Chapter One
Eddie
His one-night stand was coming back to haunt him, and Eddie Jameson had never been more eager for the reunion.
"Jameson?" The haughty venture capitalist attempted to reclaim his attention. "You all right? The punch hitting you a little too hard there?"
Eddie blinked. He had almost forgotten where he was in the New York bar, and who he was talking to...scratch that, he had forgotten who he was talking to. "Yeah. Hey, I'll be with you in a minute," he promised the suit in front of him. Any investment he had in their tedious conversation had gone out the window the moment he noticed the familiar vision sitting alone across the room. Eddie moved past the capitalist, passing off his drink in the process. The other man clearly didn't approve of being treated like a waiter, but Eddie couldn't have cared less. His focus was elsewhere.
It was Margot Daley sitting at the bar. Eddie had known her since childhood. She was one of his oldest and dearest friends—and the beautiful woman who also happened to be his most memorable recent hookup. It had been a slow burn between the two of them, spanning a decade at least; even now, seeing her like this, he couldn't help but mentally replay every thrust and arch and sweet purr of pleasure their union had elicited. Margot was his oldest friend, and his newest lover; it made for an unforgettable combination.
Even if he had never seen her naked before, Eddie would have noticed her now. She bloomed like a rare night flower in a field of interchangeable daisies. Her black cocktail dress stood out starkly against the spring pastels; where other skirts flowed breezily around bare, athletic legs, Margot's skin-tight selection hugged her every curve as intimately as the gaze of a hopeful lover. Every subtle shift of her legs might as well have broadcast itself at a ten on the room's male-only frequency.
God, she was gorgeous. Athletic as hell, and as naturally tan as he was from all her time spent outdoors. Even from across the room, Eddie could make out the strikingly dark eyebrows that overshadowed her wide-set, innocent brown eyes; they were both a contrast and a complement to her long, ginger-blond hair.
He was moving toward her before he knew what he was doing. Not that he minded, or even normally ignored, the whims of his body. His hand found her waist almost as soon as she was within reach; it slid along the small of her back in quiet, intimate greeting. Margot started and turned in her stool. Eddie had heard of the deer-in-the-headlights look, but he had never been on the receiving end of it before.
"Eddie!" she exclaimed in astonishment.
"Me," Eddie agreed. "How are you this evening, Margot?"
"What are you doing here?" Her surprise was so profound that Eddie had to momentarily fight to keep his smile fixed in place. She didn't sound exactly unhappy to see him, but there was a definite note of disbelief in her voice that made him wonder.
"I have Kyle Moby's fall from grace to thank for my invite tonight," he admitted. "This seat taken?"
Margot shook her head, and Eddie sat down beside her. He let his hand slide from her waist, even though he hated to break contact with her. Her surprise at seeing him had caused him to rethink the familiarities he had been planning.
He conceded privately that it was possible he hadn't been on her mind as much as she had been on his, even if it did come as a bit of a blow to his ego. Margot had been almost all he could think about since their searingly-hot night together almost two months ago. She was the distraction he couldn't afford, now that he was finally moving up at the agency and winning his brothers' respect...but she was also the rising addiction he couldn't find it in himself to overcome. Not yet.
There was no denying that Margot looked distracted herself. She had pieced together a simple, stunning outfit, but paid no attention to the season's colors; her golden locks looked teased by the wind rather than any sort of styling apparatus.
Eddie would have bet his inheritance that he wasn't the first guy to approach that evening, yet here she was: perched in self-imposed solitude and staring vacantly past the bartender standing sentinel. She didn't even have a drink in front of her.
Something had to be done.
"Kyle Moby? Of Mobius Mobile?" Margot inquired. "I hadn't heard anything. What happened?"
"They dropped him from the Thirty Under Thirty," Eddie confided. "But you didn't hear it from me. The new list comes out this month." He glanced around furtively for show, and Margot leaned in a little. "He made a huge spectacle of himself at their last gathering. This is their first event since Kyle got the boot."
"Well, you've certainly hyped this story enough," Margot said with mock reproof. "Typical of a Jameson."
Eddie preened at the compliment. "What are you drinking? Never mind. I've got it." He signaled to the watching bartender. "Whiskey on the rocks for me, and a whiskey water for my gorgeous friend here. Man, does that guy hover or what? Anyway, back to my story...so Kyle shows up to this party already completely black-out drunk, and everyone's pretending like they don't even notice when he can barely pile out of the back of the limousine without three more dudes assisting him. They manage to get him up to the rooftop without incident. My best guess it was his friends' intention to leave him passed out on the sofa, but the sofa they chose happened to be outside the suite...and right beside the pool."
Margot groaned and shook her head. If she thought she already knew where this was going, then she was in for a treat. Eddie settled into his stool and raised his hands as if they were necessary to measure the full scope of Kyle's fuck-up.
"So drunk asshole. Pool. Total lack of supervision. Kyle wakes up a half hour later and immediately unzips."
"No." Margot's interjection couldn't stop the train now that it had already left the station.
"Because he's got to take a leak, right? Dude's been drinking since he woke up that morning." Eddie chuckled. "So he starts pissing in the pool. And Phillip Hedlund—Number Twenty-Nine, the guy whose pool it is—comes out and sees this, and he freaks. Shoves Kyle into the pool face-first with his pants still around his ankles."
Margot groaned and dropped her forehead into her hand.
Eddie leaned in. "But as we've established already, Kyle's had a lot to drink. By now a crowd's gathered, and everyone's watching to see what he'll do next. He manages to get out of the water on his own—pants still around his ankles—but Phillip won't stop hollering about his pool. So what does Kyle do? He doesn't want to wear out his welcome any more than he already has. He stumbles over to the edge of the roof, and pukes right over the side...only there's another party going on down below. A bachelorette party."
Margot made a choking noise.
"And the girls just start screaming." Eddie waved his hands wildly around his head as if fending off an unexpected shower. It was easy to draw inspiration from Margot's growing grimace of agony. "Suffice it to say, they booted Kyle from the party...and from the top Thirty Under Thirty, which means more room for me. He turns thirty-one next week, anyway." Eddie laughed at the anticlimactic conclusion, and Margot just shook her head in utter disbelief. She had managed to remain mostly disgusted throughout his salacious yarn, but he could tell from the way her eyes glimmered that she was holding back her mirth. Why was another story, and one he intended to unravel for himself. He edged his shoulders in a little closer and nudged her. "Anyway, what's new with you? I haven't heard from you since…"
"Since." She echoed the word as if it was more than just an agreement, but a punctuation on what he had been about to say. Her seeming reluctance to bring up the other night didn't faze Eddie. He nudged her again, this time with his knee beneath the bar; after a moment, he felt Margot lean into him slightly. Her body language was less rigid than her conversation, and he took it as an encouraging sign. More than that, he just wanted an excuse to feel the lean line of her thigh pressed against his.
"Look, I'm sorry if I'm the one who dropped the ball," Eddie said. "I've been busy at the agency. And I know you've been busy at the firm. What are you working on these days?"
"Designing new offices, mostly." Margot pulled a new face this time, and Eddie chuckled. She could be endearingly expressive without realizing it, and she looked ten years younger than twenty-eight when they got on a subject she was passionate about. "Those are the only jobs coming in these days, and they're all in affluent neighborhoods. It gets boring after a while: nobody has an original idea or seems willing to take a risk anymore. Everyone just wants to do exactly what their competitors are doing."