by Nicola Marsh
“Surprise me.”
“A spontaneous woman. I never would’ve guessed.” His wry smile had a kick like a mule and I resisted the urge to rub the area directly over my heart. “I still can’t believe you managed to pull off that charade in Mumbai.”
“Sheer talent.”
“Quite the little actress.” He called the waiter over. “We’re employing extras while shooting here. Maybe you should audition.”
“Yeah, right.”
He chuckled, leaned over the bar, and spoke quietly to the waiter, placing our orders before turning back to me with a speculative gleam in his eyes. “Ever done any acting?”
“Tons.” Aside from my impersonating gig in Mumbai, I’d been the epitome of the perfect legal secretary for a year when all the time I’d been bonking buddies with the boss. No one had guessed, so that must’ve taken considerable acting talent on my part.
While flirting with Drew, the unthinkable happened. As if a single unwelcome thought about the Toad had the power to conjure him up, he appeared before me, weaving his way through the crowd with his telltale smirk.
“Shit,” I muttered, darting frantic glances around for an escape route.
I didn’t want to face him, not here, not now, not ever. Tonight was about moving on, taking the first step to boosting my immunity against heartbreak and investing in my self-confidence.
He’d always had shitty timing.
“Hey, I was kidding about the acting gig.” Drew’s warm, intimate smile should’ve had my heart doing cartwheels. Instead, it did a triple backflip with full pike at the sight of the guy who’d broken it without trying.
I managed a feeble chuckle before grabbing his arm. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Already?” Confusion creased his brow as I silently cursed and struggled to untangle my bag strap snagged on the leg of the barstool.
“I’ll explain later.” I had no intention of adhering to that particular promise. I might’ve been stupid in the past but this was the new me, the improved me, the—
“Hi, Shari.”
The totally busted me.
While I’d been disentangling my bag and fumbling for my favorite jacket—vermillion faux fur—the Toad must’ve barged through the crowd to reach me in record time.
I gritted my teeth to stop the expletive hovering on the tip of my tongue when I looked into his smarmy face.
“Hi.” Short, sharp, frosty, and one syllable more than the bastard deserved.
Drew frowned at the lack of introductions. He probably looked at the Toad and saw what everyone else saw: Armani suit (his trademark, he never wore anything else), dirty-blond hair styled a la Jude Law, intelligent green eyes, phony smile.
My stomach roiled as I resigned myself to the inevitable. Not introducing Bollywood Boy to the Toad would make me look like a bitch and as much as I wanted to:
a) throw a drink in the Toad’s face;
b) wiggle my little finger to indicate the size of his dick and smirk knowingly;
c) saunter away;
d) all of the above.
I took the wuss option:
e) when in doubt, put your best Manolo forward and hope it crushes the loser beneath it.
Sliding my hand around Drew’s arm, I managed a smile as fake as the Toad’s. “Drew, this is Tate Embley. He’s a liar—oops, I mean lawyer. Silly me.”
The Toad’s smile slipped and his eyes took on a hardened edge, adding ugliness I’d never recognized until we broke up. He stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Despite my death grip on Drew’s arm, he managed to reach out and shake the Toad’s hand. He performed the fastest handshake in history, releasing Tate’s hand after a split-second grasp. “Likewise.”
By Drew’s studied indifference, I knew he was far from pleased. Join the club.
Tate’s spurious grin returned. “English, huh? Bit far from the Motherland, aren’t you?”
I cringed, digging my fingers deeper into Drew’s arm without thinking. How could the guy I’d thought I loved be such a patronizing, arrogant jerk? I’d been blind and stupid.
“Actually, I own houses in New York, London, Lucerne, Mumbai, and Tokyo, so my Motherland is wherever my Lear lands these days. I’m sure you know how it is, Tate, being a Yankee businessman.” Drew prolonged the last word in a shocking imitation of a Southern accent and I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent laughing out loud. If my accidental-on-purpose gaff had annoyed Tate, he radiated anger now. Another thing I hated about him: his colossal ego demanding he had to top everyone.
Drew had summed up the situation in a second and had handled it with class, as opposed to the Toad acting the ass. As for his houses around the world and a private jet, I didn’t know if it was true but the fact he’d one-upped the Toad made me want to high-five him.
In true Toad-like fashion, Tate ignored the guy who had bigger toys (and probably balls) and refocused on me. “What’re you doing these days?”
“This ’n’ that.” I flashed a fabulous smile at Drew, gazing into his eyes as if he’d bestowed one of his international mansions to me, hoping the Toad would get the message. F-off.
“The office isn’t the same without you.” He lowered his voice, trying to suck me in with one of his old tricks, the smooth-as-caramel-latte tone, the one that had worked on me countless times before. Before I’d woken up and moved onto espresso.
“You worked with this… guy?” Drew’s incredulity, combined with the slight pause, led me to believe he’d been about to say something more accurate like ‘loser, cretin, jerk, bastard, moron, scum.’
I managed a mute nod while the Toad leapt in to fill the gap.
“Shari’s the best. We had a good thing going for a while. You know how it is, being a businessman and all.” He leered, his low voice heavy with innuendo, leaving little doubt as to our previous business relationship.
Bastard.
My hand fisted as I itched to slug the sneer off his face and tears burned the back of my eyes. Tears of humiliation, tears of rage, and I’d be damned if I stood there and gave the prick the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
While I floundered for the perfect exit line before my eyes spouted fountains, Drew took control again. “I doubt you and I have much in common. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let an amazing woman like Shari go. Business-wise, of course.”
I could’ve kissed him, every protective inch of righteous indignation.
Ignoring the Toad, his face now a satisfying puce, Drew slipped on my coat and hugged me to his side. “The limo’s waiting, ready to go? The crowd here isn’t as classy as I thought.”
I blinked back my tears as I eyeballed the Toad. “You’re so right.”
But I couldn’t leave. Not yet. That’s the thing about closure. Whenever the opportunity presented, you had to take it.
Touching Drew’s arm, I murmured in his ear. “Could you give me a minute?”
Drew glared at Tate and nodded. “Sure, I’ll wait for you outside.”
He ran a hand over my hair in a purely possessive gesture not lost on Tate, whose upper lip snarled. Yeah, like he had the right to care, the jerk.
The moment Drew left, Tate made a move to touch me and I blocked his reach with my forearm, shoving him away. Shock widened his eyes a second before they narrowed in distaste. “Didn’t take you long to shack up with another rich guy.”
His sneer made my fingers curl with the urge to slug him. I didn’t condone diva behavior but his smarmy expression deserved a knuckle rap.
“What I do with my life now is no concern to you.”
“You didn’t always feel like that.”
“Screw you.”
“Done that too, babe.” Before I could knee him he ran a fingertip down my arm and I reacted witho
ut thinking, grabbing his finger and bending it until he winced.
“Listen up, you lying bastard.” I bent his finger further, enjoying his pain when he paled, knowing he wouldn’t make a scene because of his precious ego. “Don’t ever come near me again.”
I flung his hand away in disgust, my skin crawling with the contact. “Take your cheesy grin and fake charm and snide insults and stick it up your ass.”
He gaped and I hustled through the crowd without a backward glance.
Not too bad as an exit line. Tate was a Grade A loser, always had been, always would be, and while I’d had my dubious honor defended by an absolute sweetheart, it felt freaking fantastic to tell him to shove it myself. Totally empowering.
Hoping the evening hadn’t turned into a total fiasco, I stepped outside as Drew’s cell rang. After a few short ‘uh-huhs,’ he snapped it shut and slid the slimline into his pocket. “Sorry, something’s come up.”
“Not to worry.”
“We never got to have that drink.” His eyes deepened to midnight in the reflected light from the neon signs and I hoped it wasn’t disinterest, or worse, disgust at what he’d seen back there. It didn’t take an Einstein to work out I’d been involved with Tate thanks to his sleazy innuendos, and as much as I’d enjoyed Drew defending me I was embarrassed. Embarrassed I knew a poser like that, embarrassed I’d put up with his crap, and embarrassed Drew now knew it, too.
“We don’t have to reschedule. You’re a busy guy, you’re not in town for long, I get it.”
“Do you get this?” He captured my face between his hands, not giving me room to move, and lowered his head. My heart jackknifed as he edged closer, hovering an inch from my mouth, tension crackling between us like a live wire.
I yearned to close the gap, craving the heady, addictive optimism that accompanied kissing a hot, new guy. I strained toward him, his breath tickling a moment before he touched his lips to mine.
The world tilted in an earth-shattering explosion of heat and desperation as his lips grazed mine, once, twice, taunting and provocative and incredibly tantalizing.
He deepened the pressure until I sagged against him, boneless, mindless, each long, hot, French kiss surpassing every erotic fantasy I’d ever had. That scintillating greeting at the airport? A prelude to this cataclysmic, indescribable sexual attraction combusting whenever we touched.
When his lips reluctantly eased from mine, he left me gasping for air.
Stunned and disoriented, I gaped like a love-struck fool.
His tender smile jabbed at my heart. “Raincheck on our drink date?”
I managed a mute nod.
“Great. Need a lift?”
I hoped my mouth and brain would work in sync. “You really have a limo waiting?”
“Of course. Would I lie to you?”
Probably. It was a design fault in the entire male species on the planet but after he’d played the knight-in-shining-armor to perfection, I owed it to him to cushion his ego a tad.
“After seeing the way that jerk treated you in there, perhaps I should rephrase that.”
Was he fishing for info? I needed to tell him something even if it was only a fraction of the ugly truth.
“About Tate—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation. I was merely making an observation.”
“An accurate one. The guy’s a jerk and, unfortunately, it took me a while to realize it.”
“How long?”
“A year.”
“Ouch.”
Saying it out loud made the truth seem more ludicrous. Had I really put up with him for twelve months, listening to his empty promises to leave his wife, storing away our infrequent happy interludes like a starving squirrel hoarding its nuts? I was nuts for being so gullible.
I waved my hand in the air as if getting rid of a nasty odor. “Thanks for the sympathy vote but I don’t deserve it. I was stupid. Live and learn, I guess. Now, how about that ride?”
Drew opened his mouth as if wanting to say more before he closed it, nodded, and guided me to the sleek black limo parked around the corner.
I liked his style. He could’ve prodded me for more info, made some droll remark not remotely funny, or generally agreed with my astute observation that I’d been stupid in giving my heart to the Toad. Instead, he handed me into the limo’s plush interior, gave the driver my address, and chatted about New York during the drive.
Grateful for his understanding, I fumbled for my purse as the limo drew to a halt outside my loft. I hated this part of an evening and as short as our ‘date’ had been, I didn’t know whether to leap from the limo, mumble something unintelligible, or plant a quick thank-you peck on his cheek. Thankfully, he took matters out of my indecisive hands.
“I’ll call you, Miss Jones,” he said, dropping a slightly-longer-than-friendly kiss on my lips.
“You do that, Mr. Lansford.” I touched his cheek in a poignant, fleeting gesture that wouldn’t have been out of place in one of my favorite rom-coms before bolting, afraid I’d acted like an ass.
I willed myself not to look back in case the rumor about not appearing too eager if you looked back at the person held up. No use jinxing this before it’d begun. I let myself into the building and waited until I got inside the apartment before collapsing in an undignified heap on the couch. I kicked off my shoes, flexed my ankles, and wriggled my toes. Didn’t help relax me like it usually did.
I’d been uptight before this evening started and now my neck muscles roped with tension. I needed some stress relief, a hot lavender bath followed by watching a Robbie-singing-swing DVD (the one where he’s in a tux, drool, drool).
First, sustenance. I grabbed a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, ripped off the top, and stuck a dessert spoon into the sticky heaven, shoveling it into my mouth with the desperation of a woman who needs a fix of something sweeter than ice cream but making do anyway.
I didn’t want to think about Drew or the way he made me feel: gorgeous, special, and after his Sir Galahad act, protected. I didn’t need protection (unless it came in a little foil packet and was ripped open with Bollywood Boy’s teeth in the throes of passion).
I didn’t need a guy in my life. But wouldn’t it be fun to audition Bollywood Boy for the part?
As I happily consumed a pint of ice cream, I ignored the voice of doubt in my head, the voice whispering, He used the tried-and-true line of Jerks United, “I’ll call you.” And he probably wouldn’t.
I also ignored the slightly sick feeling in my gut (blaming too much honeycomb) if he didn’t.
chapter ten
After six days, twelve hours, and forty minutes, I acknowledged Drew Lansford was a fully paid-up, participating member of Jerks United.
Not that I waited by the phone. Okay, I admit it, I checked my cell’s voice mail and messages rather frequently. Sad but true.
Between job interviews—and there’d been many—I’d turned into a partial recluse, heading out for essentials only: pints of Ben & Jerry’s, Doritos, and Moonlight Mojito Mix, a weird premixed concoction that tasted like 7UP with zip. Gorging on comfort food wouldn’t help my mood, but I needed something familiar in my topsy-turvy world.
Adding a top coat to my nails, I wiggled my toes, facing facts. Despite pawning almost everything and dipping into my nest egg—the size of a sparrow’s—I’d nearly blown it all on living expenses. I needed a job pronto before my funds ran out.
Twelve interviews and two call-backs in the last week, not terribly inspiring considering I’d broadened my job search criteria. Along with the usual executive assistant applications, I’d taken the plunge and applied for a few publishing positions. Copyeditors mostly, but considering the publishers’ lack of enthusiasm, Subway sandwich artist was starting to look good. I’d pinned my hopes on the call-backs. If they di
dn’t work out, better get out my knife and loaf and start toasting.
The buzzer rang and my heart did a weird flip-flop, wishing Drew would drop by, before reality set in. If a guy didn’t call for almost a week, the possibility of him visiting unannounced was as likely as Bergdorf’s throwing out their Hermes bags at cost.
It pealed out again and I waddled to the intercom, not wanting to smudge my nails.
Rabidly antisocial, I stabbed at the intercom button. “Yeah?”
“Let me in, the wind out here would freeze the cojones off a brass monkey.” Rita added a chimp imitation for good measure, earning a reluctant smile.
“Come on up.”
I pressed the button to let Rita in, though my grouchiness hadn’t improved at the sound of her voice. As much as I loved her I wasn’t in the mood to hear about her budding relationship with Romeo Rama. She’d been trying to get me out all week, inviting me to join them for dinner at Nobu, drinks at Michu, skating at Central Park.
Politely declining, I’d cited a tummy bug, a migraine, and a twisted ankle. Guess she hadn’t bought the last excuse when I’d used kickboxing with Jackie Chan as the reason. After I’d OD’d on rom-coms, action flicks were my change of pace. Besides, if I saw a hint of Hugh on the screen, I might throw the remote.
Zipping up my pink hoodie to hide a chocolate stain on the front of my grey T-shirt underneath, I opened the door.
“Hey. What brings you by?”
Rita’s contemptuous glance flicked from the top of my lank hair to the bottoms of my frayed yoga pants before settling on my face, devoid of M.A.C. or Bobbi Brown all week.
“You look like shit,” she said, breezing past me, leaving a cloud of Chanel No. 5 in her wake.
“Wish I could say the same.” I tried not to turn Kermit-green as I noted a new ebony Prada suit with a cherry silk shell underneath, four-inch black Jimmy Choo pumps, and matching handbag. She looked incredible, glowing from the inside out, while I resembled washed-out slop.