I wait for him to follow, but he abruptly turns to face me. I offer him a polite smile. “If you’ll excuse me.”
His gaze drops, and I wonder if he’s checking out my tits because as short and tight as this dress is, none of that compares to the neckline. It’s a sweetheart of a thing that reveals the tops of my breasts.
Again, my mom would rip this off of me and burn it if she caught a glimpse of me strutting down the sidewalk in this dress and the three-inch nude heels I’m wearing.
“You like London,” Harrison says.
I glance at the silver charm bracelet that is almost always on my left wrist. It was a gift from my parents when I moved across the ocean. Since then, I’ve collected many charms related to my favorite place on earth.
“You’ve got Buckingham Palace, a teapot, a double-decker bus…”
“I love London,” I interrupt him.
His gaze trails up my body to my face. “So you’ve been there?”
“I was born there,” I say softly.
“Yet, no accent.” He touches his ear lobe. “Or at least none that I can hear.”
I don’t need to get into my life history with him since he knows most of it. He just doesn’t realize it.
“What’s your name?” He takes a half step closer to me as I glance past him to the sanctity of the lobby beyond.
The elevator doors begin to slide shut, so I scoot around him and press a finger against the button to open the doors wide again.
I look at Harrison. “You know my name.”
He shakes his head. The bite on the corner of his bottom lip is unexpected and new material for my fantasies. I haven’t touched myself when thinking about him for years, but I’m all for nostalgic experiences.
I nod. “You do.”
“I’d remember you,” he says in a voice that is far too intense for this conversation.
That’s a bedroom voice reserved for moments when a woman is on the precipice of a climax. It’s not that I’ve ever been with a man who has a voice like that, but a girl can dream.
With a shake of my head, I step out of the elevator and onto the marble floor of the lobby in the building that houses my brothers’ business.
Before I can make a getaway, Harrison wraps his hand around my bicep, sending a noticeable shiver through me.
“Tell me your name,” he demands in a low tone as his breath slides over my cheek.
I hold steady, determined not to allow him to see me react.
It’s not as if this can lead to anything. The second he realizes who I am, he’ll retreat into his role as my older brother’s best friend.
I’m untouchable, which is why I’ll savor the feeling of his hand on my skin for a second longer.
I glance up at his face, at his ridiculously handsome face. “I need to go. Bye, Harry.”
That brings a smile to his perfect lips. “Harry?”
“That’s what your friends call you,” I say as I tug my arm free, take a step forward, and then another until I exit the building and disappear into the pedestrian traffic on one of the bustling sidewalks of New York City.
CHAPTER TWO
Harrison
I’ve followed the blonde beauty from the elevator for three blocks, but it’s far from intentional. The trek from my best friend’s office to mine is this exact route.
I admit that I’ve never enjoyed the view before today. Concrete, more concrete, traffic, a sea of strangers, and trash bags typically dot the horizon, but today it’s the swaying hips of the woman who called me Harry.
Harry.
That’s a name reserved for my closest friends.
I’ve never introduced myself as anything but Harrison, yet the gorgeous blonde in the pink dress tossed Harry out as if she’s said it to my face before.
She hasn’t because I would remember her.
I slow as I near a group of people stopped at the corner waiting for the light to change so they can all rush across the street toward their mid-day destinations.
Since the blonde is completely unaware that I’m less than a foot behind her, I take a step forward because I view now as the perfect time to charm her name out of her.
The voices of the people around us and the seemingly unending noise from the midday traffic in Manhattan aren’t enough to drown out the sound of a phone ringing.
Several heads in the group waiting to cross the street drop in search of their phones, including the London-born woman.
“Hi,” she says in a tone that carries over the other voices in the group. “How are you?”
She glances to the right as he listens to whoever is fortunate enough to have her number.
“Tomorrow night at Dunfoy’s Pub.” Her voice softens. “Be there for ten. I’ll be the one in the red dress with the martini glass in her hand.”
A laugh escapes her just as the light signals it’s safe to cross.
It’s misleading.
This is Manhattan.
It’s always ‘step into the street at your own risk’ here since the drivers on this island are in as much of a rush as the pedestrians.
“It feels like it’s been forever,” she says into her phone as I trail her. “I can’t wait to see you.”
As soon as she’s on the sidewalk, she turns sharply to the right to wait to cross another street.
I pause briefly, tempted to say something, anything that will give me a moment more of her time, but I continue on my way, leaving her on the corner.
I need to get back to my office for a meeting. I haven’t been to Dunfoy’s in years. Tomorrow night seems like the perfect time to revisit the bar.
“I have this idea.”
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard those words come out of the mouth of my youngest sister.
After my father died when I was four, my mother channeled her grief into a new family.
Two of my half-siblings bear the surname of the mechanic my mother took her BMW to a week after my father’s funeral. Nine months after Floyd, the mechanic, worked on my mother’s engine, my half-brother, Ryden Duran, was born. A year later, my mother brought my sister, Joslyn, home from the hospital.
When Floyd skipped town with a woman who drove a Maserati, that divorce was already in the works.
My mom set her sights on a new man then. He was a widower with no children and a thriving orthopedic practice. Dr. Denton was the charmer my mother had been searching for her entire life.
My youngest sister, Roxy, was born just months before that marriage crashed and burned. Literally. The doctor’s private plane went down in flames, leaving my mother to face the reality that her husband had been in serious shit with the IRS before his death.
“Harrison?” Roxy stresses each syllable of my name. “Did you hear me?”
I look up to see her standing in the doorway of my office. A neon pink backpack is slung over her shoulder. It’s a sharp contrast to the navy blue school uniform she’s wearing.
My youngest sister is a straight-A student at the elite Fortman Academy on the Upper West Side. I foot the bill for her education with the understanding that years from now, she’ll graduate from Harvard with an impressive degree in the sciences.
“What’s the idea, Rox?”