by Nikki Winter
Janet had a good, long laugh at her expense while Harper lamented while baking at Sweet Treats. Of course Janet’s laughter stopped once she threatened to make sure her chocolate chip cookies were off limits until the good Lord himself came back.
Owen, sadly, wasn’t as easy to threaten, the big-headed bastard. And yet, neither of them was as incomprehensibly irritating as the blue-eyed son of a bitch standing before her now. Speaking of whom, he wasn’t saying anything, just staring at her really, really hard.
“What?” Harper snapped, stepping back and folding her arms over her chest.
“You’re still in your panties,” Konstantine answered simply. “Did you know you were still in your panties?”
Well...no. She’d been in the middle of picking out something to wear when all the knocking had finally tangoed on her last nerve, and she was just now realizing all her goods were on clear display. Slowly sliding backwards into her room, she slammed the door in his face. It didn’t matter that he’d already seen said goodies...and touched...and tasted.
“Rude!” Konstantine yelled.
“I’m trying to get dressed!”
“I like what you have on now!”
“You’re such a skeeve!” she bellowed. “Stop being a skeeve!”
“I think I saw your nipples,” he sang.
Harper stomped a foot. “I hate you.”
“Are your nipples hard right now, Sweets? Is that why you’re so pissy?”
“Get away from my door, Koz!”
There was laughter. “They are, aren’t they?”
She growled. “Go away!”
There was silence from the other side. “Are you standing with your ear pressed against the door?” Harper demanded.
“No,” Konstantine replied.
“Koz...”
“Okay, okay, I’m going.”
With an exasperated sigh, Harper went rummaging through her closet, nothing coming into view except for several pairs of jeans and jerseys. Frustrated now, she went searching for her phone and dialed the one person she thought could help her.
“Yellow!” Janet’s voice rang through loud and clear.
“Wardrobe crisis,” Harper said simply. She’d wonder why she was so concerned about looking nice tonight later...much later.
She could hear her sister-in-law’s wince from the other end of the line. “Scale points?”
“Five.”
“Not too bad.” There was shuffling in the background. “Okay, what do you have that isn’t a pair of jeans or a jersey?”
Harper grimaced. “Underwear?”
“Sweet baby Jesus...”
“Help me!”
“Calm down and think. Don’t you have at least one pair of black leggings?”
Sighing, she said, “The leggings again? Really?”
“You want my help or not?”
“Yes!”
“Find the leggings.”
Harper went digging through her drawers until she finally caught sight of a pair of thick black leggings she usually reserved for wearing under her jeans when the temperature dropped during the harder months of winter in New York when long johns weren’t enough.
“Got ’em.”
“How dire is your blouse situation?” Janet queried.
“Are we talking over-the-ass or on the waist?”
Janet sighed. “Do we really need to clarify that?”
“With you? Yes...we do.” Harper answered.
“Do you want to be comfortable and look presentable or not?”
“Yes.”
“Then do as I tell you and stop questioning me.”
“I’m sorry...have we just met? I could’ve sworn we didn’t just meet.”
“Just go farther into your closet!” Janet snapped. “Find a blouse.”
Harper pulled out a white one with sleeves that cuffed at the elbow, with a low cut in the front, made of a fabric that was light and free-flowing. She hadn’t worn it since she bought it, and it looked like it might cover her ass. “Got one.”
“Fitted or free-flowing?”
“Free-flowing.”
“Good. Colors?”
Harper told her.
“Please, for the love of God, tell me you have a black leather jacket and a pair of colored ankle boots in there,” the other woman begged.
Harper tossed things out until she found the jacket then looked until she managed to pull out a pair of three-inch, plum-colored, lace-up platform boots. “What’s sad is, I don’t even remember buying this shit.”
“But I bet you can name what the first baseball cap you ever owned was.”
“Facts and examples, Janet. Facts and examples...”
“Put the clothes on, spray something on that doesn’t smell like men’s deodorant on steroids, go out there and have. A. Normal. Date.”
“Someone is awfully bossy tonight.”
“Do as I say!”
“All right!”
“Give me the details later. I wanna know if Koz manages to get the chastity belt off you again.”
“And this conversation is over.” Harper hung up the phone and tossed it onto her bed, whirling around her room like a mini-tornado in an attempt to get dressed as quickly as possible.
“Sweets!” Konstantine bellowed at her door again.
“I’m coming!” she snapped before finishing up and snatching the door open.
His brows quirked before his lips curved. “You clean up pretty damn nice.”
Rolling her eyes, she pushed past him and headed for the stairs.
“What?” he questioned, following her. “What’d I say?”
“The words every girl dreams of hearing on Valentine’s Day.” She retorted, sarcasm clear. “‘You clean up pretty damn nice.’”
There was a snort before the footsteps behind her stopped. “Hey, Sweets.”
Harper turned around. Konstantine stood on the top step, hands stuffed down into dark washed jeans. The blue of his irises was more pronounced due to his choice of a baby-blue-and-chocolate-striped V-neck sweater that hugged his biceps and shoulders. He grinned down at her. “Your ass looks amazing in those leggings.”
She shook her head slowly. “Why?” Harper questioned. “Why do I even bother with you?”
***
“Where are we going?”
“Doesn’t matter how many times you ask me that, I’m not answering,” Konstantine easily retorted, navigating the streets of East Village.
“I don’t like surprises.”
“Is this going to lead to a walk down memory lane? Because I’d rather not walk down memory lane.”
“Were you not there when Lee Miller gave me hives because he didn’t know I was—”
“Allergic to lilies and thought it was a good idea to get you a whole bouquet?” he finished, eyes focused on the road. “Yes, I was. I was also the only person brave enough to rub calamine lotion on you.”
“And were you not around when I was almost blinded by Robert Williams when he—”
“Gave you that card that was supposed to explode glitter when you opened it?” Konstantine glanced over at her. “I got you the eye patches to accessorize with your jerseys.”
“Which was the reason why I tried to claw one of your eyes out,” Harper stated.
He sighed. “My eyes are too pretty to be clawed out. The loss of my beauty would’ve haunted you for the rest of your life, and yet my still roguishly handsome face would’ve only been enhanced by the merciless deprivation of one of my best features, leaving you to feel bereft and slightly horny every time you saw me.”
There was silence. As he pulled up to a stoplight, he turned his head just to find Harper staring at him, her brows drawn downwards.
“What?”
“I just...I’m trying to figure out if all the hair hides the dent that was made in your head when you were dropped as a baby, or if they managed to repair the damage with a steel plate.” And yes, he could tell she was extremely serious when she replie
d with that.
With a gasp, Konstantine ran his hands through the back of his locks, tugging. “Pop always told me my head was just extremely hard!”
“Koz!” She reached over to pinch him.
“Ow!”
“Tell me where we’re going.”
“Yes, because physically assaulting me is definitely gonna make me wanna talk to you about my wonderful date plans.”
“Why can’t you just cooperate?”
“You mean why can’t I just roll over on command?”
“That’s exactly what I mean!”
He stopped at another light. “Because I’m not a goddamned dog, Sweets! You think I don’t know you well enough by now not to fuck up something that I had to corner you into doing in the first place?”
She tucked her lips in, folding her arms across her chest as she sat back in her seat.
“Ahh, so we’re doing silent treatment now, eh?” Konstantine asked.
No response.
“We’re just gonna sit here in awkward silence like two strangers?”
Nothing.
“I ever tell you about the time I almost got my junk caught in the zipper of my jeans?”
She snorted.
“Or about the time the cleaning service caught me shaking said junk in my mirror upon my discovery of good techno at the tender age of fifteen?”
There was a small “Heh” from her side of the car.
“Or about the time I thought I broke my junk because I wouldn’t stop mas—”
“Oh, my God!” Harper gasped. “Stop. Talking!” Her head was pressed to the passenger side window as she laughed.
He chuckled. “But, Sweets, I have so many more stories about my junk.”
“I don’t wanna hear any stories about your cock.”
Konstantine growled. “I’d advise that you don’t use that word anymore tonight.”
“And that would be why?”
“Because it makes my palms itch.”
“Is this gonna lead to another conversation about your bits? I don’t wanna have another conversation about your bits.”
As he finally stopped at their destination—Margo’s—he fully turned in his seat to look at her as she “ooohed” and “ahhed.” He retorted, “Sweets, my palms are itching because I’m tempted to spank you.”
She blinked. “I always heard silence was golden.”
Nine
The bastard was good, she’d give him that. Margo’s wasn’t someplace full of pretentious assholes and bitchy supermodels ordering side salads as main courses. It was designed to have an upscale but homey feel to it when you walked through the door, never once making you second-guess what you’d chosen to wear. The menu, if Harper remembered correctly, ranged from surf and turf to simple hotdogs and French fries. On weeknights, a live band played on the center stage, filling the food-scented air with amazing tunes.
If there was anyplace Harper wanted to spend a date, it was indeed in the restaurant of the one woman who made the best burgers in Manhattan and gave hugs almost as good as her own mother’s. At the thought of Margo Davis, Harper found herself glancing through the throngs of tables, trying to find the culinary artist with the sparkling smile.
“She’s in that last booth on the right with Pops,” Konstantine whispered in her ear, his hand resting on the dip in her back as they moved behind their waiter.
Turning her head in that direction, she spotted Ivan with his arms wrapped around Margo, a smile on his face as the older woman chuckled at whatever he’d just said. “They look so frackin’ cute.”
“Meh.” Konstantine shrugged as they sat down.
“What do you mean ‘meh’?” she demanded, gesturing in the couple’s direction. “Look at them! That’s adorable.”
He snorted, picking up his menu. “What you see as adorable, they see as sexy, which inevitably means poor Miss Margo is in for a hell of a time later tonight.”
For giving her that particular mental imagery, Harper kicked him in the shin.
“Ow! Stop with the abuse!”
“Stop filling my head with thoughts of your father having sex, you depraved lunatic!”
Konstantine chuckled, waggling his brows before crooning Marvin Gaye.
Her lips twitched but she refused to give him the satisfaction of cracking a smile. “You need Jesus.”
“I’ll neither confirm nor deny that fact.”
“Can we just have a nice normal night—”
“Date,” he corrected.
“This is not a date. It’s a—”
“Date.”
“Koz, I am not—”
“Sweets,” he said so softly that she looked up from her menu. Locking eyes with her, he responded, “You can call it whatever you want, believe whatever you want, but trust me, it’s a date.”
“You’re acting weird.”
“Am I?” Konstantine sat back. “Tell me something.”
She hated when he started with the tell me something bullshit. It usually meant he was about to step into his role as a lawyer. “What?”
“When was the last time you spent a Valentine’s Day without me?”
Harper thought back, tried to remember a year where he wasn’t there after one of her horrible, disastrous encounters. “Never,” she answered softly, a little surprised that the only time he hadn’t been with her physically on Valentine’s Day was when he was out of the country and even then he Skyped her or called. Days later, she would get some small gift with a card.
He quirked a brow. “My point exactly.”
She swallowed. “Koz, I don’t get what we’re doing here.”
“What don’t you get?”
“Why I’ve all of a sudden become your number one priority. We’re friends—we’ve always been friends—but what’s this new thing between us where everything you say or do doesn’t just feel like you’re teasing me or trying to get under my skin?” It was true. Every day he’d been home all interaction between them, when she wasn’t hiding, didn’t feel like their usual verbal sparring. This was something different. She’d look up to find him watching her with the strangest look on his face...the same look she had when she found herself watching him. It scared the living shit out of her.
It didn’t exactly help that they’d slept together. Sex between them had been great but now put them in a limbo zone with their friendship.
Konstantine’s head cocked to the side. “Ask yourself a better question—is it really new or something you never stopped to pay attention to before? Am I suddenly making you my priority, or have you always been my priority, and now you realize it because after all that shit about being friends all these years, you’re finally seeing what I’ve seen since I kissed you?”
Harper was saved from having to answer when their waitress came back for their orders but as soon as she left, he was gazing at her, making her shift in her seat.
She sighed. “What, Koz?”
“Are you gonna answer me?”
Shaking her head slowly, she replied, “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Konstantine smirked. “You can run but you can’t hide, Sweets.”
“I can and I will.”
His snort irritated and warmed her. “You’re really aiming for a sore ass today.”
At his words they both froze, staring at each other before Harper’s lips curled, and then they were laughing. “Don’t. Even. Think. It,” she gasped, pointing at him.
Konstantine held up his hands. “That was not where my mind went.” His brows winged. “And yet...”
She kicked him.
“Ow!”
“Quit with the skeevey behavior.”
“I’m gonna tell you something, and I want you to listen to me closely,” he whispered, leaning towards her. “I’m a man. It’s in my DNA to be skeevey. I fucked you within an inch of your life less than four days ago, so get used to it and bask in the sunshine that is me.”
“Can’t I just, you know
, stab you in the face instead?”
To that, he simply smiled. “You could, but like a fungus, I’d still be hard to get rid of.”
***
“For the love of God, please tell me we’re going in there,” Harper begged.
Konstantine’s lips twitched as he tightly held her hand in his own, their fingers interlocked while they strolled down Essex street, coming to a stop in front of Two Bit’s Retro Arcade. “Who knows you better than anyone else?” he sang.
She did a child-like little shuffle in her heels. “You do. You do.”
“And who was smart enough to break a twenty into several rolls of quarters?”
“You were. You were.”
“And who are you gonna let feel you up later as a reward for my thoughtfulness?”
“You...stop that!”
He chuckled. “Too late, Sweets. I’m holding you to that.”
“Koz...”
“Yes, baby?” He tugged her along as they headed through the doors. Two Bit’s was the only place that could make someone feel like a kid again while reminding them that they could get rocked off at the fully stocked bar.
“I’m having a good night. Don’t ruin it, ’kay?”
Konstantine stopped short then turned and pulled her into his chest, his hands on her hips. “Say that again.”
“What?”
“That you’re having a good night out—with me—because I’m awesome.”
She peered up at him through her lashes. “I don’t remember those last details being spoken.”
He grunted and squeezed her hips.
Harper played with the buttons on his coat, eyes focused on his chest. “I’m having a good night out with you...because you’re acting slightly less insane.”
Eyeing her, he asked, “How many drinks did you have at dinner?”
“Enough to walk straight but not to attempt dancing. Why?”
“Because you weren’t supposed to actually admit that, which means someone had more than their fair share of wine tonight.”
Her smile was wide. “Either that or you’re a pretty good date.”