Page 40 of Mr. Not Nice Guy

Brennan chuckles again. “No. And I’m a lot more sober than you are right now.”

“I can’tgo get her.” I scoff again. “What kind of fucking advice is that?”

He merely offers another shrug. “Why can’t you?”

“She’s…she’s…she’s…weworktogether!”

He smirks and lifts his upturned palm in the direction of Liza. “You think that’s ever stopped any of us?”

“It’sunprofessional,” I hiss.

“Hawkins.” Brennan stands up and slaps his hand around the base of my neck and points at my face with his glass. “It’s only unprofessional if you make it unprofessional, and you’ve already been doing that.” He releases my neck and swings his glass in another wide arc at the bar. “So, maybe you need to try another angle.”

And with that, Brennan returns to the tables with his friends, leaving me with a hell of a lot of terrible ideas marinating in my mind.

“He ain’t wrong, you know,” Travis pipes up, now standing opposite me on the other side of the bar. “It’s pretty obvious that you’rerealfuckin’ frustrated, and that can make everyone else’s life hell. So maybe do something about it.”

I scowl at him and push my drink across the bar again. “Nobody asked you,Travis.”

He refills my glass. “Well, nobody asked you to show up here all cranky and pissed off, and yet…here we are.”

Picking up my glass, I turn on the stool, angling myself away from him so I can stare off into space. Unfortunately, the space I’m staring into has one of those old school cigarette vending machines, and all I can think of is Lucky’s frickin’ mafia-man get-up and how taken Scarlett was by it.

So, Brennan and Travis are both wrong. It honestly doesn’t matter if I want Scarlett. It doesn’t matter that I feel things for her that scare the hell out of me. Because she doesn’t feel that way, and she doesn’t want me.

12

Scarlett

“Ow!” Lucky makes a big show of wincing and shifting away from me for a second before inching close again and nudging my shoulder. “Jesus, Scarlett, you nailed my footagain.”

“Well, stop hogging the pedals.” I laugh and nudge him back while we both share the piano bench in a large, wood-paneled den at his musicians’ commune, which I can confirm is beyondsuper cool. The sleek, shiny, black grand piano where we’ve been sloppily plunking out jazz standards for the past two hours is the stuff of my wildest dreams, and he’s got a total of four equally amazing pianos in this house.

“Shove over, will you?” I reach across his hands, which are splayed and trilling dead-center, and slam out the jarring melody of Duke Ellington’s C Jam Blues.

“For someone so petite, you sure need a lot of bench real estate,” he teases, but then surrenders the center keys and the pedals. He reaches around my back to play the harmony on a higher octave at the opposite end of the piano, caging me in his arm and forcing me that much closer against his side, andI ain’t even mad.

Lucky’s got a spicy scent of fine tobacco and rich bourbon, and we’ve been sipping on enough of that bourbon while feeding off each other’s creativity that I’ve decided,yes, August. I think Iwillfuck him right here on his piano bench. And then I think I’ll tell August all about it later, becausefuck you very much, August Hawkins, you don’t get to tell me what to do.

Lucky isloadsof fun, and I need all the fun I can get in life to help me forget about all the stress I’m carrying right now. And judging by how strong and deft his fingers are while he’s tickling the ivories, I know they’d be really good at tickling all the right places onme. And that’s what I need to steer myself away from all these new feelings I’ve been having for August, which I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with, and which will only leave me with unnecessary heartbreak.

And right now, Lucky’s sumptuous, spicy smell and warm, hard body is all around me, and I’m ready for a total distraction.

Turning my head toward him, I find him not even looking at the keys, rather at me in a way that tells me he’s completely down to assist me in my quest to escape. “Well,youdon’t seem to mind too much that I’m taking up your whole bench.”

“Actually, I kinda do,” he says, removing one hand from the keys while the other continues to plink away, and he wraps his arm around my waist. His playing doesn’t even falter as he hoists me onto his lap and looks up at me through warm, dark blue eyes, lidded and darkened with playful lust. “There. That’s much better.”

Sitting sideways, I turn my torso so he’s basically eye-level with my rack and offer a little shimmy of my hips. “I don’t know, Lucky. It still feels like I’m sitting on a piece of hardwood.”

He chuckles, his free hand still effortlessly playing the harmony, and then lifts his dark brows. “Cheeky dame,” he murmurs as his eyes briefly dip to my neck and back to my face.

ThewoodI’m now sitting on is quitehard, and I nudge Lucky in the direction I need him to go right now by snagging his forearm and pulling his hand off the keys. I place it on my waist, then drape my wrists around his neck and press my breasts against his chest.

“I think you’re quite fond of mycheeks, too,” I say, shimmying my hips again.

The tip of his tongue darts out to graze his bottom lip while his hands wrap around my waist and briefly skate over my hips. “Yeah.”

I smirk. “Yeah?”

---