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He smelled good, she thought. Like summer rain and sea breeze. It made her want to bury her face in his neck and breathe him in.
She wondered which of them would be more embarrassed.
Definitely her. Matt wasn’t the kind of guy who was easily embarrassed.
“Am I disturbing you?” He scanned her damp hair and she pushed at it self-consciously.
When it was wet it turned an unflattering shade. “Rust” one boy had called it at school after she’d been caught in a heavy rainstorm. When she blushed, which she was now doing thanks to her wayward imagination, her face clashed horribly with her hair.
“You’re not disturbing me, but if you’re looking for Paige and Eva they’re up on the roof terrace.”
“I wasn’t looking for them. I’ve lost my cat. Have you seen her?”
“She’s here. Come in. I opened a bottle of wine.” She issued the invitation without a second thought because this was Matt. Matt, whom she’d known forever and trusted.
“You’re inviting me in?” His eyes gleamed. “I’m honored. It’s Saturday night and I know how much you love your own space.”
The fact that he knew her so well was one of the things that made their relationship so easy and comfortable.
“You have owner’s privilege.”
“There’s such a thing? I never knew that. What other benefits am I entitled to that I haven’t been claiming?”
“The occasional glass of wine is definitely on that list.” She opened the door wider for him and he strolled past her into her apartment.
Her gaze lingered on his shoulders. She was human, wasn’t she? And Matt had an impressive set of shoulders. The kind you could lean on, if you were the leaning type. She wasn’t. Even so, there was no denying that the man was sexy from every angle, even from the back. Of course, the fact that she found him sexy was her secret and it was going to stay that way.
She could enjoy her own private fantasy, safe in the knowledge that no one was ever going to find out.
Frankie closed the door behind him. “How did you lose your cat?”
“I left the window open but she’s never had the courage to climb through it before. I don’t know whether to be pleased that she was finally brave enough to explore or worried that she felt the need to escape from me.”
“Mmm, I guess that depends on whether this is a onetime thing. Do women often try and escape from you?” No, she thought. Of course they didn’t.
“All the time. It’s hell on the ego.” He was cool and relaxed and her heart gave a little kick, as it always did around him.
She ignored it, as she always did.
Unlike her mother, she didn’t think sexual attraction was an impulse that had to be acted on. She’d rather have a long-term friendship than short-term sex any day. In fact, there were a million activities more appealing than sex, which she’d always found to be fraught with complications, unrealistic expectations and pressure.
If they gave out grades for sex, you’d be a D minus, Cole, with nothing for effort.
She frowned, wondering why that memory had come into her head now.
The guy had been a total jerk. She wasn’t going to give a second thought to a man whose ego was so big it had needed its own zip code.
Matt, on the other hand, was a good friend. She saw him most days, sometimes on the roof terrace where they met for drinks or movie night and sometimes at Romano’s, the local Italian restaurant owned by Jake’s mother.
Their friendship was one of the most important relationships in her life.
Which was one of the reasons she tolerated his cat.
“I think you should be pleased she wandered down to my apartment. Shows she’s slowly gaining confidence. With luck she’ll eventually stop trying to scratch us all to the bone. She’s in the kitchen.” She walked through and he followed her, scanning the profusion of pots on the windowsill.
“You’re growing herbs now?”
“A few. Sweet basil and Italian parsley. I grow them for Eva.”
“There’s an Italian parsley? All those trips to Italy I took in college and I never knew that.” He strolled across to the window and stared out across the small garden. “You’ve done a good job with this place. I’m lucky having you living here.”
They talked all the time about a range of subjects but he rarely made personal comments. She hated the fact that it flustered her.
“I’m the lucky one. If it weren’t for you I’d be living in an apartment the size of a shoe box and storing my clothes in the oven. You know how it is in New York.” Embarrassed, she stooped to stroke the cat and Claws shot under the table for protection. “Oops. Moved too fast. She’s nervous.”
He turned. “She’s getting better. A few months ago she wouldn’t have paid you a visit.” He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and Claws immediately crept out and jumped onto his lap. “Thanks for feeding her.”
“You’re welcome.” Frankie watched as Claws gave a slow stretch. The cat lost her balance and shot out her claws, but Matt curved his hand over her back, holding her securely against the hard muscle on his thigh.
Frankie stared at that hand and the slow, reassuring stroke of his fingers and felt herself grow hot.
“Something wrong?”
“Excuse me?” Frankie dragged her eyes from the mesmerizing movement of his fingers and met his amused gaze.
“You’re staring at my cat.”
Cat? Cat. “I—” she’d stopped staring at the cat a long time ago. “She’s still skinny.”
“The vet said it will take a while for her to regain all the weight she lost when she was shut in that room.” There was a grim set to his mouth that reminded her that there were limits even to Matt’s patience. And then he smiled. “Have I seen that T-shirt before? The color suits you.”
“What?” Unbalanced by both the smile and the comment, she stared at him.
She didn’t think Matt would ever mock her, which could only mean—
“Do you want something?” She looked him in the eye. “Because you can just ask straight out. You don’t have to do the whole ‘you look nice in that T-shirt’ thing to soften me up. Thanks to you I live in the best apartment in Brooklyn, and on top of that I’ve known you forever so you can pretty much ask anything and I’ll say yes.”
“Another owner’s privilege?” He gently lifted the cat and set her down on the floor. “You probably shouldn’t have told me that. I might choose to invoke that clause in our agreement.”
Was he flirting with her?
Confusion jammed her thought processes.
She always knew where she was with Matt but suddenly she was in unfamiliar territory.
Of course he wasn’t flirting. They never flirted. She didn’t know how to flirt. Her expertise, honed over a decade, was in putting men off, not in encouraging them.
And anyway, Matt would never be interested in her. She wasn’t sophisticated enough or experienced enough.
She needed to say something light and funny to restore the atmosphere, but her mind was blank.
Matt watched her steadily. “I paid you a compliment, Frankie. You don’t have to strip it down and check it for bugs or incendiary devices. You just say thank you and move on.”
A compliment?
But why? He never paid her compliments. “This T-shirt is five years old. It’s not that special.”
“I didn’t say I liked your T-shirt. I said I liked the way you look in it. I was complimenting you, not what you were wearing specifically. Did you mention wine?” Smoothly he changed the subject and she turned to pick up the bottle, frustrated with herself.
Why did she have to turn it into such a big deal? Was it really so hard to flirt?
Eva would have had the perfect response ready. So would Paige.
She was the only one who had no idea what to say or do. She needed to get a “how to” book. How to flirt. How not to make a fool of yourself around a man.
“Montepulciano. Unless you’d rather a beer?”
“Beer sounds good.”
She stooped and pulled one out of the fridge, forcing herself to relax. She was going to type “how to flirt” into a search engine later. She was going to practice a few responses so this never happened again. If a guy paid her a compliment, she should at least know how to respond instead of treating every comment as if it were an incoming computer virus. “How was your day?”
“I’ve had better.” He snapped the top off the beer. “Too much work, not enough time. Remember that piece of business I won a few months ago?”
“You’ve won loads of business, Matt.”
“Roof terrace on the Upper East Side.”
“Oh yes, I remember.” This conversation was better. Safe. “It was a real coup. Is there a problem with planning?”
“Not planning. That’s all good. What isn’t good is the fact that Victoria left yesterday.”
Frankie had trained with Victoria at the Botanic Gardens and she’d been the one to recommend her to Matt. “Doesn’t she have to give you notice?”
“Technically yes, but her mother’s sick so I told her to forget it and just get herself home.”
That was typical of Matt. He was a man who appreciated the importance of family. His was a tight-knit unit, not a fractured mess like hers. “She’s not likely to be back soon?”
“No. She’s moving back to Connecticut so she can be closer.”
“Which leaves you without a horticulturist when you’re in the middle of a big project.” Roof terraces were Matt’s specialty, and his projects ranged from residential homes to large commercial properties. “What about the rest of your team?”
“James’s expertise is hard landscaping, and Roxy is keen and hardworking but has no formal training. Victoria had started to teach her the basics but she doesn’t have the skills to put together a design.” He set the bottle down on the table. “I’m going to have to recruit, and hope I get lucky. Fast.” He drank and Frankie eyed the strong column of his throat and the dark, grainy shadow of his jaw. He was strikingly handsome, his body hard and strong. He spent half his working day with his sleeves rolled up covered in dirt, but even dressed casually his innate sense of style shone through. It was that restrained eye for design that had built his business.
If she had been interested in men, he would have been a prime candidate.
But she wasn’t interested. Definitely not.
People told you to play to your strengths, didn’t they? And she was very, very bad at relationships.
Matt put the beer down and for a brief moment his gaze met hers. He gave her a look laden with intimacy and it made her heart pump a little faster and her breathing quicken.
Crap, her mind was playing tricks.
She had an overactive imagination courtesy of an underactive sex life.
She looked away. “I know a lot of people. I’ll make some calls. Roof terraces need special skills. It’s not just about planting pretty flowers. You need trees and shrubs that will provide year-round color.”
“Exactly. I need someone who understands the complexities of the project. Someone skilled and easy to work with. We’re a small team. There’s no room for egos or prima donnas.”
“Yeah, I get that.” It was stupid to be flustered when she’d known Matt pretty much forever. The fact that he’d matured from lanky boy into insanely hot man shouldn’t affect her as much as it did.
He was her best friend’s older brother and he’d grown up on the same island as her, off the coast of Maine. He’d experienced the same frustrations associated with small-town living, although of course his experience had been nothing like hers. No one’s had been like hers.
After her father’s affair had been exposed and he’d left them for a woman half his age, her mother’s response had been to have affairs of her own. She’d told anyone who would listen that she’d married too young and planned to make up for lost time. In an attempt to rediscover her youth and confidence, she’d cut her hair short, lost twenty pounds and started borrowing Frankie’s clothes. There had been no man too young, too old or too married to escape her mother’s attentions.
Frankie had discovered that a reputation wasn’t something that had to be earned. You could inherit it.
No matter what she did, on Puffin Island she’d always be the daughter of “that woman.”
It was as if her identity had merged with that of her mother.
Some of the boys at school had assumed she was the shortcut to a life of sexual adventure. One in particular.
Frankie pushed the memory away, refusing to allow it space in her head. “Do you want something to eat? I don’t have Eva’s skills, but I have eggs and fresh herbs. Omelet?”
“That would be great. And while you do that, tell me about your bad day. Paige said it was a bridal shower.” Matt picked up his beer. “I’m guessing that’s not your favorite thing.”
“You’re right about that.” She didn’t bother denying it. What was the point when Matt already knew her better than most?
“What happened?”
“Oh, you know—usual thing. Groom backed out, bride cried, yada yada—” She smacked the eggs on the edge of the bowl, keeping her tone light, pretending it was of no consequence, whereas, in fact, she felt as if she’d spent the afternoon in a cocktail shaker. Her emotions were both shaken and stirred. Despite her best efforts to suppress them, memories engulfed her. Her mother setting fire to her wedding album and cutting through her dress with kitchen scissors. The agonizing family gathering for her grandmother’s eightieth birthday where her father had brought his new girlfriend and spent the entire afternoon with his hand up her skirt. “Paige rescued the whole thing, of course. She could smooth a storm in the ocean. The food was good, the flowers were spectacular and the bride-to-be’s parents still paid the bill so it had a happy ending. Or as close to a happy ending as life ever gets.” She pulled a fork out of the drawer and beat the eggs the way Eva had taught her, until they were light and fluffy.
“You must have hated every minute.”
“Every second. And the whole of August seems to be nothing but bridal showers. If it weren’t for the fact we’ve only just started the company, I’d take an extended vacation.” She snipped a selection of herbs from the pots on the windowsill. As well as the parsley and basil, there were chives and tarragon all growing in a tangled, scented profusion of green that made her small kitchen feel like a garden. She chopped them and added them to the eggs. “It started me thinking about stuff I haven’t thought about in ages. Why the hell does that happen? Drives me insane.”
His gaze was warm and sympathetic.
“Memories do that to you. They pop up when you least expect them. Inconvenient.”
“Annoying.” She added a knob of butter to the skillet, waited for it to sizzle and then poured in the eggs. “I’m not good at weddings. I shouldn’t be doing them. I’m a killjoy.”
“I didn’t realize weddings were something you could be good or bad at. Surely all you do is buy a gift, show up and smile.”
“The first two parts of that I can handle. It’s the last one that gives me a problem.” She tilted the pan, spreading the mixture evenly.
“The smiling?”
