Chapter 2
Jay ordered some drinks and food at the bar because his meeting had run longer than he’d thought it would, and his stomach was rumbling. He found a seat that faced the door, placing the box he’d taken from Blue Jay McAllister under the small table.
Something was off with her, he just didn’t know what. Digging through his memory as he looked around the interior of the hotel bar, checking for anyone he might recognize, he couldn’t remember hearing any gossip about her lately.
Blue Jay was one of the McAllisters from Lyntacky. Birdie, her sister, who had married a Duke, the family he was closest to, had told him she was a designer for some high-end fashion house in New York and was climbing up the ranks because she was good at her job.
The woman he’d seen when he stepped out of that car had looked pale and beaten. Something he’d never thought to associate with the fiery women Jay knew. She’d always seemed fierce to him. Strong willed, and rarely vulnerable.
Shooting another look at the door, he didn’t see her. She’d come for that box because it had Birdie’s homemade pencil holder, and the fact that, years after it was given to her, Blue still had it told him it was important.
McAllisters were an odd lot, and he couldn’t imagine their school life had run smoothly. Both parents were hippies, and the four kids had been raised as recycling ninjas who could name an herb and its healing properties at a glance.
He remembered them being picked on a few times, but like the Dukes, of which there were five, they had always protected their own.
Jay saw her then. She stood in the doorway, eyes moving around the bar, searching for him.
Tall, blond and curvy with a face that could stop traffic, Blue Jay McAllister had always been someone you took a second look at.
Not just because of her looks, even though those were special.
There was an energy about her that hit you when she was close.
Looking at the woman in the doorway, he thought that energy had depleted today.
He and Blue had never been tight friends, but they’d lived in the same small town, so they’d hung out together plenty. He associated her with Lyntacky, so it had been a surprise seeing her.
Her makeup, which you’d expect working in a fashion house or being a New Yorker, was expertly applied. Those long eyelashes weren’t hers, but they did special things for her jade green eyes.
They locked on his, and there was no smile as she headed his way. Chin raised, shoulders back, her lovely body stalked toward him.
She wore a sage-green pair of loose trousers, a fitted white-collared shirt, matching sage waistcoat, and a long black overcoat. Low black heels clicked softly against the floor. She was sleek. Sophisticated. And undeniably hot as hell.
No one watching the woman closing the distance would ever imagine the hemp-wearing kid he’d once gone to school with.
“Give me my box back, Jay,” she said when she reached his table.
“Sit, Blue. I’ve ordered some food and drinks. We’re friends, remember. I don’t see many Lyntacks”—the name they called themselves—“out in the wild.”
Jay kept his words even because he knew from experience that Blue fired up easily. She had grown up, but he was sure the girl who had beaten the crap out of Henry Lewis for teasing her sister about the odd-colored cookies she’d been eating for lunch was still in there somewhere.
“I don’t want to sit.” She wore her small leather bag across her body and folded her arms over that to glare at him.
“Here are your drinks,” the server said, arriving with his order.
“Move, Blue,” Jay said.
She did, shuffling a few feet to the right, but she didn’t sit.
Stubborn woman.
“What’s that?” Blue said, pointing at the large bowl of alcohol he’d ordered for her.
“Island Dream,” Jay said.
“How do you know I wanted an Island Dream?” she demanded, glaring at it. “You’ve got a beer.”
“Do you want my beer, Blue?” Jay said, holding it out.
She then let out a loud sigh that came from her toes and dropped into the seat across from him. Taking the cocktail, she took a long slurp on the straw.
“It’s alcoholic,” he drawled as she continued to drink.
“Why were you in that limousine, Jay?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?” she asked, taking another drink.
“Can’t.” Jay did work for the government, which was something he couldn’t discuss, and had worked in Washington for a while. Now he just did the occasional contract when they offered him enough money he couldn’t refuse, which was why he was in New York at the moment.
“I remember you were really good at working things out. Computers and numbers were your thing,” she said, now eating the pineapple that had been in the cocktail.
He nodded but didn’t add anything.
The server returned with a plate of beef sliders and seasoned wedges. He ordered another round of drinks, seeing as she was inhaling hers.
“How did you know I wanted food?” Blue studied the platter.
“I didn’t.” Jay picked up a slider and took a bite. “I did.”
“You wouldn’t have eaten all this,” she protested.
“So would.”
They ate in silence, and he felt her relax. Like him, Blue Jay McAllister was clearly hungry.
“Tell me what’s going on with you, Blue. Because that box signaled to me you had packed up your desk and left your job. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.”
She crunched on a wedge and swallowed. “Do you ever sometimes think you’re the anomaly, Jay? Like you were raised in Lyntacky, where honesty and integrity were important, but that is missing in other people.”
“Constantly.”
“Don’t get me wrong, some people are great, but then you get those assholes that really throw you a curveball.”
“You have a good curveball, from memory, Blue,” Jay said, smiling.
“I do.” She drank some more. “I miss being in Lyntacky sometimes, like a toothache, and then other times, I wonder how I lived there.”
“With age I’ve realized, I want to be there more. Before, when I was younger, I needed to know there was more out in the world for me,” Jay said. “But now I just want to go home when I’m done.”
“Now Sawyer and Birdie have Sadie, I’m constantly wondering if I’m missing out on watching her grow up,” Blue said.
“Yeah, I feel like that with all the Duke offspring,” Jay agreed.
Blue looked down at her drink and then back at him. “Do you have family in Lyntacky, Jay?”
He shook his head. Family wasn’t something he ever talked about. Even the Dukes hadn’t known what went on at his house. Asher Dans had, but he’d kept Jay’s secrets.
“I’m sorry. That must be hard.”
She meant it. He saw that in her lovely eyes.
“I have plenty of people there I call family. After all, I am the honorary sixth Duke, which is an honor many covet but only I have.” Jay took a drink to ease the tightness in his chest.
“If I were going to be an honorary member of any family but mine, it would be theirs,” Blue conceded. “They’re just the right amount of good and badassery.”
He nodded. “Tell me what happened today, Blue. I’m good for it.”
“No offence, Jay, but I know nothing about you.”
“Fair point. But the Dukes know me, and you know if I was a bad person, I wouldn’t be the honorary sixth Duke.”
Her sigh was pitiful and made his chest ache because Blue had never been that.
“They stole from me, Jay.”
“Who?”
She told him her story then as they ate and drank.
Life was funny like that sometimes. You had small moments in time with people you never shared time or secrets with again. This moment was his with Blue Jay McAllister.
“And so, what? You just walked out of a job you loved and had been in for eight years?”
She glared at him, eyes narrowed and maybe a little hazy now, as she was at the bottom of her second Island Dream, which he knew had a lot of alcohol in it.
“I respect myself more than staying someplace where they think it’s okay for someone to steal my designs and take the accolades. I work hard at what I do.” She slapped a hand on her chest.
“Sure, I get that, but maybe if you’d stayed and dealt—”
“I will never win this, Jay. Layla is a cousin of the people who own the business. They have no loyalty to me.”
“So what now? Are you going to sue them?”
“No.”
“You can’t just let them get away with this, Blue.”
“I can’t speak out against them because this is a small industry for all that it’s huge,” she said. “If I want to work again, then I can’t afford to be blacklisted.”
“Need someone to have a chat with them for you?”
Her eyes widened as she looked at him. “I’ve never thought of you as mean, but right then you sounded and looked just like Sawyer Duke.”
“Well, he is a hero of mine, so thanks for the compliment.”
She smiled then, and it was sweet and sad. The woman was cute, he realized, and disturbing. Funny how he’d never thought of her that way before.
They ate, they drank, and Blue Jay McAllister would need to be stuffed into a cab soon and sent home, as she was definitely on the tipsy side. But then Jay wasn’t a lot better, as he’d moved on to whisky.
He never drank much. Being raised by a mother who drank constantly soured things for you. But right then, seated with this woman who he thought he knew well but didn’t—not really—he found himself doing just that.
“You’re a lot hotter than I thought you were,” she said suddenly. Her eyes then did a slow survey over his face and moved down his chest.
“Women get really angry if men do that,” he drawled, trying to stomp down the sudden burst of heat that surged through him at her look.
This is Blue Jay McAllister of the hippie McAllisters. You don’t lust after her.
“Consider it payback, then.” She put her hand on her chin and studied him.
Some powerful people in his time had studied Jay, but right then, he felt a need to squirm in his seat. Partly because of the fact that he was suddenly hard.
Must be the alcohol.
“I’ve always looked the same,” he said manfully, trying not to check out the cleavage her current position afforded him.
“No. You’re usually messy.”
“So because I’m put together in a suit, I’m suddenly easier on the eyes?”
The smile that curved her lips was slow and sexy. “I like well-put-together people. After all, I am—was—in the fashion industry.”
Hell, she was hot, and Jay had a feeling this could go south really fast, but he didn’t want to stop it.
“Is that suit tailor-made to fit your body?”
The words weren’t exactly purred, but it was close. Her eyes surveyed him again.
Blue Jay McAllister was flirting with him, and he should have an issue with that, but Jay found he didn’t.
When his phone rang, he pulled it out of his pocket, happy for the distraction, and answered.
“Haddon.” He listened to what was said and then cut the call after saying, “I’ll get that to you at once, sir.”
“Trouble?” She was slurping on her fourth cocktail.
“No. I just need to head up to my room and get something.”
“Does your room have a view of Central Park?”
He nodded. “You want to come and take a look while I do what I need to? Then I can put you in a cab.” Bad move, Jay. Bad, bad, bad. Don’t take her up to your room.
She frowned. “I’m not drunk.”
He studied her. She wasn’t, but she was definitely a little tipsy. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He grabbed her box from under the table, and they walked to the elevator. He jabbed the button for the top floor.
She was standing close enough that their bodies brushed, which was not helping his awareness of this woman. Then there was her soft scent that seemed to slide up his nostrils. Sexy.
“Wow. You must have lots of money, or whoever you’re working with does. The top floor in this place would cost half a year’s salary,” Blue said.
“Lucky for me, I don’t have to pay then.”
When they reached his room, he swiped, and they entered.
“Oh my god!” she squealed and ran to the floor-to-ceiling windows that were the first thing you saw when you walked into the lounge.
Jay had long since lost the excitement for staying in the places he did. They were just beds until he had finished what he needed to do.
He threw his jacket on a chair, left her, and went to his laptop, glad for the distance he was putting between them. He turned it on, and then found the document he needed and forwarded it to the high-ranking military official who had called him. Jay then shut it down.
“This view is amazing, Jay.”
“I know.” He joined her, admiring the long line of her back and curves of her ass way more than he should as he did so. She’d kicked off her killer heels, and they lay beside where she stood.
“You can see so much from up here. If I lived in this suite, I’d stand right here for hours.”
“You get used to it.”
He stood beside her, studying the scenery below them.
From this height, Central Park didn’t feel like a park so much as a living canvas dropped into the middle of Manhattan. The trees had long canopies that stretch for miles.
“In the fall, this view would be spectacular,” she said.
Jay wasn’t good with descriptive words. He dealt in facts and had failed dismally at creative writing in school. Clearly, Blue hadn’t.
“Look at those paths. They wind like ribbons in and out of the trees. You can see the occasional flash of silver from the ponds catching the light between branches.”
Jay studied the park as she spoke, seeing it for the first time through someone else’s eyes. It had always just been there, large and busy, but Blue’s description was making him see it differently.
Jay watched the tiny figures move below—runners, dog walkers, and tourists. They looked like ants from here. Beyond the trees, the city surrounded the park, tall buildings lining its edges.
“It’s a magical view, Jay,” she whispered.
“I don’t really take the time to study it.”
She turned her body to look up at him. Blue was tall, but he was taller.
“You’ve got a lot of secrets, haven’t you, Jay? Want to share, seeing as I’ve told you some of mine?”
They stared at each other for long seconds, and he felt the air change between them. He should step back. Should take her down the stairs and put her in a cab.
“Jay,” she whispered. “Why do I suddenly want to kiss you?”