Friends to Lovers (Aisle Bound)

by Barth, Christi

  Ben snickered. “Sheep, huh?” He rolled into a belly laugh.

  If Gib wasn’t the one stuck managing hundreds of acres from afar, responsible for the livelihood of all the people who worked his farm, he’d probably laugh, too. “It is every bit as uninteresting as it sounds, I promise.”

  “Sorry—I’m picturing you in overalls with a pitchfork over one shoulder. Does Armani make overalls? I can’t wait to tell Sam that you’re a farmer.”

  Gib jerked a thumb at the door to shoo him away. “Go now, why don’t you? I’m very busy.”

  Ben slapped the edge of the flat-screen monitor to skew it toward him. “You’re on Twitter. You’re not busy. Twitter’s no excuse for skipping a workout.”

  “It is today.”

  “Didn’t even know you had an account.” He peered intently at the screen. “What’s your handle?”

  “I don’t have one. I’m on the hotel’s account.” Gib returned the monitor to its proper position. He didn’t need Ben sticking his nose into this particular project.

  “Checking for gripes from your staff?”

  “No. What? My staff are still reveling in the glory of the Christmas bonuses signed by yours truly.” Now that Gib thought more about it, Ben might be able to help. As long as he could put up with the unavoidable mocking. “I needed a way to contact the public, and this seemed easy. That is, until I realized I’d have to constrain my considerable thoughts into such a tiny space.”

  “What the hell are you tweeting about?”

  Gib leaned back in his ergonomic miracle of a chair and steepled his fingers. “I’m trying to find Cinderella. Your stubborn fiancée refuses to give me access to the guest lists from the New Year’s Eve wedding.”

  “Her answer’s not going to change. So stop asking her to abandon all professional integrity.”

  “It’s just so damned frustrating. The identity to my mystery kisser is locked up in one of Ivy’s spreadsheets.”

  Ben crossed his arms over the black and gold logo on his hoodie. “Would you hand out info on one of the Cavendish’s guests?”

  Not unless he wanted the two-fer of getting a pink slip and a lawsuit. “No. Of course not. I just hoped that Ivy had more elastic morals than I do. But I understand her reticence. So I’m coming at this from another angle.”

  “What are you going to do? Stake out the bride’s house when she gets back from her honeymoon and ask for the names and numbers of all her friends?”

  “I can’t wait that long.”

  A low whistle split the air, as sharp as the crease on a really good paper airplane. “You’ve got it bad for Cinderella.”

  Pushing off the edge of his desk, Gib stood. Paced from one file cabinet, past the broad width of his desk to a display case filled with a smattering of the hotel’s awards and trophies, then back again. It bothered him that the pale gray carpet muffled his footsteps. He wanted to hear each deliberate stomp of frustration. “I must find her.”

  “Gibson Moore. Man about town. Lusty Lothario.”

  Those words red-lighted his pacing. He’d narrowly avoided a spit take the first time he read them. “The intro from the piece about me in Windy City magazine. I’m touched that you took the time to memorize it.”

  “Can’t make fun of you at our next poker night unless I get all the labels right.” Ben twisted around to face him, making the black leather cushion squeak. “The point is, you’ve made a name for yourself sliding out of beds as fast as you slide into them. To you, the city of Chicago is a giant smorgasbord of available females.”

  “Well, it is a city of eight million people. Seems pointless to ignore that sort of babe buffet.”

  “Exactly. And women line up six-deep to spend a night with you. Miraculously, whether you’re with them for an hour, a day or a month, they all walk away with a smile on their face and nothing but praise for you on their lips.”

  Dealing with female tears and temper ranked right up there with root canals and missing the annual suit sale at Armani. He’d wasted enough emotional currency with that on his mother through the years. Keep it light, keep it sexy, keep it drama-free. If Gib were to redesign his family’s coat of arms, that would be the new motto scrolling across the bottom. And not in Latin. In plain English, so nobody missed the importance of it.

  “If I do something, I like to do it right. And I like to satisfy women.”

  Ben scratched his head. “With none of that breakup awkwardness, though? If you could bottle and sell that trick, you’d be a millionaire. I mean, on top of whatever you rake in off of your alfalfa fields.” He snickered at his own weak pun.

  “Trust me, having a wide network of happy women at my disposal is a useful thing.”

  “Exactly!” Thoroughly at home in Gib’s office, Ben opened the tiny closet and pulled out a gym bag. To hammer home his readiness to leave, he then stood with one hand on the chrome door pull. “You’re not a one-woman guy. You like your women like your satellite television—hundreds of options on any given day.”

  Giving in to the inevitable, Gib turned off his monitor. Maybe they could brainstorm a compelling tweet in the gym. Pounding one foot in front of the other on the treadmill always cleared the debris from his mind. “Variety is the spice of life.”

  “My point is that you don’t just have notches on your bedpost. You’ve probably got enough notches to crimp the frame of every bed on the fourth floor of this hotel. So why are you so focused on this one woman? You didn’t see her, you didn’t talk to her, and I’ve seen you literally crook your finger at women and have them fall into your arms. What makes Cinderella so special?”

  Good question. One that had kept him nearly sleepless for two nights straight. “I don’t know.”

  “You might want to figure that out before you find her.”

  Gib waved at the middle-aged woman with a teased crown of brown hair at her command post just outside his office. “Agatha, I’ll be at the gym for a couple of hours.”

  “Too many Christmas cookies?” She gave a pointed glare at his midsection over the top of her cat’s-eye glasses. He’d inherited her awesome traffic-controller-like skill set wrapped in rayon from the previous Cavendish manager. Running the hotel without Agatha would be as scary a prospect as—hell, being forced to return to his homeland. Their first two weeks together had been dicey. Learning to listen past her thick Polish accent was a full-time job in and of itself. Determined to hate him on sight for having the gall to replace her retiring boss, she hadn’t cut him an inch of slack. And at the end of those two weeks, as a reward for surviving without burning the place down (and remembering to keep the Frango mint jar on her desk filled), she all but adopted him. Sunday dinner at her house once a month was nonnegotiable. She only excused with serious proof of bodily harm, like a cast, or a minimum of ten stitches. Still didn’t cut him much slack, though.

  “Miss Lovell’s cinnamon rolls, if you must know. Their sweet goodness called to me.”

  “And you answered their call for two hours straight.” Ben puffed out his cheeks in mock distress. “Our man’s going to pot, Agatha. You might want to reinforce his chair legs while we’re gone.”

  “I did that after his date with the tennis player,” she deadpanned.

  Ah yes, the lovely Selena with thighs that could latch on to a man with the tensile strength of rebar. Energetic, too. Come to think of it, he’d ended up replacing a splintered coffee table that hadn’t survived their weekend together. Good times. And good to know Agatha kept his office, well, ready for anything.

  “Call if there’s an emergency.” Remembering his promise to Mira, he shook his head. Being available to his staff at a moment’s notice came with the position, but tonight he needed to focus all his attention on Daphne and their picnic. “Nothing less than a disgruntled multimillionaire, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a dinner app
ointment I can’t miss.”

  Ben opened the outer glass door, the one with Gib’s name arched in gold letters, and they headed down the hallway, papered in subdued gray stripes. “Come on, tell me what makes Cinderella worth pursuing.”

  Why was Cinderella so special? The question niggled at his brain like a fire ant’s bite. One reason surfaced, but sounded inane. In his own head it sounded stupid, so saying it out loud was bound to exponentially increase its lack of sensibility. Gib stabbed at the elevator button. When the car didn’t instantly appear, he straight-armed the door to the stairs. Maybe jogging up two floors to the gym would limit conversation. “We fit.”

  “If this is a height/weight thing, might I remind you of that week you dated half of a soccer team? Or the touring cast of the Rockettes in December? Eight women, all with the identical height and build...and legs that wouldn’t quit.” In a burst of speed, Ben edged ahead of him. Legs widespread, he blocked Gib’s access to the sixth-floor landing with his arms crossed like a pissed-off genie. “There’s got to be more about this one woman besides compatible anatomy tying you up in knots.”

  The more Gib tried to put it into words, the more ridiculous he felt. All he had was a bone-deep feeling of rightness. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been with so many women that I can recognize when something different comes along. Almost, I don’t know, familiar in some strange way? Her kiss, her touch...I sound completely barmy, I know.”

  “You sound like a teenage girl crushing hard. I should check your binders.” Ben let him pass, and they took the last set of stairs two at a time. The door led them directly into the large fitness complex attached to the spa. The ever-present faint smell of chlorine tickled Gib’s nose.

  “What binders?” Gib asked as he slipped out of his suit coat, despite the fat snowflakes drifting past the wall of windows. Rows of potted palms and bright pink hibiscuses encircling the room required it be kept at jungle-like conditions. At least once a quarter Gib had to resist a strong temptation to smuggle in a couple of lizards. Just to add to the atmosphere.

  “That’s right—you wouldn’t know because you went to some fancy all-boys school. Talk about a prison for your raging teenage hormones.”

  “Eton? Yes, generally considered fancy. But not exactly an institution with bars on the windows. They did let us see girls. By the time I graduated, I’d dated girls at every school within three counties.” Sure, Eton bussed them in once a month for dances. Ben, however, didn’t need to know all the particulars of how it happened; merely that it did.

  Ben unzipped his jacket as they walked the length of the Olympic-size pool. “Teenage girls in school, over here at least, draw all over their binders when they’re in the throes of puppy love. Hearts, flowers, their initials, smiley faces. And now you’re up to speed on your American trivia for the day.”

  “Is that like word-a-day toilet paper? Am I supposed to find a way to work binder doodling into a conversation later?”

  “Nah. You’re a smart guy. I know you’ll remember.” Ben swiped a bottle of water from a well-stocked shelf by the door. “So since it’s too late to recapture your lost youth, what’s your big plan to find this girl that’s turned you monogamous?”

  “Take that back,” Gib growled, throwing Ben into a semi-playful head lock. Monogamy carried with it all sorts of implications, the chief being a serious relationship. Gib didn’t have a problem with the idea of only sleeping with one woman for the rest of his life. He did have a problem with contemplating an emotional connection strong enough that any woman could have the power to screw him over. No, he wanted to find his Cinderella to work her out of his system. Like the way he sweated alcohol out with a long run after an epic night of drinking.

  Ben struggled for a few seconds, then raised his arms in surrender. “Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. You’ll never lock your dick up and hand the key to a single woman. In fact, I think the entire female population of Chicago would stage an intervention if you even considered it.”

  Gib let him go, hiding his grin of triumph. Even after six months of putting Ben through his paces in the gym, he could still take him down. “Damn straight.”

  “But do you have a plan? Aside from nagging my fiancée to death?”

  As they finally hit the locker room, Gib tugged off his tie. “Social media. I can’t find her by myself, but in today’s world, I don’t have to. I can put out a plea on every single social media site—” A truly inspired thought pinged into his brain. “Why don’t we fire up that camera of yours? Tape my plea for help finding this wondrous woman. It could go viral by tonight. Someone out there must know who she is, have heard about the magical kiss she shared with a stranger on New Year’s Eve.” Because it had to have been as world-tippingly special for her, too. On his worst days, Gib could kiss a girl senseless. Not bragging, but mere fact. He liked to think it helped make up for his inability to make a commitment to a woman.

  Ben tossed his jacket into a locker and began to stretch his quads. “You keep acting crazy like this, and we’re going to slap you silly. Or stick ice cubes down your shorts to snap you out of it.”

  Why wouldn’t Ben help him? Since he’d locked Ivy’s heart up tight with a diamond ring, Gib had assumed Ben would be sympathetic to his quest, at the very least. “You don’t understand.”

  “Really? I didn’t have any contact with Ivy after our first date for six weeks. I’d pretty well burned that bridge, of my volition. But I still thought about her, day and night. Wondered about her. Replayed the slide of her skin against mine, the sound of her laugh. Did I abandon all pride, cut off my balls and appeal to a worldwide audience to get her back? Hell, no.”

  Gib twirled the dial on his teak locker. “My therapist would undoubtedly be proud enough to throw me a parade for—how did she put it? Treating women like disposable napkins. Why can’t you be?”

  “Because, even though you don’t pay me by the hour, I’m more invested in your long-term happiness than some shrink. When this goes south—and it will, believe me—I’ll be here to pick up the pieces. You know, get you shit-faced at a strip joint.”

  “No pieces,” Gib scoffed. “You pointed out that every time I walk away from a girl, she’s still smiling. And I never get seriously attached.” Or even semi-seriously attached. It would be like eating lobster ravioli every night. Delicious, but so boring after a week he’d want to claw his own tongue out. “There’s simply no downside to finding her.”

  “Wrong. Have you thought about how this would reflect on you professionally? If you go viral with this plea, a news source will pick it up. You’re already this month’s cover of Windy City magazine. People know who you are. Dig a little deeper, and someone’s going to pop the lid on your title. The headline would be something like British Noble Crazy for Chicago’s Cinderella—Or Just Crazy? It’ll go more than viral. This story will be carried by the national press, and then British rags will get their hands on it.”

  Christ. Wouldn’t that be a living nightmare. The negative publicity would undoubtedly make some women think twice about dating him. Gib had no desire for any obstacles that might inhibit his choice of bed partners. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “Which is also totally out of character for you. You’ve got this cool, slick exterior, but on top of those designer duds, your mind ticks with the precision of a Swiss clock. Chalk this one up as a holiday to remember, and move on.”

  Probably quite sound advice. Gib hated advice. He far preferred to make up his own mind. Another reason he avoided the albatross of a serious relationship around his neck. But he still couldn’t ignore the need to find her, and kiss her again. Over and over and over. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not? You don’t need her. You’ve got Milo, the best roommate in the known universe, doing your laundry and keeping the house tidy—”

  Gib cut him off as he neatly creas
ed his trousers before draping them over the hanger. “Hey, Milo swears that he enjoys cleaning. He likes to play with the feather duster. And as a trade-off, I set him up with fantastic orchestra seats at the Goodman and Ford Oriental for every show that comes through town.”

  “Let me finish.” Ben let go of his ankle and began ticking points off on his fingers. “You’ve got most of the eligible hotties in town ready to roll into your bed at the blink of an eye, and you’ve got Daphne to watch soccer with and share those nuclear hot wings you love.”

  They were both addicted to the sweet heat that blistered their lips when they ate enough. Once she introduced wings to his bland English palate, there was no turning back. Their fingers and lips were usually stained bright orange during their wing nights. He’d never let any woman in the world but Daphne see him like that. Around her, Gib could let down his guard. Being in her company was like slipping into a pair of often-washed flannel pajamas. Soft, easy, comfortable.

  Gib kept talking while he swapped his French cuffed shirt for his favorite red Under Armour compression tee. He liked the way it shortened his recovery time after an extensive circuit of the weight room. “Another useful thing about Daphne is that she’s always ready to impart the female perspective on life. I find having a conduit to that information quite valuable when chatting up women.”

  “Oh yeah—Daphne’s never afraid to tell you what she thinks. She’s the whole package, no question. Which brings me full circle to my point. You don’t have any holes in your life. There’s nothing this mystery woman could give you that you don’t already get from someone else. Except for a whole world of trouble. And possible arrest as a stalker. So let her go.”