Last Fall Read online

  She didn’t like that so much either, which led me to believe she didn’t like me as a human being. I could tell when a girl liked me and Zoe most certainly did not like me.

  But that didn’t mean I stopped liking her. I definitely didn’t stop finding her attractive. So I occasionally ran scenarios in my head where I asked her out and we wound up hot and naked in my bed at the end of the night. If I’d thought Zoe was even remotely interested I would have asked.

  Maybe.

  It was just that for some reason asking Zoe out felt like it had a lot more at stake than with any other girl before. And every time I saw how nervous she got when the girls gave her a hard time about not dating, it ramped up my nerves even more. I had this constant feeling that if I fucked up with Zoe it wouldn’t just bruise my ego, it would hurt her, too.

  I don’t know. Maybe I was crazy.

  Marie quickly signed the check and tucked the receipt in her wallet. “I’m not saying you have to believe me or that you should do anything about it.” Then she gave me a very sisterly half-smile. “I just thought you should know in case you did want to do something about it.”

  2

  Zoe

  How to Get Away with Being a Hot Mess

  (With Fabulous Hair)

  On Fridays I take myself out to lunch as a reward for being a badass all week. I quickly learned that life as a writer is very different from anything else I’d ever done. For two years I was a nanny. And being a nanny meant I was always moving . . . well, until I collapsed from exhaustion at the end of each day. But even then it was just a pause between frantically chasing two tiny girls and keeping them alive.

  But now I was a full-time writer, and that was more like becoming the human version of a rock. Inside, my mind was working at a million miles an hour, living the lives of a dozen different people at once. Outside . . . not so much. Other than the movement of my fingers over the keyboard, my body didn’t really move. The other side effect? If I didn’t take the time to think about it, I forgot about going outside.

  So on Fridays—whether anyone could come with me or not—I took myself to Samurai Blue for lunch. It was a standing date. My best friends knew they were welcome if they could make it but that I enjoyed simply being out of the house for an hour, eating good food. So if I was alone, that was fine too.

  It was on one of these quiet Friday afternoons, somewhere between my soup and my salad, that I started to wonder if maybe I’d gotten a little too comfortable being alone. I was reading an early copy of a friend’s book, humming between spoonfuls of soup, when the person sitting beside me spoke up.

  “Did you know you’re wearing two different shoes?”

  At first I stared at the older woman. Other than saying hello when she sat down beside me at the sushi bar we hadn’t spoken. Now I could see that she was about the age of my mother, her makeup light and her smile kind.

  I tore my gaze away to look down at my feet.

  Son of a—

  “No,” I sighed. “I did not. Thank you.”

  She smiled. It was a very sympathetic smile. Not at all patronizing or—even worse—freaked out. Yeah, I’d scared a few people with my five-day-writing-sprint-no-shower-zombie looks before. “Your shirt is on inside out, too.”

  Son of a bitch! I didn’t enjoy swearing but this most certainly called for it. How many times had I asked the girls to wear their clothes correctly over the years? Dozens. If not hundreds. And here I was, in public, with less care than two little girls.

  I was a terrible example.

  “Thank you.” I turned bright red. Needless to say, I did not do embarrassment well. “I’ll be right back.” I slid quietly into the tiny bathroom at the back of the restaurant. I’d secretly hoped when I looked in the mirror I’d find she was wrong. Unfortunately my super cute turquoise sleeveless blouse was, in fact, inside out.

  Add in the tennis shoe on my left foot and the gold flat on my right, and I was a hot mess.

  “Pull it together, Zoe,” I muttered under my breath. The fact of the matter was that I was stressed. I didn’t want to admit that success was turning me into a basket case of nerves because logically it should be the other way around. Success should mean less stress. It should mean comfort and ease.

  Instead I was full of insecurities and slowly unraveling under the weight of expectation. I needed to open my mouth and talk to my friends. Or my agent. Both. I needed to talk to all of them. Talking would help so much and I knew I should have picked up the phone and insisted either June or Carrie make it to lunch today.

  But I didn’t want to impose.

  And look where that got me. Insecure in a bathroom fixing my inside out clothes. At least my hair looked fabulous.

  When I returned from the bathroom the lady was gone and my sushi had arrived. A little weight lifted. Other than the mismatched shoes, I was back to being a totally normal, if not slightly eccentric, woman.

  Cue the twist in the story. At least that’s what I would have written on my bright pink Post-it note if I were plotting the story of my life. Just as I was lifting the first delicious bite to my mouth a new person sat down beside me.

  A much larger person.

  A masculine brute of a man.

  “Zoe?”

  I choked on my food.

  “Oh god, Zoe. Are you okay?”

  I waved at him with my napkin as I swallowed gulps of water. “Fine.” I coughed some more. “I’m totally fine.”

  And totally bright red. Again.

  Today was going swimmingly.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He turned his chair a few degrees to face me. Forcing me to look into the depths of his brown eyes. Erik Cassidy. Second baseman for the Mantas, the team my friends and former employer all worked for. Erik and I had met more times than I could count and I became more flustered with each meeting.

  Because there was hot, and there was Erik.

  “It’s not your fault,” I murmured. “I’m just having a day.”

  The waitress set a glass of water down beside Erik and refilled my glass. I watched his bicep flex as he picked up the cup and took a long sip. Erik had an athlete’s body through and through. Combined with his caramel skin and brooding eyes, he was pretty much my hottest dreams brought to life.

  It would be easy to eye-fuck him and leave it at that, but he was also a really great guy. I knew that both from personal experience and from the constant string of compliments dropped by my friends who worked with him.

  So yeah, hot, sweet, and broody. In my book that was the trifecta of holy-crap-I’m-so-fucked.

  Which was why I normally avoided him at all costs. It was totally fine to have an overwhelming physical reaction to someone if you were never in the same place with them. I fooled myself into believing our paths would rarely, if ever, cross. So it was okay to have the occasional midnight fantasy about him. He was safe territory. I got to have hot sweaty sex with him in my mind, which made my life of celibacy a little more tolerable.

  Not so much when he was sitting so close our arms kept brushing.

  My skin heated. My heart beat faster. The tips of my freaking ears burned. How fast could I slam this sushi and pay my bill?

  “It’s been a while.” His smooth voice washed over me, settling my nerves a little.

  “It has.” I shoved another piece in my mouth.

  “You’ll be at the birthday party next Saturday?”

  One of my former charges was turning five and her party was next Saturday. Of course I’d be there. “I didn’t think unicorn parties were your scene.”

  His chuckle was soft and low. “You’d be surprised.”

  Sometimes it overwhelmed me how working for the Spencers had brought so many people into my quiet life. They were those kind of people. They drew you into their lives and made you part of the family. Eve was the Director of Fan Experience for the Mantas. Her sister, and my roommate, was one of the team’s trainers. One of my best friends, Carrie, was the team�
�s orthopedic physician, and her husband, Wes, was one of Erik’s teammates. All their lives overlapped until it was totally normal for a writer like me to hang out with a bunch of famous professional baseball players and executives.

  Except that in my mind this would never be normal.

  “How’s the season going?” I asked as if I didn’t know. Three years ago all I knew about the sport was that it was a sport. It was natural I’d learn the basics of the game being surrounded by it on a daily basis, but something had taken over. I wouldn’t call it obsession . . . at least not yet . . . but I also kept it to myself how much I followed the game.

  I wasn’t sure why. I think maybe it was because it was still so foreign to me. Zoe Burke didn’t care about baseball.

  And yet, I totally did.

  “Game tonight,” he said. “You should come.”

  Longing filled me. In another life I’d have squealed with delight that Erik-freaking-Cassidy had just suggested I come to a game. I’d flirt and wishfully hope he’d ask me to wait for him after the game.

  But I was never going to live that life.

  “I have to finish the book I’m working on.”

  To my surprise his entire face softened into a brilliant smile. “Is this your fantasy series or one of the romances?”

  My breath caught in my throat. Erik knew what I wrote? “Uh . . . this is something else. It’s kind of a historical saga.”

  “Well, if it’s anything like your other work, I’m sure it will be amazing.”

  The floor must have fallen out from under my feet because I could swear I was in a free fall. My heart beat a million miles an hour and I couldn’t tell which way was up. “Um . . . thank you?”

  He gave me a funny look. “You’re very welcome. How’s it going? June said something about big news coming?”

  Well, that explained why he knew so much about my books. He’d heard stuff from June in the locker room.

  “Monday. The news will come out Monday.” I tried really hard to hide how disappointed I was to realize he didn’t really know anything about my life’s work. Why would he? We weren’t friends and men generally didn’t care about the careers of women writers.

  “More books in The Butterfly Rebellion? Because I’d do just about anything to get an advanced copy of the next book.”

  I stared at him for a really long time. Probably too long. “I . . . uh . . . you’ve read them?”

  He picked up his chopsticks and dug into his ginger salad. “Oh yes. Pretty much my favorite series ever. Do you think they’ll make it into a movie or—oh! A television series like Game of Thrones? Those would be epic with the right producers.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what it was like to have an out-of-body experience, but somewhere in the middle of his excited chatter it felt a lot like I detached from my body and was now watching from above as this incredibly sexy fantasy man gushed about my books.

  Either that or I was asleep and this was all a dream.

  Somehow I made my lips move. “We’ve had interest but so far nothing concrete. Not for this series.”

  His head shot around, eyebrow cocked up. Then he leaned closer and whispered. “This news on Monday? Does it involve a movie deal?”

  I nodded quickly. The only people who knew were Jake and Eve, June and Roman, and Wes and Carrie. The deal would officially be announced on Monday, at which point everyone would know, not that it would be the end of the world for Erik to know a few days early.

  “The book I need to finish tonight is the third and final book in the trilogy.”

  He set down his chopsticks and quietly clapped. “Congrats, Zo. I can’t wait to see the news. You deserve it.”

  My fantasy of Erik was going into overdrive tonight. And then I was going to avoid him like the plague for at least six months. There’s no way I could face him with the kind of places my imagination planned to go tonight.

  “Thank you.”

  When the waitress set his tray of sushi down he whispered something to her. I tried really hard to listen in, but I couldn’t make out what he said.

  He glanced at me. “I wish you could come to the game but now I want you to stay home and write.” Then he grinned and the most amazing dimple popped in his cheek.

  It’s entirely possible my panties combusted into a cloud of smoke. Damn what a smile.

  “Why would it matter if I was at the game? Aren’t you working? You’d never know if I was there.”

  “I’d know,” he said without looking away. “And Zoe?”

  I swallowed hard in hopes it would somehow help slow my hammering heart. “Yes?”

  “I didn’t mean, ‘Hey go hang in Eve’s box like you usually do and enjoy the game.’ I meant, ‘come sit in the family section and watch me.’”

  It suddenly felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me. No air moved in or out of my lungs no matter how hard I tried. That look. Oh god, that look. His dark eyes drank me in but not in a hungry, sexual way. It was more pleading than that. More intimate. As if Erik saw no one else but me.

  I shot straight up, knocking my chair backward. It clattered to the floor with a bang, drawing the attention of every single person in the restaurant. Erik jumped out of his seat and righted my chair. My hands shook uncontrollably as I fished my weekly stash of sushi money out of my wallet and threw it on the bar.

  Then I turned and ran out before Erik could stop me. I was almost at my car when his voice rang out across the parking lot.

  3

  ERIK

  Way Too Good to be Real

  “Zoe! Wait up!” My heart was hammering way too hard for such a short jog.

  I was headed home from brunch with Marie when a familiar car caught my eye in the parking lot of Samurai Blue. There were many practical black sedans in the city of Tampa but only one that had “House Stark” on one corner of the rear window and “So Say We All” on the other, with a blue Tardis next to her license plate.

  Given the lecture I’d just gotten from Marie I decided it had to be fate that an opportunity to run into Zoe was dropped in my lap. Before I knew what I was doing I’d made a hard turn into the parking lot and was inside.

  I wasn’t hungry so this made no sense, but then again, I rarely made sense around Zoe. I wasn’t a funny guy and I wasn’t a talker, yet somehow being near Zoe always managed to turn me into a mumbling idiot.

  Today was no different. She choked on her sushi as soon as she saw me. Then I managed to stick my foot in my mouth about her books. It was clear from the look she gave me she thought I was using them as a line or something when in reality her fantasy series was one of my favorites. I’d read them twice and was dying for the next installment.

  And then I really went and ruined everything. Stupid Marie had me convinced Zoe had feelings for me. So I went for it.

  But instead of kissing—what I really wanted to do—or getting a polite rejection, I scared her. There was no other explanation for the way she reacted. I had four sisters. I liked to think I was fairly well attuned to the many reactions of a woman. My youngest sister in particular liked to give me a run for my emotional money with everything from panic attacks to abusive boyfriends. I knew what paralyzing fear looked like.

  So here I was, chasing Zoe Burke across a parking lot, hoping like hell she was okay. It was my disastrous flirting from two years ago all over again. Except worse this time.

  She hit her key fob and opened the door. Fuck. I could see her hands trembling from here. What the hell had I said to set her off like this?

  “Zoe. Are you okay?” I slid to a stop behind her.

  She threw her hands up like she was surrendering to me.

  Not a good sign. A really bad sign, actually.

  “I’m fine.” The words came out all choked and forced. Emotional. She was most definitely not fine. I’d peg her somewhere between a general freak-out and a full-on panic attack.

  “You are not fine.”

  She spun, eyes wild, and I remembered rule numero
uno: never tell a woman how she feels. Then her shoulders slumped, whatever fight she’d just mustered completely draining out of her. “Look, Erik, I shouldn’t have run out like that, but I promise I will be fine.” Her dark hair swirled around her face as the wind caught it.

  I still couldn’t get over how beautiful she was. Every time we got close . . . it was like looking at a movie star in person for the first time. Real, but way too good to be real.

  Familiar when she shouldn’t be.

  Sure, we’d spent a lot of time around each other over the last couple of years, but not quality getting-to-know-you time. She always avoided me and I didn’t hunt down women against their will.

  There was no reason looking at her should feel so right or normal, and yet that was absolutely how it felt every damn time. Her dark hair begged for me to run my hands through it. I ached in ways I shouldn’t to grab it and hold her to me while I kissed the crap out her—made her knees go weak so I had to hold her. Add in the brilliant green eyes, alabaster skin, and angular face . . . she was a work of art I couldn’t get enough of.

  “But you’re not fine right now, Zoe.” I searched her face, looking for the answers, but all I found was an empty stare. Normally Zoe was a spitfire. Words were her weapon but she also had this spunk, this general attitude toward life, like she was ready to kick its ass.

  I found it incredibly attractive.

  But right now all of that was gone. Zoe was scared and vulnerable. It made me want to wrap her up and protect her from everything. It was an instinct I usually felt around my sisters, which only made this reaction even weirder because my feelings toward Zoe were most definitely not of the platonic nature.

  “No. I’m not fine,” she said slowly, her eyes not quite meeting mine. “But as I said, I will be in a few minutes.”

  Her hands still shook. Hell, her whole body was essentially trembling. She was in no state to go anywhere or be alone, so when she turned away from me, trying to leave, my arm shot out to stop her.