Chapter 9

It took all of five minutes of being at the Malones’ gorgeous high-rise apartment for Penelope to realize what was happening: She was hanging out with the beautiful people.

Those people you saw in TV or movies. The ones you watched while wearing sweats and shoving popcorn in your face and thinking that real people couldn’t possibly look like that. And surely people didn’t really throw dinner parties where there’s a color scheme to the table linens and fresh flowers all over the place.

But they did exist, and she was one of them. Sort of.

For tonight anyway.

And Penelope had been only half right about her stress over what to wear.

On one hand, as expected, the women of the group were all perfectly put together. But on the other hand, they were so freaking nice that she was pretty sure she could have worn one of her jerseys and rattiest jeans, and they wouldn’t have even blinked.

“So, Penelope, tell us honestly now,” said Riley McKenna, as the gorgeous brunette hooked her arm through Penelope’s and guided her toward the couch. “How is it working in the testosterone cage?”

It took Penelope a minute to understand what Riley meant. “The Oxford offices? Is that what it’s called?”

“No,” Emma said with a dismissive wave of her hand as she came to join them in the living room. “That’s not a thing, ignore Riley.”

“Yes, but there is a lot of testosterone up there,” Riley argued. “Am I right?”

“Yes, dear, but unless we want them to start calling Stiletto the estrogen cave, I suggest we—”

“Estrogen cave sounds like a name for vagina,” Riley said.

Penelope choked on the white wine she’d been sipping, and Emma gave her a sympathetic look. “Sorry about Riley. She forgets that names for genitalia aren’t appropriate dinner party conversation.”

“They are in this group,” Riley said.

Emma ignored her friend and leaned forward with an eager smile for Penelope. “Okay, but do tell us…how is it really working with Cole and Lincoln? Which one’s hotter? I mean, they’re both hot, but which one makes you all panty?”

“Wait!” a feminine voice called out.

Julie Greene grabbed a wine bottle, filled up her glass, and then made a beeline for them. “How dare you talk about the good stuff while I was helping make dinner?”

“You weren’t helping, Jules!” Grace called from the kitchen. “You massacred the bread!”

“Julie can’t cook,” Riley said, patting her friend on the knee.

“I didn’t used to cook,” Julie said, holding up a finger. “But I’ve learned.”

Emma caught Penelope’s eye and shook her head.

Penelope hid a smile into her wine.

“Okay, so back to Cole—” Julie said. “Actually no, don’t answer that. Let’s wait for Grace.”

“Oh, well, there’s really nothing to talk about….” Penelope said.

“Of course there isn’t, sweetie. But let’s discuss it all the same before the men get back, shall we?”

“Honestly, how long does it take to check out a grill when it’s freezing out?” Grace mused.

Jake and Grace’s apartment building was in the process of remodeling the rooftop residents’ lounge, and the second Jake had mentioned grill, all five of the other men had insisted on a tour.

“You know they’re talking about us, just like we’re talking about them, right?” Emma said, as she came to join the rest of them in the living room.

“Maybe,” Grace said doubtfully. “Or they’re talking about steak—”

“Who cares,” Julie interrupted. “I want to hear about Cole.”

Penelope gave a nervous laugh when she realized that all of the women’s attention was riveted on her. “Okay, so please don’t think I’m playing coy, and I really appreciate the invitation tonight, but…Cole and I are just colleagues.”

Riley lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

“And friends,” Penelope rushed to explain. “I like him. A lot. But not like that.”

Julie’s nose scrunched. “But he came here with you tonight, even though we made it perfectly clear that we weren’t trying to make this a couples thing.”

“Lies!” Riley said. “We’re totally trying to make it a couples thing. We just didn’t know Lincoln or Cole, so we brought both. Ooh, maybe they could mud-wrestle over you!”

Penelope laughed a little at Riley’s bald honesty. “I appreciate the sentiment. I do. But if you’re looking to set Cole up with a woman, I think you’ll need someone a little more…”

“A little more what?” Riley demanded.

Penelope blew out a breath. “I’m not his type.”

“Fun fact,” Julie said cheerfully, “Cole doesn’t have a type.”

“Well, he does, sort of,” Grace corrected. “Boobs.”

“See, there you go!” Penelope said, snapping her fingers and then pointing at her chest. “I’m lacking there.”

“Take it from another not-well-endowed gal,” Emma said, “the menfolk find all sizes very interesting.”

“Well, Cole doesn’t find these interesting,” Penelope said. “And I don’t want him to.”

“Well, this is disappointing,” Julie said with a pout. “I could have sworn my matchmaking instincts were dead-on.”

“Rumor has it we should have gone with plan B,” Grace said to her friends, sounding just a tiny bit smug.

“Plan B?” Penelope asked. “You had multiple plans?”

“Multiple men, she means. For you, sweetie,” Julie explained.

“Plan B is Lincoln,” Grace said.

“Mmmm, Lincoln,” Riley said with a dreamy sigh. “You like him, Pen?”

“He kissed her,” Grace said, before Penelope could answer.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Penelope muttered.

But nobody heard her. Riley was too busy pretending to swoon, Julie was fanning herself, and even the ever-cool Emma looked supremely interested.

“How do you know this?” Julie said, slapping at Grace’s knee.

“Jake saw it,” Grace replied. “Lincoln did it right there in Penelope’s office. Something about an article he was working on, and—”

“It seriously wasn’t romantic. Or sexy,” Penelope cut in. “Really. It was playful and—”

“But it was good, wasn’t it?” Riley asked. “I mean, I may be an almost-married woman, but Lincoln Mathis is hot.”

“The kiss was…” Penelope replayed Lincoln’s mouth on hers. “It was nice.”

Silence descended on the room.

“Nice?” Riley said, sounding aghast.

“You know, it was…” Penelope glanced around the room at disappointed faces. “I don’t have much to compare it to.”

She supposed she should be embarrassed by the admission—and she was, a little. But Penelope had never really seen the point of pretending to be something she wasn’t.

And she absolutely wasn’t an experienced femme fatale.

For all she knew, maybe Lincoln’s kisses were as good as it got. It had certainly been more skilled than most of the groping kisses she’d endured in college. And better than Erik’s, a guy whom she’d dated for a few months and who had borderline halitosis.

“Penelope,” Julie said slowly. “I don’t mean to pry—”

“She does,” Emma interrupted.

“Okay fine, I do mean to pry,” Julie continued. “But are you seriously telling me that the best kiss you’ve ever received is merely nice? From a guy you barely know, for the sake of work?”

“Wait!” Grace said, holding up a hand. “Don’t answer that until I fill up your glass!”

Penelope happily obliged as Grace topped off all their glasses. She was more of a beer girl, but hey, it was Friday and a fancy dinner party, and well, she was having fun.

The only time Penelope ever got to indulge in girl talk was with Janie, but her sister wasn’t here….

“I don’t think I’m over the guy I left in Chicago,” she blurted out.

Riley leaned forward. “Was he a bad kisser? Is he why you’re all anti-kissing? Because I’d move to another state if Sam was a bad kisser. Hell, I’d leave the continent.”

Penelope smiled sadly. “No. I mean…I don’t know. We never, um…my feelings were one-sided.”

“Oh, well, honey, if you’ve got feelings for a guy, you have to tell him!” Julie said.

“I planned to,” Penelope said, taking a sip of wine. “I mean, like, I actually had a plan. I made dinner reservations, I bought a dress. It was red….”

Riley whistled. “Red dress, huh? Busting out all the stops.”

“Exactly,” Penelope said. She looked down at her glass.

And then I found out he stole my job and had been shacking up with a flight attendant for the past six months….

To the other women’s credit, nobody pried. They sat there silently, waiting for her to continue, and she knew that if she didn’t say another word, they’d change the subject.

But it was time to tell somebody—it was time to move on.

She went for it. “He took the job that I wanted. I don’t know if he meant to, but he did. But that’s not even the worst part. Before he could tell me any of this, I’d decided to make my move. I got brave. Or stupid. I’m not sure which, but…I kissed him.”

Penelope took a deep breath before continuing. “Needless to say, he didn’t kiss me back. Not when he was waiting to introduce me to his new girlfriend, who saw the whole humiliating thing go down….”

She put a hand over her eyes for just a moment, reliving the moment. “The worst part was, I’d really thought he liked me. That he’d been in love with me too. But now I think maybe he was just keeping me close to use me for the job thing.”

“The bastard,” Julie breathed.

Penelope smiled ruefully. “Exactly. So why can’t I stop thinking about him?”

“The heart needs time to heal,” Emma said quietly.

“Totally. Like seven years, hmm, Em?” Riley asked.

Penelope looked between the two of them. “Seven years?”

Emma hesitated. “Me and Cassidy…we once, eh…I’ll fill you in some other time. Tonight is about you. Where do things stand with you and this guy now?”

Penelope lifted a shoulder. “He texts sometimes. Still wants to be friends, tries to keep things friendly. And maybe someday I’ll want that but I just…I had to get away, you know?”

“New York is your fresh start,” Grace said, after studying Penelope’s face.

“That,” Penelope agreed, “and also maybe a little bit of running away.”

“Which you were right to do,” Julie said, jabbing her finger at Penelope’s knee. “Like Emma said, the wound needs to heal.”

“That’s the idea,” Penelope said with a shrug. “A new city was my first step. The new job was my second.”

“And a new man is the third,” Riley said.

“Well…no, not exactly,” Penelope said with a little frown. “I don’t want to rush into anything.”

“Well, of course not. I’m not saying get your heart all tangled up in things. That sucker needs to patch itself up with some time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t distract yourself from this…what’s the guy’s name?”

“Evan.”

“Okay, no more Evan. Also, no more putting yourself down, acting like you’re not worthy of male attention. You’re freaking adorable.”

“You are,” Julie agreed. “I can think of about a dozen guys who would eat you up.”

“In the nondirty way,” Grace rushed to clarify.

“But the dirty way is the best kind,” Riley said, sounding confused.

“Regardless,” Emma said, “we don’t need a dozen guys to get your mind off this Evan.”

“Nope, just one will do,” Julie said.

“Okay, but I don’t know that Lincoln—”

“No, not Lincoln,” Julie said. “If the kiss was merely nice, he won’t do.”

“Then who—”

The guys chose that moment to barge back into the apartment, and judging from their talk about medium-rare, Grace was dead-on about their discussing steak.

The men froze by the door when they saw the women watching them, and Penelope watched as Riley’s fiancé leaned toward Cassidy and asked out of the corner of his mouth, “Why do I get the feeling we just walked into one of their disastrous plans?”

Cassidy shook his head, but he too looked wary. “I don’t know. But they’ve already got most of us ringed or on the way to the altar.”

“Most of us,” Jake said. “But not all.”

The other four men turned their attention to Cole and Lincoln, who’d both been looking at their phones and missed the whole thing.

They looked up, then looked at each other in confusion.

“Uh, what’d we miss?” Cole asked.

Julie’s husband, Mitchell, clapped Cole on the shoulder. “Don’t even worry about it, man. Chances are you don’t want to know.”

Cole frowned, his eyes moving around the room until they met Penelope’s. He lifted an eyebrow as though to ask Do you know what’s going on here?

Julie leaned toward Penelope with a knowing look on her face.

“Betcha Cole’s kisses are better than nice,” she said quietly.

“I wouldn’t know,” Penelope responded.

“Oh, but you will,” Julie said confidently, as she sat back and sipped her wine. “You will.”