Walk of Shame (Love Unexpectedly 4)

“Yeah, I met him. He’s…” Taylor broke off, trying to figure out how to describe the black-haired, blue-eyed journalist Cassidy had introduced her to earlier.

“There are no words,” Brit finished for Taylor. “No words for someone that good-looking.”

“He got a girlfriend?”

Brit shrugged. “Not sure. He’s got a reputation as a ladies’ man, but so did most of the guys in the editorial group before they settled down.”

“Is there a big division between the editorial group and the rest of us?” Taylor asked.

“Everyone’s friendly, but mostly it’s the columnists on one side of the building, the operations and strategy group on the other.”

“Any chance the guys on the operations and strategy side of things are more human-looking?” Taylor joked.

Brit lifted her finger and gestured to a door to their right. “Ladies’ room, in case Cassidy forgot to point it out. But no, we’ve got our fair share of hotties on our side too, although I’d rather die than admit it to Hunter.”

“Hunter Cross?” Taylor asked.

Brit glanced over. “My best guy friend. You know him?”

“Just by name. It was a big deal he left a VP role at his last marketing firm to take a lesser title here.”

“Please don’t tell him that,” Brit said in a joking tone. “He’s insufferable enough as it is.”

Good-looking too. Taylor had never met him in person, but based on his headshot, Hunter Cross likely blended in very nicely with the Oxford crew.

“There are two kitchen/break room areas,” Brit was saying. “You in an office or the bullpen?”

“Office,” Taylor said.

The bullpen was an affectionate term given to an “open office,” where instead of individual offices, employees worked alongside each other without doors separating them. Typically allotted to more junior employees, or groups whose functions require collaboration over privacy.

“Well, should you ever need to find anyone in the bullpen, welcome to the center of it all.” Brit stopped and lifted her hands in front of her, gesturing to the bustling scene in front of them.

Men still dominated the room, although there were more women on this side than over in the editorial group, which had been mostly hot guys in their private offices.

Plenty of them glanced up at her and Brit, their gazes friendly but curious. She gave a smile, refusing to feel shy even though she hated being the newcomer—hated feeling vulnerable in any way, for fear that someone would see right through her confident shield and call her out as a fraud. To expose her as what she really was on the inside: lonely. Maybe a little unlovable, if one wanted to get melodramatic about it.

To get ahead of it, Taylor lifted her chin and pasted a smile on her face, not quite haughty, just…distant. The kind of smile that kept people from getting too close before she could decide if she wanted them to get close.

“Okay, last stop, kitchen, then I’m taking you out for lunch and we’re ordering wine, and we’ll tell nobody,” Brit said, touching Taylor’s arm to get her attention.

This time Taylor’s smile was real. Either Brit didn’t buy Taylor’s keep your distance vibes, or she didn’t care and had already decided to make good on her best friend threat.

Taylor found she didn’t mind in the least. She liked the other woman, who was friendly without being sugary.

Taylor started to follow Brit when she felt a pair of eyes on her. As the new girl, she already knew there were lots of eyes on her, but this gaze was different—she could feel it.

She turned her head slightly, scanning the room until she found the source.

She knew the second her gaze collided with his.

The man watching her was everything the other guys at Oxford weren’t. His dark hair was a touch too long, his jawline apparently not fond of a razor. His white dress shirt could have been like the rest of the guys’, but instead of pairing it with a tie and suit jacket, the man had a button undone, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

If he stood, Taylor wouldn’t have been surprised in the least to see the shirt untucked.

None of that bothered her so much as the eyes. Not the color—she thought they were brown, although he was too far away to know for sure—no, what bugged her was the way he watched her.

Not quite smirking, but knowing. As though he was the one person in the room who got her, and wanted her to know it.