“Are you afraid Conrad or Jimmy or the viewers are going to find out?”
I hadn’t been, at least until now. “A little.”
“Worried I’m going to sneak into your room at night?”
My arms crossed. “No.”
“Worried you’re going to sneak into my room at night?”
“No!” I hollered, louder than I’d intended. “I just don’t think it’s the best idea, okay?”
“It probably isn’t the best idea.” In the background, I made out a sound. Was that typing? “But it isn’t the worst idea either, and quite frankly, it’s your only option at this time of the night-slash-morning.”
“I can call one of my friends,” I said as I crouched to dig a pair of shoes from my bag. Wherever I was going, I couldn’t get there barefoot.
“But that means you’d have to wake one of them, and I’m already awake.” The typing came to a pause. “Just come over. You can figure something else out tomorrow.”
I was preparing to stave him off when out from my mouth came, “Okay.”
There was a long enough silence I could tell he was as surprised by my agreement as I was. “Can I come and get you? Do you need help with anything?”
I’d already stuffed my feet into my sneakers and shouldered my last few dry belongings in the world. “No, I’ll catch a cab.”
“You’re sure?”
“You might ask that because you’re trying to be helpful—maybe—but all I hear is you questioning my capability and competency to complete a basic task on my own.” My feet squeaked in my shoes as I crept down the stairs.
Brooks made a sound of amusement. “I might question a lot, but not that. Never that.”
After saying goodbye, I was almost to the doors when Andre caught me. He’d gone full-spectrum frantic. “Where are you going, Miss Arden? I’m still working on finding you a hotel room.”
“I’m heading to a friend’s place.” The word felt wrong, but was it? “If you need to reach me, I’ll have my phone.”
Andre’s shoulders relaxed some. “I’ve got an emergency cleaning crew en route, and they’re going to get your apartment back to normal before you know it.”
The last image of my apartment flashed through my head. “Could you let me know when they think I’ll be able to move back in? I’ll probably need to come back tomorrow to grab a few things I forgot.”
Andre’s head never stopped nodding. “I’ll take care of everything,” he said as he pulled the door open for me. “I am so very sorry for the inconvenience, Miss Arden.”
I liked how he made it sound like I’d had to wait five minutes over my reservation time at dinner, instead of the neighbor above unleashing a torrential downpour on all of my worldly possessions.
Andre waited at the door as I flagged a cab, and he waved at me after I crawled inside, before whipping around and rushing god knows where.
What a mess.
My apartment.
Me.
The night.
My current situation.
For something that could be so peaceful and refreshing, water could really rip open a vortex of suck in a person’s life under the right circumstances.
The drive to Brooks’s apartment wasn’t long, not even ten minutes. After paying the driver and climbing out, I stood on the sidewalk long enough to give myself an opportunity to change my mind.
My feet made the decision for me.
When I buzzed the apartment number he’d texted me, the doors unlocked instantly. This apartment building was nicer than mine—newer, but also colder. The designer had clearly forgotten to work in some warmth in the midst of all the sharp edges and cool colors.
In the elevator, I took a moment to tighten the belt on my bathrobe and comb my fingers through my damp hair in an attempt to make myself look like less like a drowned gerbil. When the doors opened on the seventeenth floor, I tiptoed out of the elevator like I was in a library. After finding my way to the door with number 123, my fist froze before knocking.
What was I doing?
I couldn’t just spend the night with Brooks North in his apartment. If my readers found out . . . if Mr. Conrad did . . . if my inhibitions lowered for one fraction of a fraction of a second . . .
This really was the worst idea.
Just as I was about to whip around and leave, the door whispered open. Brooks had that smirky grin, his hair almost disheveled. “Looked like you were having a difficult time with the knocking part, so I thought I’d give you a hand.” Tapping the peephole, he swung the door open all the way and stepped aside.
It took me a few moments before I moved inside, better judgment still warning I should turn and abort, but once I crossed the threshold, I was stuck. All resistance drained out of me as the night caught up to me all at once.
“Damn, you look rough, Arden,” Brooks said after locking the door.
I shot him a look that didn’t need any translation.
“You know what I mean.” He waved at me. In my old bathrobe that no eyes other than mine should be expected to see. Wearing my sneakers that had been on trend last decade. Wrangling a hodgepodge of bags overflowing with the odds and ends of my life.
“Can you please be nice for a whole five-minute stretch?” I said, finally noticing what he was wearing. Or more like what he wasn’t wearing. “And can you put on a shirt? This is already awkward enough without you running around half naked.”
He gave a small laugh as he pointed at a room just off the hall. “That’s the spare room. You can drop your stuff in there if you want. There’s only one bathroom, but I cleared out my stuff to make room for yours.”
Brooks disappeared into the kitchen, so I stuck my head inside the room he’d indicated. Flipping on the light, I was surprised by what I found. It was tidy, the blankets on the bed had been folded down, and there was a bottle of water on the nightstand.
I wasn’t sure what to make of it all; if this was Brooks doing an honest-to-goodness decent thing or if this was some play to make me fall for him. It could have been either, and quite honestly, one felt as likely as the other at this stage. Whatever the reason, I didn’t have the mind-power to stew on it, so after propping my bags against the wall and sliding out of my sneakers, I moved back into the hall.
“I boiled some water if you want a cup of tea.” His voice streamed from the kitchen as I wandered into the living area.
“Do you have anything without caffeine?”
“Eh, yeah, I think so.” The sound of shuffling through cupboards followed. “I’ve got chamomile or jasmine.”
I wasn’t a tea person, but if ever there was an occasion to sip a warm cup of steeped dried leaves, it was tonight. “Jasmine sounds good.”
“Coming right up.”
Padding around the room, I didn’t find anything of a personal note. Except for the laptop sitting on the table like mine had been back in my apartment. It seemed both of us were having a difficult time meeting our deadlines while playing the modern version of The Dating Game.
“Working late?” I said when he wandered out of the kitchen with two cups.
“Always,” he replied as he handed me my tea.
“What are you drinking?” I glanced at the dark liquid in his.
He lifted his chin at the laptop. “Darjeerling. I’ve still got an hour’s worth of work before I can call it a night.”
“I thought you get up at five in the morning.”
“I do.”
When I tried peering at what he was working on, he closed the laptop completely.
“That means you’re going to get less than two hours of sleep,” I said.
“And that’s better than no hours of sleep.” He lifted his cup before taking a sip.
“I didn’t paint you as an optimist.”
“I’m not. That’s the realist in me talking.”
Taking a sip of my tea, I felt a fresh nudge of heaviness push me. I was about to fall asleep standing up if I didn’t get to bed soon. “S
ounded pretty positive to me. Seeing the glass half full kind of thing.”
His eyes lifted. “And yet it wasn’t because, in fact, two hours of sleep is better than no sleep. That’s just the truth.” Moving toward my room, I didn’t miss the way he was inspecting me. “Nice bathrobe.”
My eyebrows lifted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s supposed to mean . . .” He held out his arms. “Nice bathrobe.”
“Yeah, but the way you said it—”
“It’s nice, Hannah. That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant. No hidden agenda.” His mouth moved before he could cover it, and that’s when I knew he was messing with me. “It looks well-loved.”
“Jerk.” I slugged his arm, which was still bare, along with the rest of his upper half. “At least I have the decency to put on clothing when I’m in people’s presences.”
“Actually, I’d find it much more decent if you refrained from clothing.” The corners of his eyes creased when he realized what he’d said. “When it comes to that antiquity,” he added, pointing his cup at my robe.
“I’m going to bed now. Before you move on to insulting my sneakers.”
He moved just out of arm’s reach. “I don’t need to insult them when their very existence is offensive enough.”
When I lunged to land another thump, he laughed and managed not to spill a drop of his tea.
“I kinda hate you, you know that?” I said as I backed into the bedroom.
“Yeah. I know that.” With a wink, he wandered to his laptop. “If you need anything, just ask or help yourself.”
Before I closed the door, I stopped. My attention was fixed on him focusing on his laptop. The pale light coming in from the window behind him cast highlights along his back, drawing lines eyes and fingers were made to follow.
“Hey, Brooks?” My throat moved as his gaze flitted my way. “Thank you.”
His face changed, relaxing under the constant restraint he maintained. In that moment, I caught a glimpse of the man I’d so quickly and carelessly fallen for that night in Chicago.
“Hey, Hannah?” he replied with a slow smile. “You’re welcome.”
Sleeping with the enemy. I’d done it.
Maybe not in the way I had that winter night a couple of months ago, but I’d slept under his roof, in his bed—one of them—and was waking to the smell of fresh coffee.
It wasn’t such an awful thing. Especially since Brooks had nice sheets on his bed—the ones that had a two million thread count and probably cost as much as the mattress, which was lavish in its own right.
My alarm had gone off at six, but given the night I’d had, I snoozed until seven fifteen. As I rolled out of bed, I felt like I could have slept another ten hours no problem.
“Brooks?” I called after peeking out the bedroom door.
He was probably still out biking five gazillion miles and had left the coffee pot on for me, guessing I turned into a troll if I didn’t get some caffeine in my system a few minutes after rising. He would have been partially right.
When I got no response, I padded toward the kitchen. With sun spilling in through the windows, it cast his whole apartment in a different light. The place was still as impersonal as the lobby of a dentist’s office, but the grays in the décor didn’t come across so monochromatic. There were more shades than I’d guessed—too many to count.
On the counter, I found a clean cup by the coffee pot, along with a note letting me know creamer was in the fridge. He’d set out a mess of sugar packets and a spoon beside the cup, because I guessed he thought I was practicing for diabetes.
After making my coffee, which might have required three . . . and a half . . . packets of sugar to make it taste right, I was about to duck into the bathroom for a shower when the front door thundered open.
“Sweet baby Buddha!” I exclaimed when Brooks barged inside looking like he’d just come from a shower himself. A sweat shower.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” As he hung up his keys, he stopped. His eyes traveled my way. They went wide.
That was when I remembered I wasn’t wearing my bathrobe, instead sporting nothing besides cotton shorts and that same cami Martin had had a tough time ignoring.
“And you have the gall to accuse me of running around half naked?” He motioned at me as though I were streaking down Lexington Avenue in nothing more than boobie tassels.
“I thought you were gone or I would have put on that robe you’re such a fan of,” I gritted out as my arms crossed. “I was just about to hop into the shower.”
He ran his hand through his damp hair. “Me too.”
“It’s your place. You first.” I sidestepped toward my room, in search of that robe.
“You’re my guest. You first.” He flipped on the bathroom light and snagged a hand towel from inside to wipe off his face.
“No, really. I insist.”
“No, I insist.”
“Brooks—”
“Hannah,” he cut in, a tipped smile carving into place. “There’s a solution that’s a compromise.”
I made a face as I ducked behind the bedroom door. “From the look on your face, I don’t want to know.”
“We could save water and shower together. Simple solution to both of our problems.”
My stomach did the weird sensation thing again. Likely due to lack of sleep and drinking coffee on an empty stomach without my usual breakfast of butter and chocolate. “More like an endless supply of problems with that solution.”
He chuckled before ducking into the bathroom, the sound of the shower cranking on following. “Fine, if you’re not down with companion showering, then you get first dibs.”
I could have kept arguing, but it wouldn’t have gotten either of us any further in the compromise department. Plus, the hot water would run out and we would both be late to work.
“I’ll be quick,” I said after grabbing my shower stuff from one of my bags. At least, what I’d managed to toss inside in the chaos of last night.
His mouth lifted higher on one side. “Oh, I know.”
Pretending not to understand what he was getting at, I snatched my “fetching” robe and jogged toward the bathroom. Once I was in the bathroom, I double-checked that I’d locked the door, then I actually looked around the room and behind towels to make sure there weren’t any hidden cameras. Perv might not have been Brook’s MO, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Not that he didn’t already know what I looked like naked . . .
I took my frustration out on my scalp as I shampooed and conditioned my hair. It had never been so squeaky clean. I managed to get my legs and armpits shaved and my hair and body washed all in under five minutes. That had to be in the running for a world record.
After swiping the towel up and down my body, I wound it around my hair and slipped into my bathrobe. I could do the rest of my morning ritual in the bedroom so he could hop in the shower next.
Brooks was in the same place I’d left him, coffee cup in one hand, newspaper in the other. He didn’t look up when I moved down the hall.
“Next,” I said, pausing outside his bedroom door. No lights were on, but there was enough natural light to illuminate the inside. His bed was so neatly made it was as though no one had ever slept in it, and the surfaces were bare of personal effects save for one frame propped on the dresser. “Is that your mom?”
Brooks made an “Mm-hmm” sound.
“She was beautiful.”
“She was,” he said, resting the newspaper at his side. “In every way. And her husband still left her. That’s not the happy ending she deserved.”
“That has to do with your father’s nature, not love’s.”
He shook his head. “Love is a chemical in our brain. It’s not some thing of whimsy or written in the stars or the thing of fate and providence. It comes. It goes. Sometimes it lasts. Sometimes it doesn’t. It isn’t a guarantee—it’s a risk.” As he moved by me, he closed the door of his bedroom before hea
ding toward the bathroom. “I’ll see you at the office.”
My hand clutched the top of my robe. “I can wait for you. If you want?”
“I figured you wouldn’t want us to arrive together. You know, in case anyone from the office noticed.” He paused in the middle of peeling off his wet shirt.
My eyebrows pinched together. The two of us arriving together, for someone at the office to see, for anyone who recognized us to see, should have been what he wanted. It aligned with his whole objective of getting me to fall for him. He should have been jumping at the idea of the two of us climbing out of a cab and heading up to the World Times together.
So why was he suggesting something else?
“See you later.” Turning, I rushed into my room to finish getting ready.
It took all of my willpower to keep my brain on the task at hand and not wandering to other pressing matters. Like the condition of my apartment. Or what I was going to do tonight for accommodations. Or why Brooks was behaving the total opposite of how I expected him to act. Or why my body was betraying me at every turn whenever he looked at me a certain way or said my name in just the right tone.
Since I’d been racking up taxi fares lately, I elected to take the subway to work that morning, which meant I didn’t have time to grab my usual breakfast. When Quinn texted to ask if I wanted anything, I requested she grab an extra chocolate croissant. And might have suggested she channel Beyonce in “Run the World” and seal the Justin deal already.
She ignored my last text.
Unlike most Friday mornings, I was one of the last to arrive to work, and I was slightly annoyed I’d missed my chance at peace and quiet to get caught up on some work.
Conrad had let both Brooks and I know that we could lighten our workloads given the time suck Romance Versus Reality had become, but neither of us seemed to be taking him up on his offer. We clearly both put a priority on our work and weren’t easily brought to crying Mercy.
“What the what?” Quinn greeted the moment I collapsed into my chair. “You look like you didn’t sleep a wink last night.”
“Ugh. Yeah. I had a bit of an emergency last night and am running on fumes.” I shot her an apologetic look, and she plopped a familiar brown paper bag on my desk. “Thanks for grabbing my breakfast of champions for me.”