Love the One You're With (2 page)

He grinned, and suddenly the perfect white teeth looked a little … predatory.

“Too much?” he asked, looking slightly sheepish.

Grace lifted a shoulder as she lowered herself into the cab. “A little obvious. Maybe go back to the drawing board on that one.”

She tilted her head up to give the guy one last thank-you only to realize that he was no longer standing beside the cab. He was getting
into
the cab.

“What are you—what the—
hey
!” she said as he gently tapped the backs of his fingers against her hip in a universal
move-over
gesture, before crowding her to the other side of the taxi.

“Where to?” he asked as he shut the door. The admirably patient cab driver started the meter and turned around. Both men looked at her expectantly.

Pride demanded that she exit the cab, but practicality … she glanced at her watch. Crap.
Fine
. She'd share a cab with this cretin.

“Fifty-eighth and Eighth,” she said.

The cab-crasher paused in the process of pulling his phone out of his pocket, looking startled.

“What?” she snapped.

“That's all the way uptown.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she said sweetly. “Did I forget to mention that when I begged you to share a cab with me?”

He shrugged and turned back to his phone. “Doesn't bother me. Tribeca's just an interesting neighborhood choice for someone who works in the Central Park West area.”

Grace straightened her shoulders and looked primly out the window. “I like Tribeca.”

Actually, Grace wouldn't have minded escaping the land of yoga moms and upscale day cares to try a new part of town. But after she'd packed up and moved out of the apartment she'd shared with Greg, she hadn't been about to tuck her tail between her legs and slink off to the furthest possible neighborhood from him.

Instead she'd picked one of the newer buildings just a few blocks from her old place. Far enough to have a different Starbucks, but not so far that anyone could mistake her as running
away.

If he wanted to put more distance between them, then
he
could pack his shit and move uptown, crosstown, out of town, off the planet …

She felt the stranger studying her, but she didn't turn to meet his eyes.

“Got a husband?” he asked.

Grace stiffened. “No.”

“Fiancé?”

“No.”
Although I thought I was on the verge
.

“Kid?”

“No!” she exploded, finally whipping her head around to glare at him. “A little personal, don't you think?”

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “Tribeca is just very family-friendly. I thought maybe that's why you picked it.”

“Do
you
have a wife, kid, or dog?”

“No way,” he said as he began typing something on his phone.

Of course not. This man practically reeked of
bachelor
.

“Then why do you live here?”

“I don't,” he said simply. “I live in midtown.”

Grace's brow furrowed. “Then what the hell are you doing catching a cab all the way down here at eight in the morning?”

His eyes flicked up then, locking with hers and holding. His gaze wasn't smug per se, but it was expectant, as though waiting for her to put something together …

“Oh!” she said. “Oh. That.”

He smiled but didn't respond. He didn't have to.

“Let me rephrase,” she said, not really sure why she was pushing. “If Tribeca is so family-friendly, why are you doing the walk of shame out of here?”

“Seems you're not the only single woman lurking amid the day care set.”

Grace narrowed her eyes. “What makes you think I'm single?”

He typed a message on his phone before responding, then slid the phone back into his pocket and angled his body to face hers.

“You really want to know?” he asked.

No. She absolutely did not want to hear that her pathetic loser-ness was visible. “Yes,” she replied.

“The spark,” he said in a bored voice.

“The spark,” she repeated.

“Between us. You felt it,” he said, his eyes cutting to hers. “Women in a happy relationship don't give off a spark like that.”

And damned if her stomach didn't give a little flip. And
double
damn if she didn't know exactly what spark he was talking about.

She
did
feel it.

But she could just as easily ignore it.

“Happens all the time when I'm annoyed,” she said, keeping her voice placid and bored.

He grinned again. “And that,” he said, pointing a finger at her, “that prickliness
—that's
how I know you're not just single, but
recently
single.”

Stab
.

Grace folded her arms across her chest. “Well, don't you just have me all figured out.”

He leaned his head back on the seat as though bored. “Let's see … you're late twenties, I'm guessing twenty-eight, give or take, but you take care of yourself. Probably yoga, because you read in some magazine that it's good for your mind
and
body, and you think balance is pretty much the holy grail. You love your job, mainly because it allows you to wear tight skirts and high heels, although you have family money that supplements your income, which is why said skirt and high heels are designer instead of off the rack. The hair color's natural, the lip color's not, and the only reason you didn't go flying out of the car when I climbed in here with you is because you're desperate to get to your oh-so-important job.”

He turned his head to meet her murderous gaze and gave a wide grin. “How'd I do?”

“I'm twenty-nine,” was all she said in reply, narrowing her eyes slightly. “But not bad.”

And then, because he'd been so damn
right
about her—scarily right—Grace gave him her best ice-princess smile. The one that ensured drunk guys in bars kept their distance, and that catty women didn't dare gossip about anyone in Grace's circle of friends.

But this guy? This guy didn't seem to interpret her special smile for what it was. Because if anything, his dark brown gaze grew warmer.

No. It grew downright hot.

And suddenly Grace realized that she was playing it all wrong with this guy. Even though she shouldn't be playing at all.

This guy didn't need ice from her—he could melt it with that perfect grin and
won't-you-come-to-my-bed
eyes. No, this one deserved fire.

Fire was something Grace Brighton had always been a little short on.

But luckily for this jackass, she'd spent the past several months getting over the bone-searing pain of having the former love of her life cheat on her.

And now? Now she was done with the denial. Done with the tears.

The anger had set in.

So yeah. She just happened to have a fresh dose of fire in her arsenal.

“My turn,” she said sweetly.

His brows lifted condescendingly. “Think you've got a read on me, huh?”

Oh, I know I do
.

See, the guy had been pretty dead-on in his assessment of her, but there was one very important detail that he hadn't hit on. The job that enabled her to wear her “tight skirts and high heels”? That job just happened to be a career in this very type of thing.

Reading men.

And then writing about it.

Sure, Greg might have pulled the wool over her eyes—maybe stomped her ego a little bit—but Grace was determined to regain her title as
Stiletto
magazine's expert on men and the games they played. She wasn't one of the lead columnists of the country's best-selling women's magazine for nothing.

And this guy was
exactly
what she needed to get back in the saddle.

“So let's see,” she said, resting her head against the back of the seat and mimicking his posture. “You work out religiously, probably to counteract the scattering of gray hairs popping up prematurely at your temples. I say prematurely, because you're only thirty-three, but you work hard and you play hard, and you hate like hell that you can't control your hair as easily as you do your biceps. Your job requires you to be endlessly charming, something that you happily carry over to your personal life, which I'm guessing means your longest relationship is somewhere in the proximity of … four months? Give or take. You fancy yourself a New Yorker, but your accent smacks of small-town Midwest—something you probably hate, though you'd
never tell your parents, whom you're close to.”

Grace paused to take a breath.

“It's never occurred to you that a woman wouldn't
want
to share her cab with you, and now you'll spend the rest of the day wondering why I wasn't fishing for a reason to give you my number. Then you'll forget all about me tomorrow when the next tight skirt catches your eye. Also, your one-night stand with Miss Tribeca guarantees you're wearing yesterday's suit, although I'm guessing you drew the line on dirty underwear, which means you're currently commando, which, in conclusion, I would like to point out is completely disgusting.”

As if on cue, the taxi came to a stop in front of her office building, and she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and leaned over to tuck it neatly into his suit jacket pocket.

“How'd I do?” she asked sweetly, her hand already going for the door handle.

He moved quickly, reaching out a hand to grab her wrist even as he pried open her fingers and placed the twenty back into her palm. “Not bad,” he said, his voice husky.

Her eyes collided with his, and if they'd been warmly flirtatious before, they were burning hot as hell now. “But?” she asked, more than a little curious about how close she'd come.

His thumb flicked across her inner wrist, making her pulse jumpy. “You got everything right but one detail.”

She gave him a look of sympathy. “So you
are
wearing the dirty underwear, then?”

“No,” he said, his voice dropping even lower. “I mean you were wrong about the part of me forgetting you by tomorrow.”

Grace's mouth went dry.

“Something tells me I'll be remembering you for a long time.” With that, he released her arm, and Grace clawed for the door handle, her composure completely shot to hell by one handsome guy.

Grace 1.0 was practically tittering at the pretty words, and 2.0 was howling at the sky in anger.

Since 2.0 was noisier, Grace clung to disdain instead of swooning, and refused to spare the man a second glance as she tucked the twenty-dollar bill back into his pocket and climbed out of the cab.

Good girl
, Grace 2.0 said with a little football-player-style slap on the ass.
This is
supposed to be your time. Single time, girl power, whatever you want to call it
.

Right. Got it. Grace straightened her skirt and headed into the lobby of the Ravenna building for the first time in over a month.

First day of her new life and all that.

It was time to figure out who Grace Brighton really was. And that meant no relationships. No sex. No men. For six months, at least.

Especially not tall dark playboys who climbed into cabs with strange women and likely skipped underwear after one-night stands.

No matter how dead sexy he was.

“Wait, you never answered the question. Was he hot?”

Grace paused in dumping sugar in her coffee and glared at Riley McKenna. “Who cares if he was hot? I said he was an ass.”

“Yes, but was he a
hot
ass?” This from Julie, who, like Riley, had apparently missed the point of Grace's story.

“You're giving him entirely too much credit,” Grace muttered as the three of them headed toward the conference room for their weekly meeting. Thanks to cab guy, she'd made it in plenty of time.

Riley and Julie exchanged a glance. “He was totally hot,” Julie said in a loud whisper.

“Are you allowed to say that? I mean now that you're engaged and all?” Riley asked Julie.

Engaged
. Grace ignored the little twinge that word caused.

She was happy for her friend, of course. Julie Greene was one of her best friends, and easily the most likable person Grace had ever met. With her honey-blond hair, wide smile, and friendly personality, it was impossible
not
to like Julie. And sure, it had come as a bit of a surprise when her flirtatious, chronically single friend had fallen for the subject of one of her articles a few months ago—particularly since Mitchell Forbes was pretty much the opposite of Julie.

But they were happy together. Happily
engaged
.

Which was great.

Really.

It was just …

Grace had always imagined that
she'd
be the first of the
Stiletto
“it girls” to take the marriage plunge. Instead she was the furthest from the altar she'd been in ten years. It was as though she were twenty again, back before she'd met Greg Parsons and had started mentally putting together the future Parsons family scrapbook.

Oblivious to Grace's envy, Julie was twisting the diamond on her fourth finger. “Of
course I can still ogle hot guys. What Mitchell doesn't know …”

“Mitchell's an omniscient robot when it comes to you,” Riley said as they filed into the conference room. “I'm pretty sure he knows
everything
. And I bet he knows that right this second you're ogling Grace's new man.”

“Grace has a new man?” asked
Stiletto
's slim, skinny-jean-clad associate fashion editor.

Great
, Grace thought. Now they had an audience. Just what she needed—the gabbiest person in the office thinking that she was seeing someone. Grace gave her friends a stern
fix-this
look. Oliver Harrington was better than Twitter when it came to spreading gossip.