Veronica glanced up and found him smiling at her in a way that brought back the same fluttering in her stomach from the other night.
“I don’t suppose I can have my card back?” he asked, still smiling.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry.” She handed it back quickly. “I don’t usually get so—” she trailed off before she admitted she’d been gawking at him.
“It’s okay. I get that a lot, ever since the article.”
“What article?”
“The one in… Never mind.” Thad’s eyes, a soft hazel green that burned like ginger fire, focused on her intently. “You really don’t recognize me?”
“I…should I?” Veronica felt like she was the butt of a joke the universe was telling and she was missing the punchline. “Wait, are you in a band?”
“No, it’s… It’s not important,” Thad recovered quickly. “Thank you.” He glanced down at her chest and she flushed at such undisguised appraisal. Then she realized he was just looking for a name tag. She’d forgotten hers in the back of the shop.
“Veronica… I’m Veronica.” She could have smacked herself. This guy didn’t care what her name was.
“I’m Thad. Nice to meet you.” He extended his hand and Veronica took it. His grip was strong but not threatening. He gave it a gentle shake.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” she said, feeling incredibly shy beneath the gentle but no less intense gaze of this gorgeous man.
When he released her hand, the world around her came crashing back. Zelda running the espresso machine, the buzz and chatter of customers. For a moment, this man had erased the background completely. Only Parker had ever done that to her before.
Thad gave her one last look before he chose a table facing the street and sat down.
“Wow…” Zelda said the word, managing to give it three syllables. “Put your eyes back in your head, boss.”
Veronica tried, but damned if she wasn’t distracted for the next half hour glancing at the man who sat quietly reading the newspaper. Veronica had let Zelda deliver the coffee to him and despite her sweet flirtations, Zelda returned to the counter with a defeated frown.
“He has to have some superhot girlfriend, right? Probably dates models or something,” Zelda muttered as she scrubbed almost too vigorously at the imaginary stains on the countertop.
“A guy like that?” Veronica chuckled. “He definitely has a girlfriend, maybe even a dozen. He looks like a player.”
Veronica forced her focus away from Thad, and it was a short while later when she glanced back, that her heart sank. Another attractive man had joined Thad at the table, carrying a baby carrier. The man reached down, pulled the baby out and handed the child to Thad, who accepted with a sheepish grin and bounced the baby on his knee, making the child squeal.
“Oh damn, he’s gay. I knew he was too freaking gorgeous to be straight,” Zelda said. She sighed. “They make a beautiful couple, though, don’t they?”
“Yeah, you’re right. They look good together.” Veronica turned her back and buried any of the silly daydreams she’d started to form about Thad in the sweet nebulous clouds of her mind.
Thad handed back his best friend’s one-year-old daughter, Hayley, despite the fact that she wanted to play more. “So, how’s things?”
Jared Redmond was a top-flight real estate attorney who’d recently married a woman who worked at the Chicago Art Institute as a junior director. They both kept long hours, but somehow had managed to do the whole “raise a kid thing,” something which still impressed Thad.
Jared sighed and leaned back in his chair, a picture of ease. “Things are great. Felicity sends her love, by the way.”
“Fatherhood looks good on you.” Thad couldn’t resist teasing Jared about that. Hayley had been an unexpected but welcome surprise to the couple.
“Yeah, it does.” Jared’s eyes softened as he shot a peek into the baby carrier at his feet. “So, why are we here? We usually do drinks at Hackney’s,” Jared asked.
“I wanted your opinion.” Thad nodded subtly at the brownstone around them.
Jared didn’t pick up on his hint. “On?”
“This place.” Thad pointed a finger upstairs. “It’s got a residence upstairs.”
“Yeah? Have you seen it yet?”
“No. I will this weekend, though.” He grinned. “I love the feel of this place.”
Jared seemed to notice the change in Thad as he spoke of the brownstone. “So you’re thinking of living here? What about the penthouse?”
“I’ll keep it open for fun, but it would be nice to have a place that’s out of the way.”
His friend smiled. “You want a real home.”
He hadn’t thought of it like that but that was indeed what this was going to be. A real home. He could leave his wild party days and endless women for the penthouse.
“Let me get this straight. You, Thad, the man who only gives a girl one date, is thinking of settling down?”
“No,” Thad laughed. “I just want to keep that part of my life separate. When I own this place, I want it to be my private sanctuary.”
“You mean No Girls Allowed.”
“Not quite so Calvin and Hobbes, but yeah.”
Jared shook his head. “You and your damn models. You know none of those women are real, right? Real women are sweet and sexy by being themselves, not acting like a man’s boyhood fantasy. You should try dating a real woman if you want a real home.”
Thad played with his empty coffee cup. “You stole the real woman I wanted. You also knocked her up and married her.”
Jared’s laughter died. “Don’t forget I got there first. I staked my claim on Felicity before you ever met her.”
Thad watched his best friend turn all caveman over his wife. Felicity had been the first woman to tempt Thad into changing his ways, but it had been clear from the moment they met that she was never going to be his, and he’d done the honorable thing and helped get her and Jared back together.
Thad wasn’t even sure if he would ever fall in love the way Jared had. He’d thought he’d been in love once, but he’d been wrong. Ever since then, he’d kept his emotional distance.
“You know what? You need a real date for a change. Not with the usual girls you date. You need someone who isn’t pretending to be someone else.” Jared looked around the coffee shop. “You need to date someone… like her.” He gave a subtle jerk of his head toward the Chi-Bean’s counter.
Thad followed his gaze to the woman currently smacking a possibly broken smoothie machine with a furious yet adorable snarl on her face. She had the most stunning black hair pulled into a ponytail that he remembered from the first night he was here. He’d introduced himself to her earlier when he’d realized she hadn’t recognized him from the GQ magazine interview. It had been refreshing for a woman not to know who he was. She’d still given him that adorable “deer-in-the-headlights” look like other women did though.
“You know that she’s not a challenge, right?” Thad said. Seducing a girl like that would be all too easy.