He inhaled, striving for patience. Just a few more hours. A few more hours and he was done with this nightmare.
Nick had never thought the day would come when he’d be looking forward to moving in with bitchy Taylor Carr, but it had to beat this.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck and surveyed the boxes, realizing he wasn’t dreading moving day tomorrow as much as he thought he would.
Sure, his initial motivation for moving in with Taylor had been to escape Jackie. And maybe to stick it to Calloway, just for being a dick.
But there were other benefits too. Taylor might not be his favorite woman on the planet, but perhaps that was sort of the point.
At least he had a good read on Taylor. He liked that he knew what she was. Competitive, cool, sarcastic. What you saw was what you got with Taylor Carr, and it didn’t hurt that the feisty package was hot.
But as Nick lifted the box of clothes onto the top of one of the piles, his back to Jackie, he felt a ripple of unease.
A memory of a time when Taylor hadn’t been quite so cool and remote. A time when she hadn’t hated him.
Nick was damn sure that he and Taylor Carr had unfinished business.
What he wasn’t so sure about was how the hell he wanted to finish it.
Chapter 6
“What is that? What the hell is that?”
Nick didn’t bother to look out from behind the enormous piece of furniture he was crouched behind. “Taylor Carr, meet the twenty-first century. This is a flat-screen television.”
“Not in my living room it’s not,” she said, hands on hips.
“Our living room,” he said, standing and plugging a cable into some black box she couldn’t identify.
“Do you have any idea how much time I spent picking out this furniture? Figuring out how to arrange it?”
“Nah. But it sounds like a really fascinating topic of conversation. Can we save it for later, get really into the details? I definitely want to know everything there is to know about that uncomfortable white couch.” He nodded toward the contemporary white leather sofa she’d spent half a month’s salary on.
“It’s not uncomfortable,” she said defensively.
“Looks uncomfortable.” He didn’t even glance at it as he plugged a cord into another black box she couldn’t identify.
“No. What it looks like is that someone moved it to the wrong spot,” she said. “When I left this morning, it was against the other wall.”
“Oh, was it?” he muttered sarcastically.
She wound her way around the stack of moving boxes to get to the sofa.
Even as she knew it was too heavy to move on her own, she placed both hands on the arm and pushed in a stubborn effort to put it back in its proper spot.
“Not gonna lie—I don’t mind the view, Carr.”
She straightened and turned around, giving Nick her coldest look. “So this is how we’re going to do this? You checking me out constantly?”
“Well.” He studied her, idly chewing the black twist tie from the cable. “Guess that depends. How often are you going to wear the skintight pants?”
“They’re yoga pants.”
“And I’m sure you have no idea what they do for your ass, right?”
As a matter of fact, Taylor knew exactly what wonders yoga pants did for the female posterior. All women did.
But to punish him for saying it aloud, she turned and bent over the couch once more, a little slower this time, wanting to torture him.
The sound of a sharp smack on her butt registered just a split second before the sting of it. “Ouch!” she yelped, instinctively covering the spot he’d just swatted.
Nick dropped onto the white couch, both arms draped over the back. It was a huge couch, but with Nick’s large frame, it suddenly didn’t seem quite as big as before.
“Whaddaya know—not so uncomfortable after all.”
“It shouldn’t be,” she said, still rubbing her butt. “Not for what I paid.”
Nick patted the cushion next to him in a silent invitation to sit.
“Pass.”
He shrugged, evidently not caring one way or the other. “You were right, roomie—the original crown molding’s outstanding.”
“Shut up,” she muttered. And then, because it was Saturday and she had nothing better to do, especially while her apartment was in total disarray, she plopped down next to him.
“Since I don’t like you anyway, feel free to tell me the truth,” Taylor said, nodding at the television. “Is the ridiculous size of that TV compensating for something?”
“Not liking me doesn’t preclude you finding out for yourself,” he said, giving her an unabashed grin.
She rolled her eyes and dropped her aqua Nikes on the coffee table, leaning back on the couch. Her ponytail bumped against his forearm, and she turned to glare at him for taking up all the space, but he just grinned wider.
She stayed exactly where she was. This was her home. She refused to feel uncomfortable.
Although…it wasn’t feeling like only her home so much at the moment.
Nick’s moving truck had left less than an hour ago, and already she could swear the place felt different. And not just because of the atrocious TV ruining her feng shui.
In the span of one morning, he’d somehow made the place feel more masculine, and not in the sexy, couple-y way she’d been hoping for when she’d planned to live here with Bradley.
The masculinity was more…obvious, somehow. Obnoxious.
“So you never really told me why you decided to make my life a living hell by moving in,” she said, crossing her feet at the ankles.
“Combination of things.”
“Give me the top three.”
“Pissing off Calloway, getting in your pants, and putting some distance between me and a crazy ex.”
Taylor ignored the first one—she’d already figured that much from the weird testosterone war in the break room. The second she wasn’t even going to dignify with a response. But the third…the third was interesting.
“You had a stalker?”
“More like a temporary roommate who wouldn’t leave.”
“Oh, so sort of like what I have at the moment.”
“Nope. Different. I’m paying rent. Jackie was more like a…”
“Yes?” she prodded, more intrigued than she wanted to let on about what Nick’s life was like outside of being a pain in her ass at Oxford. Particularly as it related to his female companionship.
He looked down at her and gave a cocky smile. “You care about my problems, Carr?”
“More like curious about what kind of girl would possibly think to date you.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he was decent enough not to remind her of that delusional time a year earlier when she’d thought to date him. Or maybe it wasn’t kindness so much as him saving that bit of ammunition for later.
“Your bestie thought I was good enough for a date or two,” he said.
“Yeah, and how’d you stack up against Lincoln?” she shot back sweetly, reminding him that the moment Daisy’s real love had come into her life, she hadn’t given Nick so much as another look.
He flinched, and Taylor felt a little stab of guilt.