In a moment of rare bravery, I was actually about to summon up the courage to ask, when there was a sudden metallic scrape in the living room. A second later, the front door opened and a man’s voice rang out through the apartment.
“Abigail? Are you home?”
Nick leapt back like he had been burned. Creating an instant distance between himself and the bed. His muscles tensed, and his eyes locked onto mine with a silent accusation.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered in a clipped voice, “I didn’t realize I was interrupting.”
I stared up in shock, as thoroughly taken aback by the situation as he was. As had been previously established, my work life didn’t leave much room for a social one. I couldn’t remember the last time there had been one man in my apartment, let alone two.
...it really made me wish I was wearing pants.
“I don’t...you’re not—”
“Abigail?” the man called again. There was a rustling in the kitchen, followed by the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. “You in here? How come your door isn’t locked?”
Then the voice clicked and I clapped a hand to my forehead.
“Jake?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m in the bedroom.” I then glared at Nick. “I guess it’s not meant for me to sleep in.”
The footsteps paused, then quickened.
I peered at Nick. “Did you forget to lock my door?”
“Sorry. Who is this guy? Are you dating someone?”
“Goodness, no. He’s on my team,” I hissed to Nick. “You’ve met him a dozen times—he’s the one who did your initial interview with Ella.”
Nick remained expressionless as the door pushed open and Jake Harmon spilled inside. In hindsight, I didn’t know why I was surprised to see him. After Nick’s coffee mak
er walked the plank out the penthouse window, neither one of us had been seen or heard of since.
...until our kiss on live television last night.
He knocked. “Hey, is everything okay? Are you dressed? Just meet me in the living room. We have a lot to talk about.”
“It’s okay. Just come in.”
“Hey—there you are!”
Jake was the kind of guy who would play the cousin, or bumbling big brother if my life was cast as a TV show. A bit too tall. A bit too gangly. And a bit too old to have not mastered the combination by now.
That being said, he was a total sweetheart and damn good at his job. Together, the two of us had single-handedly got my little PR operation off the ground. I handled the clients, and he handled things back on the home front. A perfect combination.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to just burst in on you—it’s just that none of us had any idea where you went, and for the first time since we’ve met, you’re not picking up your phones.”
I glanced guilty at my briefcase, as he shoved his rain-drenched hair out of his eyes and pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. From the way he was panting, he had literally run all the way from the office. He had yet to notice Nick (which had to be a first for the both of them), and was staring at me like I’d just beamed down from Mars.
“And then I saw the...” He hesitated, as if there was somehow a chance that I hadn’t seen it yet myself. “Abigail...you know that you kissed our only client, right?”
The entire speech had been said in one breathless burst, and by now, poor Jake was so disheveled and out of sorts, that even Nick was beginning to smile. The difference between the two men couldn’t have been more striking, but Nick was nice about it—tilting his head to the side with an infinitely patient expression, waiting for the man to glance over and notice him.
“Yeah, Jake,” I pulled the blankets up higher around me, “about that—”
“And I know you said never to come to your apartment, but at this point, I thought that emergency protocols were in order.” He held up both of this hands in that calming/bracing way that we did sometimes with clients who had ceased to see reason. “So let me start by first asking you this: did you realize that you were doing it?”