Catarina

Barrett’s expression is pure anguish.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” He nervously chews on the side of his index finger.

I’ve never seen him less than confident, cocky, or in control.

“Shh.” I pull his finger away from his mouth and scroll through his column. I navigate the menu to show the document’s history and inspect his changes.

“Kitty Cat.”

A light shiver runs up my neck at the nickname.

“How bad is it?”

He’s sitting next to me on the sofa, his leg bobbing up and down as fast as a sewing machine needle. I reach over and pat his leg. Beneath my palm is stiff denim and taught thigh muscles. I pull my hand away before I cave to the temptation to run my hand up the length of his hard body.

Odd reaction on my part. Must be the wine.

I reclaim my glass and finish reading his column, then set aside the laptop to give it to him straight.

“It’s good.”

“Good?”

“Good, not great. You overedited in a few places. Took your voice right out of it.” I show him where he swapped a casual word for a more proper one. “The word ‘crap’ sounds like you,” I tell him. “The word ‘garbage’ sounds more like my grandmother.”

A frown pulls his lips and my gaze lingers on his mouth a second longer than it should.

“You’re the bad boy of the NFL, Barrett. People will expect you to sound like one. Want me to tweak it back for you? It’ll take me a minute.”

“No.” He snatches the laptop, closes the lid, and tucks it under my turquoise pillow. “I’ll do it.”

“I know this isn’t your life’s work. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me. You do your work. I’ll do my own.”

I meet his glare. “You’re blowing away the idea of the jock who cons the smart girl in school into doing his homework for him.”

“I didn’t do that, either.”

“Not even when the girls at OSU were salivating over your big weekend play?”

A sparkle lights his blue eyes, which are steadily trained on me. “Not even then.”

The wineglass rattles in my hand and I down the contents. North’s unexpected phone call could be what has me wound tight. It’s not Barrett. I’m not attracted to Barrett. At most I find him…tolerable.

“This is work time, not date time I’m assuming,” he says. “None of this goes into the column?”

“I don’t typically work during dates so that’s a safe assumption.” I cut off mid-laugh when Fox pushes off the couch and scoots an inch closer.

“Good.” His gaze is on my mouth. I lick my suddenly dry lips. His smirk makes a brief appearance before his fingers rake into my hair. He palms my nape, tips my chin. His breath fans over my face and my eyelids sink to half-mast. Closer and closer his lips come as my heart thunders.

Our mouths meet in the briefest brush before we’re jerked out of the moment by—

Another. Freaking. Knock.

Seriously?!

My shoulders stiffen but Barrett’s posture grows more languid. He pulls me closer as another knock accompanies a bellow.

“Catarina!” calls my visitor. An angry, jealous sounding version of my ex-boyfriend.

That’s new.

“I…have to get that,” I am way too near Barrett’s mouth to think clearly. His delicious mouth.

“Do you?” he asks.

My heart ticks out a few hectic beats. Temptation is a hungry, mouth-breathing beast.

“Yes,” I state firmly.

He lets me go and that hungry, mouth-breathing beast howls in disappointment. I straighten my clothes on the walk across my apartment, jerking open the door to find North wearing a suit and a harried expression. His eyes snap over my shoulder and clash with my houseguest’s.

“Barrett Fox. Northrop Phillips the third,” I introduce lazily.

“There are three of you?” Barrett props his hands on his hips rather than stride forward to offer a hand in friendly greeting. Not that North is offering a hand, either. He mirrors Barrett’s posture and now they both look ridiculous.

“Did you need something, North?”

“I don’t trust this Neanderthal,” he says, pointing at Fox. “I came to make sure he wasn’t planning to club you over the head and drag you home to his cave.”

“At least I didn’t lead her on and then dump her way after the fact,” Barrett returns.

North’s eyes seek mine and in them I can read his every thought. How could you tell him about us? That was private.

I roll my eyes at his theatrics.

“That’s none of your business,” North tells Barrett. “Catarina,” more calmly now, “Would you like me to ask him to leave?”

A loud Ha! comes from Barrett, whose arms are now crossed stubbornly over his chest. Comparing them is like comparing apples to sledgehammers, but I do it anyway. North’s tidy, uptight clothing and fussily styled dark hair over a strong nose versus Barrett’s wrinkled white shirt and jeans, reddish hair and scruff. Both attractive in their own way, but one of them is leaps and bounds more attractive than the other.

“Catarina, answer me,” says the one who’s not winning.

“No,” I state.

“No what?” North asks, flabbergasted.

“No, I don’t want you to ask Barrett to leave.”

“Surely you didn’t invite him over.”

“I didn’t invite you over, either, yet here you are.”

His eyelids narrow. “The dating is still pretend, correct? Just for the column. This hasn’t morphed into some debased attempt at a rebound relationship.”

Adrenaline shoots down my limbs in response to North’s insulting assumption. Barrett approaches from behind, his body heat blanketing my back.

“North, I’d like you to leave,” I say. “I would thank you for checking on me, but I have a feeling your barging in was more about you than it was me.”

“It’s about you, Catarina.” North’s voice gentles. “The way it should’ve been before I let you go.”

Um.

What?

“You heard me,” North continues as if I spoke aloud. He glances at Barrett then lifts my hands with his. “I made a mistake. I came to apologize and ask you to give me another chance. I was confused.”

I blink, positive that I’m hallucinating.

“Confused?” Barrett snaps.

“Stay out of this,” I tell him before this situation reaches Popeye and Bluto proportions. This Olive Oyl can take care of herself.

“You heard her,” North gloats. I’ve never seen him gloat before. Before I can tell him to go home, Barrett brushes by me so quickly my hair lifts on the breeze he creates.

“Thanks for the assist,” he mutters as he exits.

“Fox, you don’t have to—”

But when he turns, I notice his laptop under his arm. He dips his chin in a goodbye to me and glares at North. Then he’s heading down the hallway toward the elevators.

North turns back to me.

“Smug isn’t a good look on you.” I shut the door behind him and shatter his hopes a second later. “I’d like you to stay right in this spot until we’re sure Barrett is gone. I don’t want you two scuffling in the parking lot.”

“Don’t want me to hurt your boyfriend?” More smugness. I can’t remember a time North was smug about anything.

“I don’t want him to hurt you.”

He lets out a noise that might be a disbelieving laugh.

“Can I at least get a drink?” But he’s already in my kitchen. He knows where everything is. The vodka in the freezer, what refrigerator drawer holds the limes, where I keep his favorite rocks glass…

“Help yourself.” Whatever keeps him from tromping downstairs and earning a black eye and a fat lip from the bad boy of the NFL. I carry my empty wineglass to the kitchen and North refills it for me.

“I meant what I said.” He’s trying for nice after behaving like a complete ass.

“I know you did,” I reply flatly and take a guzzle of my wine. “I’m not interested.”

“In a relationship or my friendship?”

I’m not feeling magnanimous at the moment, so I answer, “Neither.”

Barrett

I drum my fingers on the steering wheel as I watch the front door of the apartment building and wait for North’s grand exit. I also have my eye on his pretentious rich boy Cadillac. I know it’s his because of the vanity plates.

NORTHROP3

What a prick.

Showing Kitty Cat my fucked-up column was humbling and a little embarrassing, but I was desperate. After pecking at it for nearly six hours, I wasn’t sure which was crossed—a wire in my brain or my eyes. Probably my brain.

Dyslexia’s a bitch.

No, I’m not exaggerating. I have it. It’s like I always imagined people who wear glasses feel. The letters literally trade places after I’ve stared too long and I can’t tell if I typed it that way or if my brain is interpreting it wrong. I came over here expecting her to tell me I’d written the word three instead of there or renamed her Catrina instead of Catarina.

I was diagnosed when I was a kid, so I can’t blame my affliction on a hard hit on the field. In college I routinely pulled all-nighters to do what most of my friends did in an hour or two. I missed a lot of keggers which is probably why I was recruited by Miami. If I’d gone to half the parties I was invited to, chances are I’d be sitting in jail.

Or lying in the morgue.

Kitty Cat said I overedited. Who knew that was a thing? Something else for me to Google, I guess. Not tonight. Everything reads like hieroglyphics.

The revolving door spins and deposits a couple into the parking lot. I hold my breath, but no one else comes out. I tell myself I only care for Catarina’s sake, but I’m pissed about North’s horrible timing as much as I am my own.

The kiss.

Why did I kiss her?

I was towed in by her caramel-colored eyes, and the pink tongue wetting her lips. By that soft-as-sin hair and the way she shushed me as she read my column. The way she let me in and offered me a beer. The way she hung up on North and grinned at me, so damn proud of herself.

I didn’t plan on the kiss as a way of staking territory or getting her into bed. I was dragged in by every elemental, beautiful nuance about her.

And then her dickhead ex stormed in behaving like…well, like me.

I did that once when Beth and I were “on a break.” She’d been ignoring my messages and I knew she had a late test. Before I knew it, I was standing in the doorway of her dorm room. She was in there with a guy from her psychology class. His shirt was too rumpled for my taste so I balled my fists into his rumpled shirt and shoved him into the hallway so hard he fell on his ass. Then I decided Beth and I weren’t on a break and doled out a punishing kiss. Sex followed because that was how we solved problems.

I bob my foot impatiently as the door circles again and this time a man exits…who isn’t North.

Several weeks’ dry spell plus a vulnerable Catarina, plus her territorial ex doesn’t add up to a patient Barrett Fox. I can either sit here until he exits an hour from now, with his shirt untucked and his hair crimped in the pattern of her fingers, or I can put myself out of my misery and go home.

I have no claim over Catarina. It was barely a real kiss.

But dammit.

It was a good one.