“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.”
“Why would I spill my guts? I don’t even like you,” she muttered. “You don’t like me either.”
“Might make it easier to talk to me, then.”
She rolled her eyes. “How do you figure?”
“Well,” he said, setting his glass aside and walking toward her. “Way I see it, if we hate each other, no matter what the other says, it’s impossible to think less of the other person, right? Seems like there should be a certain freedom in that.”
Taylor opened her mouth to tell him his logic was ridiculous, but then she realized he was sort of right. It did make sense, in a weird sort of way.
She also wondered if, on some level, that was why she and Nick had agreed to this strange living situation. In some ways they could be most like themselves around the other, because there was no point in pretending for someone who didn’t give a shit one way or the other.
Not to mention there was the not so tiny detail that Nick Ballantine had already seen her at her worst.
“I’ve never thanked you,” Taylor blurted out, before she could rethink it. “Did I?”
“For?” His eyes were calm. Patient. It made it easier.
“That night,” she whispered.
She didn’t have to explain which night. The night Taylor had found out that her only relative—the only person in her life who really cared for her—had died. The night Taylor had been alone in the Oxford office.
Except not entirely alone. Someone else had been working late that night. Someone had heard her crying.
That someone hadn’t asked a single question. He’d merely gathered Taylor’s shaking body against his much bigger one and held her while she cried. Sobbed.
And then he’d listened while she told him all about Karen. About how her aunt had adopted her, and cared for her when nobody else would.
That wasn’t the embarrassing part, though. No, the humiliation that Taylor had barely been able to live with since that night was that somehow he’d discovered the most painful truth of her heart.
That she was terrified nobody loved her.
That she wasn’t worthy.
And Nick Ballantine had gently nudged her head away from his chest, cupped her face in his big hands, and told her—promised her—that someone would love her.
“You were wrong, though,” she whispered, meeting Nick’s eyes.
“About?”
He was close now. If she reached out her arm, she could touch him. Maybe be held by him.
“About someone loving me,” she whispered. “He didn’t. I think I’m just realizing now that he didn’t love me. Not really.”
Nick’s head snapped back slightly. “This is about Bradley. Still?”
She blinked, because his cold response wasn’t at all what she’d expected—or hoped for. “Well…yeah. What did you think it was about?”
Nick gave a cold little laugh and tossed back the rest of the wine. He set the glass on the counter and stared down at her. “Let me know when you figure it out, Taylor.”
A few seconds later, his bedroom door slammed, leaving Taylor to wonder what the heck had just happened.
—
Nick angrily stabbed his arms into the T-shirt and jerked it over his head. He repeated the process with a pair of boxers and gray sweatpants, cursing himself—and Taylor—the entire time.
He placed both hands atop his head, lacing his fingers as he stared out the window without really seeing Eighty-Third Street below.
What the hell had just happened out there?
It would be easy to blame Taylor. Hell, he wanted to. Badly. To blame her for the fact that he was in his bedroom sulking over a girl like a teenage moron.
But he was uncomfortably aware that he was the one with the problem.
Just yesterday he’d been hell-bent on turning Taylor Carr into a rebound. He should be out there with his tongue in her mouth, his hands down her pants, making her forget all about fucking Calloway.
Nick swore again and closed his eyes, the truth settling around him uncomfortably.
He wanted Taylor Carr—but when he finally put his hands on her, he didn’t want it to be about Bradley.
He wanted it to be about them.
Chapter 12
Taylor loved her job.
It wasn’t something she’d thought much about recently, given that her personal life was in shambles and her home life involved one very broody, too-sexy-for-his-own-good roommate.
But she loved everything about Oxford, every part of advertising. She loved figuring out how people worked, how they thought, how they felt, and knowing which of Oxford’s advertisers got it right and which needed help figuring out how to appeal to the magazine’s readership.
What she didn’t love was Bradley’s email request that she go old-school for their afternoon meeting and bring print copies of the next issue’s ad instead of reviewing it on their iPads the way they usually did. Apparently some bigwig from Rolex was in the office and wanted to see his full-spread watch ad as it would be in the actual magazine, glossy pages and all. And Bradley’s back-to-back meetings meant he apparently couldn’t print them himself.
Her first inclination was to tell Bradley to stick it. Not because it was an unreasonable request—it was annoying, but not all that unusual in a world that sometimes liked to pretend it was still in the Mad Men era.