“He does have great hair,” Wander said.
“We do not compliment the evil one.”
“I’m just saying!” she said with a laugh as she grabbed her margarita.
Whitney’s phone cut through the banter, and she quickly dug it out of her bag. Miles, her husband, was calling.
“Hey, babe. I’m at dinner with the girls.” There was a pause as a small smile worked its way up her face. “Yes, I made it here just fine.” She covered the speaker of the phone and looked up at us. “Miles says hi.”
“Hi, Miles,” Wander and I replied.
He must have said something funny because Whitney laughed. She was typically the quiet one out of the three of us, but she came alive with Miles.
“Okay, I’ll call you when we’re done,” she said. “Love you too.”
“I’m surprised Miles let you come all the way to New York without him,” Wander said. “I know it’s closer to you than the rest of us, but he seems like he’d be so overprotective of you and the baby.”
Whitney swallowed her bite and pointed across the restaurant. “See the woman in all black?”
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “Okay, she’s hot.”
Whitney laughed as the woman with mile-long legs, bombshell curves, and glossy black hair stared back at us coolly. “That’s Alona. She works with Miles at Keller & Associates. She was assigned to me, since Miles is on a job in California.”
“Awww! He picked you out a bodyguard?” Wander cooed. “That’s adorable!”
I wanted a man to pick me out a bodyguard. Maybe I needed to check and see if any single executive protection agents at the private security firm where Miles worked.
“Actually, Alona volunteered. She’s a huge romance reader, so she was excited to come to the conference with me. And she’ssonice. We get along great.”
I took another glance at her and was met with a scowl meant to scare. "Could've fooled me. She looks like she’s going to murder me.”
Whitney waved it off. “That’s just her face. She’s the sweetest. I asked her if she wanted to sit with us, but she said no, since she’s technically working.”
“You don’t have another stalker, do you?” Wander asked.
Whitney shook her head. “God, no. Miles is just a little paranoid since I’m pregnant.”
Wander’s phone chimed with a text. She looked at the screen and giggled.Giggled.“Sorry, it’s Jack. He’s on duty and he’s bored. He and all the guys at the station have been reading our books. It’s like a little book club. They bring themed snacks and everything.”
“You two are the cutest,” Whitney said.
I nodded. “You two found the sweetest husbands on the planet.”
Whitney beamed at Wander. “We did, didn’t we?”
She nodded. “They’re the best.”
How fucking nice for them.
Sweltering humidity wrappedaround me as I trudged down the sidewalk in search of some kind of store that had the . . .necessities. After dinner, Whitney and Wander went back to the hotel we were all staying at for the conference. Whitney was exhausted, thanks to the little human she was growing, and Wander was on a deadline and needed to get some words written.
Usually, I would have joined her for a writing session, but I was on a break. I had just released a book, and I hadn’t started the next one yet.
Unrest crawled up my skin as I headed down the packed Manhattan sidewalk. A bright red mom and pop convenience store sign caught my eye, and I picked up my pace. It was the kind of place that had a little bit of everything. That would do the trick.
The alcohol aisle greeted me like an old friend as I perused the selection. The store stuck to beer and seltzers, but that was fine by me. I grabbed a pack of pineapple seltzers and beelined for the pharmacy section.
I turned the corner by the pregnancy tests—didn’t need those—and ran smack dab into the hottest chest I had ever seen.
