Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 89883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
His number.
I feel a stab of jealousy.
Not only because Brooks is taking this woman home tonight, but because he’s also so freaking good at picking people up.
He’s so confident.
Brooks can come off as grumpy. Quiet. To be fair, he is an introvert. But the promise of sex apparently makes him come out of his shell.
I wonder just how good he is in bed. Takes balls to pick up a woman before 7 a.m. on a Thursday. Does he have the orgasmic know-how to back up that kind of confidence?
I bet he does. Brooks is not the kind to bullshit you.
The woman gives him a little wave before heading to her desk. Brooks is turning back to the printer when his gaze lands on mine.
My stomach drops. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes do.
He plucks a few pages from the printer and taps their short edge on the tray, effortlessly gathering them into a neat stack. Then he turns toward me, turns all his height and his hotness on me, and I feel a rush of excitement. Of energy.
The nerve of this man, to be so freaking handsome he makes me forget, for a moment at least, how worn out I am.
“Hey, you,” he says as he saunters toward me.
I try not to notice how his hips move, their slow, casual roll.
I try very hard.
Like always, I fail.
“Hey, Brooks,” I reply a little too brightly. Before I can make a fool of myself in front of a guy yet again, I unwrap the corner of a tray of triple chocolate muffins and grab one, holding it out to him. “I’m late—”
“Seventeen minutes.” His lips twitch, gaze once again locking on mine. “But who’s counting?”
I roll my eyes, mostly to avoid the intensity of his. “You’re the worst.”
“I am. Especially when I’m having chocolate withdrawal.” He carefully peels the paper cup from the muffin and takes a huge, shameless bite. He groans.
“Better?” I ask, warmth filling me at his obvious pleasure.
“Yes.”
Tucking the papers underneath his arm, he grabs my cart with his free hand and begins to push it toward my customary perch in a nearby corner.
“Hey. Let go of my muffins,” I say, breaking into a half-jog to keep up with his enormous stride. I’m not short, but Brooks is six-three. At least.
“No.”
“Please?”
“Nope.” He takes another bite, crumbs spilling everywhere. “Jesus Christ, Greer, what do you put in these things?”
“Love.”
“And drugs?”
I laugh. Apparently this guy makes every girl laugh. “That’s the magic ingredient. Now can I have my cart back please?”
He ignores me and inhales the rest of his muffin during the forty seconds it takes us to reach our destination. By the time he positions my cart parallel to the nearby High-Grade desk—exactly how I usually do in the exact same spot—he’s got his lips pressed to his thumb. As he clears the last traces of chocolate from his finger, his expression goes blank, then . . . falls.
So does my heart. I know he’s thinking about his sister. She died around this time years ago, but it’s obvious her passing still haunts him.
A beat later, though, his fingers are clean and his expression is smoothed over. I wonder, not for the first time, how he’s survived losing his twin. Poor guy clearly misses her, although I’ve never heard him really talk about her. George filled me in on the broad strokes, but I’ve always wanted to ask Brooks about Lizzie. What she was like, what he misses most about her.
It’s just never been the right time or place. Brooks and I don’t hang out like that, just me and him, shooting the shit. There are always other people around. My brother. Their college friends.
I can check in on him, though.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says gruffly.
“You don’t sound okay.”
“That was just . . . too fucking good.”
I hold out a second muffin. “Want another?”
“Yes,” he says, even as he shakes his head. “But I don’t eat sweets.”
“You just did, though.”
“I only eat your sweets.”
“Gross,” Theo Morgan, my friend Nora’s husband and the head of High-Grade trading, says from his perch at a nearby desk.
“You’re gross for going there,” Brooks shoots back. He takes a napkin off the cart and wipes his hands.
I scoop some ice into a cup and fill it with coffee, topping it off with a splash of milk and a heaping teaspoon of sugar. “Just how you like it,” I say to Brooks.
He takes a sip and groans again. “Damn that’s good. Thank you.”
My nipples tighten. “Anytime.”
Still sipping his coffee, he digs into his back pocket for his money clip and hands me a fifty-dollar bill.
“You’re going to clear out all my change,” I say, glancing over Brooks’s shoulder to see the line of people that’s appeared behind him.
He returns the money clip to his pocket. The starched fabric of his shirt draws taut over his chest and shoulders as he moves. “Not if you don’t give me any.”