Unfortunately, a mountain of student loan debt stood between me and my goals. I’d had to put myself through undergrad and law school and neither of those had been cheap, despite getting scholarships and working as much as I could. My pay right now was good, great even—but I couldn’t spend any of it, because there was still the chance it would only last until the end of summer. But if I won the permanent associate spot . . .
Goodbye, five-dollar bottles of wine, hello, ten-dollar bottles of wine!
I wasn’t even kidding. I had daydreams about what I’d do if I won that job. Long, detailed, luxurious daydreams about Target sprees and cute kitchenware. I’d be able to start paying off my debt and maybe even find an apartment with a window. Secretly, I was hoping that I’d be able to take my mom on a trip for Christmas. Maybe a cruise or something fancy like that.
Not that I was complaining about life right now. I was on track, just like I’d always planned. I’d finally left roommate wars behind and found a dirt-cheap studio on my own, which I was more than grateful for. I had a job and I had the support of my friends and family. Sure, I was making sacrifices—living off of ramen and putting a self-imposed embargo on my love life—but it wasn’t anything less than what my mother had given up for me. She was my hero and I wanted to make her proud.
And I knew I was capable of it. All I needed to do was work hard and show everyone at the firm what I was made of.
Usually, that wasn’t a problem. But for whatever reason, not even my noise-cancelling earbuds and the white noise app on my phone could dampen today’s hammering from downstairs.
I tried everything to block the noise.
I stuffed towels under the door to try to muffle the sound coming from below. Switched from white noise to classical. Finally, I relocated to my bathroom, the quietest of all the rooms, and built what was essentially a noise-cancelling fort out of pillows and the ratty cushions of my second-hand couch.
Then, suddenly, there was silence.
“Thank you!” I cried out, pulling off my headphones. I wanted to dance for joy. Sweet, blessed relief! I’d be able to finish up in silence, and then maybe even
—
RREEEEEOOOOWWWWWWWRRRRRR
They brought out the electric saw.
No!
My phone started vibrating with a call. The office line. “Hello? Arthur?” I answered, but I could hardly make out what my boss was saying on the other end.
“Filing . . . assets . . . leveraged . . .”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you?” I pulled a towel over my head, but it didn’t help.
“We’ll talk about this on Monday,” Arthur finally shouted.
I agreed quickly and hung up, immediately dropping my phone onto the floor and my face into my hands.
“Dammit,” I muttered to myself, not that I could even hear it over the noise coming from downstairs.
The last thing I wanted was for Arthur to think that I was difficult to get a hold of or inaccessible on the weekends. I knew that most people drew a strict line between their work life and their personal life, but that was not how my firm was. And I was perfectly willing to play by their rules.
But not the bozos downstairs, playing havoc with my Saturday.
Enough!
I grabbed my keys and stormed downstairs. I’d seen the workmen around and all the construction materials stacked in the hallway, and I assumed they were renovating the condo beneath me. Maybe someone would be able to give me a timeline, how much longer the racket would last.
But when I got downstairs, I saw what had been making all the noise.
They’d taken the wall out. The front wall, separating the unit from the street. It was gone, and instead, they were building big, iron-paned windows and wide double-doors. I could see inside for the first time: the condo was gone, and in its place, was a wide-open area with polished concrete floors and custom shelving along the wall, with furniture stacked under dust sheets.
I began to get a sinking feeling.
I stepped inside and went looking for the source of all the noise. Instead, I found an extremely attractive guy bent over a table saw.
He had blonde hair, the kind that looked like it had been naturally lightened by a lot of time in the sun, which also probably explained his tanned skin and ripped physique. He was wearing jeans and a ratty T-shirt, but it was pretty clear that he was built. But despite his undeniable sex appeal, I didn’t get nearly the same thrill I had gotten when I saw Emerson the night before.
He gave me a smile as I entered, but held up a hand to halt me.
“Sorry,” he said. “We’re not open.”
“Yeah.” I pointed towards the front. “The lack of a door kind of gave that away.”
He laughed and snapped his fingers. “Darn it, I knew we forgot something.” He mimed writing something down. “Note to self, buy door.” He glanced up and gave me a wink.
He was charming. Very charming.
But my sinking feeling just grew.
“I’m your upstairs neighbor,” I told him, and the smile faded a little.
“Ah,” he said, understanding dawning on his handsome face. “Let me guess, you’ve come to yell at us about the noise?”
“Not yell,” I corrected. “Just discuss,” I told him, in my most lawyerly voice. “Do you know about the city regulations regarding noise pollution on weekends?”
I didn’t, but I was betting he was in the dark, too.
His eyes widened a little bit.
“You’ll want to talk to the boss,” he said, backing away from me. “I just work here.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Why do I have a hard time believing that?”
He shrugged. “Must be my natural skills as a leader,” he said before hurrying off and out of my sight.
I looked around. The inside of the building was just as nice as the outside. The whole place had a bit of an old-fashioned kind of feel—classic meets industrial. The wood on the shelving, the detailing on the ceiling . . . it was all subtle, and rustic. There were framed pictures on the wall, the one closest to me showed five guys, college-aged. They were all decked out in Cubs gear, their arms slung around each other, grinning from ear to ear.
One of them looked a little familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it. Until I heard a familiar voice from behind me.
“I think you owe me some beef jerky,” Emerson said.
I whirled around, hoping that I was hearing things.
I wasn’t. There he was. The guy from the drug store. The guy from the ATM. The guy from the greatest kiss of my entire life. Standing right in front of me, smirking like he knew my secrets.
Which he kind of did.
“I didn’t take it,” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth. “You gave me that beef jerky!”
He cocked his head to the side, doing that annoyingly sexy slow examination of me.
“I suppose I did,” he finally said.
“I’m not stalking you,” I blurted out, belatedly realizing that it was practically the same thing he had said to me after showing up in the ATM vestibule.
“That’s too bad,” he teased. “Because if you had given me your last name or your number, I definitely would have been stalking you.”
My face got hot, and his grin grew wider. He looked just as amazing as he had last night, another dark shirt and pair of well-worn jeans. But his hair was still adorably messy and his dimple still creased his cheek when he smiled. Which he seemed to do a lot. I tried to be annoyed, but it wasn’t easy.
“So.” Emerson folded his arms and leaned up against the sleek, wood bar. “Chase told me that someone was out here complaining about the noise.”
“Chase?” I jerked my chin in the direction the other guy had gone. “Is that your employee?”
He laughed. “Employee? Oh, yeah, he’ll love that.”
I frowned, confused. “I thought he said you were the boss.”
Emerson rolled his eyes. “I’m always the boss when it’s something he doesn’t want to deal with. This joint is ours. His, mine.” He gestured towards the picture I had been looking at. “Ours.”
“You’re friends?” I asked, now able to see Emerson’s features in one of the guys in the picture.
“Yep,” he confirmed.
“And co-owners.”
“So all five of you own this place,” I looked around. A restaurant then, I could live with that. They probably wouldn’t be open before noon most days, and closed by eleven at night.
“We’re naming it Rascals.”
“Cute. But please tell me that you own enough of it that you can do something about the noise,” I begged him, seeing my in. “I live right upstairs.”
“Chase mentioned,” Emerson said, observing me again.
He looked long and hard, not saying anything else. I squirmed under his intense gaze.
“What?” I finally demanded.
“You’re not going to say anything about what happened last night?” he asked, a smile curving his lips.
Lips that I knew to be very talented. But that wasn’t the point.
“I don’t know what there is to say,” I stammered.
“Obviously you tracked me down for a reason,” Emerson said.
I gaped at him. “I had no idea you were here!”
“Sure, sure.” He waved me off. “A likely story. I bet you are stalking me.”
“You wish!”
“Actually.” Emerson leaned towards me. “I totally do.”
“That is so not the point,” I sputtered, hating that I was kind of turned on. But how could I not be? Emerson hadn’t gotten any less hot and now I knew exactly what it felt like to kiss him. Why couldn’t he have been like any good one night stand and just ceased to exist after I was done with him? The last thing he was supposed to do was show up in my building. Life just wasn’t fair.
“I’m here to talk to you about the noise, not about what happened last night—which, by the way, is not something that will be happening again. Ever.”