Chapter 3
We share a piece of double chocolate cake.
I know how this looks.
Like a date.
But it’s not. It’s just that the slices here at this cake/coffee shop are huge. No way can you eat one all by yourself, unless you were born with two dessert compartments. I love dessert, but I only have one.
Besides, it’s not like that between us. I’ve known Harper for what seems like forever, since I’ve been best friends with Spencer for that long.
The three of us went to the same high school, but Harper is three years younger than me, so it’s not like I was doing the left-hand shuffle to thoughts of her when I was a senior and she was a freshman. I’d never thought of her that way then.
Besides I’m right handed.
Anyway, now that we’re both in our late twenties and living in New York City, we hang out from time to time.
Maybe even more so since Spencer got engaged; he’s much less available these days.
Sometimes Harper and I go to the movies on weekends, and lately, sitting next to her in the theater is the definition of distracting.
Let’s just be blunt here: Harper is not cheerleader hot. She’s not Victoria’s Secret hot.
She’s quirky hot. Nerd hot. Video-gamer fantasy hot. She does kickboxing for workouts, she competes hard in our summer softball games, and she’s a fucking magician. For a living. Performing sleight of hand and slipping the wool over people’s eyes.
That’s kind of the hottest profession ever—hotter than bartender, than model, than rock star. Maybe not hotter than sexy librarian, though.
I honestly didn’t think these thoughts until a few months ago. Until the day last summer when she asked me to help her get even with her brother for something he did to her years ago. To exact her revenge, we pretended we were getting it on at softball practice.
I took off my shirt, she ran her hands down my chest, and the rest is history. The Harper switch went all the way on that day.
I do my best to focus on idle chit-chat with her, rather than cycling through what kind of lingerie she might be wearing, especially since I can see a hint of a black satiny strap at the edge of her V-neck sweater. I force myself not to imagine what the rest of that sexy garment looks like.
Too late. I’m picturing it now, seeing in my mind how the lace hugs her flesh, and that is one fine image. Thank you, brain, for never being afraid to go there. But now I need to zone in on the conversation.
I point at the cake we’re working on. “Scale of one to ten. What would you give this cake?”
With her fork poised midair, she stares at the ceiling. “Rapture.”
“I don’t believe that’s on the scale.”
“I did say cake was a religion.”
“Then I would think second coming would be fitting.”
“Coming. You said coming,” she says with a straight face.
“I say that a lot, actually.” I lean back in the chair, keeping it casual.
“I know.” She wiggles her eyebrows then whispers, “I was enjoying your book before you arrived. It’s so dirty.
” She says it like this is a secret. Like she just learned for the very first time that my cartoon is a fiesta of naughtiness.
“What I really want to know, Nick Hammer,” she says, owning my name in a way that the blonde from the bookstore could never even come close to, “is where your inspiration comes from.”
You don’t even want to know, Harper.
I pretend to study the cake. “I think this cake might be laced with something.”
She takes a bite and winks. “Yeah, deliciousness. That’s what it’s spiked with.”
Fuck, see what I mean? She’s too much. She makes it really hard not to think about what she’d be like in bed.
She operates at this constant state of verbal banter that’s flirting, but not quite flirting.
The net effect? I’m a cat, and she’s working the laser pointer.
I’m chasing the red light, but I can’t ever catch it.
The fact that I’m single doesn’t help. I have nothing whatsoever against one-night stands, but I’m less of a hookup guy and more of a serial monogamist, even though I’ve never fallen in love with anyone I’ve monogamied serially with, including the last woman, who’s in Italy now, working on a book.
Ergo, I’m one hundred percent available, I’m absolutely interested in the woman sitting across from me, but no way can I have her.
I take a drink of my coffee, and she reaches for her hot chocolate.
Since I can’t spend the entire time staring at her lips on the mug, I look around.
The shelves at the counter are full of fantastic-looking cakes, and a chalkboard menu lists mouth-watering flavors alongside the standard coffee options.
Peace of Cake is packed. The wooden tables are nearly overflowing with your Upper West Side potpourri of people—moms, dads, and young kids, along with twenty-somethings and couples.
“So how many was it?” Harper nods in the direction of the bookstore.
“How many what? Books sold?”
She shakes her head. “How many times did you get hit on in there?”
I laugh, but don’t answer her.
“C’mon,” she presses, tapping the table. “A good-looking guy like you. The center of attention. It must have been, what . . . every other fan?”
My ears perk up at her description. Other parts do, too.
But see, it’s not like she says good-looking guy in this come-on way.
She says it like it’s some known fact. Which is why I can’t figure her out.
I have no clue if her mind swerved out of Friendshipville and into Naughty Thought Town that day in the park, too. “No, not every other fan,” I say.
“But every other other fan?” she asks, and I laugh again at her word choice, as if every other other is now a thing.
“All I’m going to say is you were an excellent shield when I needed you.
” I snap my fingers. “Hey, I have an idea. I have this event in a couple days.” I give her the details that Serena shared with me and fill her in on my boss’s weird jealousy issues.
“But Gino still wants me to go, so you should come with me.”
“As a shield? So women won’t hit on you?” she asks, taking another bite of the cake.
“They generally don’t if you’re there with a friend.”
She gestures with her fork from her to me and back.
“Am I supposed to pretend it’s a date?” She says this like it’s the craziest notion in the world, which tells me I need to stop entertaining any thoughts of Harper Holiday running her hands down my chest ever again.
It’s not like she needs to know I drew a picture of her O face a few weeks ago.
What? Was that so wrong? It’s what I do for a living.
It’s not that weird. Besides, I deleted the file.
I was just messing around on the computer, I swear.
“Like Spencer and Charlotte pretended?” she adds, as if I could forget their ruse, especially since it worked out in its own way—their wedding is in two weeks.
“No, that’d be lame if we did the same thing,” I say, digging into the chocolate for another bite. “That would be like if a romance writer used the same trope in the very next novel.”
That skeptical eyebrow of hers pops back up. “How do you know about tropes?”
“I write a show.” Draw and write, but you get the idea.
“Yours is an animated spoof of a dirty superhero. And yet you’re that familiar with tropes in romance novels?”
“I dated a romance writer a few months ago.”
“What was that like?”
“Um, it was like dating,” I deadpan.
She rolls her eyes. “No. Did she want to practice with you?”
I laugh, loving her boldness in asking. “You mean the scenes, Harper?”
She nods as she takes another drink.
I nod, too. “She did.”
“Did you?” she asks, curiosity dripping from her tone as she sets down her mug.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. When you read her book was it like seeing your life exposed?”
“That one hasn’t come out yet. It’s next, I think.”
“What happened to her?”
“It ended,” I say with a shrug. I’m not upset about it. We had a good time for the few months we were together.
“Why?”
Because it was fun, nothing more. And because J. Cameron—that’s her pen name—is obsessed with her work. Fiction is her world. That, and she took off for Italy. “She went to Florence. I think her next book is set there,” I tell Harper.
“And I’ll be looking forward to reading the one that you”—she sketches air quotes—“helped her research.”
“Maybe I’ll never tell you her pen name.”
“I’ll get it out of you,” she says, as I take a drink of my coffee. “Does she write those cheesy sex scenes where where the man tells the woman he loves her while he’s inside her, or right after?”
I nearly spit out my drink from laughing. “Gee. I really don’t know how cheesy the scenes get. I don’t read romance novels.”
“Maybe you should. Some are pretty hot,” she says with a knowing glint in her eyes, before she steers back to the matter at hand.
“So the event. Let me get this straight. You want me to be your wing-woman to help you with your boss, who’s such a douche he can’t handle that you’re manlier than he is, and because you attract the ladies like a tomcat does the pussycats in heat? ”
Ah hell, I wish she wouldn’t use that word in such close proximity to the factory of dirty thoughts inside my skull. “I wouldn’t say that’s true.”
Harper points in the direction of the store.
“Judging from how badly that woman at the store wanted to Hop on Pop, I’m guessing you get hit on all the time,” she says, and I would sound like a completely cocky bastard if I told the truth.
Yes. It does happen a fuck-ton, but it wasn’t always like today.
With success comes more interest from women, and more interest not just in me, but in my assets.
I’m referring to the green ones, not the ones made of flesh and bone, but they like those, too.
I give a one-shouldered shrug by way of an answer.
She smiles. “I’ll go, Nick. And then when I need something, I’ll call in a favor from you. Deal?”
“Works for me.”