High praise from a man who had been in the bowels of the dance fashion industry for a decade before Piper even arrived on the scene. With his words, he’d confirmed what she already knew. Piper leaned her head on Rafe’s shoulder. “I don’t know, you’re just like me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know about that. I can see your vision, but it’s still all your vision. Maybe the answer is in production. The designs remain all you, but you build a team to figure out the execution.”
An interesting idea, one that intrigued and terrified her. Right now, she had a huge waiting list of dance directors and dance mothers just itching to secure her as their child’s dance troupe de-signer. Most of them thought they could throw money at her and find the price it would take to skip the line.
Piper didn’t have a price. As a matter of fact, those kinds of offers often got people bumped off the list altogether, or at the very least, bumped to the bottom.
Her phone buzzed and Ryden’s smiling face popped up on the screen. Jeez, it was like he knew they had been talking about her going home for the weekend.
“Hey, Rye, I’m glad you called.”
“You sound good, Pip. I can hear that smile, as always. Now, promise me you’ll keep it as I ask you a whopper of a favor.”
Oh no, not again. “I’m not setting you up with any more of my girlfriends. Do you have any idea how grossly awkward it is to nurse them through heartbreaks after you love ‘em and leave ‘em? I’m going to send you my therapy bills.”
His rich laugh soothed her frayed nerves. Although kidding, to an extent, it had been a slippery slope drying the tears of a couple of her girlfriends as they lamented her brother’s hip prowess between the sheets.
Ick. Her lady bits wilted and didn’t flare to life again for a good two months after each unfortunate conversation where she not only had to hear about her brother’s size, but his adept skill from behind.
She puked a little in the back of her mouth every time she thought about it.
“It’s not about me this time. It’s about you. Well, sort of. Look, I need to loan you out to a friend.”
She scrunched her nose. Did she just hear him right? “Uhhh…”
“I know, it sounds bad—”
“Yeah, it sounds like you want to loan me out for sex.”
Rafe raised a brow at her, making her smile.
“Oh, God, no, you can’t have sex with him.”
Hmmmm, big brother’s voice laced with a tinge of panic. Oh, now this was going to be fun.
“Pssshhh, I can have sex if I want to.”
She relished that strangled sound he made when the litany of comments running through his head all tried to claw their way up his throat at once. “Oh, well, um, sure, but Jesus, please don’t.”
“Why? Do I need your permission?”
“Yes, no. I don’t know. Look, it’s not that you can’t, but just don’t. I’m going to have a stroke,” he muttered.
Ahh, she still had it. Laughter bubbled up, and damn did that release feel good.
“For the love of God, if you do, don’t tell me until I’m dead. I don’t want to know.”
“I don’t make it a habit of passing myself around for sexual favors, Rye.”
“Yeah, I made you sound like a ho. Sorry, this is weird-ass territory for me. Look, my buddy is trying to secure a promotion and the big boss is fixated on the idea that whoever he makes partner needs to be coupled. Boss man’s looking for someone who’ll stick, and he seems to have it in his head a bachelor, someone without a family to support, can walk away from the company a bit too easily for his liking.”
“This guy can’t find a woman to bring? I mean, what’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing, nothing. The problem is the boss put him on the spot and he threw out your name.”
She reared her head back and looked down at her phone then held it up to her ear again. “Who do you know that would have thrown out my name?” An unfamiliar tingling sensation vibrated under her skin as she waited for the answer, the silence on the other end of the line growing louder with that electrical hum of awareness.
“Trevor Myers…and you might remember that at one time, he did you a favor.”
Trevor.
Her first, middle, and last crush.
Five years older than her, but the biggest star Clendon High had ever seen, Trevor shined so damn bright, the rest of the world disappeared.
She’d worshiped him from afar for years. She relished every single word he’d ever spoken to her when he hung out with Rye. She had measured the feeling every man since had given her to the way it felt to have Trevor hold her in his arms at prom.
Still, at twenty-five, every single man had come up lacking.
She needed a break.
He needed a favor.
She owed him one.
And maybe after a few days with him, she would find out he was just a mere mortal like the rest of them, and her perspective on men would be restored.
“How many days?” She couldn’t believe she had said the words.
“You’ll do it?”
“If I can fit it in…how many?”
“You’d leave Friday morning and be back Tuesday night. Trevor will pick you up and you’ll drive to his boss’ place in upstate New York.”
The damn timing was perfect. “Any idea what I should plan for while I’m there?”
“Plan for anything.”
An image of her straddling Trevor, with his hands pinned above his head, on a king-sized, soft bed flashed into her overworked mind.
Maybe she didn’t need to plan for that.
So much for seeing her parents or her brother.
“I’m in. Give him my address and I’ll be ready.”
2
the favor
SUN STREAMED BETWEEN THE BRICK apartment buildings on Greenwich Street, casting a golden glow on the russet, eight-story building. Trevor figured the building had to have gone up in the 1950s at the latest, judging by the charm of the weathered brick.
The humidity had disappeared, leaving a crispness to the air, a prelude to fall. His favorite season, and most hated season. Yeah, he was a real piece of work.
He stood in front of the understated, dark-green door to Piper’s apartment in a trendy section of lower Manhattan. Tribeca had a healthy influx of up-and-comers taking up residence, but the desirable address came with a hefty price tag. Little Piper Bradley had done fairly well for herself. She’d graduated college all of five minutes ago, right? How did she afford a place that went for well over a million dollars?
She’d always been running around with those sketch books and charcoal-stained fingers. It was probably easier to win the lottery than to find success in the art world.
Did she have to give up her love of art for a more lucrative career?
A niggling of regret filled him at the thought of her sacrificing a dream she had been so passionate about in favor of the damn rat race the rest of the world ran daily.
Piper was more than the rest of them. She deserved better than chasing a paycheck.
She lived and breathed by that sketch pad, it even stayed perched on the dinner table right at her elbow being just as much a part of her as the arm she tucked it in.