Unsuitable Men by Nia Forrester Page B

momentarily confused about where he might be. He didn’t have a single thing in his refrigerator except for Vitamin water, of that he was certain, and in his freezer, there was only vodka. And yet someone was cooking . . . who the . . ? And then it came back to him. The long evening at Lounge Two-Twelve. The panicked phone call. The trip to Park Slope and then back.
    Brendan sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was wide awake now, well-rested and clear-headed. He brought Tracy here but it was a mistake, made in a moment of weakness. She was feeling unsafe and vulnerable and he felt protective, but it was time to erect those boundaries once again.
    He washed his face, brushed his teeth and headed up to his kitchen, taking the stairs slowly, hoping she didn’t get all emotional on him when he told her he was driving her home. But when he got to the top of the stairs the sight that greeted him stopped him dead in his tracks.
    Tracy had changed while he was asleep and was now wearing one of his dress shirts, which looked immense on her small frame, and she had belted the waist with what looked his one of his ties. Her feet were bare and she had let her hair out so that it was a semi-kinky, wavy mass about her face, not the severely straightened bob he was used to seeing. She didn’t even notice him at first because she was so busy moving about the kitchen, taking strips of bacon out of the oven on a cookie sheet he hadn’t even known he owned. She bit into one slice and licked her fingers, closing her eyes in pleasure at the taste. Brendan had never seen anything so sexy in his life.
    Shit.
    Then she turned and noticed him for the first time and smiled at him, the same sweet smile as earlier. The same un-Tracy-like smile. Except now he was beginning to believe that it was very much a Tracy-smile, just one that she reserved for very few occasions, or very few people. And he wondered whether he would be one of the lucky few who were privy to it from now on.
    “Hey,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you so I just borrowed a couple of your things and went to get us something to eat. You do know that sports drinks are not officially a food group, right?”
    Then she was taking a baguette out of a Dean & DeLuca grocery bag, along with eggs, juice and a wedge of soft cheese. She moved around as though she’d familiarized herself with where everything was, and Brendan swallowed, trying to remember why it had seemed so essential that she leave.
    Tracy looked up at him again as he made his way closer, sitting at the breakfast bar, watching as she worked, beating eggs, slicing cheese and bread.
    “I got some olive oil spatter on this shirt,” she said apologetically. “And honestly, I don’t think it’s going to come out.” She winced as though she expected him to be upset.
    “That’s okay,” he said shaking his head.
    “It’s one of your Armani Collezioni shirts,” she said. “Sorry. But I couldn’t find anything in your stuff that wasn’t a designer label. Don’t you ever just go to Target like normal people?”
    “When was the last time you went to Target, Tracy?” Brendan teased.
    “I beg your pardon. Riley and I go to Target at least three times a month,” she laughed.
    “Sure you do.”
    “You should come with me sometime. Best. Date. Ever.”
    Brendan smiled.
    She was so busy with the cooking she didn’t seem to notice that she said the word ‘date’ in connection with something they might do together. It was almost impossible to connect this woman with the calm, cool and collected ice queen image she usually projected. For whatever reason, for the moment she seemed to have let her guard down around him. Maybe this was who she was all along. The person only Riley saw.
    For years he’d wondered how two women, so different could be so close. Riley was the personification of warmth; one of those rare, open-hearted people who loved you right away and had to be given a damn good reason not to. Tracy had