The One I Love to Hate

by Amanda Weaver

  He stopped and turned back to look at her. “But Aunt Gloria doesn’t have my number. Nobody in my family has my number.”

  “I know. So I got a cop to track you down.”

  Nick blinked. When he looked at Livie again, his expression had changed, like he was really seeing her for the first time since he’d opened the door. “Okay, that’s a little bit interesting and also alarming.”

  “I tried to find you online first, but you’re not really online anywhere.”

  “You wouldn’t be, either, if you’d seen what I’ve seen. So Livie—you said it’s Livie, right?—You know my aunt Gloria?”

  “She’s my neighbor.”

  Those thick, expressive eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You’re from the neighborhood?”

  “Yeah. I grew up there. Romano’s Bar? That’s my family’s place.”

  Nick let out a surprised huff of laughter. “Romano’s? That place is still around?”

  Hey. The Romanos might complain about the lousy business, but she wasn’t about to let someone else slag on the bar.

  “Since 1932, and still going strong.” Limping along was perhaps more accurate, but he didn’t have to know that.

  “I haven’t seen that place since I was a kid.”

  “It’s three subway stops away.”

  The little line between his eyebrows came back. “I don’t get home much.”

  He turned and kept walking across the very large open-plan living area, passing through a door on the far wall, which led to a smaller room. This one, obviously his office, was tucked into the corner of the building, with walls of windows on two sides and the same spectacular view of the bridge. Up against the windows were two long black tables, meeting at right angles in the corner. And every square inch of their surface was covered with computer equipment. Livie counted four jumbo displays, and at least three CPU towers buried in a snaking nest of cables and peripherals.

  Nick dropped into a black office chair and swiveled around to face her.

  “So what are you looking for?”

  Her eyes were still busy cataloging his setup. Top-notch research labs didn’t have this much computer equipment. There were pieces of hardware she didn’t even recognize. It must have cost him a fortune.

  “I need some help with a computer program.”

  Nick sighed. “I don’t know what you might have heard about me, but I don’t do tech support. Call Geek Squad.”

  She turned back to face him. Okay, he was extremely attractive and obviously successful, but did he have to be so arrogant? “It’s a little more complicated than that. I need to write a new program for my dissertation.”

  Nick leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles. Threading his fingers together, he rested his hands on his abdomen—which looked like it would be firm to the touch. If she were to touch it. How did this computer geek have a body that was so hard and sculpted...and distracting?

  “Okay, pitch me.”

  Livie blinked, embarrassed that he might have caught her staring. “Excuse me?”

  “Tell me why I should take on your project.”

  “Um, well, I’ll pay you, of course.” Although she had the sinking feeling that Nick was a long way from the budget-friendly alternative she was looking for.

  Nick scoffed. “I don’t work for money. I’ve done that already.”

  She let out a huff of surprised laughter. What a ridiculous thing to say. “And, what, you earned money once and now you have all you’ll ever need?”

  Nick said nothing—he just hiked an eyebrow and smiled—a slow, crooked curling of his lips that had Livie’s toes curling inside her shoes in response. Butterflies set up a flutter in her stomach. Oh, he was way too attractive for his own good.

  It was too bad she was never going to see him again.

  “Okay, so you’re not interested.” She turned toward the door. “Thanks for your time. I’ll just—”

  “I didn’t say that,” he interjected. “I don’t know if I’m interested until you tell me what it is.”

  Taking a deep breath to marshal her thoughts, Livie turned back. “It’s for my dissertation.”

  “You said that.”

  “I’m getting there. We’re going to be receiving a lot of data.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Me and my thesis advisor, Dr. Janet Finch. She’s brilliant. It’s her theory we’re attempting to prove.”

  “Okay, so you’re going to be receiving a lot of data. What kind of data? From where?”

  “I’m getting to that.” Did he ever let anybody finish their train of thought? “So there’s already a set of standard routines to sift through Hubble data. But what we’re looking for, what we hope to find, won’t show up in any of the standard analysis tools—”

  “Hold up.” Nick’s feet hit the floor hard as he sat up abruptly. “The Hubble? Like the space telescope?”

  “Yes. Did I mention I’m an astrophysicist?”

  Again, the corner of his mouth twitched with that toe-curling smile. His eyes, for all their darkness, danced with animation. “No, you didn’t. So you’re going to get to use the Hubble telescope?”

  “We’ll need to submit a proposal, but that shouldn’t be a problem. We probably won’t get an observing time until next spring, so between now and then, I need to write this program. Do you know anything about astronomy?”

  “Not a thing. I’m in.”

  “Wait...so you’ll do it? I haven’t even told you how much the budget is.” There was cheap and then there was what she’d been planning to offer him.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. Writing new code for Hubble data...see, that’s interesting. I’m in. That’s the pitch I was looking for.”

  “We can’t afford to pay you what you’re obviously used to.” Well, they could, but then they might as well go with the guy they’d already scoped out and blow half the grant money on him. The whole point of this was to find a cheaper alternative.

  Nick rolled his eyes. “I told you, I don’t work for the money. I mean, yes, people pay me, but the money doesn’t determine what jobs I take on.”

  Who was this guy? How did he start where she started and end up here, having built this life for himself?

  “What does determine it? I mean, what kind of jobs do you usually take?”

  He shrugged before leaning forward and hooking his ankle around another office chair and pulling it closer. “Have a seat. I do whatever appeals to me. A little banking...although not as much of that as I did in the past. Some government work, a lot of consulting. Whatever I’m interested in, really. And only what I’m interested in. I have no interest in doing some tedious corporate gig, no matter how fat the paycheck.”

  Taking the offered chair, she fiddled with the strap of her messenger bag and debated asking him any one of the hundreds of questions swirling around in her head. “I’ve heard some things about you.”

  Leaning back in his chair again, Nick smiled—a full smile this time—and his eyes sparked with amusement. His voice dropped into a lower register, something flirty and sexy. “Oh, really? Like what?”

  “You got kicked out of DeWitt.”

  If she’d expected him to get defensive, she was mistaken. His expression didn’t shift in the slightest. “Kicked out, quit...it’s all in your perspective. DeWitt and I chose to part ways.”

  “And you got arrested.”

  Again, not even a ripple of a response in his eyes. She envied his confidence, even if it scared her a little bit.

  “Unindicted,” he said with a careless shrug. “The government and I reached a mutually beneficial agreement.”

  “Which is?”

  “They didn’t file charges and in return, I did some work on their systems, to make sure nobody else can do what I did.”

&
nbsp; “Which was?”

  “I hacked into the Department of Defense.”

  “You hacked the government?” That was not what she’d expected to hear.

  Another shrug. “It wasn’t that hard. Which is why they needed me. I made it hard.”

  “So you’re a hacker.” Which was super illegal, when the hackee was the federal government. Growing up surrounded by the other side of law enforcement, she didn’t know anyone who’d even been busted for jaywalking, never mind crimes of this level.

  “Only theoretically now, to keep my skills sharp.”

  “Because it’s illegal.” Surely he’d learned his lesson now, right? Figured out the difference between right and wrong?

  Nick scoffed, swiveling back and forth in his chair. “Legal, illegal. What does that even mean?”

  Apparently not. “Um, one is right and one is wrong.”

  He spun back to face her. “Right and wrong? Right and wrong has nothing to do with what’s legal or illegal. Everything in this world, every person you meet, every choice they make, is all just a murky shade of gray. You figure out right and wrong for yourself, Livie.” The way he said her name...it was like he’d just whispered it in her ear, followed by something dirty.

  “I’m not sure I believe that.”

  He chuckled, and the sound sent a shiver down her spine. “I’m sure you don’t. And that is the difference between me and you.”

  Oh, there were so many differences between them she couldn’t begin to count them all. Maybe Nick came from the same neighborhood as her, and he had an Italian last name, but the similarities began and ended there.

  He was so... For all her intelligence and education, she lacked the vocabulary to describe him. Good-looking for sure, but there was something more, some undeniable presence, something that pulled her in—enthralled her—in spite of herself. Charisma? That hinted at his power, but it didn’t fully explain it.

  She didn’t know what to do with all this nervous, humming awareness, as it had literally never happened to her before. Men—they were definitely out of her area of expertise. She wasn’t even casually familiar with the whole men/dating/sex thing. She hadn’t avoided men and sex on purpose, she’d just never felt compelled to explore it with anyone she’d met. And she wasn’t going to do anything just to say she did it. So here she was, twenty-five and completely inexperienced with men. That had never once bothered her—until now.

  How did you talk to a guy like Nick? Oh, they were already talking—about her work and his life. But how did she talk to him? How did she—as a woman—engage with a guy like Nick—as a man? If there was an instruction manual on flirting with the opposite sex, Livie’s had gone missing the day they handed them out.

  Now, after all these years, she finally liked a guy and she had absolutely no idea what to do about it. Why did she like him, anyway? Sure, he was attractive, but he was also practically a felon—arrogant, cocky—and then there was his alarming moral flexibility. But despite all that, she did like him. To a dangerous degree.

  And now they’d be working together, for who knew how long. She suspected he was way out of her league, but she couldn’t help the tiny spark of excitement—hope—that flamed to life in her chest.

  “So you’ll help me with my coding?”

  “Can’t wait to get started.” His grin turned that spark into a bonfire. He was talking about the computer program, but it felt like he could be alluding to so much more. “So tell me what you’re looking for out there in the stars, Livie.”

  She could feel herself smiling back at him, feel her body beginning to lean toward him. She might not have a clue what to do next, but she was definitely going to grill Jess tonight to find out. “Well—”

  Out in the other room, a door opened and closed, and a voice called out “Hello?”

  A female voice.

  In moments, the owner of the voice appeared in the doorway to Nick’s office. She was tall, impossibly skinny, and stunning, with long, pin-straight silky dark blond hair and large blue eyes.

  “Oh, hello,” she said in surprise when she spotted Livie. “I didn’t know Nick was working.”

  She was British, too. Of course. Her accent was like something from Masterpiece Theatre.

  Nick hopped up out of his chair, practically sprinting across the room to the willowy goddess. If Livie had a single doubt left about who she was, the next moments crushed that. He leaned down to kiss her cheek before turning to Livie with a smile that lit him up from the inside. “Livie, this is Poppy, my fiancée.”

  Watch for Livie’s story, Love and Other Disasters, available September 2019 wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.

  www.CarinaPress.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Amanda Weaver

  Acknowledgments

  Endless thanks and gratitude to my agent, Rebecca Strauss. She’s fought tirelessly for me and this book, through its many iterations. It wouldn’t have made it out there into the world without her.

  Thanks to Anne Forlines for early pre-reading and invaluable feedback. She’s the first person to read anything I write, and I never really feel like I’ve finished it until Anne’s read it and told me what she thinks.

  And thank you to my good friend, Jennifer DeMaio, an Italian girl who grew up in Brooklyn. She gave me wonderful insight into these sisters, and advice on all the little details that matter so much.

  Thanks, always and forever, to my family, for putting up with my distraction and absence as I devoted hundreds of hours to this book. My husband, like countless partners of writers everywhere, listens patiently as I explain a plot conundrum, and never even laughs or says “I told you so” as I proceed to solve it myself.

  Author Bio

  Amanda has loved romance since she read that very first Kathleen E. Woodiwiss novel at fifteen. After a long detour into a career as a costume designer in theater, she’s found her way back to romance, this time as a writer.

  A native Floridian, Amanda transplanted to New York City many years ago and now considers Brooklyn home, along with her husband, daughter, two cats, and nowhere near enough space.

  You can find her online at: www.amandaweavernovels.com.

  You can find out all about her next release here: eepurl.com/bvgkEv.

  She’s on Facebook here: on.fb.me/1W6LnGS.

  But, like Jessica, Twitter is really her jam: bit.ly/1Zkf6MF.

  She’s on Goodreads here: bit.ly/1KcRpPu.

  As a former visual artist, Amanda adores Pinterest. Check out her profile for pages of visual inspiration for all her books, plus costume history, textile arts, Wonder Woman, rock stars, and more: bit.ly/22Z0JlB.

  Also available from Amanda Weaver

  and Carina Press

  A Duchess in Name

  A Common Scandal

  A Reluctant Betrothal

  And watch for the next books

  in the Romano Sisters series, coming soon!

  Also available from Amanda Weaver

  This Book Will Change Your Life

  Always

  Sky High

  The Notorious Lady Grantham:

  A Grantham Girls Companion Novella

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