Some Like it Hotter
She’d taken a risk on Thursday by calling Ames’s apartment in the afternoon, hoping Jean would answer. Happily, her prayers had been answered. Not only was Jean there, but Ames was out, and Jean was able to snoop in his calendar and had assured Eva in a voice dripping with exasperation that, yes, Ames would again be home on Saturday night—Saturday, for God’s sake!—and wished her luck livening him up. Then she’d given Eva her cell number and told her to call any time she needed more help, because Ames was much too hot to be wasting himself at a desk every night.
Jean was awesome.
In the NYEspresso office, a tiny cluttered room barely containing the shop safe, file cabinet, computer desk and a chair, Eva darted to her gym bag—scarlet with a white poodle in pink-and-blue workout clothes on the side, which she hadn’t been able to resist when she saw it online. She’d left her apartment that morning in a crushing hurry and had stuffed an armful of accessories inside it to experiment. Right now she had on black leggings and a black scoop-neck shirt—a blank canvas for the look she wanted to create for the evening.
Whatever that was.
She’d just selected an orange-and-yellow scarf when her cell rang. Chris!
“Hey, twin, how are you?”
“I’m sitting on that cliff overlooking the ocean reading a magazine. How do you think I am?”
“Oh, wow.” Eva’s heart gave a wistful throb. That was a fantastic spot. One of her favorites.
“Tell me what’s been happening. Glad the shop is running fine—thanks for your texts—but I want to know how you are.”
“Ah.” Eva climbed onto a stool to see as much of herself as possible in the small mirror on the wall. “Guess who I had a date with last Tuesday?”
“Guess? Jeez, Eva, there aren’t that many men in New York. This shouldn’t take long.”
Eva giggled. “Your personal florist. Ames.”
“What?” Chris gasped. “You got stuck out with Ames? God, I’m sorry, Eva. What can I do to help you recover? Tea? A massage? Disinfectant?”
Eva’s brows shot up. She stopped in the act of trying to drape the scarf attractively around her neck—how did Natalie manage it? “What are you talking about? It was fabulous.”
“You think sitting in a stuffy businessman’s bar listening to him talk about himself is fabulous?”
“Uh.” Eva wrinkled her nose and tossed the scarf onto her desk. Were they talking about the same guy? “That’s not how it was. At all. We walked through Greenwich Village, he told me everything about its history, and then we ate take-out falafel on a bench in Washington Park and then we played mini golf.”
Silence, except for incredulous noises from her twin. “Ames Cooke? Brown hair, brown eyes, gold earring, looks like—”
“Colin Farrell, yes! We had a blast. I’m totally in love with him. He doesn’t know it yet but we’re—”
“Oh, no. Not again, not with this guy. He is not your type at all!”
“What is my type?” Eva stepped down and rummaged through her gym bag, hauled out another scarf, teal this time, shot through with glittering red-and-yellow threads.
“You know, laid-back, kind of funky, New Agey, creative, a little out there. Like Zac.”
“Uh-huh.” Eva hopped back on the stool. “Have any of those relationships ever worked out for me?”
“Well, no but...well, no. They’ve all failed spectacularly. But that’s because you dive in every time before you really—”
“So maybe that kind of man isn’t my type after all!” She flung the scarf carelessly around her shoulders and turned back and forth in front of the tiny mirror.
Blech. No.
Off it came, thrown onto the growing discard pile. She wanted to look just right. Tonight she and Ames were going to have dinner at his place—she was buying—and then, oh, baby, they were going to get to know each other.
Only he didn’t have a clue about any of that yet.
She’d given him several days to miss her terribly and wrestle with himself over what he felt and what he should do about her, while she got used to NYEspresso. Good strategy, but enough was enough. She missed him, missed his smiles and frowns and alternating exasperation and joy in their time together, and how hard he fought against letting himself relax and have fun. And how hard he fought the inevitability of their crazed passion.