Love on Lexington Avenue(5)

She wasn’t just boring. She was predictably boring.

Claire’s gaze flitted over the pile of generic birthday cards. The pale, lonely cupcake. The pile of uninspired swatches and neutral samples that indicated even her house renovation, a process that by its very nature signaled change, would somehow end up . . . the same. Her house would be more modern, yes, but if she stayed the course of white and off-white, it would be what everyone expected of her. Vanilla.

An urge washed over Claire, strong and unfamiliar, and as a lifelong rule follower, it took her a moment to register what she was feeling: rebellion.

She wanted to surprise people. She wanted to surprise herself.

“Actually, Aud?” She told her friend. “About that cupcake date. Let’s do it.”

“Now?” Audrey asked in surprise.

“I’ll be at your place in twenty. We can share a cab.”

“Yes! You’re sure though?”

“Absolutely,” Claire said. “I’ll see you in a few.”

Claire started to head toward the stairs to change her clothes but backtracked to the kitchen.

And tossed the vanilla cupcake in the trash.





Chapter Two


WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7

At exactly six fifty-eight the following morning, Scott Turner slammed the door of his pickup closed, not really caring if he woke up any of the residents who lived on Seventy-Third Street. In fact, rather perversely, he hoped he did wake them up.

It wasn’t that he hated Upper East Siders. He just hated all people until he got his morning coffee. He hated especially that his rancid mood was his own damn fault. He’d been the one to agree to consider this job. He’d been the one who’d suggested the early morning meeting.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. To get anything done in August in New York City, early mornings were crucial unless you wanted to sweat your way through the day. Hell, it was already sticky, and they hadn’t even rounded the bend on 7:00 a.m.

But when Scott made the appointment with Claire Hayes, he hadn’t been factoring in a delayed flight from Seattle the night before, which had then prohibited him from restocking coffee.

To say that Scott was having regrets about doing his friend Oliver a favor was an understatement, but if this Claire Hayes woman had air-conditioning and coffee, all would be forgiven. Mostly.

As expected, Claire Hayes’s brownstone looked like every other house on the block, and he supposed that was meant to be the charm of it. In Manhattan, where the sheer number of bodies on a relatively small strip of land forced real estate to go up, literally, high-rise apartment buildings and condominiums were a dime a dozen. It was these stately brownstones in fancy historic neighborhoods that the city’s elite creamed their pants over.

In almost any other part of the country, these unassuming town houses served as starter homes for new couples and families. The training wheels of home ownership until one could afford the actual house, with a proper yard, a garage, room for the kids, etc. Not so on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where skinny structures went for eight figures, easily. Even the outdated ones got seven-figure offers just for the property value and bragging rights.

Scott wasn’t sure which category he was dealing with. Oliver had just said this Claire woman wanted a major reno. For all he knew, that meant replacing last year’s kitchen counters. In his experience, wealthy housewives weren’t known for perspective. Their emergency was someone else’s average weekday.

Scott jogged up the steps, egged on as much by the hope of coffee as he was by the desire to get this damn assessment over with so he could politely turn her down and move on to a project that lit his fire.

As with the early morning, it was his own damn fault that he was in this position in the first place. Scott had told Oliver he’d wanted a break from the corporate stuff, though he’d neglected to mention that changing a snobby widow’s towel rack from silver to copper wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

He wanted a true fixer-upper, not a glorified decorating gig for a rich woman who would probably want to replace original hardwood with some bamboo nonsense. But Oliver was on the short list of people that Scott would do just about anything for, and so he’d agreed to at least see Claire Hayes’s project before turning her down.

Even as he had no intention of agreeing to the project, Scott’s trained eye took in the details of the front porch as he knocked. Dilapidated would be a nice word for it. And he didn’t even bother with the fussy brass knocker that looked like a good door slam would send it to its death.

Instead, he rapped his knuckles against the wood, as much to test its solidity as to actually knock. Old, he realized. Really old. In fact, the front door was in the same condition as the knocker. Tired. Fading paint, warped wood, ugly, outdated frosted glass panes. Even the doorknobs were bad.

“Jesus,” he muttered, running a finger over some fugly shape carved into the wood at waist level. “Are these supposed to be leaves?”

The door opened, leaving his hand extended awkwardly, finger now pointing at . . . well, the woman’s crotch. Unembarrassed, Scott’s hand dropped back to his side as his eyes traveled back up the woman’s body. Boring gray slacks, boring blue blouse . . .

His eyes slammed into hers, and he was abruptly jolted out of his boredom. Not because her face was particularly interesting. All her features were right where they were supposed to be. Small nose, full mouth, angular jaw.