Chapter One
Anna
“Has he tried to contact you?”
I could barely hear Leah through the booming of the bass. We were perched on stools at the oh-so-cool bar in TriBeCa and we had to lean in to each other to be heard. I’m not sure if hearing her would have helped me make sense of what she was saying—we were three cocktails in. But I got that she was talking about Ben—she hadn’t really talked about much else.
Leah was my best friend in the whole world. We had met at law school, and until recently, we’d shared a flat. She was supremely protective of me, and I of her. Talking about men and drinking cocktails is what we did, and we did it so well. The subject of our conversation tonight was Ben—my most recent ex.
“He wouldn’t dare. Probably knows I’d rip his balls off.” I shrugged and sipped on my Manhattan. I had to drink Manhattans while I was in Manhattan, didn’t I?
“I just can’t believe it,” Leah said for the 57th time that evening.
I shrugged again and looked over Leah’s shoulder and saw a face in the shadows looking at me. He raised his glass and nodded in my direction. Did I know him? He looked familiar. My eyes darted back to Leah.
“And you didn’t have any hints?” she asked.
“I mean, he was different from other guys I had dated. But no, he never dropped it into the conversation that he was mixed up in crazy shit and owed money to the wrong kind of people.”
Ben the biker had turned into the boyfriend from hell—or Ben the Bastard as Leah now referred to him. He had always been so sweet to me. I thought he was going to be different. I thought I’d finally made a good choice after having precisely no luck with men for years. But I’d been delivered a reality check—Ben the Bastard was a bastard. The crazies he’d owed money broke into our flat and scrawled a crazy-assed threat across the bathroom mirror in Leah’s room. They hadn’t taken anything, which confused us. About a week later, Ben confessed and I went to the police.
The police had called earlier today and confirmed that Ben had confessed to them, as well. It had been a threat to scare him into paying back what he owed.
“So you’re going to sell your apartment?”
“Well, I still call it a flat, but yes, I’m going to sell it,” I smirked. Leah started calling her mobile a cell as soon as we landed at JFK. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to tease her sudden Americanization.
I’d decided on the plane that I was definitely going to sell my flat. I’d not felt right about the place since the break in. Daniel, Leah’s boyfriend and all around perfect man, had arranged for an alarm to be installed. But Leah had moved in with him, and I hated being on my own. Even though I knew the police were handling it, I still didn't want to be in the flat. I didn't tell Leah that because she would have moved me in with her and Daniel, and as much as I loved them, I didn't want to be living with them and interrupting their sexy time. Especially when I wasn't having any of my own.
Leah, as she couldn’t stop telling me, couldn’t believe it. But I stopped hearing from him around the time of the break-in, and so I had a niggling at the back of my brain. I’d never had much luck with the men in my life. They started off really great, but then around the three-month mark something always went wrong. I went off them, or they became clingy, or they had crazies breaking into my flat. Same old, same old.
When Leah invited me to keep her company on a week’s trip she and Daniel were making to New York, I jumped at the chance. It was an opportunity to get away from London and my flat and any complications of the male variety. Daniel would be working a lot, apparently, so we’d have plenty of girl time. And girl time was just what I needed. After Leah’s last break up, we’d flown to Mexico for a holiday. Flying west seemed to get her over her heartbreak. Let’s hope it did the same for me.
The bartender slid some more drinks in front of us—a Manhattan in front of me and a replica of the disgustingly sweet concoction that Leah had ordered earlier. I looked at Leah and she shrugged and picked up her drink. I gently pushed her wrist, persuading her to put it back on the bar.
“We didn’t order these,” I said to the bartender.
He pointed at the man I half-recognized. “They’re courtesy of the gentleman at the end of the bar.”
Sirens blared in my head. Oh no. This wasn’t happening. I didn’t want male attention. I didn’t want any complications. The familiar stranger caught my eye and raised his drink again. Ungratefully, I rolled my eyes and sat back in my chair. Leah looked at me pleadingly.
“Fuck it,” I said and grabbed the fresh cocktail. I might as well drink it. It didn’t mean I had to talk to him.