Truth or Dare (5 page)

She’d bet that smile had gotten Apartment Three a lot of things he shouldn’t have had.

Her cookies weren’t going to be one of them.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Come on, Two. You’re not a grudge holder.” He stepped closer, dropping his voice to a midnight whisper. “Let me have one.”

Maggie studied the nails of her right hand. “As it happens, Three, I
am
a grudge holder. I’m also a scorekeeper. And a gloating, ungracious winner. Just so there’s no misunderstanding.”

He rubbed an open hand over his mouth and jaw, those calculating eyes shifting between her and the cookies.

“Sizing up my raisins? Trying to decide if they’re worth the work?”

“Hell, it was like the soundtrack to a porno in here the way all these guys were grunting and groaning over them. They’re worth it. Eye on the prize is all.”

He could bite her prize. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

Another assessing look, this one holding long enough it caused a sort of nervous stir in her belly. Not helping his cookie plight at all.

“Don’t you think it’s time we called a truce,
Maggie
? We’re neighbors.” Another step, and he was working the bare edge of her personal space. Crowding her with his eyes and words and a body that really ought to have an additional eighteen inches of distance between it and hers. Only rather than stepping back, Tyler pushed the violation further. Bracing one hand on the table beside her, he leaned closer so there was no choice but to look up, up—
oh God
—into that waiting,
I’ve-got-a-reason
-to-be-cocky
smile directed down at her. Their eyes met and her thoughts scattered, because this close…with that kind of spicy, masculine scent coming off him…

He drew a long breath and let it out in a slow stream of air that ruffled the loose curls around her ear and sent a wave of goose bumps rolling across the surface of her skin. Made her fingers tighten around the edge of the sideboard behind her.

“We should be more
neighborly
, Maggie.”

From somewhere deep in the recesses of her barely working mind, she recognized…this was a
move.
A contrived, deliberate play.

And Apartment Three was whipping it out
for her.

“Come on, one cookie.”

Okay, for her cookie. Not a chance.

Maggie palmed the center of his chest, ready to give him a push, when she stopped. Blinked. Her eyes going to that point of contact between them where a low-level charge seemed to be humming beneath her fingertips, radiating up her arm.

What was this?

She looked at Tyler. Found his gray eyes staring back at her, his focus dropping to her mouth, drawing her awareness to her lips and the air moving between them.

Her need to wet them with her tongue.

Tyler’s brows crashed down and he took a step back, severing the connection and bringing her brain back online.

Scooting out from between the table and the man who shouldn’t be confusing her at all, she waved at the tray.

“Go ahead. Have one. The rest. I don’t care.”

He shook his head, leaving the cookies untouched as she headed back to the kitchen.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid.

What the hell had he been thinking, giving Maggie the full-court press over some oatmeal raisin phenom?

And yeah, right, that’s what it had been about.

Her cookie.
Not him getting off on that freaking sexy, snarky, and cutting cute she seemed to reserve solely for him. The back-and-forth play for power he’d told himself he had to give up because he’d been spending too much time thinking about the well-honed insults rolling off Maggie’s tongue, the fire in her eyes when she had her glare going, and how her face heated up when she was really good and mad. And all that had started making him think about her tongue and her eyes and how damn hot she was.

So not part of the plan, and so much for his good intentions.

One look at those calculating narrowed eyes, the flat-out challenge when she walked in, and he’d been ready to go a few rounds…over anything. She could have been taunting him with a six-month-old issue of
Better Homes and Gardens
and he’d have been up in her grill, baiting her into a fight.

Only this time, somehow the part of him looking to get under her skin got crossed with the part of him that wanted to get close to it. The part that kept thinking how soft she would be beneath the brush of his thumb…
Hell.
For a minute there, he’d been headed toward a place he had no right going.

And yeah, he could hear his mom from their Thanksgiving call two days before, urging him toward that very course of action. Hinting around again about him moving back to New York. About starting to date. About starting over.

She wanted what was best for him. He got that. But what he couldn’t get was how of all people, she didn’t understand why starting over—giving up—wasn’t an option. So he’d given her what he could. The reassurance that he’d started getting out of the apartment. That he’d met a few guys from the neighborhood and a few more from his contract.

His mom hadn’t kept tabs on his social life since he was sixteen. And it felt weird trying to appease her about it now, but after everything that happened with Gina and Charlie…hell, he didn’t want her worrying.

At least not about friends. But as far as a date went—his gaze sought out the hallway Maggie had disappeared down—that wasn’t happening. He couldn’t afford to get involved and wouldn’t lead anyone to believe he could. Whatever he’d once had to offer was no longer his to give.

And if he was starting to look at the girl downstairs as more than Apartment Two…he needed to stay the hell away from her.

Tyler hadn’t been doing half bad in his effort to disengage with Maggie. Four days he’d kept it civil, resisting her stairwell taunts no matter how tempting the opening she left him. He was doing the right thing, but apparently it was too much to hope he’d get a little karmic credit for his efforts and the universe would cut him some slack.

He’d been propped against an open stretch of wall inside The Groove, listening to one of the guys he was partnered with on the Lyla Textile ad campaign playing sax with his jazz band, when he’d glanced back toward the bar and there she was.

Maggie.

Her hair done up in a way he hadn’t seen before. Soft, with a kind of understated sexy that made a man think about getting his fingers into it—before he’d realized he had no business thinking like that at all. She was wearing high heels and this long, fitted overcoat with a filmy midnight scarf at the neck and a hint of something silky in a rusty red flirting around the break at the bottom.

Damn,
she looked pretty.

This had to be the date Sam and Ava mentioned she was going on. The one he’d tried not to get too curious about but still somehow managed to learn they called Hot Doc, that Ava thought he was a class act and totally deserving of his moniker, that Sam knew people who knew people at the hospital and his sources claimed the guy wasn’t a total douche, and that Ford was of the opinion Maggie almost looked like she wasn’t dreading the date…which didn’t make a whole lot of sense until Ava had given him the broad strokes of this pact she and Maggie had going. Hell, who was he kidding? It
still
didn’t make sense. But since he wasn’t curious, he’d kept a rein on the sixty-odd questions that had immediately sprung to mind.

Like he was keeping a rein on the questions he had now. Because Maggie and her date weren’t his problem. Even if she had walked in alone and was worrying that freaking lush bottom lip of hers while she stared at her phone.

Not his problem.

She found a couple open seats at the far end of the bar and sat down, shaking her head at the bartender.

Tyler scanned the place, taking it in with a different eye than when he’d shown up earlier to support a colleague. Being Wednesday, it wasn’t busy. There were a few clusters of after-work-looking dudes who’d apparently decided to make a night of it. Some couples. A group of women who were putting their coats on to leave. And a small crowd toward the back half of the place, obviously there more for the band than the bar.

Not exactly packed with predators, but still, with Maggie coming in alone, looking the way she looked…it was too much to hope there wouldn’t be one—like the schmo already pushing up from his table to amble over to the vacant seat beside her.

Not his problem.

But even as he thought the words, he felt the muscles along his neck and shoulders tense and some wholly misguided territorial instinct kick up.

Maggie didn’t need him.

She could handle herself.

The guy leaned in, throwing her his line. Maggie answered without looking up from her phone. No smile. Zero encouragement. Still, he flashed his table one of those too-confident grins that wouldn’t let him back down for at least a few more minutes.

Not. His. Problem.

Her date would be there any minute, probably falling all over himself for being late, because seriously, to have a woman like that waiting…

Another line from the barfly and Tyler’s molars ground down. This time, Maggie didn’t even speak, offering only a shake of her head. She was going to be fine. Without him.

Leo had seemed like he’d make such a perfect date.

Charming and attractive. Confident without being arrogant. Interested without coming across desperate. And thanks in part to a rotating schedule at the hospital, working the kind of limited availability that fit Maggie’s pact needs precisely—or so she’d thought before getting the text that an emergency with one of his patients was keeping him late. If the guy had been her average businessman, she’d probably be put off that he hadn’t been on time. But Leo was actually saving lives, so it wasn’t like she could go getting her panties in a twist about it. Besides, what was thirty minutes?

“Come on, one drink.”

She checked the clock on her phone again. Twenty-seven minutes.

“No, thank you,” she said, adding more tightness to her reply than she had the first time.

The guy wasn’t being a flat-out jerk or anything, but not taking no was getting on her nerves.

“Okay, but so you know, my friends are watching and I bet them I’d be able to talk you into a drink. We’re in sales, so this is kind of a big deal, if you know what I mean. You don’t want me to look like I can’t do my job, do you?”

And now with guilt?

No. She wouldn’t reply.

But instead of walking away, the guy planted an elbow on the bar and signaled the bartender. Which meant he’d just given himself license to hang out until the order was up.

Whatever. She was closing in on the high score. Three more veggie skewers and—

“So, Hibachi Catapult, huh?”

Maggie closed the game and turned to the guy, trying to figure out what she could say to put him off without having to be a total bitch about it, when a set of broad shoulders wedged between them and a deep voice that did a not-so-welcome thing to her belly cut in.

Tyler.

“ ’Scuse me, buddy. Think my friend here is saving me a seat.”

Friend?
What a laugh.

Three hadn’t been able to spare her a single insult since their cookie incident at Ford’s.

Mr. Sales straightened, a look of irritation flashing across his features as Tyler leaned into the bar.

“Hot Doc running late?”

He knew about her date? Of course he did. But only because diarrhea of the mouth was something of an epidemic with her friends.
Their friends,
she grudgingly amended.

He wouldn’t have cared himself.

She slanted a look at him again.

No, he wouldn’t. And she didn’t care even if he did.

“Got stuck at work. But he’s coming,” she stressed. “What are you doing here?”

Hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, he nodded toward the band. “Guy I know through work is playing.”

He glanced back at the drink pusher. “Saw you come in and figured I’d make sure you weren’t getting hassled or anything.”

She shifted uneasily. “Thanks.”

“So what’s the story?” he asked, not looking at her. “You have an ETA?”

There’d been a time when no way would Three have let the obvious jab go unthrown. He’d have been on her about getting stood up. About an imaginary date from the Niagara Falls area or keeping her expectations realistic. About keeping the faith. But now? Nothing but polite.

Detached.

“He was supposed to be leaving the hospital fifteen minutes ago, so it should really be any time. You don’t have to stay.”

“I’ll go if you want. Or I can stick around until he shows up.” With a nod down the bar, he added, “Keep the flies off.”

Her suitor was still watching, like he was expecting another shot. And if she told Tyler to take off, that’s exactly what she’d be giving him. She didn’t want to owe Three a favor, but…“Don’t think this gets you off my cookie blacklist.”

His chest rose and fell in a way that looked suspiciously like he’d given in to one of those single-breath laughs. Sliding onto the stool next to hers, he said, “ ’Course not.”