He dropped his bag and keys on the counter and eyed Taylor’s bedroom door warily, wondering what the hell Calloway had done to send her from sad and determined to angry and pissed.
Her door was open a crack, allowing the voice of nineties Alanis Morissette to blast through the entire apartment.
Nick wasn’t an idiot—any woman listening to “You Oughta Know” at this volume should be avoided.
He meant only to quietly shut the bedroom door so he could watch the tail end of the Rangers game.
But at the same time his hand found her doorknob, his eyes found her, and he faltered in his resolve to give her a wide berth.
Taylor sat cross-legged on a sheepskin rug on the floor, surrounded by pieces of wood. She was scowling fiercely at a piece of paper in her left hand, her hair in a messy knot atop her head. Instead of the usual tight dresses she wore to the office or the sexy tight pants she wore to the gym, she wore a Knicks jersey and tiny gray boxer shorts.
It was the hammer in her left hand that had him reaching out and flicking a finger over the volume knob on the stereo system by the door to turn it down—way down.
Her head whipped toward him, hammer rising slightly.
Nick raised his eyebrows, silently asking what her plan was.
She huffed out a sigh of irritation, lowering the hammer. “Ballantine.”
“Carr,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb and crossing his arms.
She opened her mouth as though to snap at him, then closed it and looked away. It told him all he needed to know. The music told him she was angry, but everything else said hurting.
Damn.
Nick debated his move for about ten seconds before pushing away from the door and walking back into the kitchen.
Any man with half a brain would have left a woman in this state to nurse her breakup in private. Well, maybe first removed the hammer from her hand.
Nick was a smart man.
But it would seem he also had a moronic soft spot—one that didn’t like to see the usually impenetrable Taylor anything less than fierce and fighting.
She wasn’t broken, though. He’d seen her broken, just that one time. And this wasn’t the same. This was angry Taylor. Not devastated Taylor. He wanted to make sure she understood the difference.
A minute later he walked back toward her bedroom. She glanced up in surprise at his reappearance, her eyes locking on his for a split second before dropping to the two glasses of cabernet in his hands.
He entered her bedroom uninvited, stepping around the pieces of shelving and scattered screws, and held the wineglass in front of her face.
She hesitated only a split second before accepting it with a murmured “Thank you.”
Nick nodded in acknowledgment, his eyes scanning her bedroom. She usually kept the door closed, so it was the first time he’d seen her personal space.
He was surprised to see it was entirely different from the vibe of the living room. The main area of the apartment was all white sofa and marble coffee table and pale gray barstools. Though Nick would have expected her bedroom to be more of the same predictable neutrals, it was anything but.
Other than the white sheepskin rug, where she currently sat, everything else was bold colors.
Her bedding was a dark, deep blue, the window treatments a deep burgundy. The room would have had an almost masculine feel to it, but it also had little marks of Taylor all over. On the dresser was a bottle of expensive-looking perfume—a scent he knew was as spicy and alluring as the woman herself. A gold candle sat next to what looked like a tube of lipstick on the nightstand, and there was an animal-print throw casually draped across the base of the bed, perfectly summing up her feline tendencies.
“Everything to your liking?” she asked from her place near his feet.
Her words were sarcastic as ever, but her voice lacked heat. Her tone was more husky than usual, as though she was simply…tired.
Nick nudged the toe of his shoe against a piece of black lacquered wood as he took a sip of the wine. “Building Calloway’s coffin?”
She pleased him by laughing. “Not a bad idea. But no. I’ve been at this piece of crap for an hour, but I’m pretty sure the little pictures in the instruction manual aren’t even for the right piece of furniture. I mean, what is this one?” She pointed at the paper. “It looks like a penis.”
Taylor thrust up the directions at him. He accepted the rumpled booklet, but kept his gaze on her rather than looking at the illustration she referenced.
She was a bit paler than usual, but there was no puffy redness around her eyes to indicate tears. Good. Good. Calloway wasn’t worth them.
Nick gently nudged a board out of the way with his foot and lowered to the ground across from her, turning his attention to the instructions.
“For as much as you paid for your fussy couch out there, you couldn’t have bought an assembled piece of furniture? What’s with the Ikea flashback to college?” he asked.
She sighed tiredly. “That was the deal I made with myself. I could get the couch if I went thrifty on everything else.”
“What’s its furniture destiny?” he asked. “Bookshelf? Desk?”
“Bookshelf.”
“A large one, apparently,” he said, surveying the numerous pieces.
Taylor’s slim shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I have lots of books.”
“Yeah?” he asked, flipping through the manual, getting the gist of which piece went where. “Never pegged you as a reader.”
“What did you think I did in my spare time, killed cats?”
“Nah. Men.”
“I’ve thought about it,” she muttered, taking a sip of wine.
“What sort of books do you read?”
“Classics, mostly,” she said drawing her knees up and looping her arms around them, wineglass dangling in her fingers as she rocked the red liquid from one side of the glass to the other. “Karen turned me on to them when I was a kid. Dickens, Twain, the Bront? sisters. I inherited her collection when she died.”
She didn’t explain who Karen was, because she didn’t have to. Not to him.
He’d been there that night.
Nick watched her out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, and he wondered if she was remembering that night at the Oxford office. The night she’d let him hold her, only to pass him over for Calloway.
He wanted to ask if that night was why she hated him so fiercely.
“Which is your favorite?” he asked instead.
“Book?”
Nick nodded, continuing to pore over the overly complicated directions for the bookshelf.
“The Great Gatsby’s marvelously written. Sometimes I read it just for the way Fitzgerald strung a sentence together. Dickens’s characters are my favorite, though.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “Estella?”
Taylor’s head snapped up in surprise. “You’ve read Great Expectations?”
“I have.”
“So you’re a reader too?”
“Most writers are,” he said, setting the directions aside and taking a sip of wine as he evaluated the mess she’d made.
“But you’re a journalist. That’s different from a fiction writer.”
“I’m both,” Nick said, reaching for the tool near her knee, trying to ignore that her current position left a long expanse of smooth, silky thigh exposed.