Unexpectedly His(14)

In a strange fog, Nick stepped out of the elevator as the doors began to close, catching up to her outside his condo. Without a word of acknowledgment, she swiped the electronic key he’d messengered over and opened the heavy door into a stack of cardboard boxes. The seductive pull of her breezy scent evaporated like summer rain hitting the overheated Brooklyn sidewalk. Across the threshold, the espresso-stained floors were littered with neatly labeled containers. Clearly, this trip wasn’t her first.

“Planning to stay six weeks or sixty years?” he asked.

She gave him a half-guilty, half-apologetic smile. “Just the six weeks, but I’m renovating my place in Gramercy Park—is it okay?” Her blue eyes blinked at him.

Like he had a choice. “Works for me.”

He deposited his box onto the stack and followed her through the labyrinth of cardboard boxes muscling their way into his man-style home with its floor-to-ceiling windows and built-in sound speakers. She detoured from the narrow hallway into the bathroom, set her box on the marble vanity, and emptied its contents. He felt like he’d been kicked in the nuts. His sleek black counter was being overrun with a stash of girly products.

Nick stared at the impromptu beauty counter. He wasn’t compulsive about much and that neurotic line of Bed, Bath and Beyond scared the shit of out him.

Instinctively, he glanced toward his subway-tiled, walk-in shower and felt the color drain from his face. An aggressively floral set of shampoo and conditioner bottles filled the shelf. Worse, they were pink. Not even a normal pink, but a bright fuchsia that screamed, a woman is infiltrating your sanctuary. He drew in a breath. Right now, he didn’t care about her killer legs or how incredibly fantastic she smelled, his handsomely tiled, black and white bathroom was being overtaken by the feminine touch.

Nick turned around, ready to discuss the situation, but she was already gone. What the hell? He glanced down the hall. She was like a ninja. He took a few steps toward the back of the condo…and that’s when he heard the humming coming out of his bedroom. Worse, the humming of some decades-old love song.

He drew in a breath and counted to ten. He could manage. Nick Wright wasn’t about to be chased out of his own place or lose a partnership he’d worked his ass off to get, all because of a little bit of feminine gear and some humming. He was a professional. A reasonable, capable professional. He could take the noise. After all, she was doing him a major solid. He’d be wise to remember that, he thought, walking toward the sound.

Just outside the door, an old memory hit him, snapping into focus like a faded photograph made suddenly clear. A warm summer night, his mom sitting on the front steps of the row house, humming while she waited for his father to stumble home from some late-night poker game, probably three sheets to the wind, a fact she’d successfully hidden from his siblings, but not from Nick.#p#分页标题#e#

A stab of familiar guilt hit him hard. He despised being like his father, even in the smallest way. Sure, he didn’t drink or bet the mortgage on the ponies, but when it came to women…he played ’em the same way. Love ’em and leave ’em. He stepped into the doorway and leaned against the frame. The strategy had worked for him, too, kept all his relationships light and fun and distant.

Until now…

Now she was here, humming in his previously sacrosanct, good-times-only bedroom.

And—fuck. She was a real cutie.

Neurotic maybe, but cute. His gaze took in the three hard-case Louis Vuittons lined up against the back of the closet, all emptied, everything starched and ironed, neat as a pin. Yeah, the neuroses ran deep. “I hope you left some room in there for me,” he said, his tone laced with more than a fifth of irony.

Marianne turned around, blushing. “I’m sorry, I probably brought more than the basics, but better to be prepared, although I was wondering…about the whole closet…or rather, the bedroom, or well, the…um, the bed issue…” She drew in a breath. “Is this the only…the only…”

“The only bed?” He nodded and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “To be honest, I never have overnight guests. Company, yes. Overnight, no.”

“Oh.” She adjusted the glasses against the bridge of her nose. “Female company?”

A smile played at the corner of his lips. “Is there any other kind?”

Her gaze fell to the floor in a trademark move he was already starting to recognize. Devil damned if he understood why, but the impulse to needle her was irresistible. All buttoned-up and serious, she was just so different from the sleek, ambitious legal eagles lined up to fill his empty bed on Saturday night.