Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
S he had to break up with Neal.
It was a sad fact that Lark Shaw was a people pleaser who hated conflict. Her parents loved Neal. They’d been over the moon when he proposed. And Neal was a decent, hardworking, handsome guy. Any woman would be thrilled to have him.
Any woman but her.
The problem with Neal was that there was no spark between them. No zing. No I’ll-die-if-I-can’t-have-you-now passion…as evidenced by the fact that they hadn’t had sex in months. The worst part of that, though? She didn’t even miss it.
It wasn’t like they’d ever had good sex.
Which was why she had to break up with him. Soon.
“Doodlebug,” Neal sing-song’d as he let himself into her house.
Her cringe was multi-leveled. First of all, she hated that stupid nickname. It’d been fine when she was eighteen. But now? No thirty-two-year-old woman should be called “doodlebug.”
Secondly, she’d asked him repeatedly not to let himself into her house. She had been raised to be polite, and walking into someone’s house unannounced was flat-out rude. She always knocked when she went to his apartment, even though she had a key.
Plus, if she was being honest, she was halfway convinced that if she wandered into his home unannounced, she’d find him jacking off on the couch midday to weird porn. There was just no coming back from something like that.
“I’m in here,” she said as she loaded her lunch plate into the dishwasher.
Neal strode in like he owned the place and dropped a perfunctory kiss on her cheek. Almost like a kiss he’d give his mom or grandmother. It made her cringe even harder.
“There’s a partner dinner on Friday.” He grabbed one of her smoothies—the ones she meal prepped for herself every Sunday and had limited quantities of—and took a swig, downing half of it in one go.
She tried to ignore the burning in her chest that was most assuredly resentment and asked, “A dinner with clients?”
He belched, then put the mostly empty bottle back in the fridge. Her left eye twitched. “No, just the partners and their wives to celebrate landing the Billings account. I’ll pick you up at 7.”
A frown line creased its way across her brow. She’d never had frown lines before. Great. Now the man was aging her prematurely. She had to break up with him. “I work that night,” she reminded him. “You know Sherry has her book club Fridays at 6. And I have to get the final arrangements done for the Lipinski wedding. I probably won’t get out of there until 10 or so.”
Neal rolled his eyes. “I figured the old bat could miss one book club. It’s her shop, after all. You’re just an employee.”
The just in that sentence was doing a lot of heavy lifting. It usually did, because this was nothing new. Neal hated that he was a fancy lawyer and she was just a florist. She’d tried to explain to him numerous times over the years that she enjoyed her work at the flower shop. She was great at it, and Sherry was a wonderful, motherly woman who she adored.
She just didn’t have big career aspirations like Neal. Was it really such a crime to have just a job instead of a career ? Lark didn’t think so. She’d never found a career path she’d been passionate about, so why force it?
Her lottery winnings from several years ago allowed her to pretty much do whatever she wanted for the rest of her life, so long as she didn’t live extravagantly. She’d paid off her parent’s house, then bought her house and remodeled it to restore it to its original glory and did some repairs to her Land Rover. But other than that, the rest was split among some low-risk investments. Her monthly expenses were so low she could live off the interest of her winnings for the rest of her life.
Neal, of course, assumed she’d move into his trendy downtown apartment when they got married. She’d rather die than live in that soulless, beige-walled, ultra-modern, chrome-wrapped nightmare.
Although, at this point, she’d rather die than marry Neal.
“I can’t take the night off,” she said through clenched teeth. “You’ll have to go without me.”
He let out a sigh like she was the most exasperating creature on the planet. “Can’t you do this one thing for me? Just this once, Doodlebug? It’s important.”
As if their entire relationship, the engagement, the wedding planning, hadn’t been done according to his taste without a single thought given to what she wanted. Neal was a selfish jerk. Always had been, probably always would be. If he really loved her, he’d listen to her every now and then.
This was it. She was going to end it. She couldn’t waste another second dealing with this— what was that thing Sherry called that angry customer last week? —dunder-headed cuntmuffin.
She took a deep breath. “Neal, I?—”
And that’s when her doorbell rang.
The primal scream she let out only happened in her head. She knew because Neal was already ignoring her. He’d pulled out his phone and was aimlessly scrolling. He didn’t even make an effort to see who was at the door for her. Because why would he? This wasn’t his house, he was fond of saying when it came to picking up after himself or replacing groceries he’d eaten.
“Oh, no, let me get it,” she muttered under her breath, trudging to the door.
But because she was a polite, people-pleaser at heart, Lark went ahead and put on a sunny smile and opened her door. It wasn’t her visitor’s fault she was trapped in a loveless engagement to a selfish douchebag, after all.
That’s when she noticed there was a giant on her porch.
Seriously, the guy was so huge he blocked out the sun that usually flooded her porch with its warmth every morning. Lark was five-nine barefoot, and this guy towered over her. He had to be at least six-four, maybe six-five. He had his back to her…his ridiculously broad, muscle-y back. And it looked like he could crush watermelons with his tattooed biceps.
Then he turned around.
Eyes as black as Satan’s soul locked on hers with an intensity that made the smile fall right off her face. She gulped.
Holy hell, he was gorgeous .
Not gorgeous in the clean-cut, chiseled kind of way Neal had going. This guy was rough around the edges. Wild looking. Even the longish dark hair sticking out from under his ball cap looked untamed. Hard features and hard eyes.
But he had the softest looking, pillow-y lips Lark had ever seen in her life.
“Are you Lark Shaw?” he asked.
Her knees went a little weak. His voice …sweet merciful crap, his voice was sexy. She could listen to that deep, raspy baritone for the rest of her life and never get tired of it.
Wow. She hadn’t missed sex in a long, long time, but damned if this guy, this stranger on her porch, wasn’t making her miss the hell out of it.
“That’s hot,” she whispered. Then let out a hysterical hyena giggle when she realized what she’d just blurted out. “That’s me , I mean.”
She mentally slapped herself across the face. Pull yourself together, woman! This is embarrassing .
His dark brows pulled together as he stared down at her. “I’m with the city. Your neighbor across the street reported a gas leak. I didn’t find anything over there, but would it be OK if I checked the meter in your basement? Just to be safe?”
As stunning as this man was, Lark was not an idiot. She’d seen more than her fair share of Law and Order SVU . “Do you have some ID?”
He gave her the weirdest look. Almost like he was proud of her, which made no sense whatsoever. But he did pull a city lanyard out of his pocket. At the end of it was an ID that did, in fact, have his picture on it. “Bill?” she read off the laminated card.
“That’s me.”
Huh. He didn’t look like a Bill . He looked like a construction worker that moonlighted as a Magic Mike dancer. But that was neither here nor there.
She had one more test for Bill the Gratuitously Sexy City Worker. “You said the neighbor across the street reported something? Mrs. Laningham?”
There was no Mrs. Laningham. If he said she’d been the one to call, Lark would know he was up to no good and would call the cops.
His brow furrowed. “No, Mr. Luther.”
Well played, Bill the Gratuitously Sexy City Worker. Well played.
“Nice to meet you, Bill,” she said, putting on a smile again. “Come on in.”