by Robin Kaye
The incredible women who make up the Valley Forge Romance Writers.
My agent—Kevan Lyon, for all you do.
My Sourcebooks Casablanca team: Dominique Raccah, my publisher; Danielle Jackson, my publicist; my editor and friend, Deb Werksman; and all the Casablanca authors I’ve grown to know and love.
And finally to my friends at the Carlisle Crossing Starbucks who keep me laughing and fueled up while I work.
Copyright © 2009 by Robin Kaye
Cover and internal design © 2009 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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WC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
“From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.”
—Helen Hayes
This book is dedicated to my parents. My father, Richard J. Williams; my mother, Angela Orlando Feiler; and my stepfather, George Feiler, who always inspired and fed my love of books and laughter. Thanks for giving me wings.
Chapter 1
REBECCA LARSEN SHOULDERED OPEN THE DOOR OF HER new Park Slope apartment and surveyed the wreckage. A pizza box lay open on the coffee table, containing the remnants of a sausage and mushroom pizza of indeterminate age. By this point, Becca was on her last nerve. Her cat had shrieked for the entire trip from Philadelphia to Brooklyn, and as Becca gazed about the room, she began to feel a sensation akin to entering the Twilight Zone.
Annabelle, Becca’s best friend, sister-in-law, and resident of the apartment until two weeks ago, wasn’t a neatnik by any stretch of the imagination, but Becca had never seen her leave this much of a mess. Empty beer bottles littered the remaining space on the coffee table, and a pair of very large shoes lay underneath. Men’s shoes. Becca’s sense of unease escalated. It definitely looked as if there was a man living there. Yep, the XXL fleece hoodie thrown on the couch was her first clue; the second was the singing that came from the direction of the bathroom seconds after the hiss of the shower started.
Becca grabbed the baseball bat she found leaning against the wall by the closet and skulked to the bedroom. The bed was unmade, which wasn’t startling, but the collection of men’s jeans hanging off every surface as well as a mess of jockey shorts and socks on the floor certainly was. Not as much, though, as the voice coming from the shower. It was a rich bass baritone, and if she wasn’t mistaken, he was singing an old ’40s tune. God, who sings songs from the ’40s? Whoever it was had a smooth, smoky, sexy-as-hell voice that was hot enough to make a woman melt like chocolate in a two thousand-degree kiln. The guy in the shower had one hell of a voice. Too bad he was also going to have one hell of a bruise.
She spent some time thinking about whether she should hit him while he was in the shower or wait until he got out. He’d gotten through the first stanza of his song and the whole chorus before she decided to wait until he emerged. The shower curtain might severely curtail the speed at which the bat would hit, and then there was the problem of proper aim.
Pushing the door open with the end of the bat, she watched the steam roll toward her and bring with it the scent of yummy-man. A man who smelled like that at any other time would have her following him just to get a whiff. His scent was clean, with citrus and spice overtones that made her mouth water. The body that stepped out of the shower bare-ass-naked stole the breath from her lungs, the attack plan from her memory, and made her thankful she was a woman who could appreciate the human form because she’d never seen one finer. Her eyes wandered back to his face just in time to see the corner of his full lips lift to form a grin. If looked at separately, each part of his face—the Roman nose, sapphire blue eyes, curled spiky black eye lashes—was almost pretty, but something about the way they fit together and the addition of his five-o’clock-shadow-before-noon, stole the prettiness from his face and made it arrestingly gorgeous. He was the Sicilian version of a Greek god. He had to be the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in person, and as a sculptor, she’d seen more than her fair share of beautiful people. Too bad she disliked him.
Rich Ronaldi looked over his shoulder to find his sister’s best friend staring wide-eyed at his bare ass. Well, maybe it wasn’t only his ass she stared at because when he turned, she got a load of the full monty.
Becca rested the end of the bat she carried on the floor. “Excuse me, but what the hell are you doing here?”
Rich had never been the shy type, but the women who got a load of him in the buff were usually invited to do so. Becca, Miss prim-and-proper-ice-princess, wasn’t. He wished he knew where the damn towels were. He’d just moved in, well, in a figurative sense of the word. He’d stayed there for a few days, and he had a towel somewhere, but knowing himself, it was on the floor along with his dirty socks and underwear.
If he’d known she’d be coming by, he’d have kicked them into the closet or at least under the bed. But then, Becca was the last woman he’d expected to darken his doorstep. He had no clue why, but since their first meeting, he got the distinct impression she wasn’t overly fond of him. “How did you get in here?”
Becca didn’t seem to grasp the fact that standing naked in front of a woman who wouldn’t normally give him the time of day is not the most comfortable thing to do. She didn’t turn away or hand him a towel, not that there was one at hand. He brushed past her into the bedroom, saw a towel hanging off the footboard of his bed, and quickly tied it around his waist. The only reaction he saw from Becca was a blink.
“I used my key. What are you doing in my bedroom, taking a shower in my bathroom, which is conveniently located in my apartment?”
Rich let out a laugh. “Hold on. I’m the one asking the questions here. This is my apartment. I’m leasing it from Rosalie and Nick.”
She crossed her arms, the action pulling her baggy sweatshirt taut across her chest. A chest he forgot she even had. When he realized he was staring, he returned his gaze to her face and found her rolling her eyes.
“You’re impossible. So is your story since I’m subletting the apartment from Annabelle. It was her apartment, and now it’s mine. You need to leave.”
She looked like one of those sexy Anime cartoon characters. She was tall, just a few inches shorter than his own 6’3”, and thin with long, long legs and short, choppy, platinum blonde, perpetually tussled hair that gave her a sexy as hell, just-been-fucked look. Rich mimicked her stance, careful not to spread his legs wide enough to dislodge the towel, though it would serve her right if he did. “You’re wrong. Rosalie and Nick own the apartment. They rented it to Annabelle, who has since moved out. I moved in. If anyone is leaving, it’s you.”
“Well then, we have a problem. Because as of right now, I’m living here.”
“Not with me, you’re not.”
“Exactly.”
He waved his arm to encompass the whole apartment, and the whole mess he had scattered across it. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“The only possession I see here is your mess. Everything I own that’s not in storage is now in the living room, so, in that respect, as in others too numerous to count, you come up…” She looked him
up and down with a critical eye. “…decidedly short.”
Rich had half a mind to whip off his towel just to show her how very short he wasn’t. He was a man comfortable with his body and his um… size. Shit, he’d never had any complaints in that department, and from the look in Becca’s eyes when she ogled him—and it was an ogle—she didn’t have any complaints either. He was sure she was just trying to get a rise out of him, which she wouldn’t. She wasn’t his type.
No, Rich’s type was a woman like his girlfriend, Gina: a little bombshell. She was all black-haired, copper-eyed, and built like a woman. She was a barely five-foot package of pure TNT. Gina dressed like a woman. You’d never find her wearing an old sweatshirt five sizes too big and a pair of low-slung baggy jeans. “Shit.” He looked at the clock. He was going to be late. He was meeting his dean at the Harvard Club and then heading uptown for a date with Gina. “I don’t have time to talk about this. I have somewhere to be. Why don’t you go out to the living room and let me get dressed. I’ll call Nick and Rosalie on my way and find out what to do about this mess. You can spend the night tonight because I have other plans, but I have to tell you, babe, you’re gonna be looking for another place to rent.”
Becca pulled her cell off her jeans and flipped it open. “I’m not leaving until after I’ve spoken to Mike and Annabelle. We’ll see who’ll be combing Craigslist for a place to hang his mess. And let me tell you, babe, it’s not going to be me.”
Rich didn’t bother to wait for Becca to leave before reaching for his towel. Thankfully, she stormed out and slammed the bedroom door behind her. Rich found a clean pair of jockeys and pulled them on wondering what else could happen. He went to the closet, ripped the plastic off his dry cleaning, and slid on his lucky shirt—the blue one everyone said matched his eyes. He looked around for his favorite pair of 501s, stepped into them, and while he buttoned the fly he scrounged around for clean socks. He had to go for the emergency pair of red socks he’d gotten for Valentine’s Day last year. He hated them but kept them in his gym bag for emergencies. It looked as if he had to wear his boots to hide the damn socks, and sometime in the next day he either had to do figure out how to do laundry, find a laundry service close by, or go to his mother’s. He tried to remember if he picked up the last of his laundry he left there. After stuffing his wallet in his back pocket, he slid on his watch and ran his hand through his hair. Perfect. Well, perfect except for the temporary lodger banging around in the next room.
Becca paced the apartment waiting for Rich to dress. The man was completely exasperating. Moving to Brooklyn meant she’d be the only single female in a gaggle of couples. The payoff for overlooking all that togetherness was that she’d be close to her newfound brother, her best friend turned sister-in-law, and her little niece- or nephew-to-be. She could always sneak out of whatever stifling function she was talked into and escape to her own apartment if it got to be too uncomfortable. She just didn’t expect to be stuck moving in with the only other unmarried person she knew in Brooklyn. The fact that Rich Ronaldi had played a starring role in all her fantasies since the day she met him only added to the numerous reasons that he was the last man she wanted to be alone with. He was a regular menace.
When he stepped out, he’d gone from Mr. Wet-and-Wicked to Mr. Urban Chic. He wore great boots, perfectly faded jeans that lovingly hugged his thighs, ass, and well, everything else a pair of well-designed jeans is supposed to hug. She turned her back on him and stepped into the kitchen. “Do you want some coffee before you leave?”
Rich shook his head. “I’m late as it is, and as much as you try to be the lady of the house, you’re not. Making coffee isn’t going to change that, Becca.”
The way her name rolled off his tongue, dripping with sarcasm and something else she thought it best not to consider, made her want to call the cops and have him thrown out. But if she did that, she’d have to prove residence, which she couldn’t. She’d also have to explain to Annabelle why she’d had Rich thrown in the clink. Becca tossed a filter in and counted the scoops of coffee hoping it would help in the same way counting to ten did.
Nope, no luck there. She measured the water, filled the machine, and was still as angry as ever.
Rich followed her to the kitchen and was now leaning on the breakfast bar staring at her. “I need to go. I’ll be back late, if at all. Feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Stay the hell out of my things. We’ll get this mess sorted out, and you can be on your way first thing in the morning. I don’t think Gina would look too kindly on you staying with me.”
Becca didn’t bother holding back her laugh. “Oh yeah, she’s got a lot to worry about there. Get over yourself Richie. The only thing I’m interested in is my apartment.”
Rich plucked a leather jacket off the back of the kitchen chair, went to the door, and picked up his keys. “Sorry to tell you this, babe. But that old saying, blood is thicker than water, is just as true today as it was when the Germans penned it. Of course, the Italians have taken it to a new level.” Rich winked. “Don’t wait up.”
Rich walked up the steps of the Harvard Club and headed toward the bar. He didn’t belong to the prestigious club, but Craig Stewart, his old friend and new boss, the dean of psychology at Columbia University, did. Rich stood in the doorway of the bar and looked for Craig.
The two had a long-standing lunch meeting there once a month. It began when Rich had been one of Craig Stewart’s doctoral candidates. Even while Rich taught at Dartmouth, he’d fly down to the city every couple months and always met with his mentor and friend.
When Rich had woman or job troubles, Craig was the first one he’d call for advice. Thankfully, Craig was quick to help him out of the last mess he found himself in. Now Craig was not only a friend and a mentor, he was a boss.
“Rich, over here.”
Rich nodded and worked his way past several tables to the bar. Craig stood a few inches shorter, quite a few years older, and about fifty pounds heavier than Rich. Rich accepted the beer Craig pushed toward him as he tossed his jacket on the back of his stool. “Thanks. I’m sorry I’m a little late. It was a family thing. It couldn’t be avoided.” He held up his glass, and then took a long drink from it. “How are you?”
“Good. I saw your research on schools was cited, and you were quoted in the science section of the Times this morning. You didn’t mention the Times had picked up on your work. Congratulations.”
With everything going on that morning, Rich had completely forgotten about it. “I’m sorry. I should have said something, but I can’t take all the credit. There were two other co-authors.”
“Yes, but the article said the researchers were led by you. It’s good for you and good for the department.” He slapped Rich on the back. “I’m proud of you. But I have to say I’ve been a little disappointed that Emily and I haven’t seen you at the house. We saw you more when you were up at Dartmouth.”
Rich always got along well with Craig’s wife, Emily. But now that Craig was his boss, Rich wasn’t sure exactly how to treat the relationship. “I’ve just been busy trying to get things set up the way I like them, moving into my new place, getting my office settled, ordering new books for next semester. You know how it is.”
“That I do. I invited Jeff Parker to join us in about a half hour. I know you met at the faculty mixer, but I thought since you’re both new to the faculty, you might want to get better acquainted. He’s got a great jump shot, and I know you’re big on basketball.”
Jeff was the professor in office next to Rich’s. “Sure.”
Craig took a sip of his drink and set his glass down. “I heard from your old dean yesterday.”
Rich had just taken another swig off his beer and tried not to choke on it. “Oh?”
“He wasn’t too happy with the way you left things with his daughter.”
As if he hadn’t made that crystal clear during the last six months of Rich’s tenure at Dartmouth. “Shit, Craig. She’s a grown woman.
How the hell was I supposed to know she was my dean’s divorced daughter? Darcy has a different last name, and thank God, she looks nothing like her daddy. If she did, I wouldn’t have got in bed with her in the first place.”
“I understand, Rich. I do. But don’t you think you’re getting a little old for this? Even you have to admit that your serial dating has brought nothing but trouble to you your entire life. First, there was that problem with the law.”
“Hold on, I was seventeen. And that had more to do with stripping cars than with my dating life.”
“Still, it was your girlfriend who turned you in.”
“Yeah, but I turned my life around. I did my six months of hell in military school. I paid my time, and my record was expunged. You would never have known about it if I hadn’t told you.”
Craig rested against the back of his stool. “I still can’t believe you live the way you do after going through military school for even six months. Your place always looks like a frat house after a weekend party.”
“Which is why I spent most of my time in military school in the brig. I could never get a quarter to bounce on the bed after I made it. Then I got nailed for paying someone else to shine my shoes, buckles, and iron my uniforms.”
Craig laughed. “That explains how you remained a slob. Still, you’re a thirty-four-year-old man. Aren’t you getting to the point where you want to settle down?” When Rich looked at him with what he was sure was a blank, confused expression, Craig continued. “Have a committed relationship, maybe get married, and have a few kids? Isn’t that what you want?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I just thought that since you’re back home now that you might want to reevaluate your life. You have a great opportunity at Columbia if you play your cards right. You’re on the right track, but you can’t afford another problem like the one you had at Dartmouth. You’re exactly where you want to be. Now you can look forward to having more of a personal life. You know, settle down, have a committed relationship, get married.”
