Hunter felt like an idiot. He was in his thirties, for God’s sake. Far too established in the world of women and dating to make such a rookie move, but he had.
His date had been fine. Good, even, in that he hadn’t wanted to shoot himself halfway through dinner. Conversation had been pleasant, if not exactly scintillating. The rib eye he’d had for his meal had been excellent, as had the tiramisu she’d wanted to split for dessert.
It was not, however, by Hunter’s estimation, a date that necessitated or even inspired a repeat. He didn’t see himself marrying or even seriously dating Haley Ferris. She was pretty, kind, and . . . incredibly literal.
Not a bad trait in and of itself, to be sure, but given Hunter’s particularly dry style of sarcasm, their conversational tactics had hardly been compatible for the long haul.
Throughout the night, he’d made a couple of facetious remarks, and the sarcasm had gone completely over her head. Conversely, there’d been a handful of times when he’d mistakenly assumed she was being sarcastic when she wasn’t. They’d laughed their way through the awkward misunderstandings, but a love match it was not destined to be.
But the date itself hadn’t been Hunter’s mistake.
No. That would be going out with a woman who lived in his building.
Thus a date that should have ended, as most of them did, with an easy parting of ways outside the restaurant was turning into something altogether more complicated. Instead of him ushering a woman into her own cab before departing in a separate one, he and Haley were headed to the same destination.
Ergo: shared cab. And if the way she was leaning against him was any indication, she had every intention of suggesting the proverbial nightcap invitation.
Shit.
Hunter was good at a lot of things. Extricating himself from the expectations of women was not one of them. He wasn’t a pushover in his professional life and not with his friends. But when it came to a pretty woman, he was terrified of hurting her feelings. Terrified, even more so, of tears, because what man wasn’t?
Not that he’d peg Haley as a crier, but they didn’t seem to be on the same page in terms of their incompatibility.
Her hand found his knee. Shit.
Either she thought the date had gone a lot better than he had or she didn’t care how the date went and was just looking for a one-night stand. Which normally he’d consider, if the woman was interested and the mood was right. But again, it came down to that pesky proximity issue. Though they didn’t live on the same floor of their apartment building, they were likely to bump into each other while checking mail, in the stairwell, or during the odd fire alarm when the elderly woman on the first floor burned her toast again.
Those casual encounters would be much less awkward if they hadn’t seen each other naked.
The cab pulled up to a stop outside their building, and as Hunter paid the fare, he tried to remember his friend Lincoln’s advice for getting rid of a woman gracefully. Before he’d met Daisy Sinclair, Lincoln Mathis had been one of the city’s most liked and most nefarious playboys. The two qualities should have been mutually exclusive, but Lincoln had made it work. His reputation for letting women down easily, and in a way that had them adore him more than ever, was legendary.
So once, after a couple of cocktails, Lincoln had given Hunter a script of sorts. Something about letting the woman think she was in on a secret vulnerability of yours. Or was it figuring out what the woman’s vulnerability was . . . or . . .
Damn it. Hunter couldn’t remember a damn thing Lincoln had told him.
Haley was waiting for him on the sidewalk and flashed a seductive smile as he closed the door to the cab.
“How gentlemanly of you to escort me home,” she said. Her giggle as she said it let him know that it was a joke. At least in her mind.
Hunter smiled. A tight, polite smile, but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, Haley stepped closer and tilted her head up. “It’s early yet. I have an incredibly expensive bottle of cognac I got for Christmas from my boss that I’ve been dying to share with someone.”
Hunter reached out and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Did he tell her no now, or did he do the polite thing and accept the offer of a nightcap? But if he did that, he’d merely put off the moment when he had to let her down for real. . . .
Why did he do this to himself? Earlier in the week, when Haley’s grocery bag had exploded in the lobby and he’d helped her pick up an ungodly amount of green leafy shit, why had he not dodged her suggestion of dinner then?
He could have claimed a busy week at work. Or travel. Or the flu. Or a girlfriend! Damn it, that would have been an easy one. He could have claimed he was seeing someone else, and . . .
“Um, Hunter?” The female voice came from behind Haley, and the tone was incredulous, maybe verging on outrage.
He scanned the darkness, noting a female form in the shadows of the corner of his building, where the smokers tended to congregate around an ugly potted plant.
It wasn’t a smoker, though. And the voice and walk of the woman were wonderfully familiar.
Brit emerged from the shadows, and her face, now illuminated by the city lights, was livid.
“Who is this?” Brit said in a low, dangerous tone before Hunter could greet her.
Um. What?
Had she been drinking? Brit was a friendly, welcoming sort. Not at all the type of woman to be, well . . . weird.
“Brit, this is Haley. Haley, my friend Brit Robbins.”
Brit’s laugh was brittle. “Friends? Is that what we are? We didn’t feel like friends when you had me pinned against the wall of your apartment. We didn’t feel like friends when we blew off brunch to stay naked in bed all day. We didn’t feel like friends when I let you flip me over and—”
Hunter let out a startled laugh and held up a hand to stop the crazy nonsense she was spouting. “What the hell—”
Her blue gaze snapped from a nervous-looking Haley to Hunter, and though Brit didn’t lose the crazed look, she added something else, just for Hunter. A wink.
Ah. Got it.
Well, hell, now he felt like a moron for not seeing her plan earlier.
It was hardly the first time Brit had extracted him from an unpleasant dating situation by pretending to be his girlfriend, or, whatever, but usually he was in on the plan. And usually her methods weren’t so . . . graphic.
“Did he tell you any of that?” Brit asked, turning back to Haley. “Or that he’s taking me out tomorrow? Or that after last weekend, I could barely walk straight—”
Jesus. Hunter choked back a horrified laugh and decided to put an end to this. For Haley’s sake as well as his own.
He stepped away from Haley and toward Brit, his fingers wrapping around her upper arm. “Brit. Sweetie. Let’s just go up to my place and talk a little bit.”
“Sure, ‘talk,’” she said, putting air quotes around the word. “We all know—”
He tightened his fingers in gentle warning. Enough with the weird sexual references; you’re creeping me out.
He gave Haley an apologetic smile. “Haley—”
She shook her head and stepped backward. “Forget it. I knew you were a player, but . . .” She shook her head again. “See you around, Hunter.”
He and Brit watched until Haley disappeared into the building.
Then Hunter looked down at her without releasing her arm. “Happy now?”
She beamed up at him. “You’re welcome.”
He gave an incredulous laugh. “I can’t say gratitude is my first emotion right now.”
“It’ll come when you realize I saved you,” she said confidently. “Don’t try to tell me you weren’t freaking out trying to figure out how to get rid of her.”
“She wasn’t that bad,” Hunter grumbled, feeling guilty for wanting to be rid of Haley as much as he had.
“No, she seemed okay,” Brit agreed. “But you weren’t into her.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because you were doing your scratch and lean.”
Hunter blinked. “My what?”
“Scratch and lean. Whenever you’re uncomfortable in a situation and wish you could get out of it but don’t know how, you scratch the back of your neck and lean slightly away from whoever you’re dealing with.”
“I do not.”
“Okay, maybe I do,” he said, because he really had no idea if he scratched his neck, or leaned, or whatever. “But we’re not calling it that. We’re not turning it into a thing.”
“You should be grateful for the quirk. Without it, I’d never have known to rescue you!”
“Yeah, thanks for that, I guess—wait.” Hunter released her arm but looked down at her sharply. “How did you know to rescue me?”
“I told you, the scratch and lean—”
“No, I mean why are you even here?”
“Because we’re best friends?”
“Best friends don’t lurk outside each other’s apartment buildings.”
She linked arms with him and started toward the front door of his building. “They do if they have a favor to ask.”
“Isn’t that what texts are for?” he asked warily. Brit had been to his place dozens of times, maybe hundreds, but rarely did she simply show up without warning.
And Brit asking favors was even more rare. Not that he’d have minded if she asked for more. He’d do just about anything for her. But generally speaking, Brit wasn’t the type to need favors. He’d always thought of her as entirely self-sufficient.
“Believe me, you don’t want to hear this request in a text,” she said.
That had him curious. And more than a little wary, especially given their conversation from yesterday.
Hunter dug his keys out of his pocket, used the electronic fob to open the door to his building’s lobby. He held it open for her, and she stepped inside.
His Upper West Side building wasn’t a fancy one. In fact, it was the very first building he’d moved into after arriving in New York a decade earlier, fresh off the plane from Missouri. At the time, it’d been all he could afford. The pre-war mid-rise had a doorman, but in a cost-cutting measure he worked only nine to five, Monday through Friday, rather than the round-the-clock coverage of fancier buildings. There was one elevator, and though it had to serve only eight floors, Hunter found it quicker to take the stairs to his sixth-floor unit unless dealing with groceries or luggage.
The lobby, while probably deemed lavish at the building’s opening in the twenties, had a decidedly dated feeling, and not in the intentionally retro-glamour style of the renovated pre-war buildings in the area.
When he’d gotten the job at Oxford a few years ago, Hunter’s first thought had been that he could move to a newer, nicer building, only to realize . . . he didn’t want to.
The Enclave was home, and Hunter didn’t want to live anywhere else. Instead, he’d applied the increased income to renovating his unit. With the landlord’s surprisingly indifferent permission, he’d gutted the kitchen, creating an open floor plan, with all new appliances.
The bathroom too had gotten a makeover. Goodbye ugly wallpaper, and hello to a new showerhead that worked all the time, instead of when it was in the mood.
Most other things, though, he’d left alone, preferring to let the character of the old building show itself in the high ceilings, the old-fashioned windows.
He’d have left his furniture alone too, but by then Brit had wiggled her way into his life and insisted that he ditch the frat vibe. She’d sent his secondhand sectional with the duct tape on one of the arms to Goodwill and replaced it with a comfortable brown leather couch that he liked more than he’d ever admit to her.
She’d also picked out his coffee table, lamps, and all the other shit guys didn’t really care much about, but she’d taken care not to make it fussy. As a result, his home was, well, home. Or at least a pretty good temporary home until he found his way back to Missouri, which he’d always thought of as the endgame.
Hunter started toward the stairs, and Brit groaned. “You know that if you go to the gym every day you don’t have to take the stairs, right?”
“Well, since you don’t go to the gym every day, consider this your cardio,” he said, planting his hand on her back and shoving her up the stairs.
She trudged ahead of him, the wedge heel of her boots clicking on each step. “You don’t treat your dates like this, do you?”
“Definitely not.”
“Oh, that’s right. Because you try to get rid of them before they have to do the StairMaster portion of the evening.”
He reached out and pinched her side. Brit gasped and whipped her head around. “You did not just pinch my muffin top.”
“Your what?”
Her eyes narrowed before she resumed her climb. “You know full well what a muffin top is, and you know you just pinched it.”
“I think it’s cute.”
“Shut up, Hunter.”
He grinned as she stomped harder up the stairs until they reached the sixth floor.
“You owe me water. And wine. In that order,” she said, her chest heaving just slightly as she waggled her finger at him and then followed him down the hallway.
“No problem.” He pushed his key into the lock. “I’ve got an open bottle of red from last night. There might be a bottle or two of white in the fridge, if you want me to open that?”
“Whatever you’re drinking.” She shrugged out of her jacket and hung it up herself in his coat closet. She pulled out a second hanger and wiggled her fingers for his coat.
He handed it to her, barely registering that it was his apartment and thus he should probably be hanging up her coat. But, then, they were long past that.
“What I’m drinking will depend,” he said, scratching his chin and studying her.
“On?”
“This favor you have to ask me. Is it the type of favor that I can hear while sipping water? Should I pour myself a glass of wine? Or is it the type of favor where I’m definitely going to want whiskey?”
She chewed her lip and considered. “Whiskey.”
Hell.
“For me too,” she said.
Double hell.
Brit rarely drank whiskey. Only when she really needed liquid courage. Which meant . . . whatever she had up her sleeve?
He wasn’t going to like it.