Page 86 of Pucking Your Best Friend

Okay, it had. It was huge. Incredibly huge. But it was also beautiful. Because she enjoyed everything about it.

On Wednesday, her landlord called and announced that her apartment was almost ready and she could move back in on the weekend. Maddie, though, kept that to herself. She didn’t want to leave yet. She liked waking up with him every morning when Matt was in town. She enjoyed waiting for him in the evening and asking him how the game or practice or whatever had gone.She liked arguing with Matt about whether or not he should finally do his own laundry. She loved that she could kiss him whenever she wanted. And she enjoyed that it waseasybetween them again. Weightless. No conversation was a fight. There were no more awkward encounters. They were themselves again. Only more.

Better.

“Oh no, not that face again,” Hailey complained when they met outside the office on Thursday. “I thought Matt just left! Why are you glowing like you just had an orgasm?”

Maddie grinned and dug out her keys. Hailey was the only person she had told about her relationship with Matt. Lucy would ask too many questions.

“A lady never tells, Hailey.”

“Oh God, don’t tell me you had phone sex!”

“Okay, I won’t,” she said innocently. “But seriously, I didn’t realize it could be hot just to hear someone explaining to you in minute detail…”

“Maddie!” Hailey cried out, pressing both hands to her ears. “Some things I just don’t want to know.”

“You asked!”

“I didn’t! I saiddon’ttell me you had phone sex. Besides, is it ethical for you to date a client?” She frowned. “What will ESPN say?”

Maddie frowned. She just hoped the network never found out. Either way, she didn’t feel like thinking about it too much right now. “It doesn’t matter!” She waved her hand. “They’re not interested in this thing anymore.”

“Mm hm. While you are all the more interested.” Hailey waggled her eyebrows. “I mean if you…”

Maddie would never know what her best friend had been going to say because she stopped mid-sentence and her eyes widened.Her gaze fixed on the door to the agency in front of them. “What the hell is that?”

“Hm?” Maddie turned questioningly and her head exploded into three shades of red – the same colors of the flyer marring her door.

If you’re looking for love, you might as well pray to the gods or call an astrology hotline, it said in thick black letters on a blood-red background on which someone had scrawled twisted hearts in light pink, all of which were broken.

She knew immediately where the flyer came from. There was only one person on the promenade who drew such ugly hearts! A stupid divorce lawyer down the way…where they might have put up a sign again yesterday.

“He didn’t do that!” she exclaimed in shock.

“Apparently he did,” Hailey replied. She looked as incensed as Maddie felt.

She gritted her teeth and ripped the flyer off the glass. “No! No. No. No. Not in my backyard!”

Matt had taught her that at times you have to seek confrontation to make things better. She suspected that she would feel a lot better if she yelled at Connor Stone. She wasn’t going to let him ruin her good mood. Today, she would begin fighting for herself! And since she didn’t care what Connor thought of her, he was the perfect first victim of her wrath.

She crumpled the flyer in her hands and trudged down the promenade to the building at the end.

“Finish him off!” Hailey called after her.

She nodded firmly, planning to bang on the office door and kick it in if necessary, but to her dismay, Connor stepped outside just as she was making a fist.

“Hi,” the caustic suit said coolly, his face completely neutral, his tie immaculate. God, how was it possible that no one had strangled him with it yet? “Having a nice morning?”

“You!” she snapped. “What’sthisabout?” she asked angrily, holding up the wad of paper.

“What’s what about?” he asked matter-of-factly. “I didn’t crumple the pretty flyer.”

“But you put it up.”

“Oh, yes. That’s right.” He rocked back on his heels, smugly satisfied. “With a level, too, so it was nice and straight. You just ruined fifteen minutes of work. Normally, I charge six hundred dollars for fifteen minutes, so…”

“Connor, you can’t just put something like that up! It’s bad for business!” she snapped.

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