At the end of a department-head meeting, my boss popped in, introduced the new director of sales, then—because he had an unexpected meeting with a client—asked if someone wouldn't mind showing him around.
Wouldn't mind?
Ah, hell no.
Because Noah Rivera was easy on the eyes.
And had the best smile ever.
But wait. That’s not why I stuck my hand in the air.
“I’ll be happy to show him around,” I offered.
I did it because I liked to help.
Always had, always would.
“Why, thank you very much for being my tour guide,” Noah said as we walked down the hall and I showed him the food labs at our chocolate company.
“I like to wear all sorts of hats. Head of marketing, captain of the softball team, and chief tour guide.”
He stopped in his tracks. “Whoa. Did you just say softball team?”
I laughed. “Yes. Is that a surprise?”
“No. It’s just—could this day get any better? I love softball.”
I nudged his elbow.
Wait, did I just nudge his elbow?
Must behave.
I tried to make light of it. “Then you really ought to join our team. We have a ton of fun playing with the other food companies in the city.”
He shot me a quizzical look. “And you like sports leagues? Like, really like them?”
“Sure. My daughter’s school is right near the park, so it works out perfectly. She’ll meet me at Central Park and work on homework during the games.”
His eyes swept down to my hand. Was he hunting for a ring? Well, he wouldn’t find one.
“That is so cool that you’re into—I mean, that Heavenly has a softball team. I’m fired up to join.”
I flashed him a smile. “And I’m fired up you want to join.”
I gave him the rest of the tour, popping by to say hi to other key team members, saving the best for last.
When we reached the corporate cafeteria, I swept my arm out wide. “And the best part? Heavenly has fabulous food. Yummy soups and delicious salads, and all sorts of options if you’re a vegetarian or gluten-free, or what have you.”
He nodded appreciatively at the spread. “This is going to be perfect.”
I glanced at my watch. It was twelve thirty.
“Want to get something to eat?”
He smiled brightly. “Is everyone here as friendly as you?”
I shrugged playfully. “We do have a great group of people. That’s why I’ve been here for more than a decade.” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not for nothing, they do call me Ambassador Ginny.”
He offered a hand. “Have I mentioned what a pleasure it is to meet you, Ambassador Ginny?”
“And it's a pleasure to meet you, Noah.”
See, I did all that because I’m helpful.
Not because I was totally perving on the hot new guy.
We sat down and had lunch together, and that’s when I made the biggest mistake.
“Tell me more about you.”
I learned he lived in Queens, a few blocks from his family, had dinner with his parents every Sunday, and liked to play soccer with his older sister’s youngest son.
He was a freaking twenty-five-year-old family man.
Thanks, universe, for the temptation.
His Prologue
She was friendly. Outgoing. Liked softball. Could talk up a storm.
She was also sexy as hell.
Oh, and she had an Australian accent.
Nothing hotter in all the world.
It was official.
I was falling in love.
1
Noah
I hear my favorite sound when I head to the break room to grab a bottle of water. The sound of a certain woman.
“You know how it is, right?”
That sexy voice. Gets me every time. In the you-know-where.
Ginny is pouring a cup of coffee and talking to a gal who works in operations. “I hear ya,” the woman, Julie, says.
“You’re just so overwhelmed, you try to do two things at once all the time, like you suddenly think you’re superwoman, and you can both wash dishes and dry them at the same time.”
Julie chuckles. “Or fold laundry at the exact moment that you’re cooking.”
“What a skill set. Don’t I wish I could do that.”
“I’d also like to be able to sleep and exercise simultaneously.”
Ginny high-fives Julie. “That’s how it is being a mom. You’re completely convinced you can do everything, and then you get really cocky, and also totally overwhelmed, so you try to do two diametrically opposed things at once that never work. Like brush your teeth and pee.”
“Girl, that never works.”
“Which leads me to my point. All this superwoman stuff—we can have it all—is just a bunch of poppycock. We’re simply trying to do it all, and we fail at all the things that way. For instance, how can I truly do one of the gazillion things on my to-do list while I’m working out? Too hard to answer email. Can’t fold laundry and exercise. And I’ve yet to figure out how to sweep the floors while I’m on the treadmill.”
I figure this is my chance to cut in since working out is my hobby, my passion, my second favorite physical activity. I turn the corner into the room. “You could try doing squats while you brush your teeth,” I offer in as friendly a way as possible. “After all, isn’t that a great use of time? That’s totally achievable. I do that every day, in fact. I always do squats and lunges while I brush my teeth, and I use my electric toothbrush, which runs for a full two minutes. You do thirty seconds on each quadrant of your mouth, so I do lunges on each side. Right, left, right, left, boom, done.”
I do a few squats and a couple of lunges to demonstrate.
The redhead, oh the glorious, gorgeous redhead Ginny—who’s become a colleague, a teammate, a friend, and a lunch companion, which is thoroughly awesome because lunch is one of my three favorite meals, the others being breakfast and dinner—stares at me curiously, her lips quirking up.
“Are you saying I need to do squats, Noah?”
I gulp. I did not mean to insult her at all. All I want is to shower her with compliments. “No, your legs are—”
“You think I’m not working out enough?”
Abort, abort, abort.
I grab the steering wheel of the plane, and I try to fly it out of the crash landing that I’m about to careen into.
The last thing I want is for the woman I’m totally hot for to think she’s anything less than a ten. No, a one hundred. No, a one thousand on the scale of total freaking gorgeousness, charm, and personality.
She’s the warmest, friendliest gal I’ve ever met and has been since day one. If I could just figure out how to get her to see me in a new way.
I point furiously at the legs in question. “No, God no. Your legs are toned, tanned, and perfect.”
I mentally slap myself upside the head. Am I allowed to say that in the workplace? I have no idea what I’m allowed to do in the workplace anymore.
Julie snickers. “I feel like it might be my cue to go. Seems you two have a lot of multitasking and exercise life hacks to chat about.”
She exits as Ginny arches a brow and says, “I’ll have you know, I do try to do squats, because they are good for your legs.”
“They’re great for your legs. I pray at the altar of squats every single day.”
She taps her chin. “But I did kind of think”—Ginny drops her voice to a naughty whisper—“that squats were good for your butt . . .” She trails off, her eyes drifting as if she’s checking out her own rear end. Oh, I would like to be looking out of her sockets right now and staring at her fine ass. Not that I haven’t checked out her cheeks every single time she strolls down the hall. Yes, I like her personality, but I dig her looks too.
A lot.
I’m confident, though, that I can’t compliment her butt. That’s
definitely not cool in the workplace.
“Your legs . . .”
Hold on. I don’t know if I’m even allowed to say her legs are perfect. Is that verboten? What the hell am I allowed to say to a woman I work with anymore? We’re lateral here at Heavenly. It’s not like I’m her boss or vice versa, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to hit on a woman at work.
“My legs are strong,” she says with a smile, finishing my half-said sentence. “I live in a fifth-floor walk-up, so I’ve already managed to combine exercise and transportation. See, that’s the one thing I have mastered multitasking.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. We’re on the same wavelength, so I decide to push a little further past the work zone. “Well, that’s awesome. Also, aren’t electric toothbrushes good for, ya know, other things?”
Her grin is the definition of wicked. “Noah, are you about to say something vastly inappropriate about electric toothbrushes?”
“I don’t know what I possibly could have been saying,” I say, as cheeky and innocent as possible.
She steps closer, her eyes tap-dancing with delight. “Were you going to say that using an electric toothbrush is a euphemism for using something else?”
I part my lips to speak when she flashes me a smile, presses a finger to her lips, and says, “We’ll just pretend neither one of us mentioned battery-operated devices.”
She exits in a cloud of honeysuckle copper hair and an Aussie accent that turns me all the way on. And yes, as she walks down the hall, I watch her walk away.
Someday, someday soon, I’m going to come up with a proper plan for how to woo Ginny Perretti.
2
Ginny
Groan.
Epic groan.
Absolutely epic groan worthy of a meme.
What was I thinking?
It’s a question I write in my idea notebook in big, blocky letters. Then, because I want to make sure I remember it, I do a 3-D outline of the block letters.
What were you thinking, self?
I can’t lead him on. Even though, my God, he is one of the cutest men I have ever seen. Cute as in red-hot, want to jump him, sexy as sin. But he’s a boy, that’s what I have to remind myself.
He’s twenty-freaking-five.
What the hell would I do with a twenty-five-year-old? What would we talk about?
The same things you have been talking about.
I tell that voice to shut up.
Because those arms, that face, that dusting of scruff. The whole picture of Noah Rivera is everything I shouldn’t want.
You don’t need a younger man.
I write it again.
And again.
And again.
I shift gears from my reminder, scrawling out my ideas for our next marketing campaign, repeating silently, He’s too young for me.
That’s the trouble.
I’ve always been drawn to younger guys, and they’re always dangerous. They’re not serious, they don’t have their act together, they don’t know how to take care of you. Even though I absolutely do not, in any way, shape, or form need a man to take care of me, I do need someone I don’t have to mother.
I’m thirty-five and I have a ten-year-old daughter. I’m a single mom, and I’ve only ever been a single mom.
My daughter’s father left me before she was born, and I raise her all by myself. That’s why I don’t need yet another young guy in my life, someone who can’t compute what it’s like to have responsibilities. After all, he’s the man who has enough free time to train for marathons, play in the company softball league, do a kickass amazing job as the director of sales, and probably get a full night’s rest too. He might be exceedingly excellent at playing the Uncle Noah role, but c’mon. As endearing as that is, it’s not the same as actually having everyday responsibilities of the permanent kind. I have to remind myself of that every time I feel tempted.
My boss taps the door to my office. “Idea,” he announces.
I turn around and wave at the man the other ladies call Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. They might as well add “Unavailable” to his business card, because Leo wears unattainable like a cologne. Works for me, since we’re friends and only ever will be buds. I have this crazy hunch he’s still carrying a torch for a woman from his past, but he doesn’t like to talk about mushy stuff, so I don’t prod too much about the woman named Lulu. A woman I’ve noticed him looking at pictures of on his phone now and then. “Hey, Leo. What ideas are rattling around in that big old brain of yours?”
He strokes his chin. “What’s rattling is this. The Big Chocolate Show is coming up soon.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
I raise my hand like I have the answer in class. “That we’re going to gorge ourselves on chocolate to successfully achieve the nirvana state known as a chocolate coma?”
He taps his skull. “You can indeed read my mind. Because I do fully expect us to sample as much as we possibly can.”
I pat my stomach. “I’m in. I’m awesome at chocolate sampling. You ever need help with that, you call on me.”
“You’re the only one I would ever call on.” He clears his throat. “But in all seriousness, what I was really thinking was at the show we should look for the next rising star.”
I bounce on my toes at the prospect of finding a top chocolatier to design a line of craft chocolates for Heavenly. “Yes, that was actually the real mind meld that I was receiving from you. Brilliant idea, and I’m going to be on the lookout.”
That’s what I focus on this afternoon: devising a strategy for the upcoming trade show. I don’t at all think about the young, sexy, muscular, perfect-bodied, Michael Peña look-alike who tried to make an electric toothbrush is like a vibrator joke.
I might, though, use one of those devices tonight while thinking about him—and it’s definitely not the electric toothbrush.
The next day, in the break room, I find Noah digging into a kale salad.
That’s a sign right there. I despise kale, and Noah likes it.
All I have to do is focus on things I dislike, and I’ll get rid of my desire for him.
I mime gagging.
3
Noah
I take the bait.
“Hmm. I get the feeling you’re trying to say you don’t like kale? Is that what you’re saying, Gin-meister?”
She rolls her eyes. “Noah, no one likes kale.”
I stand tall and proud in front of the podium in kale defense. “Not true. I love it, love it, love it. Like adore it. I think it’s one of the greatest foods ever.”
She shoots me a skeptical look. “That’s not possible.”
“No, it is possible. See?” I take another bite and I chew, smiling and humming as I go. Oh, that was a bit of a mistake, because kale definitely takes a couple of years to chew through, and that’s going to make it harder for me to talk, and talking is absolutely one of my strong suits when it comes to Ginny. Except it’s also my wild card still, because what if I say something that turns her off? Screw it. I’m the eternal optimist, so I choose to believe everything will all be good. “I love kale, and I bet you can too.”
“But you’re a health nut,” she says. “That means you have to love it.”
“By virtue of being a card-carrying eater of veggies and protein?”
“Yes, you’re a flag-waving member.”
“Ha, you said ‘member.’”
She laughs.
Like I said, the mouth is a wild card. “And kale is delicious.”
“Maybe to someone who never eats chocolate,” she suggests, her brow furrowing. God, she’s adorable when she argues. She gets a little crinkle between her eyebrows that I want to run my finger over, that I want to press my lips against, that I want to kiss.
And I officially have it bad for this woman if the crinkle in her forehead gets me excited. “I bet you’ve never had a roasted sesame seed kale salad, have you?”
She pretends to wretch.
/> “How about kale mixed with brussels sprouts and lemon?”
She clutches her stomach. “Are you trying to make it sound as awful and miserable as possible?”
I laugh. “Ginny, you don’t know what you’re missing.” When it comes to kale and men.
“I am definitely not missing kale.”
I set down my salad bowl, reach for her arm, and wrap my hand around it. She’s quiet at first, and so am I, because, hello, did I just kind of make a move by touching her arm? And does it actually feel better than how a hand wrapped around an arm should feel?
She lets her eyes drift to my palm, and I swear she trembles slightly, a little shudder that makes me think she likes it when I touch her. Makes me want to go for it with her. It emboldens me.
“Let me make you a kale treat,” I say in my best sexy voice.
She smiles softly. Kind of sexy. A little sweet too. As I let go of her arm, her fingers trail down my wrist.
Holy kale smoothie, she is flirting with me, and I have a leafy vegetable to thank.
She pins her gaze on me, her eyes fierce, her expression playful. “Bring it on, Noah Rivera.”
There. Right there. When a woman uses your full name, it’s definitely a sign. A sign of something good.
So I keep it up. No need to stop the volley now. “And if I prove you like kale? What then? What happens if I win the great kale battle?”
“It’s a contest?”
“Hell yeah. Contests are awesome.”
She laughs. “Fine. If I win, you have to make my next PowerPoint.”
I scoff. She probably thinks it’s a punishment. Little does she know nothing gets me down, not even PowerPoints. I’m actually ridiculously good at them, and I tell her as much.
“Ginny, I’m the master of PowerPoints. You can count me in.”
“The master of PowerPoints, you say? Tell me what other talents you have. Can you fold laundry?”
I puff out my chest. “I can fold laundry, I can do my own laundry. I’m fully house-trained,” I pause, then add, “in chores.”
Dating Mr. Right: Four Standalone Romantic Comedies Page 17
