“Seriously, Nick. Why do you say that?”
I tug her closer, and she goes with it, letting me. “Princess Clueless, you’re about to get an education in all the things you’re oblivious to.”
5
We grab two stools at Speakeasy, a kick-ass spot in Midtown. The bartender, Julia, slides us two coasters and takes our order.
Julia’s married to the guy who owns the law firm I use for all my contracts. That’s Clay Nichols. He runs the shop, and is pretty much Manhattan’s most fearless entertainment lawyer. His cousin Tyler joined him recently. Tyler’s a beast, too, and handles the day-to-day for me. He’s absolutely the guy I want having to deal with Gino.
Julia pours me an Imperial Stout and then mixes the drink Harper ordered, which is made with tequila and lemon soda.
“And one Long-Distance Lover for your friend, coming right up,” she says with a wink to us both, as I give her my credit card.
Julia shakes her head, sliding the plastic back to me. “Your money’s no good here, handsome.”
“Please. I insist,” I say, trying again.
She stares me down. “As if you can pull the whole I insist act with me. It’s a rule. No client of Nichols and Nichols shall ever pay for his libation. Now, enjoy your drink with your pretty redheaded friend,” she says, then hands Harper the cocktail.
“Hope you enjoy it. By the way, love your hair,” she says, and it’s funny because Julia’s redhead comment doesn’t bother me—she means it as a compliment, since her hair is the same shade, while Gino meant it in a douchey Neanderthal way. Kind of like how he means everything.
“Thank you,” Harper says, running her hand along her locks. She let her hair down when we left the bowling alley. “Same for you.”
“It’s true what they say. Redheads have more fun. So be sure to have fun,” she says, then presses her hand to Harper’s arm before she heads off to serve a new group of customers.
Harper looks at me, surprise in her eyes. “She’s quite friendly.” She brings the drink to her lips, and takes a long sip. Her eyes widen and she points to the glass as she swallows. “She makes good drinks, too. This is amazing.”
“She’s not an award-winning bartender for nothing. They have the best drinks at Speakeasy. Just don’t tell your brother we’re here,” I joke, since Spencer and Charlotte own three bars in Manhattan.
She pretends to zip her lips. “Our secret is safe with me,” she whispers, and as soon as those words ghost past her lips, I find myself wondering if we’ll ever have other secrets, like about the things we crave, the things that drive us wild, that turn us on in the dark, and if hers would match mine.
“By the way, did I do okay as your shield tonight?”
“You were the best,” I tell her, then I take a long swallow of my drink. Damn, the beers here are spectacular, too.
“What are you going to do the next time, and the next time? The hits come pretty relentlessly from the ladies. It’s like rapid-fire interest.”
“Hey,” I say, stopping her as I place a hand on her knee. “Pot. Kettle.”
She arches an eyebrow. “How so?”
“From Simon to Jason, you certainly seem to have the men lining up for you.”
She shakes her head and shoots me the universal look for what have you been smoking? She follows it with, “What on earth are you talking about?”
I stare at her. “Seriously?”
“Seriously, what?”
I hold up a hand like a stop sign. “You are aware that Jason has a thing for you? Like I told you at the bowling alley. And Simon the Hemsworth-look-alike dad does, too.”
She narrows her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
I nod emphatically. “I know so.”
She shakes her head, just as certainly. “Nope.”
“Oh yes, Princess Denial. Jason likes you. It was obvious.”
“No, this is obvious,” Harper says, holding up her left hand, bending her thumb in half, then pretending to magically remove the tip of her thumb, only so badly it’s clear how she does it.
“Wait. So you didn’t really pull off your thumb?”
She holds up all ten fingers. “No! Astonishing feat, isn’t it? I still have them all.”
“And it’s equally astonishing that you don’t realize Jason ‘let me friend you on Facebook’ ex-classmate likes you.”
She grabs her drink, shrugs, and knocks some back.
It’s then that I realize Harper’s bafflement over the opposite sex goes both ways. She doesn’t know how to act around guys who like her, and she has no idea when they’re into her either.
Selfishly, this is kind of an awesome discovery because it means I have carte blanche to continue thinking about her naked, beneath me, over me, coming for me, and she won’t have a clue. Considering I think about her naked an inordinate amount of time—like, for instance, two seconds ago my mind wandered to wondering what color her panties were—this is a very good thing.
Especially since the natural next step is to daydream about stripping her of the pale pink panties I’ve decided she’s wearing.
But I care about Harper, and I can tell this little lack of fluency in all things men is going to become a big problem for her at some point. Seeing as I’m all about helping the ladies, I give it to her straight. “First, yes, Jason is into you. Second, Simon is too. And I’m willing to bet my left hand that Simon has already texted you since the other day when you doused me in hot chocolate.”
That earns me a small, contrite smile. “Did you get it out of your shirt?”
“Haven’t done laundry yet. Ran out of detergent.”
“They have stores for that.”
“Yes. They do. But don’t think you can derail me.” I hold up my left hand. “And don’t let the fact that I offered my non-drawing hand as stakes make you think I’m not one hundred percent confident that Simon let’s-talk-about-the-party texted you. I’m really attached to both hands.”
“Fine,” she says, with a huff, like it costs her something. “He texted me earlier today.”
“I amaze myself. What did he say?”
She reaches into her purse, finds her phone, and shows the text to me.
Hey there. Hope you’re having a great week. Would love to get together and talk about the party. Coffee sometime?
“Case. Closed.”
“How does that prove anything?”
“Okay. Let me ask you something. Do you regularly need to get together with parents and talk about the parties you’re doing?”
“Not that often,” she says, answering quickly.
“Could you, for instance, handle the plans for little Hayden’s fifth birthday on the phone?”
“Sure.”
I slap a palm on the counter. “The guy wants to see you in person because he likes to see you.” I point to my eyes then to her. “He likes looking at you.”
“Ohhhhhhhh,” she says as my meaning registers. It's fascinating, like watching a video of one of those baby foals learning to stand for the first time. She brings her fingers to her forehead, and mimes an explosion. “Mind. Blown.”
Wait ’til she sees what other mystical insights into the male mind—if you can even call it that—I can perform. “Let’s put this to another test. Got Facebook on that phone?”
“Of course.”
“Open it up,” I say, making a rolling gesture with my hand.
She clicks on the blue icon. “Okay, what am I looking for?”
“New friend request. Jason from the bowling alley. I guarantee it’s there.”
She scrolls down the screen and blinks in surprise. “Can you do this with lottery numbers, too?”
I stab my finger at the phone, ignoring her cute little snark. “The dude wants to connect with you because . . .” I let my voice trail off and make sure she’s looking me in the eyes, as I finish, “he wants to connect with you.”
“Because I heard the next Powerball is going to be huge—”
; I cut her off. “What did you say to Simon when you wrote back?”
She sighs, shakes her head, and screws up the corner of her mouth. She waits a moment before she speaks, like she’s trying to figure out what to say, maybe hunting for her next quip. But the words she picks are simple. “That’s the thing, Nick.”
This time there’s no sarcasm, no teasing, nothing unclear in her tone. It’s just earnest and nervous. “What’s the thing?” I ask gently.
“I don’t know what to say to him,” she says, with a one-shouldered shrug. “I can stick a pencil in my nose and make it appear to come out of the side of my head much easier than I can figure out what to write.”
“Wait. You can stick a pencil in your nose?”
She nods in excitement. “Want to see?”
I kind of do, in a sort of sick-fascination way. But not now. “Another time, unless it’s a Blackwing.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s only my favorite type of pencil in the entire world. But let’s focus on one thing at a time. Let me walk you through this. You say: Sure, that sounds great. How about Friday at five p.m.?”
She shudders. “Too hard.”
“To say that?”
She inhales deeply, like she’s steeling herself to say something tough. “Okay, look. There’s no pretending with you. You’ve already seen what happens when I like someone. I can’t talk. I can’t speak. If I can manage words, they’re ridiculously inappropriate ones. Even if I texted him, I wouldn’t know how to act on Friday at five p.m.”
Damn, the way she says that is so sweet and so sad at the same time, and I half feel sorry for her, and half want to tell her she’s so fucking cool it doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Because if she can’t get past her inability to speak around guys she likes, life might be lonely.
I move my stool closer. “But you understand women. You knew what that woman was up to at the bookstore.”
She rolls her eyes. “Vicious’s wife wasn’t exactly subtle. But yes, I can understand my native language. It’s men that vex me.”
“You honestly and truly don’t know what to say or do with a guy?” I ask softly.
She levels her gaze at me. “I’m a magician, Nick. I go to kids’ parties. I work with moms. I never meet men. Simon is the exception because he’s a single dad, and that’s rare. I don’t know the first thing about the mating and dating rituals of the American male. I’m nearly twenty-six years old, and touching your arms to prank my brother in Central Park last summer was the most action I’ve gotten in ages.”
I want to preen and offer her my arms to touch again, because my ego is keying in on the part about me. Then it hits me. Most action she’s gotten in ages?
But before she can elaborate on the state of her sexual satisfaction, or current lack thereof, her blue eyes show a hint of sadness, and she looks away.
“It was?” I ask quietly, trying to digest the enormity of that kind of drought. Sounds like hell.
She looks back at me and shrugs, almost in defeat. Her expression seems resigned, as if she’s accepted the inevitable. “Yep,” she says with a rueful smile. “That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“You haven’t been with anyone, in any way, in a long time?”
“I’m quite close to my iPhone, and I’m kind of amazingly intimate with my pillow. Don’t tell anyone. But yes, I’ve been single in the city since I moved back after college.” She sighs deeply, then squares her shoulders. “But it is what it is, Nick. Being a magician is not that conducive to dating. It’s a trade-off I have to accept.”
“Why does the job hold you back?”
She holds up her fingers and counts off. “First, whenever I do meet new people, usually the first thing they want is for me to show them tricks. They see a magician, not a woman,” she says, keeping her chin raised, even though there’s an undercurrent to those words. “Second, even though I do a few corporate events from time to time, the vast majority of the people I interact with are moms and kids. And third, the reality of my job is that I spend a lot of time alone. In front of a mirror. Practicing tricks,” she says, punctuating each phrase with a pause. “If you want to know why I could barely speak the other day, there you go.”
Something clicks. Harper is fantastically sarcastic, something I love, since it’s a second language for me. But I bet this issue—the solitary nature of her life—is why her sarcasm is so finely tuned. It’s a protective armor, shielding her. She uses it regularly, giving it a thorough workout each day to guard a lonesome heart.
“That’s kind of a bummer,” I say, because it’s rough when the job you love hinders you. I’m lucky to be in the entertainment business. I meet women all the time. But if I were spending all my days at home drawing, like I did in high school, I’d probably be better acquainted with the Saturday night TV schedule. As it is, I don’t have a clue what’s on, and I vastly prefer that my career has a social side to it, since, well, I like people.
“It’s fine,” she says, waving a hand as if she’s making all her solitude disappear in a poof. “I love what I do for a living. If my job makes it harder for me to date, that’s just the price I have to pay.”
“But why does it have to be that way? Why does one have to exclude the other? I don’t think you have to be lonely.”
“I didn’t say I was lonely,” she corrects, but her tone is defensive. Then she brightens her smile. “But hey, I get to have my magic wand in exchange for a meaningful connection with the opposite sex.”
“Depends what kind of magic wand you mean,” I tease.
She laughs, and stage whispers, “Maybe that is what I meant.”
Whoa. Did she make a dirty comment again? And just like that, I’m wondering what exactly she does alone in her apartment late at night. “How many speeds does this magic wand have?”
“Fifty,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows. “And there are worse things than coming home and curling up with a deck of cards and a very powerful magic wand, right? Especially now that I have the memory of your guns to get me through. And trust me, it’s a really good memory.”
My throat goes dry. My bones heat up. This girl and her innuendos will kill the last remaining non-sex-focused brain cells. I try to fashion a reply, but my brain is in visual-only mode at the moment, picturing Harper and her very powerful magic wand.
“I have an idea,” she says, in an inviting whisper, and I swear my dick springs to attention faster than it ever fucking has before. She just talked about my arms; clearly she’s got big plans for me to end her drought. She wants more than fifty speeds, and I can deliver that, no problem.
Yes, Harper, you can totally ride me, and I will give you ten thousand orgasms before I even have one. Because I am that kind of lover. I am generous and giving, and I would absolutely love to introduce you to my tongue so I can do things to you that will turn your world inside out and leave you begging for more. How’s that for an answer?
Evidently, I’ve momentarily forgotten her off-limits status, because the mere prospect of Harper’s idea is already driving me wild with possibilities, and she hasn’t even asked yet. But she’s going to. She’s absolutely going to ask me to give her some much-needed action, and the only response to that is My place or yours?
“Go on.”
“Well, you know how you kind of owe me?”
Fuck, yeah. I’m more than ready to pay my debts. Let’s start payback with you riding my face, shall we?
“I owe you twice, I believe,” I say, because I don’t want her to forget all that I’m willing to do in this quest. “Once for you saving me from the fan with claws and her fire-breathing dragon of a husband, and again for you making my life easier with my boss tonight.”
Nice math, Hammer. You just scored two turns on the merry-go-round of the girl you’re lusting after.
“Great then,” she says, with a wide smile that spreads across her gorgeous face. “So you’re game?”
Bring it on. “A
bsolutely.”
She claps once. “You’ll be my tutor and give me lessons in dating?”
6
Okayyyy. Let’s just slam on the brakes while I reroute myself. Because my brain was barreling in one direction, and hers was veering in another. Not gonna lie. I’d been furiously plotting whose home is closer, and whether a cab, Uber, or quick jog—make that sprint—would get us there faster.
Since jetpacks aren’t an option.
My phone buzzes. I grab it and open my messages, hoping it’ll help me redirect all the blood that’s flowing in one direction only.
* * *
I’m bored. Charlotte’s out with Kristen, and there’s nothing good on TV. Up for a drink?
* * *
Wow. That worked. Never met a boner killer as effective as a text from the brother of the girl you want to screw. But Spencer doesn’t need me to answer right away, so I ignore him, turning the volume off on my phone and sliding it into my pocket.
“You want me to teach you how to date?”
She nods and smiles. “You’re good at this. You know women. You can read men. You understand all the things I find completely confounding.”
“You want me to be your Cyrano?”
“You don’t have to come on dates with me and whisper from the bushes, but considering wanna-see-a-pencil-in-my-nose is my go-to opening line, and that I don’t even know what to write back to Simon, I think we can both agree I need a little bit of help,” she says, holding up her thumb and forefinger to show a sliver of space as she makes fun of herself.
I glance up at the ceiling, weighing her request. On the one hand, I can’t let her fumble through New York City so completely unequipped for conversation. On the other hand, she’s Spencer’s sister.
“I know it’s an odd request,” she says, fidgeting with her napkin, her words with a touch of worry to them. “But it shouldn’t be too weird, right? Since I know I’m not your type.”
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