I Knew You Were Trouble

by Lauren Layne

  He himself was in the unusual situation of knowing both equally well. As a writer, he mostly partnered with the editorial guys—he’d actually taken over Lincoln’s job on a short-term basis when the other guy had taken a personal leave last year.

  But since then, whenever Nick had taken on a short-term gig, his desk had been on the other side of the building with the marketing/advertising guys, due to space limitations. It was how Nick had gotten to know Hunter.

  For that matter, it was also how he’d gotten to know Taylor as well as he had, but he wasn’t in the mood to think about that hot mess.

  “What can I get you guys?”

  “Whatever you’re making,” Jackson Burke said. “Cole said you won some custom cocktail competition lately? Make us that.”

  “I’ll make you two that,” Nick said, nodding at Hunter and Jackson as he got down the proper stemware. “But you…” He pointed the cocktail glass at Lincoln Mathis. “You going to bust my balls if it’s not pink, frothy, or has a sugar rim?”

  Lincoln grinned. “My reputation precedes me. I’ve never even been in here, and you know my drink preferences.”

  “Word’s gotten around,” Nick said, choosing his words carefully.

  Lincoln merely grinned wider as he leaned across the bar. “Daisy?”

  “If you’re asking me if your girl was in here bashing your manhood, telling me I was the much better guy for her…maybe.”

  Lincoln laughed at Nick’s sarcasm. “Bastard. Make me whatever you’re making them. I can handle it.”

  Nick grinned in response, a little relieved to get a step closer to Lincoln Mathis’s inner circle.

  Of all the guys in the Oxford group, he and Lincoln were the rockiest, courtesy of the fact that Nick had temporarily held Lincoln’s job and had made a move on Lincoln’s girl—although, to be fair, he hadn’t had a clue that Daisy even knew Lincoln when he’d asked her out a couple of times.

  Besides, the way Nick—and, he hoped, Lincoln—saw it, he and Daisy had only shared meals. He’d never laid a hand on her other than to help her with her coat.

  Nick was glad of it. Not only because it meant that Lincoln had no reason to hate him, but because it meant he and Daisy could still be friends—truly friends. She came into the bar every so often with Brit or one of the Stiletto girls.

  He liked her, a lot—enough to respect that she was obviously blissfully happy with Lincoln. And while Nick thought he was a good-looking guy, even he knew Lincoln Mathis was better suited to Hollywood than Oxford. The man was all black hair, blue eyes, and an obnoxious supply of one-liners.

  Nick measured out the Cynar, rye whisky, and bitters into three shakers, then one by one added an egg white to each shaker. He shook Jackson and Hunter’s first, straining them into the glasses he’d chilled with ice, then did the same with Lincoln’s.

  He didn’t bother to watch the men’s reactions as he rinsed the shakers out. Nick already knew it was a damn good drink. He didn’t put anything in front of a customer that he didn’t think was as perfect as it could be.

  “Damn,” Jackson said. “I’m a pretty dedicated beer guy, but that’s fucking amazing, even if it’s served in a chick glass.”

  Nick nodded in acknowledgment, not taking offense in the least. Jackson Burke was a former professional quarterback from Texas and had taken his team to several Super Bowls. Nick would accept whatever compliment he could get from the man.

  “So what’s new with you guys?” Nick asked as he put the shakers back in their proper place. He glanced over to see that the ladies in the corner were still nursing the martinis he’d made earlier.

  “Who cares?” Hunter said, taking a sip of the drink. “You’re the one with news.”

  “Am I?” Nick raised an eyebrow.

  “Dude. You moved in with Taylor Carr.”

  “Hot damn,” Lincoln said in surprise. “Really? How did I not know this?”

  “Because your face is always buried in Daisy’s—” Jackson glanced at the women in the corner and lowered his voice. “Flower.”

  Lincoln laughed but didn’t take his attention away from Nick. “Taylor, huh? Always knew you guys had something brewing beneath all that ‘I hate you’ crap.”

  “We’re roommates,” Nick said. “That’s it.”

  “Really,” Hunter said. “All the available apartments in this city, and you opted for the one your worst enemy lives in?”

  “I guess the idea has merit,” Lincoln said. “Keep your enemies close and all that.”

  Yeah, let’s go with that.

  “I guess,” Hunter muttered, hazel eyes studying Nick. “Sort of thought it might be something else.”

  “I’m not hooking up with Taylor,” Nick ground out. No matter how fantastic she looks in her gym clothes. Her pajamas. Her brunch clothes. Her work clothes.

  Shit.

  “Nah, I was hoping it had more to do with sticking it to Bradley,” Hunter said.

  Nick glanced at the other man in surprise. “Aren’t you and Calloway friends?”

  “Sure,” Hunter said cautiously. “Doesn’t mean I like the way he treats women.”

  “Women. As in more than Taylor?” Jackson asked. “Heard he left her high and dry the day he was supposed to move in. Fucking shitty.”

  “Well said, man,” Lincoln said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “And yeah, I heard that too. Anyone else getting the impression our office’s even more gossipy than Stiletto? But for real, what’s the story?”

  “Not mine to tell,” Nick said, pouring them each a water so that he could avoid their eyes.

  “He went from Jess Hayes to Taylor, and now back to Jessica,” Hunter said, his disdain clear. “Wouldn’t bug me so much if the timeline wasn’t too damn close to being overlapping.”

  Nick’s head shot up at that. It was bad enough that Calloway had hurt both women. If he’d cheated on each of them with the other…

  Jackson made a snorting noise. “Moron. He couldn’t have picked a worse woman to double-cross. I’m pretty sure Taylor Carr could kick all our asses. At the same time.”

  “She is pretty fierce,” Lincoln said, picking up his water glass. “Very tigress. But, you know…hot.”

  “I don’t think you have to speculate that tigresses are hot,” Hunter mused. “It’s implied, right?”

  Lincoln seemed to consider this and opened his mouth to reply, but Jackson held up a hand. “Cross, do not get Lincoln started on this shit. He’ll take it to a weird Animal Planet place, and we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Lincoln lifted a shoulder as though to say, True.

  “Okay, but really,” Lincoln said, shifting attention back to Nick. “Daisy’ll kill me if I don’t get the lowdown. Are you and Taylor a thing now?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Nick said, jerking his chin toward Hunter. “He and Taylor share a best friend.”

  Hunter gazed back at Nick in amusement. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “What?” Nick asked irritably.

  Hunter merely grinned. “Fishing to figure out what Taylor’s told Brit about you.”

  The observation was so dead on that Nick barely withheld a wince at being so transparent and girly.

  Okay, so maybe he was aware that Hunter’s best friend was none other than Brit Robbins. And maybe he’d been curious what Taylor and Brit had been talking about when he’d walked in on their conversation the other night.

  God knew he couldn’t ask Taylor. They were back on speaking terms, but not of the civil variety. The past few days, their animosity had been kicked up to DEFCON 1 levels.

  “Make me another of these and I’ll give you something to work with,” Hunter said.

  Nick glared. “Great. And then we can paint each other’s nails after?”

  Lincoln raised his hand. “I’m in.”

  Jackson punched Lincoln’s hand down with more force than necessary. “No.”

  “Okay,” Hunter was saying as Nick began mi
xing the drinks. “So, girl talk time for real. According to Brit, she thinks the perfect thing to help Taylor see that Bradley’s a douchebag not worth dwelling on is a good shag.”

  Lincoln, Jackson, and Nick all stared at him.

  “Shag?” Nick said.

  Hunter shrugged. “I have English relatives.”

  “Explains the Prince Harry ginger hair,” Jackson muttered.

  “How’d you know who Prince Harry is? You sound like Mathis. And my hair’s brown,” Hunter said, a bit testily.

  “Reddish brown,” Lincoln argued.

  “It’s fucking brown—”

  “Guys,” Nick cut in. “Don’t make me throw you out of here for annoying the hell out of me.”

  “So, what do you think, Ballantine?” Hunter said, with a warning glare at the other guys. “Taylor up for a rebound fling?”

  Nick’s hand faltered in the process as he dropped the strainer on top of his shaker. “Hold on. Are you proposing that you be her rebound fling?”

  “Why not?” Hunter said with a shrug. “These two clowns are inexplicably taken by hot women, you’re not interested, so…”

  I’m interested.

  In fact, it had occurred to him lately that he and Taylor burning up the sheets could have several benefits beyond sticking it to Calloway. For starters, maybe he and Taylor could figure out how to release their fangs from each other’s throat if they were at each other’s neck in a more interesting way.

  And Taylor wasn’t the only one who could benefit from a no-strings-attached rebound thing. Nick had been trying to put the thing with Kelsey behind him, but he’d been doing it with women who’d seemed right yet been entirely wrong.

  Maybe hooking up with a woman he knew to be trouble was the perfect antidote.

  “Stay away from her,” he growled at Hunter as he poured their three drinks.

  Then he bit back a curse, because it was obvious from their collective grins that he’d just done exactly as they’d planned all along.

  Chapter 11

  “Oh, you’re not serious,” Taylor muttered, staring at the corkscrew in her right hand, which defiantly displayed the jagged end of a cork that had snapped in half when she’d tried to remove it.

  She peered down the stem of the bottle, looking at the remaining half of the cork, which was jammed stubbornly out of reach.

  “Now what?” she muttered to the bottle of pinot grigio.

  She knew her way around a bottle of wine, but had never had to troubleshoot one before. She needed a wine expert, she needed…

  Taylor’s eyes flicked toward Nick’s room. She needed a bartender.

  She tapped the corkscrew against her lips, deciding which she wanted more: the white wine or her pride.

  Then Taylor had a flashback to seeing Jessica and Bradley get into a car together after work earlier that evening. The wine. She definitely wanted the wine.

  Taylor marched toward Nick’s room. She knew he was home, because she’d heard the shower turn on a few minutes earlier.

  Not for the first time, she was relieved that the two-bedroom condo had the rather unusual Manhattan feature of having two bathrooms. The thought of sharing a bathroom with Nick Ballantine was…unsettling.

  The door was open a crack, and she tapped her nail against it before pushing it open. As far as knocks went, it was a lame one, and the second the door was open, she knew exactly what her subconscious had been hoping for.

  Nick wasn’t naked, though with nothing but a dark blue towel wrapped low on his waist, he was nearly as good as.

  Taylor sucked in a breath, because, well…

  A-plus, Ballantine. A-freaking-plus.

  He was tall with broad shoulders, and wore clothes well, but he wore naked even better.

  Well, almost naked.

  His upper body was perfectly sculpted, covered enticingly in dark hair that trailed all the way down his flat stomach, disappearing under the towel.

  Taylor swallowed. Bradley had had a nice upper body too, but his chest had been waxed hairless. Very pretty-boy.

  She’d thought she liked that, but the sight of Nick’s unapologetic masculinity had her pulse racing out of control.

  He didn’t seem particularly surprised by her intrusive presence. Annoyed, but not surprised.

  “Shall I turn around nice and slow?” he asked wryly. “So you can see it from all angles?”

  She dragged her eyes back to his face. “Could you?” she asked sweetly, twirling her finger in a spinning motion. “I’m hoping for your sake your back’s not quite so hideous.”

  He jerked open a dresser drawer and pulled out an undershirt and a pair of boxers, although he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to put them on. Fine by her.

  “What do you want, Taylor?”

  She held up the wine bottle.

  He stared. “You’ve been practically spitting venom at me for nearly a week, and now you want to share a bottle of wine?”

  “No,” she ground out. “The cork got stuck. I was hoping if I asked nicely, your bartender skills could help me access the fun juice.”

  His lips moved in an almost-smile. “This is you asking nicely?”

  “What if I compliment you? Would that help? Because this is all very nicely put together,” she said, waving a hand at his body. “I mean, if you like the whole manly, muscled, really fit thing, but I mean, let’s be honest, most girls don’t. So sorry.”

  She was trying for their usual sarcasm, but her voice came out sort of flirtatious and flirty.

  Nick must not have minded, though, because he didn’t tell her to get the hell out of his room and stop checking him out.

  Instead he walked toward her, holding her gaze the entire time.

  She refused to step backward, even when he got close enough that she could smell his soap and see the way his still-damp chest hair curled ever so slightly.

  Taylor thrust the wine bottle against his chest so she wouldn’t be tempted to do what she really wanted to do, which was to trail her fingers and maybe her lips over his pecs, just to get a quick taste….

  Nick stepped even closer, and Taylor leapt backward, yelping a little as her funny bone banged against the wall. “What are you doing?” she gasped.

  He gave her a look that was half amused, half annoyed. “Getting my wine key from the kitchen. What, did you think I was going to open it with my teeth?”

  Nick brushed past her, unabashed about wearing only his towel as he headed into the kitchen. She followed him, watching as he opened a drawer and pulled out a little gadget like waiters at restaurants used to open wine bottles.

  “I was hoping for something a little more MacGyver,” she said, settling on a barstool. “Like a paper clip or something.”

  He flicked open the corkscrew part of the tool with his thumb and glared at her. “You want the wine or not?”

  She made a please continue gesture with her hand. “So. Not working today?”

  “Not at the bar, no.”

  She watched as he gently began working the wine key into the cork. Taylor had to admit, the little tool had a lot more finesse than her clunky corkscrew. Or maybe it just looked little because his hand was so big….

  “You wrote?” she asked, forcing her attention away from his hands before her curious mind could start thinking of all the other interesting things he could do with those long fingers.

  “Yup.”

  “Oxford stuff or book stuff?”

  His brown eyes flicked up to hers. “Little of both.”

  Taylor’s gaze dropped back to his hands as he began easing the cork out of the bottle. “I found your pen name.”

  “Did you?”

  “Wasn’t hard.”

  “Meaning you Google-stalked me.”

  She shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by the soft pop of the cork coming out of the bottle. “You buy one?”

  “Yup.” All of them.

  He went to the cupboard, an
d she was oddly delighted when he pulled down two wineglasses instead of one.

  “Read it?” he asked as he poured their wine.

  Every last book.

  “Yeah,” she said, accepting the wineglass. “Thanks.”

  He nodded as he set his glass aside, pulled the mangled cork off his wine key, and put the tool back where he’d found it. Strange how quickly the kitchen had gone from being her kitchen to their kitchen.

  “I liked it,” she said softly.

  “I didn’t ask,” he muttered.

  She smiled into her wineglass. No. He wouldn’t. He was too much like her—likely dying to know her thoughts, but too proud to lay himself bare in front of his nemesis.

  Taylor also noticed that instead of picking up his wineglass and retreating to his bedroom, he lingered a bit.

  “So, when do we find out what happens to Jax?” she asked. “After he finds out Dackery is a traitor?”

  Nick’s eyebrows lifted. “Either you’ve read out of order or you’ve been busy. That’s the most recent in the series you’re referencing.”

  “Told you I was a reader.”

  “Yeah, of classics,” he said.

  “Speaking of that, thanks for finishing the bookshelf,” she said.

  The shelf had stayed in pieces for days after their initial fight, but she’d come home from work yesterday to find it assembled and in the exact spot she’d envisioned it in her bedroom.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to stop her eyes from drifting over his body. “You want to, um, put some clothes on?”

  Nick shrugged. “Eventually.”

  She exhaled in irritation. Or arousal. Lately she was noting that those two emotions seemed to feel an awful lot alike.

  “You seem less crazy today,” he observed. “Are we in the acceptance stage of the Bradley mourning period?”

  She twirled her glass and sighed. “You don’t get it.”

  “So help me understand. Explain to me how you can possibly give a shit about that guy.”