The Cornerstone (50 page)
Some lines are meant to be crossed.
Patrick
That hair.
That fucking hair.
It was everywhere, always, and I wanted to tangle my fingers in those dark curls and
pull
.
And that would be fine if she wasn’t my apprentice.
Andy Asani was nothing like I expected. She was exotic and scary-brilliant, and the slightest murmur from those lips sent hot, hungry lust swirling through my veins. Outside my siblings, she was the only person I could name who shared my obsession with preserving Boston’s crumbling buildings.
Andy
My wants were few: good eats, tall boots, hot yoga, interesting work. One incredibly hot architect with the most expressive hazel eyes I ever encountered and entirely too much talent in and out of the bedroom wasn’t part of the original plan. Apparently he was part of the package.
Wine was my rabbi and vodka was my therapist, and I needed plenty of both to survive my apprenticeship. Especially with Patrick Walsh leaving love notes in the form of bite marks all over my body.
“T
his is the
best taco truck in Boston,” Patrick said, gesturing to the van parked between Harrison and Concord in the South End. “The best. No pickled beets or arugula. Real tacos. You like tacos, right? If you don’t, this isn’t going to work out.”
“Haven’t met a taco I don’t like,” I replied from the passenger seat of Patrick’s Range Rover.
“If you tell anyone about this, or put it on Twitter, and then everyone and their uncle shows up and I can’t get a taco? You’ll be pulling permits at City Hall for the next six years.”
“I can handle that.”
With a nod, we headed toward the van. We ordered the day’s special, barbacoa de costilla, and he inclined his head toward the park across the street. It was cold but the late afternoon sun seeped through my skin, and I turned my face toward it when we settled on a stone bench.
The tacos were delicious, and when I told Patrick as much, he grunted in agreement. It was a raw, beautiful sound that annihilated Operation Don’t Think About Patrick Walsh Naked.
I wanted to hear that sound again. I wanted to
cause
that sound. I ate my tacos, staring at a bronze statue of a rider on horseback, reminding myself to stop thinking about sex.
“Any other food trucks you’d recommend?”
Patrick nodded as he chewed. “Plenty. There’s a Vietnamese truck that I could hit every day. The best banh mi ever, and there are a few awful banh mis in town. And this one truck that only does grilled cheese, but wicked amazing grilled cheese.”
I offered him an appreciative smile. Patrick was speaking in complete sentences
and
we were talking about the only thing I liked more than architecture: food. “You’re quite the foodie.”
“Nah,” he laughed.
“Anyone who can distinguish banh mi quality is a foodie,” I said, directing a raised eyebrow at Patrick.
“There’s a sriracha fried rice and braised beef dumpling truck I’ve been meaning to try,” he said, his hazel eyes hard and reserved despite his light tone.
“Sign me up for that.”
Taking the last bite of my taco, I nodded enthusiastically while he stared at me. I needed sriracha fried rice in my life, and it sounded like Patrick did, too. Sauce dribbled over my lip, and his eyes darkened when my tongue scooped it up.
“All right, Asani.” He stood and started toward his car, his steps urgent. “Back to the office.”
They liked to call me names. Manwhore. Slut. Player. But I make wrong look so right…
He’s a flawed perfectionist…
I can read women better than any blueprint. I understand their thoughts and feelings, their secret desires and insecurities, and I know how to get rid of them once I get off.
But all bets are off when Tiel Desai slams into my life. She redefines what it means to be friends, and she makes it sound like the filthiest thing I’ve ever heard.
I can’t read the gorgeous conservatory-trained violinist, but she’s the only one keeping me from shattering by small degrees, and I can’t let her go.
She’s wildly independent…
My past—and New Jersey—are far behind me, and now my life is blissfully full of music: playing, teaching, and lecturing, and scouring Boston’s underground scene with an annoyingly beautiful, troubled, tattooed architect.
I’m defenseless against his rooftop kisses, our nearly naked dance parties, the snuggletimes that turn into sexytimes, and his deep, demanding voice.
I have Sam Walsh stuck in my head like a song on repeat, and I’m happy pretending history won’t catch up with me.
The one thing they have in common is a rock-solid disregard for the rules.
They find more in each other than they ever realized they were missing, but they might have to fall apart before they can come together.
It’s the wrongs that make the rights come to life.
“H
ey,” I said,
and he grinned in response. “You mentioned on the ride over here that you were really jazzed to see this place. So I’m wondering, do you have a huge architectural boner right now?”
“Would you like to find out?”
“Actually, yeah. I’d also like to rip your clothes off and ride your cock until I see stars and lose the power of speech, if that’s okay with you.”
He barked a surprised laugh and squeezed my leg. “That’s a really sweet idea,” he said. “But you’re only doing that if I tell you to.”
“Maybe I don’t want to take orders anymore,” I said, pouting.
“But you do,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “Let’s see if we can get out of here without anyone noticing.”
Of course, someone noticed. An older gentleman struck up a conversation with Sam, and as it became obvious they’d be chatting for awhile, I stepped away to get a drink. It allowed me to watch him from a distance, observe the way he used precise gestures when he was talking about his work and twisted the ring on his thumb when he was thinking. He didn’t acknowledge the purposeful glances women sent him as they wandered past, but he did scan the room every couple of minutes, and he smiled when our eyes met.
I could tell he was attempting to wrap up the conversation, without much luck. When he looked at me again, he sent me a frustrated stare, and I sucked my martini’s olives off the spear to distract him.
Except one of those olives missed my mouth and landed right between my boobs, and he observed the whole thing. My eyes wide with shock, I saw Sam abruptly excuse himself and rush toward me.
He grabbed my elbow and dragged me away from the event. He led me into a small office with tall windows facing the McDowell Mountains. “What was that?” he asked.
“Rogue olive,” I muttered. Inside the office, we looked at each other, smiling wildly, and broke into laughter.
“There’s only one solution,” Sam said, eyeing my cleavage. “If you’d like.”
I gestured to my chest. “There’s an olive trapped in my boobs. Clearly, this requires an architect.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said as he slipped out of his suit coat and folded it over the back of the desk chair. “There’re a couple hundred architects out there, and none of them are touching you.” He traced the edge of my dress, his finger following the rise and fall of my breasts. “Can you be quiet?”
“What is it you think you’re doing?”
He pressed his finger to my lips. “Shush.”
Kate Canterbary doesn’t have it all figured out, but this is what she knows for sure: spicy-ass salsa and tequila solve most problems, living on the ocean—Pacific or Atlantic—is the closest place to perfection, and writing smart, smutty stories is a better than any amount of chocolate. She started out reporting for an indie arts and entertainment newspaper back when people still read newspapers, and she has been writing and surreptitiously interviewing people—be careful sitting down next to her on an airplane—ever since. Kate lives on the water in New England with Mr. Canterbary and the Little Baby Canterbary, and when she isn’t writing sexy architects, she’s scheduling her days around the region’s best food trucks.
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