Love on Lexington Avenue

by Layne, Lauren

  My loins?

  He stood slowly, giving Claire a boyish smile. “No, thank you, ma’am.”

  “Claire,” she corrected, feeling a little fluttery at the rather perfect smile. “ ‘Ma’am’ makes me feel old.”

  She ignored the knowing look Scott gave her from across the room. Compared to him, you are old.

  Instead, she tried to channel confident, sensual woman. Like Naomi and the guy at the home improvement store. Like Audrey and anyone.

  “Claire, then,” Dean said, grinning again. “Good to meet you.”

  Oh God, he had a chin dimple. Was he even real?

  “Do you work with Scott often?” she asked, scrambling for something to say.

  Dean lifted his broad shoulders. “Nah, he’s not in town much. I like to be available when he calls, but this is really just a side gig for extra cash.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s your main gig?” She immediately dropped her hand to her side when she realized she’d been on her way to literally twirling her hair. God, she was even more out of practice with flirting than she’d realized.

  “Acting. Well, modeling mostly, but when I get my big break . . .”

  This time it was harder to ignore Scott’s knowing look, but she determinedly kept her eyes on Dean. “What sort of acting do you do?” she asked, noting that there were no signs of tattoos peeking out from beneath his T-shirt. She wondered if that applied to the rest of him. She rather hoped so. She’d never understood tattoos, and it seemed a shame to mark up all that perfection.

  Scott deliberately stepped into Claire’s view behind Dean’s back and made a quick swipe of his thumb on the side of his mouth, as though indicating that she should wipe up her drool.

  “Commercials so far,” Dean said, oblivious to Scott’s antics. “But I’ve been an extra a few times on primetime. You may have seen me . . .”

  He named a few procedural dramas that Claire had heard of but never seen, and she wracked her brain for something dazzling to say.

  Scott interrupted before she got inspired. “Hey, Dean, I feel like an ass. I just realized I never asked . . . how the hell is your wife? Newlywed life treating you well?”

  Claire’s eyes went wide, and she glanced from Scott, back to Dean, praying that Scott had made some sort of mistake . . .

  “It’s good!” Dean said with a happy smile. “Even better now that we’ve moved into a bigger apartment. Juliana’s having a great time decorating. Wouldn’t mind picking your brain on what to do with our kitchen though; we’re trying to find ways to modernize it without too much expense . . .”

  Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  She’d just gotten a tiny glimpse of what Audrey and Naomi must have felt knowing they’d been flirting with a married man without realizing it.

  It was horrifying.

  Beyond.

  Claire slowly backed out of the room as Dean and Scott began talking about garbage disposals. Her pride was stinging hard. Flirting with a younger man was one thing. Flirting badly was slightly embarrassing. Flirting badly with a married younger man?

  “Kill me,” she said out loud, walking back toward the kitchen.

  Worst of all, Scott had seen it. No, wait. That wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that Scott had known Dean was married and let her go out on that limb anyway. It was wrong to feel betrayed. Even more stupid to feel stung, but she did, just a little.

  She knew the guy was gruff and a little rough around the edges. She somehow hadn’t expected him to be mean.

  Bob joined her in the kitchen as she pulled out a rotisserie chicken and began pulling off pieces for her salad.

  “Your father’s an ass; you know that, right?” Claire asked the dog.

  Bob’s butt was planted on the floor, her tail wagging furiously in what Claire was pretty sure was agreement. “Yeah,” Claire said, as she broke off a big chunk of meat and fed it to the dog. “You totally know that.”

  Chapter Seven

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 9

  It wasn’t one of his favorite pastimes, but Scott could admit when he’d been an ass. Today had been one of those days. Scott had known the second he’d seen Claire gawking at Dean what was going on. He’d hired Dean enough times to know the sort of response the bronzed, beefy kid elicited from women.

  Somehow, though, Scott had been surprised—and annoyed—to see that Dean’s brawn had had its usual effect on Claire Hayes. The woman seemed far too levelheaded to drool over a gym rat who was a good guy but had the conversational skills of a saltine.

  And yet, she had. She’d found Dean hot, her word, and for some perverse reason, the whole situation had gotten under Scott’s skin. Enough so that he’d avoided taking the high road and letting her know Dean’s marital status. Instead, he’d let her flutter and titter around the kid.

  Scott wasn’t proud of it. Especially since his motives for not telling her had seemed to come awfully close to jealousy. She could not have made it clearer that touching Scott that morning hadn’t done it for her.

  And then a twenty-something beefcake rolled in, and she’d practically swooned.

  Scott liked Dean well enough. The kid was more reliable than most and didn’t drive Scott up the wall. But the thought of Claire with a slightly dim model seemed all sorts of wrong, even as he knew it was hypocritical. Scott had hooked up with plenty of twenty-something aspiring actresses himself, many of whom had been eloquent and informed and others who knew very few words beyond like.

  But that was him. He was practiced at this sort of thing, knew exactly how to extricate himself from the bedroom after the main event without anyone getting hurt. Claire, on the other hand; he was betting she didn’t have the first clue about how to have a relationship with a man without getting her emotions involved. She was a woman who had an entire room of her dead husband’s belongings upstairs; her emotions were definitely a mess, whether she realized it or not.

  He rubbed at his chest, acknowledging the slight tightness that had been there ever since she’d stormed out of the house earlier. The things he’d said to her about Brayden had been overstepping in a big way. They’d been borderline cruel, and while he knew he could be blunt, mean didn’t sit right with him.

  He should have apologized the second she came back into the house with that stupid pink beverage. Instead, he’d let her throw herself at Dean. Scott cursed softly as he replayed the horrified embarrassment on her cheeks when she’d learned Dean was married, the pink cheeks of humiliation that he could have spared her.

  Damn it.

  It was half past six by the time Scott wrapped for the day, closer to seven by the time he ran his errand and made it back to her place. Claire looked up in surprise when she saw him standing in her kitchen entryway. “Oh! I thought you’d left for the day.”

  “Left, yes. But not for the day. You thought I’d left Bob?”

  She glanced to her right, where Bob sat adoringly staring at whatever Claire was stirring on the stove. He didn’t blame the dog. It smelled delicious.

  Claire gave a slight frown. “I guess I forgot Bob had to go home.”

  “You two have come a long way since earlier,” he observed.

  “We called a truce,” Claire replied. “I agreed to share my chicken earlier, and she agreed not to kill me in a vicious dog mauling.”

  “Yes, because that was definitely a risk,” he replied dryly.

  Claire tilted her head. “What do you think about calling her Bobsie? It’s more feminine.”

  “Veto.”

  “Yeah, but you owe me,” Claire said, giving him a dark look as she stirred. “I realize we aren’t friends, but that was straight up mean today. You could have told me he was freaking married.”

  “I know.”

  She didn’t look up from the stove until he stepped forward, his apology gift extended. She stared at it in confusion. “What’s this?”

  “Peace offering.”

  Claire set her wooden spoon on a plate beside the stove and, turning
around fully, reached for the bottle of wine. “It’s pink.”

  “Yeah, well.” He shoved his hands into his jeans, feeling atypically embarrassed. “You seem to be a fan of the color in your home. I thought you might like your wine that way, too.”

  She looked up at him. “You bought rosé? My brain can’t even comprehend that.”

  “I admit it was a first for me. I can’t promise it’s any good, but the guy at the wine shop around the corner insisted it was the best he had.”

  Claire held up the bottle. “He’s right. I’ve had it, and it’s excellent. It’s also expensive.”

  Scott shrugged. “Good thing I’m loaded then.”

  She let out a startled laugh at his blunt announcement.

  “You are . . .” She studied him, looking for the right words. “Not like other people.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Well, don’t,” she mused, looking back at the wine. “I’m not entirely sure I like you.”

  He smiled, enjoying her bluntness, especially because he expected it wasn’t typical of her. Claire Hayes struck him as the type of woman who had an endless supply of polite banalities at the tip of her tongue for every situation, and yet she didn’t bother using them with him.

  A fact that strangely pleased him.

  She continued to study the wine, a frown on her face.

  “Everything all right?”

  Claire met his eyes. “You’re undercharging me.”

  Yes. “How do you figure?”

  She held up the wine bottle. “This isn’t just expensive, it’s very expensive. Which makes me think you weren’t joking just now when you claimed to be loaded. And yet, based on the contract I signed yesterday, you underbid every single other contractor I talked to by a lot, and none of them have your expertise.”

  “Was there a compliment in there somehow, or . . .”

  She set the bottle on the counter, refusing to be deterred. “I don’t want you doing me favors.”

  “Noted.”

  Claire merely looked at him, her hazel gaze steady and patient. Waiting for an explanation.

  Scott was no stranger to stubborn staring contests, though usually they were for the opposite reason—a client hoping to wear him down to a lower price.

  Scott always won those staring contests, but not this one.

  He sighed and relented. “Fine. I undercharged you.”

  “Because I’m a poor little widow?”

  “I’m not that nice,” he said bluntly. “But then, you seem to have figured that out already.”

  Her lips twitched in a half smile. “Then why?”

  Knowing she wanted the honest answer, Scott gave it to her. “Most of my clients are enormous corporations with nearly limitless budgets. If I charged you what I normally charge, you couldn’t afford it.”

  “No, probably not,” she agreed. “So why not just politely decline my little house renovation and move on?”

  “I intended to.”

  She blinked, and he felt a surge of satisfaction that he’d been able to catch this unshakable woman off guard, even in a small way.

  “What changed your mind?”

  He crossed his arms and shifted his feet, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. He didn’t know how to explain to people that his work was as much feeling as it was numbers and supplies and good, old-fashioned elbow grease.

  “The front door knocker,” he evaded. “It was just so god-awful, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing one of those was still in existence.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, Mr. Turner,” she said with a slight smile, turning back to the stove.

  He didn’t deny it. He was a terrible liar—he didn’t have much use for lying, and thus didn’t have much practice. Still, he didn’t know whether he was surprised or disappointed that she was apparently going to let him off the hook. That she wasn’t going to press him to explain that he’d simply stepped into the home and felt it—the sense that he needed to put his mark on this place.

  Or the fact that as much as he loved to travel, he’d jumped at the excuse to sleep in his own bed, in his own city. To eat something other than microwave dinners and room service. To see his freaking dog.

  So, no. He didn’t need Claire’s money.

  What he needed was a chance to catch his breath. To remember what it felt like to enjoy life instead of just going through the motions. He wasn’t exactly sure how or why an unremarkable brownstone off of Lexington Avenue was the answer, but somehow . . . it was.

  Scott told Claire none of this.

  Instead, he pointed at an ugly pink tile on her counter. “No. Hell no.”

  She turned around, her gaze following the direction of his finger, and gave a slow, satisfied smile. “Oh, this?” She picked up the tile and held it up for inspection. “I picked this out just for you. I was thinking it could be the floor and the walls of the powder room.”

  “Good God. You can’t—”

  She laughed, delighted by his expression, before tossing the tile sample aside. “That was exactly what I was hoping for when I picked it up today.”

  He sagged a little in relief. He knew this wasn’t his home, but he didn’t know if he could bring himself to place the ugly 1950s-style tile in anyone’s home. “So we’re not going with that?”

  “No.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a white marble sample. “I haven’t figured out the walls yet, but I’m crushing pretty hard on this for the floors. I just have to figure out if I can afford it. You may be giving me a discount for mysterious reasons, but suppliers are not cheap.”

  He was already reaching for the tile, relieved that the woman wasn’t entirely without taste.

  “Is it too white?” she asked, sounding unexpectedly vulnerable.

  “Too white?”

  “I told myself I didn’t want to go blah, and I figure white is as blah as it gets. And yet, I keep coming back to that one.”

  “What were the other options, pink sequins? Magenta-stained wood?”

  She gave him a quelling look as she pulled a corkscrew out of the drawer and reached for the wine bottle.

  “There’s white, and then there’s white,” Scott told her.

  “Clears it right up. Thank you.”

  He ran a finger around the edge of the marble, trying to figure out how to explain. Wondering why he even wanted to. Typically, he told his clients what they wanted, and they nodded and agreed, or they found another contractor. This project was different. She was different. Though how, he was still figuring out.

  “When you talk about blah white, you’re talking about using white as the absence of color. A drab blank canvas with no personality, no vision. It’s how most people use white in a home. They tell themselves they’re selecting neutral, but really they just lack the guts to commit to one thing, so they choose something that will go with everything.”

  He glanced up and found her listening with rapt attention.

  “Other whites,” he said, continuing to rotate the piece of marble with his finger, “like this one, are deliberate whites. See the strands of silver? The glimmer? The vibrant richness of the white? You didn’t choose this because it goes with everything. You chose it because it is the thing. That’s the difference.”

  Neither of them said anything for a long moment, and Scott was fully braced for her to make a polite excuse to get him out the door. Scott didn’t try to express himself often; he knew he wasn’t good at it . . .

  Claire held up the wine bottle. “If I open this, will you have a glass, or does that threaten your manhood?”

  He exhaled slightly in relief, strangely pleased that she wanted him to stay.

  She misunderstood his lack of response and shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t have any beer in the fridge, but I’ve got some red wine and a couple of other liquor bottles up there.” She pointed to the cupboard above the fridge. “Brayden liked whisky, you’re welcome to help yourself. Unless
that stuff expires.”

  He reached out, took the bottle from her. “I think I’ll take my chances with the pink wine over a dead man’s booze.”

  “You can stay for dinner. If you want. It’s just chili, but it’s pretty good if you’re okay with spice.”

  He felt another of those unfamiliar surges of pleasure at the invitation, though he kept his tone indifferent. “Okay. Might as well, since I’m not sure I could drag Bob away just yet.”

  “Me and Bobsie have bonded, haven’t we, sweetheart?” She crouched down to pet the dog with both hands, and he searched for wineglasses.

  “If I get a dog.” she said, rubbing Bob’s ears, “I’m getting a big dog just like this one.”

  “Says the woman who thought she was a dinosaur. And you say that now, but you haven’t had to pick up her poops yet.” He poured two glasses of wine, a generous one for her, smaller for him. He had to drive and wasn’t at all sure he’d even like the pale pink liquid.

  Claire winced at the poop mention as she stood and accepted the glass he held up. “I’d forgotten that part of owning a dog in Manhattan.”

  She started to take a drink, then lowered her glass and looked at him. “I just realized I don’t know where you live. Manhattan?”

  He nodded. “And Brooklyn.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve got a place over on Sixtieth and Eleventh Avenue, but I kept my place in Bushwick. I keep meaning to rent one out, but I can never decide which.”

  That was only part of the truth. The whole truth was that not having options made him itchy. Picking a place seemed like the first step to settling down, and that’s not something he wanted. Hadn’t wanted in a long time.

  “Huh. I’d never have pegged you for a Manhattan guy.”

  “Yeah, well. My neighborhood and your neighborhood are not the same Manhattan.”

  “True,” she said, sipping the wine. “Which does Bob like better?”

  Scott shrugged. “I’ve got a little yard in Brooklyn, so probably that one. But Manhattan means a shorter commute from your place, so at the moment, I think she likes that one.”

  “She’ll be coming with you every day now,” Claire said matter-of-factly.