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My heart sank, but I forced a smile. “Yeah, of course.”
She climbed to her feet, and I followed suit.
“Thank you again for everything you did for me today,” she said. “And for the wine and talk, too.” She extended her empty glass over the railing to me. “Goodnight, Holden.”
“Goodnight, Lala.”
Back inside my apartment, I set the bottle of wine on the kitchen counter and placed my glass in the sink. But when I went to put Lala’s down next to it, I noticed lipstick marks on the rim.
Don’t do it, you dick.
Why not? You already slept in her sheets, bozo.
I clenched my jaw and tried to walk away—really, I did. But I was going to be pissed at myself tomorrow for saying inappropriate shit to Lala anyway. What’s a little more self-loathing? So I picked the bottle of wine back up and filled Lala’s glass, lining my mouth up where hers had been to drink.
By the time I was done, I’d already started berating myself.
What the fuck, Holden? What’s next—stealing her underwear to sniff?
CHAPTER 4
Lala
At the end of my first week in New York, my new admin, Tia, and I were eating our lunch outside of the Department of Health headquarters where I’d be conducting my research for the next few months. I’d just filled her in on my current rent-free living situation.
“I can’t believe they’re letting you stay for free. That’s so nice of them.”
“Yeah. These guys are like brothers to me.” Well, except for one. Holden was more like a wicked, hot stepbrother, perhaps. But there was nothing brotherly about the way my body reacted to that man.
“So…like brothers, but three of them are single?”
I cleared my throat. “Yup.”
“You’ve never hooked up with any of them?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m engaged.” She knew about Warren, so I wasn’t sure why she’d asked me that question.
“I know, but I mean in the past?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Are any of them good-looking?”
“They’re all great-looking, actually.”
“Really…” She wiped some mayo off the side of her mouth. “Well, I should come by and, you know, meet you for a drink there some weekend.” She winked.
I smiled back, but as a breeze blew my curls around, I hated where my thoughts had gone. I wouldn’t mind introducing Tia to Brayden or Owen, but I wanted to gatekeep Holden. And that was ridiculous. Holden Catalano could not be gatekept. Holden freaking belonged to the world; he was with a different woman every week, for heaven’s sake.
The afternoon flew by after lunch. Thank goodness it was Friday because my first week on the new project had been pretty grueling. After some early confusion about which space the Department of Health would be providing me to conduct my work, I was finally able to settle into a corner of the building. And I’d been promised more than one admin, but so far it was just Tia. So things were off to a slow start.
I got home from work that afternoon around 4 PM. I couldn’t wait to kick my feet up and pour myself a glass of wine to start the weekend. Or maybe I’d crack open a pint of ice cream and do dessert before dinner. Who was I kidding? Wine and ice cream before sushi takeout sounded perfect.
But after I took a shower, my plan to have a relaxing early evening was thwarted by a beeping sound coming from somewhere in the apartment. I walked around until I figured out it was coming from a detector in the ceiling in the hallway. I dragged a chair over to check it out, but there was nothing to press to stop it. The battery probably needed to be changed, but I didn’t have a screwdriver to get inside.
I really didn’t want to have to bother Holden. Somehow, I’d managed to avoid contacting him for anything all week. It surprised me that I hadn’t run into him by chance, since he was right next door, or that he hadn’t stopped by. After our conversation out on the fire escape—when we’d both admitted our past attraction to each other—I didn’t want to reach out to him for no good reason. And maybe he felt the same. Almost every encounter with him left me feeling guilty, even if nothing ever happened. It was all guilt over my thoughts, which I seemed incapable of controlling.
After almost an hour of putting up with the beeping sound, I caved and picked up the phone.
Holden answered on the third ring. “Lala Ellison…wassup?”
“Hey.”
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “How did your first week go?”
I let out a deep breath. “It was rough, actually. Some stuff hasn’t gone according to plan. But things will hopefully be better next week.”
“Damn. Okay. Well, TGIF then.”
“Yeah. Seriously. I was hoping to chill tonight, but there’s a beeping sound coming from one of the detectors that’s driving me bonkers. I can’t open it without a screwdriver, which I don’t have. I was hoping you—”
