Page 6 of Unromance

He tore his eyes away from the elevator doors, anxiously awaiting them to open, meeting her curious gaze.

“You and elevators have old beef, huh? Did an elevator steal your girl?”

“My lunch money, actually,” he said heavily. “For years…”

She clicked her tongue. “It’s always the ones you never suspect.”

He huffed a laugh as the doors opened on his floor. He stepped out quickly, inhaling fully for the first time since entering.

He glanced back at her, and she stopped chewing on her cheek to flash him a smile. He paused with his key in his hand. He didn’t normally do this—casual. The media followed his dating life like a religion. At first, he’d been uncomfortable with it, but growing up in the spotlight, he’d gotten used to it. But doing this, being anonymous for a night and losing himself in another person, telling no one, thrilled him. It hadn’t been his intention when he’d suggested leaving the bar, but she’d been so confident, he wanted to say yes, to get a taste of the way everyone else lived, able to be casual with their feelings and their bodies, with no TMZ to say a damn thing about it.

Except… he wasn’t everyone else. Was this a mistake—a mistake he was dragging her into unwittingly?

“We can go somewhere else,” he began.

Her brows shot up. “And make you get inanotherelevator?” she asked incredulously.

The corners of his mouth quirked up. “I’m just saying—”

The words died on his tongue as she sidled up in front of him, her fingers curling under the lapels of his peacoat. “Just open the door, Code Name: Álvarez.”

At her proximity, all thoughts of not doing this flew from his mind. He leaned forward, pressing her up against the doorframe, delighting in the slight hitch of her breath, the way her lips parted slightly. He slid his key into the lock and twisted, pushing the door open. “After you, Totally Fake Name Greene.”

She flashed him a grin before slipping under his arm and entering his apartment.

He watched her shrug out of her coat, revealing what he was fairly certain was the only sexy turtleneck in existence. Something warm and molten pooled in his stomach, something more than heady lust. This might be a one-time thing, but he had a feeling this night, this woman—Sawyer Greene—was going to stick with him for a while.

CHAPTER THREE

THE ONE-NIGHT STAND– Romance math dictates that the less likely a character is to have a one-night stand, the more likely they are to run into said one-night stand again.

Holy shit, his place was nice. If Sawyer was going to get murdered, at least she would go out knowing she died somewhere clean, as her mother would have wanted. Mason took her coat from her, hanging it in the closet by the front door. If he was a serial killer, he was a polite one. She missed the warmth of her coat, though she was fairly certain the chill clinging to her was more from nerves than actual cold.

She didn’t do this. She didn’t let guys—or gals—pick her up at bars, and she didn’t do the picking up. Yet here she was, in this stranger’s very nice apartment that she basically invited herself back to. He hadn’t batted an eye. Strangers must hit on him all the time. She’d gone out tonight in need of distraction, and as far as distractions went, he was a great one.

As he hung up his coat next to hers, she realized she’d been giving the coat too much credit. Yes, there was some undeniable magic about peacoats and how they made anyone wearing them instantly 27 percent hotter. But the broad shoulders and the V-shaped back? He came by that naturally.

She wondered what else he came by naturally, her fingers fumbling with the frozen laces of her boots as she tried her best not to fling snow sludge all over his tiled entryway.

“Is bourbon okay?” he called.

Following the sound of his voice down the short foyer, she nearly tripped as she passed through the kitchen, the black cabinets and countertops falling away to reveal floor-to-ceiling windows, the view of Lake Michigan reflecting the skyline back to them.

“Bourbon is preferred,” she said once she picked her jaw up off the floor.

It was obscene how nice his place was. What the fuck did he do for a living? Probably something incredibly boring with stocks or numbers, utilizing a very expensive Ivy League degree his parents bought him in between snatching up yachts and summer homes.

Either that, or this was the place of the last girl he went home with, and she was stuffed in the walls somewhere.

She should probably listen to fewer true-crime podcasts.

Or more.

It was up in the air at this point.

He pulled two glasses and a bottle of bourbon out of a hutch, and she sighed in relief. If he had one of those bar carts with crystal decanters or ice in an ice bucket, that would have been too far. She wasn’t sure whythatwas where she drew the line on acceptably rich and unacceptably rich, but it was.

“Ice?” he asked.

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