“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“Got it.”
She jerked up—he’d answered that way too fast—and his easy grin was nearly her undoing.
Don’t look at his dimples.
“Just friends,” he said, his voice warm and smooth like butter.
For a moment, their eyes collided. They collided and held and nothing short of the ground splitting open was tearing them apart.
Abby’s breath caught. Something shifted. She saw it in the way his eyes darkened. In the way his nostrils flared.
And it scared the crap out of her.
The urge to turn tail and run was so strong that if Tucker wasn’t standing between Abby and freedom, she just might have done it.
But then the taxi driver slammed the trunk shut and though she jumped, her eyes didn’t leave Tucker.
“Where to?” the driver asked as he rounded the cab and reached for the driver side door.
“La Guardia,” Tucker answered.
“Okay.” The driver paused, half in the cab. “But you guys have to actually get in the cab before I can leave.”
The driver’s sarcasm was heavy, but they both ignored him.
“This is your last chance to change your mind, Abby,” Tucker murmured. “I won’t hold it against you. Like I said, the entire Simon clan can be a little overwhelming.”
Abby thought of what her roommate had said earlier—that Abby was into Tucker. In that way. God, Lisa didn’t know the half of it. Abby wasn’t just into Tucker Simon—she was absolutely, head-over-freaking-heels in love with him.
Hence, the whole inconvenient thing.
She’d realized it several weeks earlier.
Or maybe she’d known it all along, but it had stayed hidden, like a secret afraid of the light.
One Friday night, he’d stayed after hours, and they’d played darts in the back of the bar until three in the morning. Those hours had passed much too quickly and she’d still been buzzing the next night when he’d shown up for last call with a tall, classy blond on his arm. It was at that moment Abby knew.
It wasn’t just jealousy that she’d felt. It was hurt. It was gut-wrenching hurt. How crazy was that? Over the course of the last year, this man had come to mean so much to her, and not only did he not know, she was pretty sure that if he did, he would have stopped coming by The Black Dog.
Because he was a decent man.
So, she’d done nothing about it. She’d pretended that nothing had changed, because the highlight of her week was when Tucker came into the bar. It was a highlight she wasn’t willing to throw away. Not yet anyway.
Now here she was, staring at a man who would probably break her heart.
Abby should have grabbed her bags, made up a lame excuse and called it a day. She should have hightailed it the hell out of there.
But she didn’t.
Instead she slid into the cab and held her breath until, a few seconds later, Tucker joined her.
She was either making the biggest mistake of her life or...or maybe not.
She groaned and closed her eyes, feeling anxious, excited and scared.
Chapter Three