by Ruthie Knox
Please, please, let this be Amanda’s spare bedroom.
She pulled the summer-smelling comforter up over her face and willed her pickled brain to release the details of what had happened after the Drink of Doom.
Her brain gave her snapshots of a dodgy, solitary walk back to the Tube. The echoing clomp of her heels down underground staircases and over concrete hallways. The buzz of the fluorescent lights making her heart race as she wove her way toward the Northern Line. Waiting for the Docklands train at Bank, staring at her shoes and trying to breathe herself calm. The hot whoosh of stale subterranean air on her face as the train arrived. She’d been on her way home to Greenwich, alone. So how—
Oh. Canary Wharf. The evening unfurled more rapidly now. The thick jasmine perfume of the woman seated next to her making Cath’s mouth water, sour and vile. Rushing off the train before the doors could close. Later, leaning on the map kiosk, watching the strangers on the platform as her stomach settled.
A black and clawing loneliness had crept into her bones, eating the marrow and leaving behind an ache she didn’t know what to do with. A million miles from Chicago, from anything resembling a real home, she’d been in tears, bleary and tired and fuzzy when she’d spotted City’s familiar face.
Then, his hand at the small of her back, guiding her onto another train. His keys in the lock of the flat.
Of all the guys in London, she’d gone home with City.
Cath relaxed, relieved to know whose bed she’d slept in—and to confirm she’d only been sleeping. Even drunk, lonely, and out of her head, she wouldn’t have thrown herself at City. He wasn’t her type at all. When she fell, it was for the bad apples, the unapologetic scoundrels with funny stories, wiry bodies, and battered guitar cases. Not for guys like City. Not for men who were good.
And she’d been watching City long enough to know he was definitely good. He was the sort who helped mothers carry their strollers down the station steps and gave up his seat on the train to anyone female, old, or less fit than himself.
Come to think of it, he didn’t sit much.
She flipped back the comforter and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, scanning the floor for the outfit she’d worn last night. No luck, but the sight of the red wool rug brought back a sudden, dismaying image of herself sitting splay-legged on it, giggling helplessly, arms tangled up in her own shirt. She’d shouted for City to come and help her. She could still feel his hands at her rib cage, large and warm, pulling her to her feet. Unzipping her skirt. Smoothing his T-shirt over her shoulders, as impersonal as if he were dressing a child.
How utterly humiliating. How utterly Cath.
But no, that was the old Cath. Bad Cath. New Cath had been doing pretty well before last night’s cocktail had knocked her flat on her ass. What had the Blind Date said it was? Some kind of energy drink thing with tequila and gin and triple sec and she didn’t know what-all else. The sort of cocktail undergrad girls with low self-esteem downed by the pitcher on spring break in Florida. Had she not been half stoned on wine and pain and Patsy Cline, she’d never have let it past her lips.
You did, though. And how many mistakes does that make, Mary Catherine?
She counted, pushing her fingers into the mattress one at a time.
One. You agreed to the blind date.
Two. You had too much wine.
Three. You didn’t flee at the first sight of the cross-dressing Patsy Cline.
Four. You drank that nightmare of a cocktail.
Five. You took public transportation home instead of a cab.
Six. You hooked up with City and then, what? Passed out?
On four drinks?
No, dumbass. On four drinks and two antihistamines.
Oh, hell. The twenty-four-hour allergy medicine she’d taken yesterday morning wouldn’t have mixed well with alcohol. After City had rescued her from the Canary Wharf train platform, she must’ve conked out on him.
She took it back. City wasn’t a mistake. He was her guardian angel.
A guardian angel who’d seen her in her underpants.
Cath took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Time to find a bathroom, locate her clothes, thank City for the safe harbor, and get the hell out of Dodge.
The bedroom door opened onto the hallway of a modest flat. The main entry was at one end, and that had to be the kitchen at the other. Which left two rooms with open doors and the third directly across the hall from the bedroom with the door mostly closed. Cath crossed her fingers. Let that be the bathroom.
It was. She peed for approximately nine years and then splashed some cold water on her face, working up the courage to look in the mirror. Ugh. At least when she’d been a bad girl, she’d had spiky hair dyed black to match her clothes, and she’d been able to do the goth thing on hangover days, accentuating her pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes with heavy eyeliner and lipstick the color of dried blood. Now that she was playing it straight, she just looked like Tinker Bell coming off a bender. After scrubbing her mascara off as best she could with cold water, she ran damp fingers through her chin-length, wispy brown hair in a futile attempt to restore some semblance of a style.
She spotted a new toothbrush still in its package on the back of the sink and eyed it covetously. Even after a drink of water, her mouth tasted like … There were no words. And the toothbrush couldn’t be City’s, because his was on the wall in a holder with his toothpaste. Unless there was another woman lurking around here somewhere, he must have put it out for her.
Had any of the guys she’d actually slept with ever been so considerate?
No, definitely not. Rating a toothbrush of her very own was a first. She picked it up and smeared some of his toothpaste onto the bristles.
How strange to be in City’s neat little bathroom, using his toiletries. Her favorite stranger. Silly as it seemed, she retained a vivid impression of the relief that had flooded through her when she saw his face on the train platform last night. It had felt like she’d known him all her life rather than just observing him from afar for the better part of three seasons. Her intuition told her she could trust him.
Given how bad her instincts were, he’d probably turn out to be a serial killer.
She spat and rinsed out her mouth, beginning to feel almost human. What she really needed was a hot shower. Glancing with longing at the claw-foot tub, she noticed a towel neatly folded over the edge. Another one was draped on the radiator. She poked it with one finger. Still damp, so it had to be City’s. The towel on the tub was for her.
A clean towel and a toothbrush, and he hadn’t even gotten into her pants. What a guy. No wonder she hadn’t slept with him.
She paused a moment before stripping off the T-shirt. New Cath didn’t get naked in strange men’s apartments. On the other hand, New Cath had made six significant mistakes since dinnertime yesterday. How likely was it that mistake number seven would be the one that sank her?
Cath shook her head. If City had planned to assault her, he’d have done it last night. Instead, he’d put her to bed and set out a toothbrush and a towel for her. He was a regular Boy Scout. She’d known that already.
The shower felt heavenly, the water nearly hot enough to scald—just how she liked it. She stayed under the spray for a long time, wishing she could wash the shame away along with the grime. Smoothing City’s spicy, man-smelling soap over the tattoo that wrapped around her lower back and one side of her stomach in a wide band, she reminded herself she’d done worse things and managed to get over them.
This thing, whatever it was—this oops, this slipup that had landed her in City’s shower—did not have to mean that New Cath had slid off the rails and plowed into a hedgerow. This could be a blip. Two years without a blip was pretty good. If she went right back to New Cath with no further blippage, she might manage to forget this had ever happened within, say, six months. Blips did not count on one’s permanent record.
After drying off with City’s plush towel, Cath pul
led on her underwear and shrugged back into the T-shirt. Mostly headache-free and heading toward hungry, she ventured out in search of her host and, she hoped, her own clothes.
The unmistakable odor of bacon wafted through the flat, but the kitchen was quiet, so she peeked in the door next to the bathroom. An empty office. She moved toward the remaining door, which had to be the living room.
Wrong. It was a studio. Canvases were stacked four and five deep along the walls and in front of shelves that were neatly arrayed with paints, paper, and other supplies. The artist was in residence, his body turned three-quarters away from her, utterly absorbed in the large painting on his easel.
Disoriented, Cath leaned against the doorjamb and watched him for a while. She never would’ve figured City had an artistic side. The painting on the easel in front of him was nearly finished, showing a woman working at a desk in an office. He must have painted the picture in his bedroom, too. The style was unmistakable.
He was talented.
Damn, and now her skin was doing that tingling, goose-bumpy thing it did whenever she got the hots for an artist. What was it about painters, anyway? The play of the lean muscles in his forearms, the precision in his fingers as he wielded the brush over the canvas—the whole scene just turned her crank.
It was a purely situational attraction, of course. Meaningless. This was City, for heaven’s sake. She’d never once gone melty over him before. It was just that in faded jeans and a paint-smeared red T-shirt that clung across his shoulders, he looked like a completely different man.
His ass wasn’t helping. The man had a really tidy ass.
Ashamed of the randy teenager who had overtaken her brain, Cath pushed away from the door and crossed the room. “You’re pretty good.”
He turned and looked at her, his face momentarily blank. His short blond hair was tousled as if he’d been running his hand through it, and there was a streak of red paint on his cheek.
Then he smiled, and Cath temporarily forgot how to breathe. City didn’t look like City when he smiled. It was still his face, though with nice teeth and a boyish dimple in one cheek. Pleasant surprises, but there was something else, too. An I’m-going-to-eat-you-up something. Smiling, City didn’t appear altogether safe.
To her dismay, he lit her up like a pinball machine.
Chapter Three
Cath leaned against a table strewn with crumpled tubes of paint and jars full of brushes, pressing her damp palms against the surface and willing her heart to stop pounding. You’re not really attracted to City. You’re just looking for your clothes, and then you’re going home. A blip, remember? This is a blip.
Dimly, she realized he’d spoken. “Sorry, what?”
His lips twitched, and the dimple made another appearance. “I only said ‘Good morning.’ Are you all right?”
She’d been on the money predicting he’d have a posh accent, anyway. Maybe she could blame the hangover for her reaction to the smile. She needed to eat something. Or get laid.
It had been a while. Could you still say that when it had been two years? It had been a while.
“That depends,” she said.
“On?”
“On what I did last night.”
He pursed his perfect lips, a frown line appearing between his eyebrows. “You don’t remember?”
“Not much.” She drew her index finger along the surface of his worktable, as if checking for dust.
“Do you remember refusing to tell me your name or where you live?”
“We talked?” Funny, she couldn’t resurrect any memories of speaking to him. Only his hand, warm and solid, guiding her. Only the way he’d made her feel.
The way he was still making her feel, come to think of it. She was bare-legged in this strange man’s apartment, asking him to reveal the details of what she’d done while drunk last night. The situation ought to have been intimidating. She ought to have been queasy with remorse.
She wasn’t, and she could only conclude the reason was City. He projected calm.
“You kept calling me ‘City,’ ” he said.
Cath nodded. “Yep. That’s what I call you.”
He gave her a wry smile, and she held on tight to the edge of the table. Maybe calm didn’t quite cover it. Not when he smiled, anyway.
“That’s precisely what you said last night.”
His voice wasn’t at all what she’d expected. It was low and warm and soothing, and it took the edge right off his fancy accent.
“Did I say why I wouldn’t tell you my name?”
The smile widened, and she decided it ought to be classified as a misdemeanor. Grinning with Intent to Discombobulate.
“You told me you were sad and quite tired, but you didn’t require my help, and all you needed to set yourself to rights was a cup of coffee and something to eat.”
“So how did I—”
He raised one finger to prevent her interruption, his eyes twinkling with amusement. She’d never noticed how unusual his eyes were before. They were green over brown, both exotic and warm.
“Then,” he continued, “when I tried to introduce myself properly, you covered my mouth with your hand and insisted we remain strangers, because you could tell I was a very nice man”—he pronounced the word nice as if it were a razor blade he was carefully spitting out—“and I’d be far better off not knowing you.”
Cath was impressed. Her drunk self had more sense than she’d given her credit for.
“That’s true,” she offered. “I’m not really your type.”
He cocked an eyebrow but let the comment slide.
“Since I’m here, I guess that means you took a pass on the opportunity to hop the next train and leave me to my own devices?”
“It was nearly midnight,” he said, defensive. “All the shops were closed, there were no cabs to be found, you wouldn’t tell me where you lived or let me see you home, and you could barely stand up. So yes, bringing you here seemed like the right thing to do.”
A thought distracted her from the question she’d been forming. “What were you doing at Canary Wharf at midnight on a Friday?”
“Trolling for prostitutes.”
He delivered the line in such a dry, remote tone, it took her a second to get that he was joking, but when she did, she couldn’t prevent herself from teasing, “You must have been so disappointed with the selection.” She glanced down at her small, decidedly unvoluptuous body in the oversized shirt.
“I wouldn’t say that, love.”
The dimple appeared again. She lost a few seconds gazing at his mouth, and then she came to and let her eyes slide down his torso to alight on his hand, which still held a paintbrush.
She hadn’t expected the smile. Or the paintbrush.
She definitely hadn’t expected him to flirt with her.
“I’d been to see a film,” he explained.
“I passed out,” she replied, attempting to steer the conversation back toward the safer ground of her humiliation so that she could get the details she needed and scurry home.
“I suppose you did. You were terribly tired. I made a pot of tea, and by the time I’d finished you were asleep at my kitchen table. I tried to rouse you, but you said, ‘Leave me alone,’ and then something that sounded very much like, ‘Don’t murder me.’ ” He reported all this matter-of-factly, as if drunk women passed out on his kitchen table every Friday night.
Which, for all you know, they do.
“Nice of you not to.”
“I seem to have convinced you I’m a nice man.”
Cath nodded her agreement, though he didn’t look all that nice at the moment. The gleam in those green-brown eyes was positively rakish. She hadn’t thought City had a speck of rakishness in him.
“Sorry about the stripping part,” she mumbled, partly because she was sorry but mostly because she wondered what he’d say.
The smile he gave her made her toes curl, it was so wicked. “You do remember,” he said in that low rumble.<
br />
“You were very, uh, gentlemanly about that.”
“You were very intoxicated.” He turned away to set the paintbrush down on the tray at the base of his easel.
“Yeah.”
She stared at her toes until they uncurled. This was her cue to ask what he’d done with her clothes. She would have, only City asked, “How are you feeling?” and so she had to keep talking to him. She tried to mind it but failed. The man was proving to be an enjoyable conversationalist, and he was remarkably easy on the eyes.
“I’m fine, thanks. I have a little headache, but the shower helped. And the toothbrush.”
“Glad to hear it. Would you like breakfast? I fried up some bacon.”
The mention of bacon made her stomach rumble.
“That sounds like a yes.”
“I do have a weakness for the bacon-sandwich hangover cure,” she admitted. “But it seems a little lowbrow for you, City. I can’t imagine you drunk, much less hungover.”
He took a few steps closer and studied her, an unabashed appraisal that should have been rude or even scary but instead sent syrupy heat creeping through her abdomen. “Considering you don’t know my name, you seem to have a lot of ideas about me.”
Oh, she had ideas. She had a whole slew of new ideas about him, and she needed to find an exit strategy quick, because none of them was on the list of things she was supposed to be thinking about. Banker, she reminded herself. He’s a banker, a very boring banker. Enough already. Just, whatever you do, don’t flirt with him.
“I don’t need to know your name. I’ve seen you around, and I know your type.”
Aaaand she was flirting with him.
It won her a smirk. “What’s my type, then?”
“For starters, you come from money. You went to expensive boarding schools, graduated from either Oxford or Cambridge, and now you work at a bank in the City—thus the name.”
He frowned and wiped his hand over his mouth. What a mouth.
“Just let me know when I get something wrong,” she offered.
“By all means, carry on. You’re doing a brilliant job so far.”
