Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers Book 1) (11 page)

But he never came back.

And I’d been sick of waiting.

I had been saving that part of me for him for so long that I didn’t want it at all anymore. My virginity reminded me of Parker, and I thought that by getting rid of it, it might finally rid me of him.

It was stupid, I know.

It hadn’t worked and I had cried afterwards when I got back to my dorm. The whole thing just felt like such a waste. It hadn’t been with the only person I had ever loved, the only person I cared to give it to. It hadn’t been special like he had promised. It hadn’t felt good either.

Honestly, I had been ashamed of myself that I’d become so weak that I hadn’t even cared about something like that.

That was a long time ago, though. Things were different now. Parker and I were friends again and that’s all we would ever be. Because I couldn’t go through the pain, the heartbreak, of losing a man like Parker Cruz all over again.

But I had to admit.

I would have given anything to feel those fingers of his inside me again.

Kinley

Two days later, I was practically running into Ryan’s gallery to get out of the cold New York air. I was taking off my gloves and digging into my bag when Ryan came out from the back.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said and greeted me with a kiss on the cheek.

Everything he did lately was starting to feel really intimate and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

I smiled anyway. “Hi. I came to drop off my most recent negatives. See if there’s anything you like in there and I’ll get to work on the printing and framing.”

He took them from me and already started sifting through them. “I’m sure there will be about a million that I like, as always. I have your check from the show.”

I followed him as he walked back to his office, the gallery looking as pristine as ever with no traces of the show the other night. He opened the top drawer of his mahogany desk and took out a white envelope, handing it to me with a big smile on his face.

“Sold all but one. But one of my regulars is actually coming in to look at it tomorrow. He couldn’t make it to the show the other night and he sounded interested.”

“Great,” I replied as I pictured the new 35mm lens camera I wanted to get, which this commission check would more than cover. And maybe I’d throw in a massage with it, too. Possibly a new pair of Louboutins.

I didn’t treat myself like that very often.

“Well, let me know if you want any of those prints and I’ll get right on it. I leave town on Saturday for a week and then I should have about three days here before I leave again for five days, I think.”

It was hard to keep track when I didn’t have my planner with me. Yes, I still had an actual, physical planner. Keeping my schedule on my phone just gave me a headache, and I preferred to write everything down anyway.

“If I’m on the road, though, I can still put an order in,” I added. “No problem.”

I actually preferred to print and frame all of my photos myself. I had splurged on printing, cutting, and framing equipment a few years ago and used one of the spare bedrooms in my apartment for my studio. Doing it all myself just provided a more satisfying feeling of completion. But being on the road so much, I sometimes had to send in orders if I couldn’t get them to clients quick enough. The equipment wasn’t exactly mobile and they couldn’t always wait for me to get back into town. Plus, the guy at the print and frame shop gave me a great discount.

Ryan nodded, a contemplative look on his face. I had a feeling I was not going to like what he was about to say. “How about I pick you up for dinner when you get back into town next week? There’s a great new sushi place that just opened up on sixty-first. I was thinking we could go there and then you could finally see my place. I just bought the most charming Persian rug for my dining room.”

First of all, I hated sushi. Absolutely detested it and I knew that I’d told him that only a thousand times. Clearly, he hadn’t been listening.

Second of all, it kind of bugged me that he’d already planned out our entire date—one I hadn’t yet agreed to—without asking me what I wanted to do.

Third of all, I knew that he owned an art gallery and everything, but listening to a guy describe a rug as “charming” did nothing in the way of making me want to fall into bed with him.

Okay, yeah. So we had been on two dates. I liked Ryan and he had been a good friend to me over the last year, showcasing my work in his gallery and hooking me up with prospective clients. But being on a date with him was like watching
Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
. Boring, predictable, and you knew he was never going to do anything exciting. He was a nice guy but every day he put on that same sweater and same shoes and talked about roughly the same thing.

That was Ryan. I didn’t want to be overly critical but he was the most vanilla guy I had ever been on a date with.

And that did absolutely nothing for me.

Plus, he had been a little too presumptuous with me and our non-relationship lately. Calling me “beautiful” and “gorgeous”, letting those kisses on the cheek last a bit too long, and inviting me back to his place when I’d never sent him any signals that would indicate I wanted to sleep with him.

“Why don’t we hold off on that,” I said gently. His face fell, a frown forming. I didn’t want to be mean but I also didn’t want to lead him on. “I’m just really busy right now,” I went on. “I’ve got a ton of shoots lined up with it being the beginning of the year and all that. I don’t think I’m going to have much free time for a little while.”

So it wasn’t
I’m not into you like that and I highly doubt I ever will be, so please don’t ask me out again.
But most people would take the hint and recognize it for what it was: a polite brush-off.

He hesitated for a second and then nodded as the same smile that he reserved for his clients came over his face. I found it cheesy, to be honest. He was just too…
pretty
for me.

Parker’s not.

No, he sure as hell wasn’t. It was laughable to even suggest that Parker was the pretty type. He was rough and hard and had a certain mysterious darkness within him that I had always found alluring. I’d started to learn more about the reason for that darkness during our brief time together.

But then he left just when I was starting to make progress.

I knew that his home life had been shitty and his parents were jerks but I didn’t know the extent of it. I had always wanted to know, though. I sensed that there was so much he was hiding, things he needed to share with someone. Burdens he needed to unload before they consumed him.

“We can talk about it when you get back and you’re not so busy, then,” Ryan said, the easy confidence he had shining through.

Apparently, he didn’t take a hint easily.

That could be a problem.

##

I walked into the bar and looked around for my friend, Norah. It was Friday night, so the bar was busy. Walking a little farther in, I finally found her sitting at a high-top table near the bar. She was talking to a guy with red hair and a red beard, wearing a thick, cable-knit sweater and jeans, looking like he had been out to sea for the last six months.

Not something you see often around here.

Then again, it was New York. Nothing was normal or predictable around here.

She usually had a line of guys waiting to talk to her so this wasn’t a surprise. Not that I blamed them; the woman was gorgeous. Big, blonde hair. Makeup always applied to perfection. Year-around tan. Perky, fake boobs, although you would never guess they weren’t real. And the kind of smile people paid orthodontists thousands of dollars for. She was like a life-size Barbie doll that guys went absolutely nuts over.

I walked in their direction, but Norah’s back was to me so she didn’t see me. But I definitely heard part of their conversation. Particularly, her side of it.

“…Well, you know my Mercedes has a spacious backseat…all-around seat warmers…top-of-the-line stereo system. It’s parked just outside.” She ran one of her painted fingernails across the man’s chest, down his stomach, making his eyes widen. “Maybe we could sneak out there and you could show me if the curtains match the—”

“Hey, Norah!” I kind of yelled, making both of them jump.

I couldn’t help it. I would have done
anything
to not hear the end of that sentence.

She turned around and beamed at me. “Kinley!”

We hugged each other and then she turned back to Bucky, the shrimp boat captain. “Okay, my girl’s here now. We’ll talk later.” I didn’t miss the wink she sent him, nor the fact that his face turned the color of his hair before he walked away.

“What’s with Yukon Cornelius?” I asked her, shrugging out of my coat and draping it over my chair. “That’s not your usual type.”

She pointed at me. “Exactly. I’m trying something new. Besides, I was always curious about the whole red hair thing…”

I put up my hand. “Yeah, I got that. You ordered a drink yet?”

“No, I waited on you. Their special tonight is four dollar Long Islands.”

I closed the drink menu. “Done.”

We flagged down a server and told her our drink orders. “By the way, you do realize that you hit on men like you’re selling a house, right?”

She laughed. “I know but it’s what I do. I can’t always turn it off. Plus, I think it turns some guys on,” wiggling her eyebrows as she said it.

Her phone screen lit up and she immediately went for it. “No phones!” I put my hand over hers, stopping her texting. “We agreed. No phones during our pow-wows.”

She sighed and put it down. “I know. I’ve just been waiting on these clients to make an offer on this amazing penthouse. They keep going back and forth about it and I’m getting antsy. And I have it on good authority that a pretty sizeable offer is coming in on the place soon, so I’m trying to nudge them. They’re pregnant and this would just be the perfect place for them.”

“Well, aren’t you Mother Theresa,” I said, my sarcasm hanging off the words. “Providing homes for new families.”

“Hey, you’re just mad that you didn’t go through me when you bought your apartment and you got a crappy deal on it.”

“That was before I knew you.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, well. To each his own.”

“You know that doesn’t make sense right?”

Another shrug. “When in Rome.”

I rolled my eyes just as the server dropped off our drinks.

Norah and I met years ago when I was fresh out of college with a brand new degree in photography. She hired me to take pictures of some of the properties she was showing after I answered her ad online. Though I was a nature photographer now, back then I was still trying to break into the business and was really just looking for work at the time. Anything to add to my portfolio which, up to that point, had been mainly composed of amateur projects for my graduate classes.

Since she had also been starting her career in real estate, she was willing to help a fellow graduate out and had ended up loving my work. We had been close friends ever since.

“So, Realtor Barbie. How’s work going?”

She downed half her drink without taking a breath, and I became concerned that she might forget to come up for air. “I guess that answers that question,” I muttered.

She finally came up and wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “It’s actually going great. Beginning of the year and suddenly everybody thinks they need to relocate, so I’m being bombarded with consultations.”

“Any hot, single billionaires in that bunch?”

“I’m still meeting with all of them, so I’ll let you know,” she responded with a wink.

She was convinced that her life was going to turn into a romance novel one of these days. She predicted that she would meet her future billionaire husband when he hired her to find him a bachelor pad. They would end up having hot sex on top of every surface at every place she showed him. He would eventually realize he could no longer be his perpetual bachelor self because he had fallen in love with her. They would get married, buy a couple of yachts, and have beautiful children together. The end.

Hey, we can all dream.

“How’s the photography game?”

The thought of the Canada shoot sent a shiver down my spine. “Well, I’m looking forward to summer. You can buy me more thermal underwear for Christmas next year.”

“You need a big, burly man to keep you warm at night up there,” she said firmly. “Not thermal underwear, my dear.”

“Because
that’s
going so well for me.”

My mind went to Parker, more out of reflex than anything else since he was the only man that I’d had any sort of intimate contact with lately. But I commanded myself to move him to the back burner.

“Has Ryan, the Rubik’s Cube of Boring, asked you out again?”

I cringed. “He did today, actually.”

A look of amusement flashed across her face. “I assume you said no.”

I just gave her look. “Obviously. He asked me out for sushi and then not so casually said we should go back to his place afterwards.”

“Because he got new kitchen tiles that he imported from Spain?” she asked in feigned excitement.

“‘Charming’ new Persian rug, as a matter of fact.”

She snapped her fingers. “Damn. That was my next guess.”

Somehow, her drink was already gone and she was asking for another before I’d put away half of mine. I looked at her in astonishment. “Did you forget I was a lush?” was her only response.

The next thirty minutes passed with stories from our jobs, questions about each other’s families—she asked how Clay was enjoying his new position as Mayor of D.C.—and summer plans, even though it was only January. That was either depressing or motivating, I wasn’t sure which.

I looked up from my mango grilled chicken and saw her studying me with narrowed eyes. “What?”

She pointed her fork at me. “There’s something else going on with you.”

“No, there’s not,” I said too defensively, my first mistake. “What do you mean?”