Maggie gave her an adoring look filled with genuine gratitude. Ava went to the kitchen for some water and Maggie leaned against the window frame, studying the blight upon her walkway. The undeniably built blight who was loosening up by swinging his arms at chest level, forward and back. Forward and back in a motion that pulled the sweat-soaked fabric of his white, moisture-wicking, tight-enough-already shirt taut across the ripped muscles of his back so she could see the flex and bunch of each one, the twin channels running alongside his spine.
Total wet T-shirt contest stuff. And totally annoying.
Ava came back carrying a half-drunk glass of water. “So any prospects for this month?”
As a rule, the topic of whether Maggie had scrounged up a date was met with grudging reluctance and a put-upon attitude. The dating thing was strictly for Ava’s benefit, and Maggie tried to think about it as little as possible. But today was different. Today the topic was met with a grin. A big one.
“As a matter of fact, yes. You remember when you broke your wrist two years ago and we—”
“Oh my God! Hot Doc?” Ava demanded, bouncing so hard her water nearly spilled. “He was so into you. Pulleeease tell me it’s Hot Doc.”
Maggie nodded. “Ava, he’s seriously perfect. Like, everything I’m looking for.”
Ava bit into her lip, clutching her glass to her chest with both hands. “Tell.”
“Obviously he passes the usual rigmarole. No cats. Employed. A reference in the form of his sister, whom he was actually giving dating advice to when I ran into him. Laughed multiple times. And his schedule at the ER is so nuts, the soonest we were able to book something was the thirtieth!”
Ava’s smile had gone a little stale and Maggie shifted uneasily on her feet. “What?”
“I guess when you said he was perfect, I thought maybe you were sort of excited about going out with him.” She sighed. “For real.”
So maybe this wasn’t the right time to share what Maggie had considered the best part. The guy was scheduled to leave on some two-month medical exchange just three days later. Instead she promised, “I’m open to the possibilities.”
It had to be enough, because it was all she had.
Sighing, Ava turned back to the window. “It’s what we agreed on.”
“So who have you got?” Maggie asked, glaring at Apartment Three, who looked to be finishing his cool-down as he turned around, providing her with an unobscured view of the front of him. The damp spikes of his hair hung low across his brow, and the hard set of his eyes and mouth and, well, damn it, everything else about him reminded her of what a total ass he was and how much she didn’t like him.
“Cop. Met him at court. Solid eight on the hot scale. Knows a bunch of people over at the firm.”
“You excited?”
“Ehh. I’m open.”
Yeah.
Tyler stopped where he was and looked up to her window. Their eyes met, and all the hot and hard and hostile got lost in the lopsided grin that broke out across his face, his right brow arching all well-who-do-we-have-here as he watched her watch him.
Carefully maintaining her look of disdain, Maggie trapped a piece of Booty between her index and middle fingers and held it up with the snap of her wrist at the window.
Ava snorted. “What, is that some kind of snack food flip-off? How’s he supposed to know to be offended?”
Oh, he knew. That world-class smirk working his mouth and nod of understanding confirmed it.
“Hey, Sam and Ford are back with beer for their movie,” Ava noted as the guys walked up to the gate, stopping beside Tyler.
“It’s a movie night?” Maggie asked, her brow drawing forward as she watched the conversation happening down at street level. The exchange of knuckles…the laughs.
What the hell was this?
“Not for us. They’ve got one of those Saw movies, and you know the commercials alone give me nightmares. So no way.”
Sam and Ford started for the building and feeling better, Maggie popped the bite into her mouth. Only then Sam stopped, saying something she couldn’t make out. Tyler nodded, turned back to her window, and, jutting his chin at her, double-bumped the pinky side of his fists together, Ross style from an old episode of Friends.
Damn it, she tried not to laugh. She didn’t want to give in. Give him the satisfaction.
But in the end, the absurdity of Three’s flip-off was too much to resist, and not only did she aspirate her bite of Booty and double over choking…but of course, he saw it, too.
Ava shoved the glass in front of her and sighed, “I think I love that guy.”
Bastard.
Chapter Four
“I cannot believe he’s here,” Maggie groused, sailing down the hall toward Ford’s kitchen, her eye twitching at the fingernails-down-a-blackboard sound of Apartment Three’s laughter defiling the space behind her. “First I’ve got Sam giving me this whole ‘he’s not so bad’ business, laughing about when he said this or that. Then suddenly Ford’s out for a run with him. And just when I think it can’t get any worse”—she slammed her tote of cookies on the butcher block and spun on her heel to face a bored-looking Ava—“I walk into Ford’s for our usual game-day hangout, and what do I find? That ass sitting in my favorite couch corner with my BFF handing him a beer! Et tu, Brute? Et tu?”
Ava checked her phone. “You know you sound like a lunatic, right?”
Maggie’s arms crossed. “It’s him. He’s making me this way. On purpose. Antagonizing me, intentionally. You heard him—‘Heya, Two’—when I walked in. What the hell is ‘Heya’ anyway?”
“Um, I think it’s like, ‘Hey you,’ isn’t it?”
“Hey. You. Really nice.”
Okay, so when she said it like that, it didn’t seem quite the call to throw-down it initially had. But whatever, she knew she was right. The guy was gloating over being in her space.
And worst of all, his being there caught her so off guard, she hadn’t even had a comeback ready to go. She’d just gawked like a fool through those first few outrage-infused breaths and then turned tail for the kitchen.
Prying the lid off her cookies, she stewed. She’d left that dickhead with the upper hand.
“Oh my God, are those what I think they are?” Suddenly, Ava was pressed up close to her side as she stared down with undisguised lust. “I take it back. I can’t believe his nerve showing up like this. And the way he talked to you? What an ass! Can I have one?”
Appeased, Maggie lifted the tray and offered Ava first pick.
Of course her friends could have a cookie.
Back in the living room, Maggie paused beside the TV, waiting until she had everyone’s attention.
Tyler’s mouth tipped to one side, those hard eyes slamming down on her with the special blend of judgment, irritation, and amusement that got under her skin like nothing she’d ever encountered before. Only then he noticed the cookies. His eyes darkened, his nostrils flared, and—geez, was that a shudder?
Hello, power position.
“So guys, I know how much you like the chocolate chip, but when I was at the little gourmet market yesterday, I saw they had those big, plump raisins in stock again,” she said, offering a tantalizing glimpse of her bounty. “So I hope you don’t mind I made Aunt Nora’s Oatmeal Raisin recipe instead.”
A chorus of needy masculine groans rose around her as Maggie circulated through the room, making a production of pointing out the biggest cookies, the thickest. The ones with the nicest golden brown at the edges. Shamelessly, she worked every compliment to the max while ever aware of Apartment Three tracking her movements with the vigilance of a starved man.
When only one guest remained unserved, and the rest of the room was splitting their attention between the game and the cookies even guys took a minute or more to finish, Maggie made a slow, deliberate pass in front of Ty, keeping carefully out of reach as she went by.
Crossing to the sideboard in front of the window, she set the tray down. A
rranged the remaining cookies as a prickly awareness chased up her spine, alerting her to the close proximity of the unwelcome one. The infiltrator.
“Those cookies look pretty good, Apartment Two.”
Damn straight they do. “Mmph.”
She turned where she stood, using her body as a shield as she faced the antagonistic jerk who’d been her best bickermate since the day he moved in, in June. Hands stuffed in the front pockets of his faded blues, those broad shoulders hunched forward in a way that somehow made them look even bigger than when he stood straight, he ducked his head and shot her with a look from beneath some seriously thick lashes, flashing what she regretfully had to admit was a pretty spectacular smile at her. And sure enough, it even came with a dimple accompaniment.
She’d bet that smile had gotten Apartment Three a lot of things he shouldn’t have had.
Her cookies weren’t going to be one of them.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Come on, Two. You’re not a grudge holder.” He stepped closer, dropping his voice to a midnight whisper. “Let me have one.”
Maggie studied the nails of her right hand. “As it happens, Three, I am a grudge holder. I’m also a scorekeeper. And a gloating, ungracious winner. Just so there’s no misunderstanding.”
He rubbed an open hand over his mouth and jaw, those calculating eyes shifting between her and the cookies.
“Sizing up my raisins? Trying to decide if they’re worth the work?”
“Hell, it was like the soundtrack to a porno in here the way all these guys were grunting and groaning over them. They’re worth it. Eye on the prize is all.”
He could bite her prize. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
Another assessing look, this one holding long enough it caused a sort of nervous stir in her belly. Not helping his cookie plight at all.
“Don’t you think it’s time we called a truce, Maggie? We’re neighbors.” Another step, and he was working the bare edge of her personal space. Crowding her with his eyes and words and a body that really ought to have an additional eighteen inches of distance between it and hers. Only rather than stepping back, Tyler pushed the violation further. Bracing one hand on the table beside her, he leaned closer so there was no choice but to look up, up—oh God—into that waiting, I’ve-got-a-reason-to-be-cocky smile directed down at her. Their eyes met and her thoughts scattered, because this close…with that kind of spicy, masculine scent coming off him…
He drew a long breath and let it out in a slow stream of air that ruffled the loose curls around her ear and sent a wave of goose bumps rolling across the surface of her skin. Made her fingers tighten around the edge of the sideboard behind her.
“We should be more neighborly, Maggie.”
From somewhere deep in the recesses of her barely working mind, she recognized…this was a move. A contrived, deliberate play.
And Apartment Three was whipping it out for her.
“Come on, one cookie.”
Okay, for her cookie. Not a chance.
Maggie palmed the center of his chest, ready to give him a push, when she stopped. Blinked. Her eyes going to that point of contact between them where a low-level charge seemed to be humming beneath her fingertips, radiating up her arm.
What was this?
She looked at Tyler. Found his gray eyes staring back at her, his focus dropping to her mouth, drawing her awareness to her lips and the air moving between them.
Her need to wet them with her tongue.
Tyler’s brows crashed down and he took a step back, severing the connection and bringing her brain back online.
Scooting out from between the table and the man who shouldn’t be confusing her at all, she waved at the tray.
“Go ahead. Have one. The rest. I don’t care.”
He shook his head, leaving the cookies untouched as she headed back to the kitchen.
—
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid.
What the hell had he been thinking, giving Maggie the full-court press over some oatmeal raisin phenom?
And yeah, right, that’s what it had been about.
Her cookie. Not him getting off on that freaking sexy, snarky, and cutting cute she seemed to reserve solely for him. The back-and-forth play for power he’d told himself he had to give up because he’d been spending too much time thinking about the well-honed insults rolling off Maggie’s tongue, the fire in her eyes when she had her glare going, and how her face heated up when she was really good and mad. And all that had started making him think about her tongue and her eyes and how damn hot she was.
So not part of the plan, and so much for his good intentions.
One look at those calculating narrowed eyes, the flat-out challenge when she walked in, and he’d been ready to go a few rounds…over anything. She could have been taunting him with a six-month-old issue of Better Homes and Gardens and he’d have been up in her grill, baiting her into a fight.
Only this time, somehow the part of him looking to get under her skin got crossed with the part of him that wanted to get close to it. The part that kept thinking how soft she would be beneath the brush of his thumb…Hell. For a minute there, he’d been headed toward a place he had no right going.
And yeah, he could hear his mom from their Thanksgiving call two days before, urging him toward that very course of action. Hinting around again about him moving back to New York. About starting to date. About starting over.
She wanted what was best for him. He got that. But what he couldn’t get was how of all people, she didn’t understand why starting over—giving up—wasn’t an option. So he’d given her what he could. The reassurance that he’d started getting out of the apartment. That he’d met a few guys from the neighborhood and a few more from his contract.
His mom hadn’t kept tabs on his social life since he was sixteen. And it felt weird trying to appease her about it now, but after everything that happened with Gina and Charlie…hell, he didn’t want her worrying.
At least not about friends. But as far as a date went—his gaze sought out the hallway Maggie had disappeared down—that wasn’t happening. He couldn’t afford to get involved and wouldn’t lead anyone to believe he could. Whatever he’d once had to offer was no longer his to give.
And if he was starting to look at the girl downstairs as more than Apartment Two…he needed to stay the hell away from her.
Chapter Five
Tyler hadn’t been doing half bad in his effort to disengage with Maggie. Four days he’d kept it civil, resisting her stairwell taunts no matter how tempting the opening she left him. He was doing the right thing, but apparently it was too much to hope he’d get a little karmic credit for his efforts and the universe would cut him some slack.
He’d been propped against an open stretch of wall inside The Groove, listening to one of the guys he was partnered with on the Lyla Textile ad campaign playing sax with his jazz band, when he’d glanced back toward the bar and there she was.
Maggie.
Her hair done up in a way he hadn’t seen before. Soft, with a kind of understated sexy that made a man think about getting his fingers into it—before he’d realized he had no business thinking like that at all. She was wearing high heels and this long, fitted overcoat with a filmy midnight scarf at the neck and a hint of something silky in a rusty red flirting around the break at the bottom.
Damn, she looked pretty.
This had to be the date Sam and Ava mentioned she was going on. The one he’d tried not to get too curious about but still somehow managed to learn they called Hot Doc, that Ava thought he was a class act and totally deserving of his moniker, that Sam knew people who knew people at the hospital and his sources claimed the guy wasn’t a total douche, and that Ford was of the opinion Maggie almost looked like she wasn’t dreading the date…which didn’t make a whole lot of sense until Ava had given him the broad strokes of this pact she and Maggie had going. Hell, who was he kidding? It still didn’t make
sense. But since he wasn’t curious, he’d kept a rein on the sixty-odd questions that had immediately sprung to mind.
Like he was keeping a rein on the questions he had now. Because Maggie and her date weren’t his problem. Even if she had walked in alone and was worrying that freaking lush bottom lip of hers while she stared at her phone.
Not his problem.
She found a couple open seats at the far end of the bar and sat down, shaking her head at the bartender.
Tyler scanned the place, taking it in with a different eye than when he’d shown up earlier to support a colleague. Being Wednesday, it wasn’t busy. There were a few clusters of after-work-looking dudes who’d apparently decided to make a night of it. Some couples. A group of women who were putting their coats on to leave. And a small crowd toward the back half of the place, obviously there more for the band than the bar.
Not exactly packed with predators, but still, with Maggie coming in alone, looking the way she looked…it was too much to hope there wouldn’t be one—like the schmo already pushing up from his table to amble over to the vacant seat beside her.
Not his problem.
But even as he thought the words, he felt the muscles along his neck and shoulders tense and some wholly misguided territorial instinct kick up.
Maggie didn’t need him.
She could handle herself.
The guy leaned in, throwing her his line. Maggie answered without looking up from her phone. No smile. Zero encouragement. Still, he flashed his table one of those too-confident grins that wouldn’t let him back down for at least a few more minutes.
Not. His. Problem.
Her date would be there any minute, probably falling all over himself for being late, because seriously, to have a woman like that waiting…
Another line from the barfly and Tyler’s molars ground down. This time, Maggie didn’t even speak, offering only a shake of her head. She was going to be fine. Without him.
—
Leo had seemed like he’d make such a perfect date.
Charming and attractive. Confident without being arrogant. Interested without coming across desperate. And thanks in part to a rotating schedule at the hospital, working the kind of limited availability that fit Maggie’s pact needs precisely—or so she’d thought before getting the text that an emergency with one of his patients was keeping him late. If the guy had been her average businessman, she’d probably be put off that he hadn’t been on time. But Leo was actually saving lives, so it wasn’t like she could go getting her panties in a twist about it. Besides, what was thirty minutes?