When It's Right

Dedication

Special thanks to my partner in crime, Brighton Walsh, for her unending support, and to my husband, Scott, for his near-saintly patience.

Chapter One

“We’ve got to stop doing this.” Nate took a long pull from his beer before slumping deeper in his seat.

Looking up at him over the top of her book, Cassie raised an eyebrow. “Doing what?”

“This!” He swept his free hand out as if to encapsulate everything. “Just all of…
this
.”

Something was burning in his gut, a dissatisfaction too deep and raw to even name. From the way she was scowling, Cassie was going to make him, though. She sat there in silence, dripping skepticism and giving him that look she always speared him with when she wanted him to use his words.

Words. As if those should be a problem. He made his living with them, and here he was, ready to burn them all down.

In exasperation, he rolled his eyes. It was obvious, wasn’t it? “It’s a Saturday night, for Christ’s sake. The last weekend of the year, and here we are, sitting around drinking—”

“You’re drinking.”

He talked right over her. “—drinking all by ourselves. Look at us, Cassie. We’re young, in the prime of our lives. Successful.”

“You’re successful.”

“
We’re
successful.” Sure, maybe he made more than she did, but they were both professionals. He barreled on, picking up steam. “We’re attractive. We pay our rent. We have degrees and jobs. What’s wrong with us?”

She shrugged and directed her gaze back down. “Nothing.”

He huffed, set aside his beer and lunged, grabbing her book right out of her hands. He only gave the cover the briefest glance before waving it around. “
Jane Eyre
. You’re rereading
Jane Eyre
on a Saturday night. Can’t you see anything wrong with this picture?”

Glaring, she reached out and swiped at him, stealing the book back. Without even looking, she marked her place and tossed it aside, directing her full attention at him. “No, I don’t see anything wrong with trying to get some work done so I can relax for the rest of the break. The only problem I see here is that Giselle found another sucker to float her bills for her.”

Cassie’s face went red, like she realized at the exact same moment he had that she’d gone too far.

Eight months. He and Giselle had made it eight months. It was longer than he usually suffered anyone, and he’d been starting to think what he had with her was good enough. That maybe it was time to consider asking her to share his apartment. His life.

Turned out, she’d been sharing a lot more than that with that jackass Parker from accounting.

Cassie had been supportive enough then. Had held his hand and kept his glass full as he’d completed a grand tour of every whiskey they carried at the bar down the street, and had gotten him home in one piece. But the next morning, over coffee and a fistful of ibuprofen, she’d pulled her “told you so” act.

“You never liked her,” he said, accusing. But his heart wasn’t really in it.

The subject was still too raw. Sure, Giselle hadn’t exactly been his intellectual equal, and yeah, so maybe she’d grown a little too accustomed to batting her eyelashes and getting Nate to pick up the tab for her. In his experience, that was par for the course. All women expected it, and he’d resigned himself to it. He was starting to resign himself to an awful lot of things.

Which brought them right back to what he’d been trying to say in the first place.

“Don’t you see, Cassie? We’re in a rut. I date one awful woman after another—”

“If you’d try dating someone who wasn’t a gold-digger—”

He rounded on her. “And what about you? When’s the last time you went out with anyone at all?”

The set of her mouth told him he was in dangerous waters.

She crossed her arms over her chest and squared her jaw. “Not everyone has people falling over themselves to ask them out.”

“I don’t—”

He did, though. Always had. It was embarrassing, honestly. But Cassie wasn’t exactly a slouch herself, and why she was pretending she was utterly mystified him. Just sitting on the couch in her pajamas, her sand-colored hair tossed over her shoulder in a braid, she was cute, and when she put some effort into it she could be stunning.

Like, truly stunning. Staring at her now, he felt his vision shift. He let himself look at her the way he so rarely allowed himself to and wondered, not for the first time, why they hadn’t ever…

“Never mind.” She snapped him out of his reverie. Waved one of her hands dismissively and looked away toward the window. “Even if I did have a fan club, at least
I
have some standards. Unlike some people I could name.”

That was a sucker-punch. “I have—”

“I just haven’t met anyone who’s caught my eye or who…” she paused, hesitating before continuing, “…measures up.”

He tilted his head. There was a wistfulness to her voice that was new. “To?”

The silence hung just a second too long before she turned to look at him and sighed. She swatted at his leg and stood. “To what I want.” Gesturing toward his beer, she asked, “You want another?”

“Sure.” He drained what was left of his old one as he watched her walk away. Shapeless as they were, those pajama pants clung in all kinds of interesting ways, and those hours she spent coaching the girls’ basketball team at her school were paying off. And then when she leaned over to grab the bottles from the bottom of the fridge…

He nearly choked, jerking his gaze from her ass as she turned back toward him. God, this was why he never let himself look at her this way. They were friends, he reminded himself. Best friends. And she wasn’t even his type.

Then again, if she was right, “his type” was half the problem.

She held a beer out to him, and he grabbed it from her without a word. She’d already popped the top, so he took a deep swig, swallowing hard against the coiling tension in the room. Tension. That, too, was new.

The liquid poured down his throat, cold and good. It helped him focus. He’d had a plan tonight.

He looked up at her and forced a grin. She had a beer of her own, and at his nod of thanks, she held it out to clink against his. Plunked back down on her spot on the other couch.

“Anyway,” he said. “We’ve both had a shitty year in the romance department. So I propose we make some resolutions. Together.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m listening.”

“You’re going to find your elusive someone. And I’m going to find a girl who’s not…what was it? A gold-digging bitch?”

“I never said that.”

No, not precisely. “I thought the b-word was implied.” At her noncommittal silence, he smirked and slapped his palm against his thigh. “Regardless, we’re never going to meet Mr. and Mrs. Right sitting around your living room.”

“So what do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know! We go out! Do things. Separately, even.”

A flash of something like panic crossed her face, but before he could really process it, her features were settling back down, her posture stiffening.

He cut off her inevitable protest. “Come on, Cassie. You know we make terrible wingmen for each other. Everybody always assumes we’re together.” He reached over and nudged her knee. “Try to deny it. And don’t think I don’t know you play along as often as not to get out of actually talking to the guys that hit on you.”

“Because they’re usually not worth talking to!” She threw her hand up in the air. “You know we’re just going to end up back here in a few months. And why shouldn’t we? I hate bars, and you, for all the money your firm pays you, prefer mooching free beer off me.”

“Uh-uh. We’re getting out of this rut. And we’re starting with a bang.”

“This is gonna be good.”

“C’mon. Where’s your sense of adventure? Do you have plans for New Year’s Eve?”

“I don’t know. I thought we were going to that friend of yours…what’s his name?”

“Parker? The guy who was screwing my ex-girlfriend in the supply cabinet?”

“Oh.”

“Right. ‘Oh.’ Not an option anymore.”

“Then what do you propose?”

“Something exciting.” He took a deep breath, preparing for her to let loose on him.

It had stared out as a passing fancy, something that had occurred to him randomly back when he was still nursing his pride over Giselle. But the idea hadn’t gone away, no matter how ridiculous it had seemed. And really, if he wanted to start the new year with a bang, was there anywhere else to go?

“I was thinking,” he started. “How do you feel about…Times Square?”

For a painfully long time, Cassie stared at him, speechless. Finally, she shook her head. “Times Square. In New York.”

“Is there another?”

“You realize we live in North Carolina, right?”

“Yes.”

“That it’s cold in New York right now?”

“Yup.”

“That it’s December twenty-ninth and we’ll never get plane tickets or a hotel room now?”

“It’s eleven hours by car. And doesn’t your grandmother live in Queens?”

“Yes, and I’m sure she’d be delighted to have us drop in at three in the morning.”

“If we left at nine tomorrow, we could be there before
Jeopardy
is over. She’s still addicted to that, right?”

Again, she gaped. “You’re really serious.”

“As a heart attack.” He rushed to explain why this wasn’t quite as crazy as it sounded. “Come on. You’re off until the second, I don’t have any court dates until then either. We can take my car. You know you love the Beamer. Imagine it, getting away from everything, taking a chance, doing something unplanned for once. No Giselle, no
Jane Eyre
. Just the two of us…”

And just like that, her whole expression changed. She lifted her chin and set down her beer. Held out her hand. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

The remaining list of arguments he’d prepared died in his throat. “Really?”

“Sure. Why not?”

The smile that stole across his face made his cheeks hurt. God, he needed this. After everything with Giselle, after…well, just everything, really. He reached out and closed his hand around hers. It was soft. Warm.

He hid the way his breath faltered. “You won’t regret this, Cass.”

“I better not.”

He grinned and squeezed her fingers. “You won’t. I promise.”

Chapter Two

“What was that you were saying last night? Something about not regretting this?” Cassie leaned back against the siding, cupping her coffee and holding it close to her lips.

Nate’s only response was to grunt and wrench one of his hands out of the bowels of his engine to hold it up behind his back, greasy middle finger extended. Cassie chuckled into her coffee and took a long sip.

Just as planned, she’d gotten to Nate’s at nine a.m. sharp. He’d looked as gorgeous as ever as he’d opened the door for her, rumpled and barely dressed in an undershirt and jeans, his hair still wet, dark and curling behind his ears. Light olive skin and deep brown eyes.

Also, completely oblivious to the effect he had on her. Stumbling through his morning haze, he’d let her into his condo with barely a word and pointed to his coffee maker, which she’d fired up with practiced ease. By the time the first cup was ready and in her hands, he’d managed to finish getting dressed and drag out a duffle bag full of who knew what. They’d loaded everything into the back of his BMW and strapped themselves in.

Then he’d turned the ignition. And instead of a purr, they’d been greeted with a sputter. And silence.

She kicked a rock and crossed one leg over the other, shifting again. She’d been staring at Nate’s ass for almost two hours now, killing time while he tried to figure out what was wrong. While the view was nothing to complain about, her patience was wearing thin. They were supposed to be well into Virginia by now, not sitting around a half-dozen feet outside his door.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Bracing his arms on the sides of the engine block, he rose and shot her a glare over his shoulder. “Yes, Ms. Smarty Pants. I think I know how to fix my own car.”