
Heart racing, he slid the envelope into his jeans pocket and jumped out of the Jeep.
When he arrived at Whittaker Hall, his heart slowed. The stone bench under the tall oak was empty. Another time, he’d have taken a long, lonely walk back to the parking garage, but after talking with Chris, and knowing the only way out was forward, he knew what he needed to do.
He knew what he wanted.
And as crazy as his plan might be, he’d make it work.
Chapter Fifteen
“Guess who I ran into this afternoon.” Lexie stilled her bouncing knees with one hand while stirring her wonton soup with the other.
“The Naked Cowboy?”
“Even better. Steel.”
“No way. Where?” Sam ripped open a packet of duck sauce and drizzled it over the open end of her spring roll.
“Remember that appointment I had scheduled with my old Leland professor, Dr. Prescotti, the one who accepted a position at Manhattan U a few years ago?”
“Yeah, yeah. Please say he loved it.”
Lexie set her spoon on the table and squeezed her hands between her knees. “He agreed with my other readers. It’s ready to go out into the world.”
“You were so stone-faced just now, I got scared, but I knew it. I knew this was the one.” Sam jumped up and hugged her. “It’s happening. I’m so excited for you!”
“Thanks.” She took a deep breath. “I’m trying so hard to listen to his advice and not obsess and focus on one step at a time and keep writing, because it could be a long time before I hear anything. Lit managers and art directors get totally swamped with submissions by so many talented playwrights, you know, and I mean, who am I, but yeah, the readers all love it, and I think there’s a sliver of a chance I’ll see it performed on stage one day.”
Sam hugged her tighter. “It will happen. Wonderful news.”
“And the best part, Dr. Prescotti asked to share it with one of his contacts who produces off-Broadway stuff.”
“Sick.”
“I know, right?” She picked up her spoon. “Oh, almost forgot my other news. I was hanging out at the campus, waiting for my meeting, when who else but Matthew Hennessey comes walking by.”
“Your trainer?” Sam’s eyes went wide. “Why was he there?”
“He and Steel must be friends from the gym.” The breath stalled in her throat as she remembered Matthew’s eyes on her, like he’d been thrilled to see her, too. Pfft. Yet another subject she needed to stop obsessing over. “He was doing some handyman work or whatever, maybe for Steel, er, Chris.”
“So, what’s he like?”
“Matthew?”
Sam rolled her eyes.
So much for not obsessing. “Oh, Steel?” Hmmm. What did he look like? “Well…he has the cutest glasses and thick black hair. Nice voice.”
But not what I’d imagined.
“And?”
Lexie blinked. “What?”
Her friend threw her that don’t-make-me-ask-a-hundred-questions look of hers. “Were the buns steely?”
She snorted. “They were nice.” Although she hadn’t been tempted to grab them like she always was Matthew’s. She stared at her soup.
No spark. Not a teensy tiny glimpse of the hunky poet lover I’d fantasized about.
Was she doing the same with Matthew? Setting him up as some kind of perfect man, leading to the inevitable letdown later on when she learned he was human like everyone else? She brushed that thought away.
“Why the frown, girl?” Sam leaned in. “What aren’t you saying?”
She kicked the underside of the table with the toe of her ballet slipper. “He wasn’t…I mean, he’s not…” She groaned, exasperated by her train of thought, which always led back to her trainer. “I don’t know how to explain it. But I’m relieved I finally met him.”
“Good. Mystery solved.” Sam popped the rest of her spring roll into her mouth.
No longer hungry, Lexie pushed her bowl of soup away and glanced at her phone. “Oh, crap. It’s him.”
“Chillax. He isn’t messaging you,” her roommate pointed out. “You got real lucky when you slipped up the other night. You
had no way of knowing your boss lost her father as a kid, too.”
She nodded, sobered by the sad coincidence she shared with Ms. Swann. “I was stupid sad that night. Caught me at a weak moment. Won’t happen again.”
“That reminds me, what did Ms. Swann say when you told her you’re using your cell for this little matchmaking extravaganza instead of her boy toy one?”
“It’s all good. I mean, her phone could’ve had dead zone problems here.” Once she’d shown her boss that reverse-lookup wouldn’t reveal any identifying information about the sender, Ms. Swann had relaxed. Still, Lexie had been very careful about what she shared with him since then, making sure she was either super vague or sharing stuff she knew was true about Ms. Swann.
Sam nodded. “What’s the status with Lynda’s Steakhouse?”
Her stomach began to churn. “Not a done deal yet. Got to schlep over to the restaurant tomorrow, do a little more schmoozing.”
“Sounding more like a native New Yorker every day.” Sam smirked. “Next thing we know you’ll be rooting for the Yankees.”
“Bite your tongue.”
Sam picked up the remains of her meal. “Thanks for dinner. I enjoyed catching up. My treat next week.”
Lexie trailed into the kitchen behind her roommate, glancing at the newest message from Steel as she took care of her leftovers. Such a beautiful day. Did you have a good one?
Back on her sofa, she tapped her Swann-appropriate response. Didn’t get out to enjoy it. Work has been busy, but good.
Then I’m honored you reached out to me for a night on the town.
Only six more days. And they couldn’t come soon enough.
Looking forward to it.
Me, too. She hit send.
Want a bonus question? I won’t ask you one in return.
Should she? Would she be messing things up for Ms. Swann if she didn’t play along?
Last chance…3…2…
Aw, damn. She had writing goals to achieve tonight, but she needed that great review from her boss, too.
One-and-a-half.
She chewed her bottom lip. Any data she collected about Steel would show she had the initiative and problem-solving skills J&C expected of their exec assistants. Okay, I’ll play. She paused for a moment, then typed: What’s your favorite childhood memory?
Text Me, Maybe Page 7