“Confused?” Barrett snaps.

  “Stay out of it,” I tell him before this situation reaches Popeye and Bluto proportions. This Olive Oyl can take care of herself.

  “You heard her,” North gloats. I’ve never seen him gloat before. Before I can tell him to go home, Barrett brushes by me so quickly my hair lifts on the breeze he creates.

  “Thanks for the assist,” he mutters as he walks to my front door.

  “Fox, you don’t have to—”

  But when he turns, I notice his laptop under his arm. He dips his chin in a goodbye to me and then glowers at North. He heads down the hallway toward the elevators without another word.

  North turns back to me.

  “Smug isn’t a good look on you.” I shut him into my apartment but shatter his hopes a second later. “I’d like you to stay right in this spot until Barrett is gone. I don’t want you two scuffling in the parking lot.”

  “Don’t want me to hurt your boyfriend?” More smugness. I can’t remember a time North was smug about anything.

  “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

  He lets out a disbelieving laugh.

  “Can I at least get a drink?” But he’s already in my kitchen. He knows where everything is. The vodka in the freezer, what refrigerator drawer holds the limes, where I keep his favorite rocks glass...

  “Help yourself.” Whatever keeps him from tromping downstairs and earning a black eye and a fat lip from the bad boy of the NFL. I carry my empty wineglass to the kitchen and North refills it for me.

  “I meant what I said.” He’s trying for nice after behaving like a complete ass.

  “I know you did,” I reply flatly. I take a guzzle of my wine. “I’m not interested.”

  “In a relationship or my friendship?”

  I’m not feeling magnanimous at the moment, so I answer, “Neither.”

  Barrett

  I drum my fingers on the steering wheel as I watch the front door of the apartment building and wait for North’s grand exit. I also have my eye on his pretentious, rich-boy Cadillac. The vanity plates read: NORTHROP3

  What a prick.

  Showing Kitty Cat my fucked-up column was humbling and a little embarrassing, but I was desperate. After pecking away for nearly six hours, I wasn’t sure which was crossed—a wire in my brain or my eyes. Probably my brain.

  Dyslexia’s a bitch.

  No, I’m not exaggerating. I have it. It’s like I always imagined people who wear glasses feel. The letters literally trade places after I’ve stared too long and I can’t tell if I typed it that way or if my brain is interpreting it wrong. I came over here expecting her to tell me I’d written the word three instead of there or renamed her Catrina instead of Catarina.

  I was diagnosed when I was a kid, so I can’t blame my affliction on a hard hit on the field. In college I routinely pulled all-nighters to do what most of my friends did in an hour or two. I missed a lot of keggers which is probably why I was recruited by Miami. If I’d gone to half the parties I was invited to, chances are I’d be sitting in jail…or lying in a morgue.

  Kitty Cat said I over-edited. Who knew that was a thing? Something else for me to Google, I guess. Not tonight, though. Everything reads like hieroglyphics.

  The revolving door spins and deposits a couple into the parking lot. I hold my breath, but no one else comes out. I tell myself I only care for Catarina’s sake, but I’m pissed about North’s horrible timing as much as I am my own.

  Why did I kiss her?

  Simple. I was towed in by caramel-colored eyes, and the pink tongue wetting her lips. By that soft-as-sin hair and the way she shushed me as she read my column. The way she let me in and offered me a beer. The way she hung up on North and smiled at me, so damn proud of herself.

  I didn’t plan on the kiss as a way of staking territory or getting her into bed. I was dragged in by every elemental, beautiful nuance about her.

  And then her dickhead ex stormed in behaving like...well, like me.

  I did that once when Beth and I were “on a break.” She’d been ignoring my messages and I knew she had a late test. Before I knew it, I was standing in the doorway of her college dorm room. She was in there with a guy from her psychology class. His shirt was too rumpled for my taste, so I balled my fists into his rumpled shirt and shoved him into the hallway so hard he fell on his ass. Then I decided Beth and I weren’t on a break and doled out a punishing kiss. Sex followed because that was how we solved problems.

  I bob my foot impatiently as the door circles again. This time a man exits...who isn’t North.

  Fuck.

  Several weeks’ dry spell plus a vulnerable Catarina, plus her territorial ex doesn’t add up to a patient Barrett Fox. Are they in there right now, working things out the way Beth and I used to?

  I can either sit here until he exits an hour from now, with his shirt untucked and his hair crimped in the pattern of her fingers, or I can put myself out of my misery and go home. I have no claim over Catarina. The kiss I gave her barely qualified as a kiss.

  But dammit.

  It was a good one.

  Chapter 13

  Catarina

  I expected Barrett to be in the office the next day toiling away at his laptop, but he wasn’t. The day after that was a skip day for him, too. I managed to tuck away my irritation long enough to ask Mia if she’d heard from him.

  “He’s working from home. Why?”

  No reason. Just wanted to ask him why he kissed me and then ran out.

  My boss was suspicious, so I made up something about the column.

  So here we are. Friday morning and Barrett isn’t here again. Not that I expected him. If I was going to skip work—

  Wait. Do I spy a tall, ginger-haired, grouchy ex-NFL player? Why, yes. Yes, I do. It’s eight minutes after ten, so he’s not exactly late, but it feels late to me.

  He’s smiling his easy, carefree smile and carrying a short cup of coffee. I straighten expectantly in my seat. When he spots me his smile drops. His gaze is as piercing as a dagger’s tip when he drinks from the cup.

  I guess that particular Starbucks wasn’t for me. I look to his other hand. Empty.

  He’s dressed in jeans and a navy T-shirt tight enough that I make out the outline of firm pecs and rounded biceps. I shift in my seat as I remember how close we came to making out. That would’ve been a better ending to the last evening we spent together.

  “Casual Friday,” I quip, and then realize that wasn’t much of a quip. More of a bland observation. He takes inventory of my pink button-down top and white skirt.

  “Not for some of us, apparently.” In his cubicle, he unpacks his laptop bag. I pretend to read my own screen while surreptitiously checking out his ass. He is wearing those jeans.

  Once his laptop is open, he slaps a notebook and pen onto the otherwise barren desk and begins his work.

  I try to ignore him. It works for about a half hour, and then I can’t take it any longer. I grab my gone-cold office coffee. I don’t want another drop, but I need an excuse to walk by him en route to the break room.

  “How’s it going?” I ask, my second annoying comment of the day. I might as well finish out the trifecta with Are we having fun yet? or Any plans this weekend?.

  Except I know that he has plans this weekend because they’re with me. We forewent the Art in the Park idea in favor of a beer tasting at the museum. That seemed more apropos.

  “Fine.” He takes his eyes off his work to peg me with a blue stare that makes my knees tremble. My attention trails down to his mouth where I notice a tiny freckle at the edge of his upper lip. Either that or it’s chocolate. What I wouldn’t give to taste it and find out. “Need something?”

  I frown at his gruffness. You’d think he’d be at least friendly since I let him kiss me.

  “I need coffee,” I lie. “And we need to discuss our plans for tomorrow.”

  “Noon at Columbus Institute of Art, or CIA as the horrible acronym goes.”

  “Are we driving separately?” I ask my coffee mug, scuffing one of my ballerina flats into the nubby carpet.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe we should take a cab in case we have too many beer samples and—Hey!” I bark, startled because Barrett has shot out of his chair. His hand wraps firmly around my upper arm before I finish my thought.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper harshly as he leads me across the office. Cold coffee sloshes onto my shoe. He stops, takes the mug and places it on my desk calendar where it leaves a big, wet, coffee-colored stain, and then finishes marching me into Marge’s old office.

  He shuts the door behind us and releases me, swiveling around to burn me with a dark look.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I point at my shoes. “You owe me a new pair of flats.”

  He takes in the splatter on my shoe. “No way. Those are hideous.”

  “I don’t know what your problem is, Fox, but you can’t expect to come in here and act like this after what happened Tuesday night.”

  “I can’t, can I?” He advances a step and I back up two. “What about you? How are you doing after Tuesday night?”

  I match his next forward step with a retreating one of my own. “I—I don’t know. I thought we could talk about it.”

  “So. Talk.” His jaw saws back and forth in irritation.

  I back up another step and bump against a bookshelf. It’s lined with dusty magazines and three-ring binders and a fat dictionary I can’t imagine anyone in this day and age using for anything other than killing spiders.

  “You kissed me on Tuesday,” I remind him, my voice less firm than I’d like. “I thought—”

  “So?”

  “So?” I repeat.

  “Yeah. So? You were the one swearing we’d never kiss. I always knew it would happen.”

  “You initiated it!”

  “Again: So?”

  “So...so...why are you acting like you hate me? Why did you avoid me this week?”

  “I wasn’t avoiding you, Kitty Cat,” he says with a mocking smile that suggests I’m overreacting. “I had shit to do. I have a life that involves more than your silly column and a forgettable kiss at your apartment.”

  Embarrassment warms my neck. Not because he downplayed the kiss we shared or that he was genuinely attracted to me in that moment. I was there. That wasn’t a forgettable kiss. But it’s the “silly column” part that cuts deep.

  I work hard. I spend my life hunched over a laptop, my wrists aching and fingers stiff from typing for hours upon hours. I don’t do it because it’s “silly.” I may have categorized this assignment as a puff piece early on, but I’m committed to an outcome that is nothing short of amazing.

  “My column isn’t silly.” I hear my own hurt feelings in every syllable. Evidently, so does Barrett. His eyebrows soften in sympathy.

  “I shouldn’t have said that.” He glances at the ceiling, then back at me. “I worked more on the column. Took your advice.”

  “Mia said it was really good.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s better than okay—it has to be. It was better than okay when I read it. I may have been too harsh. I should’ve—”

  “Did you sleep with North?”

  “What?” I scrunch my face, legitimately confused.

  “You heard me.”

  “We dated for six months. Of course I slept—”

  “On Tuesday night,” Barrett interrupts, impatient. “Did you sleep with him on Tuesday night? I didn’t see him leave.”

  “You waited for him to leave?”

  “For a while.” He won’t look at me.

  “Why?” Confusion is my only ally.

  “Because. Because.” His eyebrows meet over his nose.

  Oh, hell no. He’s not allowed to clam up. He dragged me in here, he can damn well confess what’s rankling him.

  “Tell me why you waited for North to leave.” I grab his forearms and force him to meet my eyes. Fox licks his lips. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. Finally, he speaks.

  “When he walked out of there with his third-generation nose in the air, I planned on telling him to leave you alone or he’d have to deal with me,” Barrett says, his teeth bared.

  “Why do you care? Especially after some stupid little smooch that was ‘forgettable.’” I let go of him to air-quote the word and then wait for him to explain.

  He does.

  In the best way possible.

  His lips slam into mine, the force of that move pressing me against the bookshelves. My shoulder blade meets one shelf, the back of my ribcage another, and yet another is leaving a bruise on my hip.

  Barrett notices. Never halting the kiss, he cups the back of my head protectively, his arm resting vertically along my spine. Now I’m cradled by muscle and the fresh scent of cotton and clean man. Much better.

  He pulls his lips away from mine, and a heavy breath exits his lungs. “Fuck.”

  I study him through drowsy lids, my lips still tingling from the kiss. Satisfaction resonates from everywhere we touch when I realize he’s coming apart because of that kiss.

  Chin tipped, I tell him, “You taste like the cup of coffee you didn’t buy me today.”

  He shakes his head, seems to debate a response, and then commits to, “If you’re back with North, I’ll stop.”

  He’s in a holding pattern, his arms stiff, knees locked. My arms are wrapped around his torso just above his hips, which he’s purposefully distancing from mine.

  “Kitty Cat… Do you want me to stop?”

  I’ve gone from hating that nickname to being turned on by it.

  “Kiss me, Fox.” Fingers in his belt loops, I pull his hips against mine. I’m rewarded by the feel of the hard length of him pressing into my belly. “Like you mean it this time.”

  He doesn’t hesitate. This is the kiss I wanted at my apartment before we were rudely interrupted. I both feared it and wanted it to go on. It’s the sort of kiss that can only end with us wearing zero items of clothing.

  He lifts me, hands cradling my ass and props me against one of the bookshelves. It creaks and shifts. A few books splat to the ground, their pages now hopelessly creased. His teeth rake over my bottom lip before abandoning it for my neck, where he suckles the skin there until it’s damp.

  That’s not the only part of me that’s damp. I drag my flats uselessly along the backs of his thighs wishing I’d have worn my high heels. Then I could hook onto him and anchor myself while his talented mouth committed its delicious assault.

  He returns his mouth to mine, one warm hand sliding behind my knee as my breath catches. Arms wrapped around his neck, I unseal my lips from his and regard him with wide eyes.

  “I won’t venture any higher,” he swears, his wicked smile in full force. “But someday.” He gently brushes the inside of my knee with his thumb. “I’ll take my time kissing this part of you.”

  On a sigh, I touch my lips to his and give him a hot, slow, tongue-tangling, mind-erasing kiss that has us both panting when it’s over.

  I end our lip-lock with a sad hum and rest my forehead against his.

  He disentangles me, sets me on my feet, and then tugs the hem of my skirt down to my knees. My (apparently) hypersensitive knees.

  Someday I’ll take my time kissing this part of you.

  Le swoon.

  He adjusts his length so that it’s standing upright behind his fly, the outline of his erection obvious and mouthwatering. I fail at suppressing a shiver.

  “Eyes up, sweetheart, or else it’ll never go away.” His voice is sandpaper. Every gritty word rakes over my sensitized skin. “Get going. I’ll follow after I collect myself.”

  I steady myself before bending to retrieve the downed books. He catches my elbow and straightens me.

  “Let me get it. Please. I cannot watch you bend over right now.” His desperate expression matches his plea.

  “Okay.” Feeling a zing of excitement at having behaved like a rule-breaking teenager, I smile and turn to leave.

  “Did you though?”

  My head is a wad of turned-on fuzz when I ask, “Did I what?”

  “Sleep with North on Tuesday?”

  The fuzz sharpens to needles that I shoot from my pupils directly at him. Is he kidding right now? But he’s not. He waits, lips pressed into a flat line, fists at his sides.

  “Idiot,” I say before I yank open the door, slam it behind me, and march to my desk. I spot the coffee ring on my otherwise perfectly pristine planner and grow angrier.

  “Asshole.” I’m fuming as I hastily pack my bag. Does he actually believe I’d sleep with North on Tuesday and then make out with him on Friday? Who does he think I am? Him? I shove my laptop, charger, and cellphone into the bag next. How could he ask me something like that? I think as I angrily cram my notebook into the bag. By the time I pull my purse from the bottom desk drawer, I have an audience.

  “Bad timing?” Mia interrupts, a steaming mug of coffee in her hand. “Where are you off to?”

  I have not a single clue. There’s no good excuse for my actions save the truth and I sure as hell can’t tell her that. Or can I?

  “Barrett Fox. Mia, honestly, what were you thinking with this story? Why me? Why him?”

  “Come on, sweets.” She grips my arm and once again I’m being dragged off to parts unknown. My deflection worked a little too well.

  I’m now sitting in her office, my butt in a chair while she leans over her desk, her hair frizzy and frightening.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, and my response is naked shock. “I hope this isn’t what caused you and North to break up.”

  “How do you—?”

  “Is it?”

  “No. Not at all.” It’s not a secret, and it’s not hard to guess she overheard me on the phone with him or mentioning it to Nanci.

  “This assignment is a marketing ploy. You and Barrett are opposites in every way. It makes for a great story. His writing has this blatantly clumsy edge, and yours has this sharp, pinpoint snap. Readers are going to eat this up.”

  I rub an aching spot over one eyebrow as I come to a conclusion. “You knew we wouldn’t get along.”