She snorted. “Especially them. If I don’t see Liam Darcy in a Fabio wig, I’m quitting.”
“Oh, come on. He can’t be that bad.”
“He has the bone structure of a Greek god and the personality of a marble representation in the Met. But Cooper runs this place, and Darcy is Cooper’s buddy. Plus their ad agency is a BFD.”
“A BFD?”
“A Big Fucking Deal. Darcy I could do without, but his sister is a goddamn delight. Is it weird that I want to be her best friend?”
“For you? Not even a little. You asked her already to be your best friend, didn’t you?”
“Come on, Laney—just because I asked you to marry me within the first five minutes of meeting you doesn’t mean I asked her too.”
I shot a look at her over my shoulder.
“Well, why’d you ask if you already knew? I can’t help it, Laney. This is just who I am as a person.”
“I’m trying not to be jealous, but you’re not making it easy.”
“Oh, come on,” she said on a laugh. “You’ll always be my number two.”
“I’d ask you to call me your deuce, but that’s not any less shitty.”
That one earned me a full-blown cackle. “Sorry to imply that you, one of my favorite people, are excrement. I have a toddler. There’s a lot of poop talk around my house right now.”
I dropped the box on the table at the door where one of the cashiers, Ruby, started sifting through it.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re going to meet them, since you’ll be working with them. You’ll fit right in, I’m sure, as long as it’s not up to Liam Darcy. I figure he’ll warm up once he sees what you can do.”
“You make it sound like Liam is going to oppose me.”
Cam’s dark brow rose with one side of her smile. “Don’t take it personal. I’m pretty sure Liam opposes everybody.”
“That’s comforting,” I said flatly.
“Ruby,” Cam started, addressing the girl with the fire-engine red hair behind the table, “Free drink tickets to any guy who takes his shirt off. Fabio Freebies!”
“Even the chubby ones?” she asked hesitantly.
“Particularly the chubby ones. In fact, give those guys two for being good sports.”
“You got it, boss,” Ruby answered on a laugh, and we headed toward the bar where several of our hottest bartenders were prepping the bar for the crowd.
And what a mighty sight that was to behold.
Three gigantic, shirtless men in Fabio wigs worked behind the bar carrying ice buckets and loading liquor onto the shelves. Beau walked up with a crate of bottled beers wearing little more than a loin cloth and a leather strap across his ridiculous chest. Harrison dumped ice into the well in a pair of leather pants. That was it. Leather pants and combat boots, his pecs that outrageous shape that was not quite round, not quite square, but some strange in between that made your fingers itch. And Greg had donned a billowing pirate shirt, unbuttoned to the belt of his very tight, very black flat-fronted Victorian-looking trousers.
The three of them smiled at Cam in unison, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. There was just too much top shelf man-titty on display for functional thinking.
I decided then that I was a big fan of Fabio night.
Somehow I tore my eyes away from the trio and turned around, taking stock of Wasted Words. The high, industrial ceilings and maze of exposed pipework. Shelf after shelf of books stood proudly on one side of the bar, and on the other stood table after table of comics, graphic novels, manga—the works, everything from brand new releases to collector finds.
When I came back to New York a couple years ago to help my family out, I had no plans other than to help save our flower shop, Longbourne. But the flower shop was on its feet again and doing better than ever. So Jett and I moved uptown so he could get back to work managing Wasted Words with Cam, and they asked me to come on as their social marketing director.
Honestly, I had no real desire to go back to a big firm, content to freelance, thankful for the freedom it gave me. And I hadn’t been lying when I said they made it easy to work at Wasted Words. It was the easiest thing I’d ever sold.
When I looked up, the most unladylike snort ripped out of me at the sight of my brother.
Jett cut me a look, his blue eyes hard, but always glinting with humor. “Don’t,” he warned.
I circled him when he approached, eyeing his studded leather boots. “Are you supposed to be Viking Fabio?”
“Stop making it sound like I’m a Barbie doll.”
“Oh, I’d always insist you were a Ken.” I flicked the leather belt that criss-crossed his chest, eyeing his wig, which covered the inky black hair all the Bennets possessed. “I don’t think I like you as a blonde. It’s unnerving.”
“You’re dressed like Fabio, and I’m the one who’s unnerving?”
“Well, listen, Jett—if you can’t get a date in this, I don’t know that you ever will. Any hetero woman who doesn’t swoon at your vitality in this is either crazy or dead inside.”
He made a face. “I’d say thank you if you weren’t my sister.”
“Ha, ha.” I nailed him in the bicep hard enough that he winced. Or at least pretended to.
“Here they come!” Cam called over her shoulder as the line began to form at the door.
“Seriously. It’s singles night, and I’m making Cam find you a lady,” I insisted.
But Jett rolled his eyes so hard I couldn’t even see the irises for a second. “I don’t need help finding a lady, especially not from Cam. A match made by Cam is the kiss of death. It always turns out the exact opposite from what she intends. The last girl I let Cam hook me up with ended up engaged halfway through the night. To another guy.”
“Ouch.”
He laid a hard look on me. “I mean it. Don’t.”
I put my hands up. “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll do it myself.”
With a laugh, I dodged him when he tried to grab me, spinning away.
See, Jett was the last of my brothers to pair off. The other three were well on their way—one married even—and worse than that, Jett and I were the oldest. Dusty old spinsters, if our mother was to be believed. If Mrs. Bennet desired anything, it was seeing her children married and breeding. I think she would have happily taken breeding alone, if given the choice between that and the alternative.
Thankfully Jett and I had escaped her designs by moving a hundred blocks away.
Either way, Jett had been unlucky in love. I didn’t quite understand why—the guy was smart, funny, and cut like granite. He was well over six feet tall and handsome, with the sharp jaw, Roman nose, and brilliant blue eyes all of us had. He was handsome, and I didn’t just say that because we were twins. By anyone’s standards, even a sister who got a little urpy at the sight of his nipples, he was straight out of the oven. But he’d always had trouble picking the right girl. He’d been railroaded and run around, too kind and honorable for anything less than trust as a given. And as such, he’d been through a string of girls that I’d like to have gouged the eyeballs out of.
Tonight would be the perfect night to change that. Everyone was ridiculous in a Fabio wig. And any girl who would happily make a fool out of herself for the sake of a good time had an automatic foot in the door, in my book.