I Think I Love You

by Layne, Lauren

  She kept her voice low, though nobody was paying them any attention. The office building was a high-rise with thousands of employees. Oxford was only one of Ravenna Corporation’s publications. You could go a month without seeing the same face twice.

  Hunter maintained his silence until they stopped at Oxford’s floor. He followed Brit out, mostly ignoring her happy chatter as they headed toward his office.

  “Okay,” she said, taking the last sip of his coffee and then dropping it into the trash can in his office as she shut the door. “So, I talked to that new Web design contractor about the mock-ups for the spring—”

  “Forget the damn mock-ups,” he snapped, turning back toward her and crossing his arms. “How about you tell me what the hell you were doing fluttering your eyelashes at Bradley Fucking Calloway?”

  “Fluttering my eyelashes?” Brit asked, half bemused, half irritated by the unfamiliar note of high-handed anger in her best friend’s tone.

  Hunter Cross didn’t really get angry. Irritated, sure. Impatient, absolutely. But this was . . . different.

  He ran both hands through his hair, as though he didn’t know what to do with her. “You know. You were all . . . flirty.”

  “So what?”

  He gave her an incredulous look. “You know his reputation, right? He’s a complete asshole when it comes to women.”

  “He wasn’t an asshole to me. It was harmless.”

  “This is a workplace. He’s your colleague. When it comes to flirting, there’s no such thing as harmless.”

  “Oh, knock it off,” she said, her anger now matching his. “You know as well as I do that this office is a breeding ground for romantic relationships. Ones that last,” she pointed out. “Nick and Taylor. Cole and Penelope. Heck, if you include the girls down in Stiletto, you also have Jake and Grace, Cassidy and Emma. Even Lincoln and Daisy sort of count. The company doesn’t have any policy against office relationships, so . . .”

  She lifted her hands as though to confirm harmless.

  “Hell, Brit, he dated one of your best friends. Does Taylor know you were just throwing yourself at her ex?”

  “It was Taylor’s idea!” Brit exclaimed, a little stung by his disdainful attitude. “I told her that you refused to help me and that I was going to experiment with the whole seduction thing on my own. She suggested Bradley. Said he was a master of flirting and completely safe since I’m too smart to fall for him.”

  “Are you?” Hunter challenged. “Too smart to fall for him?”

  “What does it matter?” Her hands found her hips as she glared at him. “How is it possibly your business who I date?”

  “I’m your friend.”

  “Yes, but right now you’re overstepping.”

  He flinched.

  Brit gentled her tone slightly. “You’ve never cared about who I pursued before. Why is this so different?”

  “Because now I know of your . . . plan. And I don’t think Bradley Calloway is right for you.”

  “He doesn’t have to be right. I’m not looking to marry the guy. Or even date him. I was just trying my hand at being anything other than good ol’ Brit, you know?”

  “I like good ol’ Brit!”

  “Well, damn it. I want someone to better than like me, Hunter!” she shouted.

  The room seemed to go still, and she wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised by her outburst.

  “Brit,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t,” she said, her head dropping slightly. “You don’t have to say anything. I just . . . I need to do this. I feel like I’m at a crossroads, not only because guys don’t seem to fall for me, but because I’ve never experienced that thing that other people seem to when in a relationship. I want—”

  She broke off, stopping short of telling him that she wanted to know what it was to feel all-consuming lust. To want someone.

  It was one thing to tell her girlfriends that over a couple of glasses of wine, but confiding such things to a guy, even her best guy friend, felt a little . . . weird.

  “Sorry about my reaction,” he said grumpily, leaning back and resting his palms on his desk, his fingers drumming in a way that she knew meant he was deep in thought. “It’s just . . . Calloway treats women like shit. I can’t stand the thought of him walking on you.”

  “He won’t.”

  “You say that, but—”

  “Look, Hunter,” she said, starting to feel really over this conversation. “I asked you to help; you said no. You don’t get it both ways, ’kay? You can either help me out, or you can stay out of it.”

  Hunter’s jaw tensed, his fingers drumming faster. “So, if I agree to help, you practice that weird eye flutter on me instead of other dudes?”

  “Well, first of all, it wasn’t weird,” she said defensively. “Maybe only to you because you’re not used to it.”

  “It was weird. You looked like you had something in your eye.”

  Okay. That was quite enough.

  And because his petty dig wasn’t worth a verbal response, she pinned him with a withering glare before pivoting on her heel and turning toward the door.

  Hunter caught up with her, touched her arm. “Hey. I’m sorry. That was a dick thing to say.”

  “Yup.” She reached for the doorknob without looking at him, and his hand slid from her biceps down to her wrist, closing around it lightly.

  She went very still at the contact. She and Hunter touched all the time, casual, whatever, touches that she didn’t even notice.

  For some reason she noticed this one. Noticed the emotion behind it.

  Apparently he did too, because he dropped her wrist quickly and cleared his throat.

  “You’re going about it all wrong,” Hunter said quietly, shoving his hands into his suit pockets and glancing down at the floor before looking up at her again.

  “Your disapproval is noted,” she snapped. “You don’t need to beat the proverbial dead horse.”

  “No, I mean . . . the overt come-ons will work on guys like Bradley, but he’s not the type you’re after. Right?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “He’s a little . . . obvious. And I guess my approach was as well.” Hunter shrugged.

  She turned toward him. “So what approach would have been better?”

  He blew out a breath and crossed his arms, causing his suit jacket to strain slightly over his upper arms. They were good arms. Great arms, if you cared about that sort of thing.

  She looked down.

  “Look, Brit, if we do this . . .”

  Her head snapped up. “Seriously? You’ll do it?”

  “I’m considering it,” he said carefully. “Better me than Bradley as your guide.”

  “He wasn’t my guide, just my practice dummy, or whatever.”

  “And that’s what I’d be?”

  “I was thinking you’d be sort of both. You know, you could show me what to do. I could practice. On you. And then when I’m ready, I could take my skills out in the real world.”

  He gave a crooked smile. “You make dating sound like a hobby.”

  “Well, for you it sort of is, right? How many dates a week do you go on?”

  He shifted awkwardly. “It depends.”

  “Two? Seven?”

  “Jesus, not every night,” he said with a grimace.

  “Still, sometimes you date casually, onetime things. Other times it’s a one-night stand—”

  He narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Please,” she said. “I’ve been in your orbit long enough to know how you operate. I’m not judging.”

  “Okay, before I say yes,” he said slowly, and her heart thumped excitedly. “What exactly is the time frame here? How will we know when we’re . . . done?”

  “You’re the teacher,” she said. “I’d imagine you’d get to decide when I passed the class?”

  “Shit,” he muttered. “This is weird. Okay, well, what’s your endgame? What’s your goal? If I do this, I need clear objectives.”<
br />
  She smiled, because it was so him. But it was also her. She and Hunter were on the operations team, after all. They left the subjective, art-form aspect to the writers and the design team and focused on the more concrete elements like time frames and numbers and calendars.

  “Okay, well, best case, I’d like to be in a relationship, or on the verge of a relationship with someone . . .”

  “Not like Lenny?” he supplied.

  “Right.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but that could take a while,” he said. “Not because of you, but . . . well, I don’t know that anyone can control the timing of meeting one’s future spouse, or whatever.”

  “I don’t need to meet the One,” she said quickly. “I just want the potential. To make it past date three or four without getting the let’s be friends talk.”

  Hunter nodded slowly, as though thinking it over. “All right. All right. How about this: We call off this experiment after you go on three dates with the same guy. He doesn’t break up with you, and you at least sort of like him.”

  “That works,” she said. Then she grinned. “So you’ll do it?”

  “A few more questions first, so I’m clear. What exactly do you want me to do? Just answer your questions, or—”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I have a list!” she said.

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course you do. Give me a preview.”

  She pursed her lips. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Because you know I’ll reconsider,” he said in a resigned but tolerant tone.

  “Let’s just say, if you needed whiskey to hear my initial request, you’ll definitely want it for the specifics.”

  “Fantastic,” he muttered. “Can’t wait to start.”

  She squeezed his arm excitedly. “Me neither.”

  “I was being sarcastic—”

  She knew.

  “How about my place tonight at seven?”

  “My apartment’s less cramped and I have better booze,” he said. “Come over to mine.”

  “Yeah, but for my first lesson we have to be at my place.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll have beer,” she said, waggling her eyebrows enticingly as she deliberately avoided answering his question. “And pizza,” she said. “Whiskey too.”

  Hunter shook his head. “I’m going to regret this, huh?”

  “Look on the bright side,” she said cheerfully. “For the next couple weeks, you’ll get to boss me around at work and outside of work.”

  “I do like bossing people around,” he admitted. “Speaking of which, can we do some actual work now?”

  “Absolutely,” Brit agreed, going to his office guest chair and sitting down, crossing her legs as he went around to his side of the desk and sat across from her.

  Ten minutes later, the conversation had shifted to the pros and cons of adding a whole new golf page to the website, versus building a golf feature onto the existing sports page, and though Brit gave the conversation most of her attention, she couldn’t quite give it all.

  Because far more interesting than golf was the fantasy of the future love of her life once Hunter taught her how to dodge the friend-zone trap.

  Though it was odd. Try as she might, hard as she concentrated, Brit kept trying to visualize her dream guy, but he seemed . . . hidden. As though he wasn’t ready to be revealed.

  Oh well.

  All in good time.

  Chapter Six

  As instructed, Hunter arrived at Brit’s apartment building at seven o’clock. She’d added him to the “authorized guest list” long ago, but most of her doormen recognized him on sight.

  He talked football with James for a few minutes, and after agreeing to disagree on the likelihood of the Giants standing a chance against the Seahawks on Sunday (Hunter would bet serious money not), he headed up to Brit’s apartment on the twenty-sixth floor.

  Hunter rapped the door with his knuckle. Brit opened it, her face expectant, then her enthusiasm dimmed ever so slightly. “Oh. It’s you.”

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “Pizza guy should be right behind you,” she explained, pulling him inside and then ducking her head into the hall. Not seeing anyone, she shut the door and waved at her apartment. “Beer’s in the fridge, wine on the counter. Grab the door when the pizza guy knocks, ’kay? I already paid and tipped through the app.”

  “Sure,” he said, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it on the back of the barstool at her kitchen counter. Technically Brit had a coat closet, but he knew from experience that there wouldn’t be space, or even a spare hanger, for all the clothes spillover she had from her main closet.

  Brit lived in a high-rise in Chelsea, complete with a contemporary lobby, state-of-the-art gym, outdoor entertaining areas. But she usually joked that the trade-off for an apartment in a modern building in Manhattan on a modest salary was living in a shoebox.

  It wasn’t inaccurate. Her place was new, with granite counters, updated appliances, and all that, but it was a tiny studio, basically one long room. She had the bed shoved against the window, a pullout couch shoved against the bed, all of which faced a TV he’d mounted on the wall for her, with no small amount of swearing.

  He pulled a beer out of the fridge and dug through her drawer until he found the bottle opener. “Want anything?” he asked, popping the cap off the beer and looking with a small stab of male alarm at the scene before him.

  He was used to Brit’s place being crowded. And, as mentioned, he knew the apartment’s limited closet space was no match for his friend’s penchant for shopping.

  But this . . .

  There were clothes everywhere. On the bed. On the couch. There was some sort of weird one-piece pants thing draped over the TV.

  He took a sip of beer and surveyed the chaos with a mixture of amusement and impending terror.

  Normally, he wouldn’t have thought much of it. As organized as Brit was at work, her home life could be an entirely different story. She tended to embrace extremes, with massive spring-cleaning sessions and then weeks where finding her cellphone beneath the clutter was an adventure.

  However, knowing that tonight was supposedly part one of her training . . .

  He was stumped.

  Hell, maybe she was right about not knowing how guys operated, because he didn’t know a single heterosexual guy who would feel anything other than utter panic at the scene before him.

  “Is that a yes on a drink?” he asked again as she opened a dresser drawer and scooped out a messy pile of clothes, depositing them on the bed.

  “I have a glass of wine somewhere,” she said distractedly as she repeated the process with another drawer of the dresser.

  With minimal surfaces in the small apartment, it wasn’t hard to find the glass of red wine sitting on the counter by the fridge.

  He was about to bring it to her, but a knock at the door distracted him.

  Hunter accepted the pizza delivery, pushing aside the container on top that he knew was the salad she always insisted on ordering but rarely touched, and checked to make sure the pizza was as they liked it.

  Pepperoni all around, olives on his half, mushrooms on hers. Perfect.

  He shut the pizza box again, though if this weird clothes thing she was doing lasted much longer, he was eating without her.

  Hunter brought her the wine, careful not to step on the dozen or so pairs of shoes scattered around the floor.

  “You did remember that I was coming over tonight, right?” he asked.

  She accepted the glass absently and took a sip, surveying the mess. “Yes, of course.”

  “Please tell me all this doesn’t involve me.” He gestured with his hand over the mess.

  She patted his shoulder. “It’s a crucial part of the plan, I promise.”

  He gave a pile of dresses a doubtful look. “If this is your idea of a great date, we have more work to do than I thought.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m putting
you through this so I don’t have do it to my future suitor.”

  “Suitor, huh?”

  “Come on,” she said, taking another sip of wine and heading back to the tiny kitchen area. “You’ll be more amenable to my plan once you’re fed.”

  “I doubt it,” he muttered.

  But she was right. Once he’d put away three pieces of pizza and opened his second beer, he was feeling slightly less terrified by whatever she had up her sleeve.

  It helped too when she put on a classic-rock playlist. His favorite. Not hers. He revised his opinion. Maybe Brit knew more about the male brain than he realized. Pizza. Beer. Steely Dan . . .

  He contemplated another piece of pizza, decided against it. Then he noticed that Brit’s mushroom side of the pizza was barely touched and that for once she actually had eaten the salad she’d ordered.

  “What’s the story there?” he said, pointing accusingly at her plateful of lettuce.

  “I know, right?” she said with a sigh as she nipped a cucumber off the tip of her fork. “But a lighter dinner will make this whole process a little less painful.”

  “Okay, enough with the cryptic routine,” he said, reaching for the wine bottle and topping her glass off. “Tell me what’s up.”

  She washed down another mouthful of salad with a gulp of water and gave him a grin. “You’re going to help me audit my wardrobe, and I can’t be stuffed full of pizza for that.”

  He groaned. “I had a feeling that’s what was going on.”

  “Think about it, though,” she said, giving a bounce of excitement. “What better way to overhaul my image than starting with my clothes. You know, I always thought I had okay fashion sense, but looking through it now, maybe some of it is a little dowdy?”

  “Your clothes are fine,” he assured her.

  “I know,” she agreed. “I need better than fine. I need . . . hot.”

  “Can’t Taylor or Daisy help?”

  “Taylor maybe. She’s got that femme-fatale thing down. But what works for her won’t necessarily work for me. Which is why I need a guy opinion on what makes me sexy. Your opinion.”

  He shaped his fingers like a pistol and raised it to his temple.

  “Oh, stop,” she said with a laugh. “It won’t be that bad. I was thinking I’ll just hold up some things, try on others, and you can tell me the first thing you think when you look at it. How’s that sound?”