Oranges and other fruit rolled onto the floor as a bottle of wine skidded out of her hold.
The good news was, the woman on the phone stopped haranguing her daughter. The bad news was as Val stared at the contents of her bags on the floor, her eyes welled with tears.
Shit. Bennett had a lot of experience with women. A lot. Yes, he was a bit of a man whore. But one thing he was not comfortable with were tears. She just looked so vulnerable, he wanted to tuck her in for a hug. What the hell is wrong with you?
When the elevator doors slid open on their floor, he hit the stop button. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
He let himself in to his apartment and grabbed his grocery bags. When he came back in less than a minute, Valentine was desperately trying to gather all her things into her arms.
“Here you go.”
She shook her head stiffly. “I think my humiliation is complete. Thank you. But you don’t have to help me. I got this. I can do it.”
He merely shrugged. “Everyone needs help sometimes.” When he had retrieved the last of the wayward fruit, including some spiked yellow thing he couldn’t identify, he stood tall. “Go on, I’m right behind you.”
Her phone started to ring on the floor again, and she picked it up but didn’t look at it. Just shoved it into her pocket. “Thank you,” she muttered. Then she let him into her apartment.
To say he was surprised would have been an understatement. Sure, he’d seen glimpses of her sheer white curtains but he figured given her stiffness, she’d have a sterile beige kind of place. He couldn’t be more wrong. Everywhere he turned there was color. Bold and bright. All seamlessly blended together.
“You got it from here?” he asked as she put the bags on the counter.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about the elevator. I’m sort of mortified.”
“It happens. Everyone has a bad day from time to time.”
“’Kay. Well, see you.”
He debated not asking for her help. But as he was here and he needed a hand, too, he might as well. “Okay, so about the other night.”
She shook her head. “Oh, we are not doing this conversation. I’m pretending it didn’t happen.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing. That woman I was with—that’s my boss’s wife.”
She gasped. “You two were...cozy.”
“Yeah, not to my liking. I told her you and I were together to get her off my case, but now she wants to have the two of us for dinner at her place. And given what I heard on the phone, I think maybe the two of us can help each other out.”
For one long beat, she stared at him. “You realize this, right here, is the longest conversation we’ve ever had with each other?”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is you don’t even know me. But you want me to pretend to be your girlfriend?”
“Fiancée, actually.”
A bark of laughter tore out of her. “You’re nuts.”
“Look, you need a date or whatever to some wedding, it sounds like, and I need a fiancée. This is win-win.”
She took the grocery bags and turned them upside down, emptying them before shoving them back at him. “We can’t stand each other. You with your tattoos and your loud punk music or whatever.”
He frowned. “Excuse me, that’s classic rock.”
“Whatever. No. You are all wrong. If you have a clean-cut brother, I’m down. But you and I will not mesh. Not to mention that woman looked like she wanted to carve me up into pieces, so thanks, but no thanks.”
This was not the end of this conversation. “Okay, well, you think about it.”
“Answer’s no.”
“You want to tell me what you have against me?”
“You mean besides you being arrogant, loud, a womanizer, flirty and accosting me with kisses?”
He smirked. “You liked the kiss, I could tell.”
She stormed past him and opened her door. “Out.”
With a sigh he turned to go. “I’ll give you a couple days to think about it.” She rolled her eyes, but as he left, he could have sworn he saw her lips twitch. Well, at least it was a start. He had a few days to wear her down. He wasn’t going to the Voss house without her.
* * *
“So tell me exactly what happened. You came home with James, my least favorite friend, and then next thing you know your neighbor’s kissing you?”
“I have no idea what happened.” Val paced back and forth in her living room in front of the couch as Mel looked up at her. “One second, James was bumbling through a breakup, and the next thing I know Mr. Sexy and Tattooed and Terrible Neighbor was kissing me.”
“So exactly how did he kiss you?” Mel asked. “Was there tongue, or was it a peck? Did he hold you close up against him? Or was it one of those cases where he just leaned in with his face?”
Val considered. Her mind ran through the kiss over and over again like a movie reel. Bennett with his direct stride and intense focus on her. Bennett wrapping his arm around her waist and sliding one into her hair and then tucking her against him intimately as he lowered his lips. “Yeah, he definitely had me pressed up against him.”
Mel hooted. “This is fantastic. Finally, someone we can dig our teeth into who isn’t a boring Marcus replacement.”
Val frowned at her best friend. They didn’t talk about Marcus, since he’d unceremoniously dumped her before her final exams senior year. Val didn’t like to reminisce about that period of time. Marcus and everything that came with him was better left forgotten.
Mel held up her hands. “Easy does it. All I’m saying is that ever since Marcus, you’ve been looking for that perfect Morris Chestnut kind of guy. You know, tall, athletic, charming as hell, great job, the right connections, the right schools. You’ve pretty much been dating a cookie-cutter version of the same guy for the last five years, and it never works out for you.”
“You’re wrong. I am not trying to replace Marcus. So what if some of the guys have the same qualities? I happen to like those qualities.”
Mel shook her head. “No. Your parents like those qualities. You don’t know what you like.”
“Of course I know what I like.” Mel had no idea what she was talking about. Val knew what she liked. Of course she knew what she wanted. She dated. Yes, maybe she aspired for a very specific look. Tall, chocolate and in good shape. That didn’t make her super shallow, did it?
“No, you don’t. Because you’ve never dated anything other than the Marcus version. And let me just say, if you’re gonna date versions of Marcus, please upgrade. Do not downgrade. That makes no kind of sense. Now, I want to hear more about that sexy neighbor. He sounds like someone completely opposite to Marcus.”
Val’s stomach flipped at the mere mention of Bennett. Stupid hormones. So what if he made every nerve ending stand up and pay attention? There was more to a relationship than great chemistry. “No, not gonna happen. I don’t know what his deal was. But I’m not jumping on the gravy train.”
“Of course you’re not. Because you never do anything outside of your little box.” Before Val could even argue, Mel continued. “You’ve been saying for the last year how you want to shake up your life. With Sol getting married, you were trying to do your own thing. Break free a little of the usual expectations. What happened in that? Because James was not making that happen. And to make matters worse, he was calling you boring.