LEXI

“How could you let me fall asleep here?” I fly to a sitting position, legs tangled in sheets as I glare across the room. “I have to work in an hour!”

My oldest friend, my best friend, and my most irresponsible friend are all the same person—and she goes by the nickname Kitty. Her real name is Kathleen, and she hates it. Too formal, she says.

“It’s only ten,” Kitty drawls, crossing a leg over her knee. She opens a window and lights up a cigarette. “We were up late. I thought you needed some rest, so I let you doze.”

“I don’t need sleep, I need to work!” I scramble to my feet, adjust my outfit, and cringe. “Do I look like I’m headed on a walk of shame?”

Kitty is an artist by trade, hence the reason she doesn’t need to be anywhere before noon. She eyes me from top to bottom, then nods. “Wild and crazy walk of shame.”

“I wish.” I look down at the dilapidated excuse for a blanket at my feet. I nudge it with my toe. “It’d make a better story than this.”

“Honey, why are you trying so hard to be domesticated?” Kitty stands, her long, lanky body the sort that drew stares from strangers. “It’s way more fun to be careless.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I can’t be careless because I have to pay the bills.” I swipe the scrap of fabric from the floor and study it. Looks something like a fish net. I scowl and wrap it over my arm before making my way toward the door. “Next time let’s try anything but knitting.”

“How about we actually go dancing like we’d planned?”

I make a face. “I’ll see you this weekend?”

“Bye, doll.”

I punch the button on the elevator, but it takes at least thirty seconds for the light to turn on. So, I forgo the elevator and choose the stairs, taking them two at a time until I curve around the landing and rush past her doorman.

Kitty Catalain has a doorman. Kitty Catalain has boyfriends in seven different countries. Kitty Catalain has the body of a supermodel and the style of a Parisian designer.

There’s absolutely no way to leave her place and feel like I have my shit together. I like to say I’m the ugly step-sister to her Cinderella life. Today is a perfect example. I’m twenty-seven, single, and struggling to remember where I parked my car.

“Hey, George?” I poke my head back into the building and wave at the doorman. “Do you know where my car is? I could’ve sworn I got the front spot last night, but it’s not there...”

George, an older gentleman, clears his throat and glances over my shoulder. I turn, follow his line of sight, and curse when I read the words printed on the sign along the curb.

STREET CLEANING.

“Does that mean my car’s been towed?” I turn to ask him. “They really should warn you.”

“The signs have been there for a week.”

“Crap.”

“I’m sure you can retrieve it from the impound lot.”

“Right, but I don’t have time for that.” I run a hand through my hair, tapping my toe against the floor. “Or the money.”

“Would you like me to call you a cab?”

“A cab?” I look at him like he’s crazy. “I don’t have the time or the money for that either! Can you ring Kitty?”

Thirty minutes later, Kitty’s dropping me off in her cute little Mazda, a sparkling new car that’s trendy and functional and just perfect.

“I’m really sorry about that, honey,” she says, leaning over to give me a kiss on the cheek. “You know I don’t pay attention to the signs. Do you need me to find your car? I can call Roberto, my mechanic. He knows his way around a car...” She pauses to giggle. “Among other things.”

“Your mechanic, too?”

“What can I say? He’s good with his hands. Nope—scratch that. Great.”

I shake my head and smile at her. There’s nothing else to do, really. Kitty just loves to be alive, and somehow, that excuses her flaws. Also, she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.

“Thanks,” I say, climbing from the car. “I’ll pick it up later. I still have work today.”

I enter my apartment building like a tornado. My hair is a disaster, my clothes look like I’ve spent the night on the grimy floor of an Italian discoteca, and my horrible attempt at knitting is draped around my neck, giving off the vibe of a fishnet scarf.

I look like I’m wrecked from a wild and crazy night. However, all we actually did was spend the night drinking wine, trying out Kitty’s makeup samples, and cursing at How to Knit video tutorials.

Regardless, there’s a very professional-looking woman who’s in the middle of moving her things into our apartment building. Rather, she’s standing around, instructing a band of moving guys, and none of them probably know my state of disarray has come from a night with knitting stick-things.

This woman looks put together. She’s standing in way-high pumps with a tight little pencil skirt and beautiful bushy hair. Even her moving boxes look expensive. One glance at me, and she’s probably wondering if it’s too late to renege on her lease.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” I murmur, glancing at the elevators.

There are two.

The problem is that they’re both currently taken by very large things, and there’s no space for me to fit into any of them. Apparently, the woman moving into my building has more things than the Minnesota Institute of Art.

It’s Sunday morning, and I need to get to the diner. It’s the only day of the week busy enough to require a full staff—and as the owner, I can’t be setting a bad example, showing up late looking like an out of work showgirl.

“Do you need—” The woman has half a sentence out of her mouth, but I’m already hurtling down the front steps.

There’s a secret entrance to my building, and nobody knows about it but me.

Well, actually, me and Fred.

Fred is the janitor who told me about it a few years back. On a day similar to this one, my parents had been waiting in this very lobby to pick me up. Meanwhile, I’d scrambled to my building, running late as always from Kitty’s birthday party, wearing a very tiny sequined dress.

I’d run into Fred and asked him to distract my parents while I slipped into the elevator. He’d done me one better, and had taken pity on me, showing me to the back elevator so I could sneak into my apartment and change before my very wholesome parents saw all-too-much cleavage. I’d owed him free coffee from the diner for a month.

The only issue is that this elevator isn’t technically supposed to be in service. It’s an old service thing locked way, way in the back between the building and the garage. It’s in a cement corridor that’s damp, dark, and the perfect setting for a horror flick. In a pinch, however, it gets the job done.

I punch the button and wait, ignoring the Out of Service signs and twiddling my thumbs. I pull out my phone and check the time. Just over twenty minutes to go until I’m officially late to work. I need a shower and a change of clothes... a change of hair, if that’s possible, and a few spritzes of perfume. With my luck, I’ll never make it on time.

Reluctantly, I type out a text to my second in command at the restaurant. I warn Rick that I’m going to be late, and it causes me physical pain as I hit Send.

“Well, look who we have here.”

I recognize that voice, and I whirl around to face none other than Bradley Hamilton. He’s leveling his deep brown eyes on me, sending trembles across my body. My phone shakes as I force myself to remain calm.

I raise my eyes to match his gaze. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m taking the elevator.”

Bradley’s eyes study me for a long moment, absorbing my frazzled look, including the outfit that should’ve been worn to a rave—not kept locked inside with a ball of yarn. “Am I witnessing the Lexi Monroe walk of shame?”

I tilt my nose in the air. “I would never tell you.”

“I take that as a yes.”

Brad moves to stand next to me, which has my heart leaping into race mode. Nothing new there, seeing as he’s been getting my pulse racing since he moved in next door and declared my older brother, Lucas, his best friend.

Bradley Hamilton is a bundle of confusion. He’s tall, hot as hell, and built to intimidate. The man runs a gym, so I suppose looking good is part of the job. Not that I’ll ever admit to his face that he looks good—not anymore. I tried that once, and it didn’t get me anywhere.

Which made things awkward for the twenty odd years that he and my brother played on the same hockey team. They started together as baby hockey players, then grew into high school Varsity, college at the University of Minnesota, finally landing deals within weeks of each other with the Minnesota Stars, our state’s professional hockey team.

For three years, Bradley and Lucas played next to each other on the rink. Then Brad had gone and wrecked his knee—that’s the day he learned that he’d never play professional hockey again.

That day had changed him.

It’d changed us, and it’d changed any sort of relationship that’d formed between us. Brad and Lucas had fought, their argument ending in a legendary falling out between them. Then, Brad had pushed me away. For the last three years, we’d barely spoken.

I’m not bitter anymore. Usually. Mostly, I’m just annoyed.

I press the elevator button again, mumbling about it being the slowest machine on the face of the earth. Brad’s smirking; I can feel the smirk without looking at him. That’s how well I know the man. Even after three years, I can still read his mind.

“What is that smell?” I snarl, my stomach growling as I turn to face him. “It’s giving me a headache.”

He raises the brown paper bag in his hand. “Burger?”

“Eat it already.” A fast food label is stamped on the side, and the clear scent of greasy deliciousness wafts up to me. I must moan aloud without realizing it because he raises an eyebrow, and this makes me snap. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

“Someone a little hungry?”

“You might say that.” I let my hand clap against the cement wall as my body curls itself in half. After hours of drinking wine and having my hands busy with yarn, I’m just now realizing that it’s been hours since I ate anything. Too many hours. So many hours I can’t even remember, and that’s a problem. “I’m starving.”

I run a diner; it’s a passion project. Food is more than my hobby, it’s my life. My deepest desire. My vice. My lover... especially when the rest of my love life has run dry. And when my stomach hits empty, it’s not a pretty sight.

The elevator arrives, but I don’t move. I’m trying to hold my breath so I’m not tempted to steal his bag and run. “Can you please take a different elevator?”

“Do you have a problem with me?”

“No. I have a problem with your food.”

“Just because you’re hangry, doesn’t mean you need to insult my burger.”

“Bradley Hamilton, do not start with me. You’ve seen me hungry, you’ve seen me angry, but you ain’t seen hangry yet.”

“I feel like we’re getting there.” He puts an arm out to hold the door and gestures for me to step through first. “A night of wild sex will give anyone an appetite.”

“Wild sex? Yep, that’ll give anyone a big appetite,” I reply as the doors close, and then I glance down at my attire. Running a hand through my gnarly hair, I try for smooth and seductive, but my fingers get stuck in a knot, and the illusion is ruined. “I’m probably having so much wild sex you wouldn’t even know what to do with it.”

“Oh, Lex.” Bradley Hamilton steps into the elevator, jamming his finger against the door-close button. Once we’re locked inside, he brushes close to me, his delicious scent—probably a mixture of some manly-ass shampoo and a cologne infused with pheromones—washes over me. “You’re cute when you’re nervous.”

“Yeah, well...” I pause, gasping for air.

He’s so close to me I could loop my arms over his neck, press his lean, beautifully hard body against the elevator walls and kiss him senseless. I know we haven’t talked in three years, but it’s sort of been on my bucket list.

Just before he’d gotten injured, we’d been on the verge of something...something beyond friendship. He’d kissed me on the cheek the night before the accident, and it’d sent me into a desperate spiral of lustful daydreams ever since. To say I have unresolved feelings for Bradley Hamilton would be an understatement.

“So, I’m curious. With whom did this wild sex occur?”

“What?”

“Last night. Your crazy adventures.”

“Oh, Kitty. Wait. What? No. Forget it. Hunger is clouding my thoughts.”

“I’d offer you a bite, but it’s my only cheat meal of the week and...” He inhales the beautiful scent of a fresh burger. “I was really looking forward to eating it all.”

“It’s morning. Who eats burgers in the morning?”

“Someone who’s been up for six hours and already hit the gym.”

“Yeah, sure.” I roll my eyes. “Like you’d be out of bed before noon on a Sunday.”

That’s when I take a better look at him and realize that probably, he’s not lying. The man is in incredible shape. It’s spring in Minnesota, and the temps have finally pushed into the high sixties, which is basically bathing suit weather.

Brad’s taking advantage of these almost-balmy temperatures with low hanging shorts and a t-shirt, and his hair is wet and rumpled. If I had to guess, he’s just showered at the gym and is coming home for lunch. Exactly like he said.

“Well, whatever. I already knitted today.”

“Knitted?” He raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t take you for the domesticated type.”

“Why? You think I need a man to be domesticated?”

“I didn’t say anything about a man.”

“Well, you implied it.”

“No, I just meant—”

“You’re just jealous you don’t have this warm blanket to cuddle with.” I fist a hand through my oddly shaped blanket-scarf and brandish it in his face. “That’s right—I made this.”

Bradley stares back at me. He’s got this whole chocolate brown hair, chocolate brown eyes thing going on, and it makes my hand slip right through one of the loops in my blanket. Not exactly snuggle material, I suppose.

“Jealous?” I ask, rubbing it against my face. I struggle not to wince as it scratches my skin. “Because you should be.”

“I am.” He bites his lip, watches me rub the blanket across my cheek, then directs his gaze toward the ceiling.

He sounds a little strangled. I pull the blanket away from my face, not wanting to go down this road—especially when our elevator ride should be coming to an end any second now.

“They really need to fix this elevator,” I babble. I’m not the sort of girl who sits in silence very well. It’s not that I want to be social, I just hate silence more than I hate talking to people. “We’re going to be in here all day, and I can’t afford—”

The elevator groans to a stop, cutting off my sentence.