by Lauren Layne
I Knew You Were Trouble is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Loveswept Ebook Original
Copyright © 2017 by Lauren LeDonne
Excerpt from Walk of Shame by Lauren Layne copyright © 2017 by Lauren LeDonne
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Walk of Shame by Lauren Layne. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
Ebook ISBN 9780399178726
Cover design: Caroline Teagle
Cover photograph: sakkmesterke/Shutterstock
randomhousebooks.com
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
One Year Ago
Eleven Months Ago
Ten Months Ago
Nine Months Ago
Eight Months Ago
Six Months Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Lauren Layne
About the Author
Excerpt from Walk of Shame
ONE YEAR AGO
One thing nobody had warned Taylor Carr to be prepared for on her first day on a new job at the country’s top-selling men’s magazine?
The eye candy.
As in lots and lots of the hottest guys she’d ever seen, each one better-dressed and more charming than the last.
Now, Taylor liked to consider herself a no-nonsense kind of girl. She’d probably been called a ballbuster behind her back once or twice.
But here, amid the suit-wearing perfection that was the men of Oxford magazine, she felt a little, well…
Breathless.
Taylor had a type, and the polished, successful, clean-cut attractiveness of the Oxford guys checked all of her boxes.
It had started with her interview with the editor in chief. As far as male specimens went, it didn’t get much hotter than the green-eyed, dark-haired brand of tall, dark, and handsome that Alex Cassidy had going on.
But even if the title of boss hadn’t already marked him as off-limits, the gold wedding band had been a clear look but don’t touch.
However, it was becoming increasingly clear that Cassidy was the rule, not the exception. So far on her tour of the office, she’d met at least a half dozen guys who qualified as perfect tens in her book.
All of them very much unavailable.
Her new boss gave her a regretful look as he paused in their tour of the office. “I hate to do this on your first day, but you okay if I hand off the rest of your tour? I’ve got a meeting in five that I tried to get out of, but—”
Taylor waved her hand at Alex Cassidy. “Please. Don’t worry about it. Just point me toward someone who can show me the coffee, give me a couple of lunch recommendations, and I’ll have everything I need.”
The editor in chief had spent the past fifteen minutes taking her around the office, making introductions, doing the typical we’re like a family speech, although she had to admit that based on what she’d seen, it did feel a bit like a family.
She was going to like it here. She was determined to.
Cassidy smiled. “That I can do. And I know just the person.”
Taylor braced herself to meet another obnoxiously attractive man, but the small office Cassidy led her to belonged to a woman. A pretty twentysomething with blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a friendly smile.
“Brit, this is Taylor Carr. She’s starting today with the advertising team. Taylor, this is Brit Robbins, digital marketer extraordinaire.”
Brit smiled. “Welcome! Fab shoes,” she said with an approving look at Taylor’s Jimmy Choos.
“Annnnd, that’s my cue,” Cassidy joked, already backing out of the office. “You mind showing Taylor the rest of the office? Specifically, where she can find coffee?”
“Should I also tell her the coffee sucks because you won’t replace the machine?” Brit called after an already retreating Cassidy.
He didn’t respond, and Brit turned her attention back to Taylor, giving her a once-over that was unabashed but friendly. “So. Please don’t think me forward, but there’s a shocking lack of stylish women around this place. Any chance you want to be best friends and talk about boys?”
Taylor laughed in surprised pleasure. She had never been much of a girl’s girl. Growing up, she’d been almost painfully shy in a way that other kids interpreted as standoffish. By high school, her aunt’s icy demeanor had rubbed off on Taylor enough that the other girls’ avoidance of her hadn’t hurt—much.
College had gotten better. Sort of. She’d joined a sorority and learned how to play nice with the other girls, so to speak. She’d also learned that for every competitive, catty woman out there, there was another perfectly nice, loyal friend to be had.
Still, Taylor could count her really good female friends on one hand, and none of them lived in New York. She was definitely in the market for a local BFF.
Taylor leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper. “So I’m not the only one who noticed.”
“That we live in the headquarters of hot guys? No, trust me. I spent the first six months trying to remember to wipe away the drool. I was basically HR’s worst nightmare.”
“No dating among colleagues?”
Brit shrugged as she picked up her cellphone and gestured for Taylor to follow her down the hallway. “As far as I know, it’s not an official rule. I just know I lack the emotional maturity to handle a workplace romance.”
“Not even a holiday-party hookup?”
“Nah. But if Lincoln Mathis looked my way twice, I’d break all my own rules.”
“Yeah, I met him. He’s…” Taylor broke off, trying to figure out how to describe the black-haired, blue-eyed journalist Cassidy had introduced her to earlier.
“There are no words,” Brit finished for Taylor. “No words for someone that good-looking.”
“He got a girlfriend?”
Brit shrugged. “Not sure. He’s got a reputation as a ladies’ man, but so did most of the guys in the editorial group before they settled down.”
“Is there a big division between the editorial group and the rest of us?” Taylor asked.
“Everyone’s friendly, but mostly it’s the columnists on one side of the building, the operations and strategy group on the other.”
“Any chance the guys on the operations and stra
tegy side of things are more human-looking?” Taylor joked.
Brit lifted her finger and gestured to a door on their right. “Ladies’ room, in case Cassidy forgot to point it out. But no, we’ve got our fair share of hotties on our side too, although I’d rather die than admit it to Hunter.”
“Hunter Cross?” Taylor asked.
Brit glanced over. “My best guy friend. You know him?”
“Just by name. It was a big deal he left a VP role at his last marketing firm to take a lesser title here.”
“Please don’t tell him that,” Brit said in a joking tone. “He’s insufferable enough as it is.”
Good-looking too. Taylor had never met him in person, but based on his headshot, Hunter Cross likely blended in very nicely with the Oxford crew.
“You in an office or the bullpen?” Brit was saying.
“Office,” Taylor replied.
“Bullpen” was the nickname for an open working area—instead of being in individual offices, employees worked alongside each other without doors separating them. Such an arrangement was typically used for more junior employees, or for groups whose functions required collaboration over privacy.
“Well, should you ever need to find anyone in the bullpen, welcome to the center of it all.” Brit stopped and gestured to the bustling scene in front of them.
Men still dominated the room, although there were more women on this side than over in the editorial group, which had been mostly hot guys in their private offices.
Plenty of the staffers glanced up at her and Brit, their gazes friendly but curious.
She hated being the newcomer—hated feeling vulnerable in any way for fear that someone would see right through her shield of confidence and call her out as a fraud. To expose her as what she really was on the inside: lonely. Maybe a little unlovable, if she wanted to get melodramatic about it.
To get ahead of it, Taylor lifted her chin and pasted a smile on her face that was not quite haughty, just…distant. The kind of smile that kept people from getting too close before she could decide if she wanted them to get close.
“Okay, last stop is the kitchen. Then I’m taking you out for lunch and we’re ordering wine, and we’ll tell nobody,” Brit said, touching Taylor’s arm to get her attention.
This time Taylor’s smile was real. Either Brit didn’t buy Taylor’s keep-your-distance vibes or she didn’t care, and had already decided to make good on her best-friend threat.
Taylor found she didn’t mind in the least. She liked the other woman, who was friendly without being sugary.
Taylor had just started to follow Brit when she felt a pair of eyes on her. As the new girl, she already knew there were lots of eyes on her, but this gaze was different—heavy. As though she could feel the weight of it.
She turned her head slightly, scanning the room until she found the source.
The second her gaze collided with his, she knew that the man watching her was everything the other guys at Oxford weren’t.
His dark hair was a touch too long, his jawline apparently not fond of a razor. His white dress shirt was like what the rest of the guys were wearing, but instead of pairing it with a tie and suit jacket, the man had a button undone, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. If he stood, Taylor wouldn’t have been surprised in the least to see it untucked.
None of that bothered her so much as the eyes. Not the color. She thought maybe they were run-of-the-mill brown, although he was too far away for her to know for sure.
No, what bugged her was the way he watched her.
Not quite smirking, but knowing. As though he was the one person in the room who got her, and wanted her to know it.
Taylor whipped her head away, but as she turned, she could have sworn she saw him laugh. At her.
Taylor lifted her chin and continued after Brit, telling herself it didn’t matter. The guy wasn’t even close to her type, and chances were their paths would never cross.
She strode away from the bullpen without giving in to the urge to turn around and see him one last time.
She didn’t.
But it bothered her that she wanted to.
—
More than eight hours later, Taylor shrugged on her trench coat and made her way toward the elevator lobby, refusing to limp even though the Jimmy Choo sandals had declared war on the outer edge of her pinky toe.
It was past seven, and most of the Oxford crew had started clearing out a couple of hours ago, so she had the place mostly to herself.
She’d stayed late to finish up the new-employee training—all those HR-mandated online courses that mostly pointed out the obvious and fried the brain.
The doors on one of the elevators were just closing as she approached, and she hurriedly punched the down button in an attempt to catch it.
The doors reopened, and Taylor stepped inside, only to falter for reasons that had nothing to do with the shoes.
It was him.
The deliciously unpolished guy who’d been watching her earlier.
She’d been wrong about the white dress shirt. It wasn’t untucked after all, but shoved into dark jeans with just the right amount of carelessness.
Taylor hadn’t worked up the courage to ask Brit about him when they’d gone to lunch. She wasn’t even sure why she wanted to know.
Up close, it was even more clear he wasn’t her type. Taylor had always gone for clean-cut and serious guys. Guys she could count on.
This one was leaning against the back wall of the elevator as she stepped into it, looking up from his phone just in time to see her stumble.
“You okay?” he asked.
Brown. She’d been right about his eyes being brown.
“Of course.” The self-conscious retort came out a little more haughty than she’d intended, and he lifted his eyebrows in amusement.
Taylor turned around to face the elevator doors as they shut, her gaze locked straight ahead, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him shift around to the side wall of the elevator car, sliding his phone into his back pocket.
He leaned a shoulder against the elevator, studying her unapologetically.
“Really?” she snapped, irritated by the scrutiny.
He merely smiled and straightened, extending his right hand. She wanted to be petty and ignore it, but manners demand she turn and shake it.
Taylor regretted it instantly. The contact of his palm against hers was electric, and she sucked in a quick breath.
He grinned wider. “Nick Ballantine.”
“Taylor Carr,” she said, tugging her hand free and turning once more toward the front of the elevator so he wouldn’t see how flustered she felt. What was wrong with her? He was just a guy.
The elevator stopped on a lower floor, opening for a group of gorgeous women. Taylor took a moment to admire their fabulous stilettos, wondering if their shoes were pinching as much as hers after a long day.
“First day?” Nick Ballantine asked, ignoring the newcomers, all of his attention focused on Taylor.
“Yup.”
“What team?”
“Advertising. You?” she asked, glancing back at him.
Nick shifted his bag higher on his shoulder. “None. I’m a contractor. I fill in when Cassidy needs a spare writer.”
“So you’re not at the office full-time?”
“Is that disappointment I hear, Ms. Carr?” he asked, rubbing his palm idly along the dark stubble on his jawline.
“Is that ego I hear, Mr. Ballantine?” she countered.
He merely grinned wider as the elevator reached the lobby and the door opened. The chattering women exited first, and Taylor was right on their heels.
“Ms. Carr.”
She sighed and turned back to Nick Ballantine, who’d followed her into the opulent lobby. “Yes? What?”
He walked toward her, stopping just near enough that she had to look up. “Why don’t you like me?”
He sounded genuinely curious, maybe a little amused, and though cand
or was usually a trait Taylor liked just fine, she didn’t appreciate being called out on her strange reaction to him.
“I don’t know you,” she replied.
“So everyone gets the ice-princess routine?”
The question was teasing, but it still stung.
Ice princess.
The label was hardly a new one, but she’d worked hard to eradicate it in recent years—to remember that just because she’d been raised by Karen Carr didn’t mean she had to become Karen Carr.
Still, there were times Taylor wondered if icy distance was part of her DNA or something. Because she didn’t make friends easily—Brit Robbins being a hopeful exception.
And though she knew men liked the way she looked, she’d learned the hard way that she apparently had one-night stand written all over her instead of take home to Mom.
She was prickly, and she knew it. But she wished that, just once, someone would get it. That they would understand she wasn’t icy so much as careful. That she didn’t know how to show vulnerability or softness, not because she didn’t feel it, but because she’d spent the past twentysomething years being told that crying made you weak, feelings left you vulnerable, and the only person you could count on was yourself.
Taylor had hope that someone would see it someday—would understand her.
Today was not that day, and Nick Ballantine was not the man.
She lifted her chin and met his dark gaze head on. “I changed my mind, Mr. Ballantine. I don’t have to know you to decide whether or not I like you.”
“Verdict?”
She stepped forward and tapped a red nail against his chest twice. “Definitely. Not.”
ELEVEN MONTHS AGO
“Tay! Taylor Carr, get your spin-class-toned ass in here right now!”
