And the Next Thing You Know . . . Read online

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  Not the one you’re waiting for . . .

  Jeffrey Bornic is getting over his ex. Really. So what if the rising-star attorney is angrily sleeping his way through most of Manhattan’s male population? When the time is right, the perfect partner will show up. And Jeffrey knows exactly what he’ll be like: an ambitious, polished professional who’ll make the ideal other half of a fabulous power couple.

  Theo McPherson is definitely not that guy. He’s a short, fiery redhead who works in the arts and wears sneakers held together with duct tape. If it weren’t for the fact that Theo is his best friend’s little (literally) brother, Jeff would be crossing the street to avoid him. Theo, meanwhile, has nothing but contempt for guys in suits, and seems to have deliberately set out to make Jeff’s life miserable, all while grinning at him in that exasperating—some might say irresistible—way that he has.

  At least it’s hard for Jeff to keep moping over his ex when he’s butting heads with Theo—and suddenly wondering if the last guy he’d ever fall for might be exactly that . . .

  And the Next Thing You Know...

  Chase Taylor Hackett

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Chase Taylor Hackett

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  First Electronic Edition:

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0446-8

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0446-3

  First Print Edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0447-5

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0447-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Travis, without whom there would be no point.

  Or dinner.

  Chapter 1

  Running

  Jeffrey

  Thamp thamp thamp thamp thamp thamp thamp thamp.

  That was my running shoes on the wet pavement of East 87th Street. Not fast, just trotting, just getting warmed up. I don’t really hit my stride until I get to Central Park.

  It was still mostly dark out. Even though it was a Saturday, I liked to get up and out this early, before the rest of the world. Not a lot of people out this time of day.

  Except for this guy and his gigantic dirty-white poodle and a fifteen-foot leash, I swear.

  Yo, Pierre, gimme a break!

  It was like waiting for a freight train to go by—I jogged in place until I could get around them. Who knew poodles even came in that size? There ought to be a law. That thing was like a Shetland pony with a haircut.

  Garbage truck. The garbage guys saw me practically every day and waved, like I was their buddy or something. I raised my head in a nod.

  What a miserable morning. It was cold, it was drizzling. Wasn’t this like the first day of spring or something? Typical. People always got all stupid about spring, but this was what spring really was—cold and wet.

  Man, was I in a bad mood.

  Got up in a bad mood.

  Again.

  It had been a stretch of bad moods lately. Seriously. Since like October.

  I suppose that means since Roger. Old boyfriend. Make of that what you will.

  It didn’t help that my apartment was half a construction zone. I had bought the apartment below me and I was doing a huge reno to turn the two apartments into one giant duplex. I mean, I was having people do the reno, e.g., architect, contractors, subcontractors. I’m a lawyer at a big New York firm; I wasn’t swinging a hammer myself. The place would be fantastic when it was done, but until then…

  As always, I turned left onto Fifth down to 85th Street—there’s an entrance to the park at 85th.

  I had to jog in place, waiting for the light before I could cross Fifth Ave. with a couple of other runners. I nodded. One woman wiped some soggy hair from her forehead (from the drizzle, not from sweating) and smiled—I didn’t.

  And that was about it for a social life for me on the run. Occasionally, very very occasionally, I’d see some hot guy who’d catch my attention. But even that had been a while. Maybe it was menopause. My thirtieth birthday was coming up. Was this the beginning of the end?

  Oh God, maybe.

  There was never much traffic at this early hour, and I didn’t wait for the light to change. I jogged across toward the park entrance as soon as I could.

  I had work stuff in my head. I realized I was making a list of crap I had to do. And then I started a second list of crap I could move off my list and on to somebody else’s list of crap to do.

  Across Fifth Ave. there’s a short path that leads along through the park just above the 84th Street transverse, with the Metropolitan Museum off to my left. Then a sharp right onto the East Drive. That’s where it happens. That’s where I stop jogging and start running—and once I’m there, I’m in the zone and I’m not bothered by anything. The Guggenheim could be in flames, I wouldn’t notice. It was just in the warm-up that my head kept churning.

  My route: uptown past the reservoir, around and down the west side and then loop back up to the Met. It’s about a five-mile circuit. I jog/cool-out on the way back to the apartment.

  I was just across Fifth when my phone gave out with a text-ping. Fuckaduck. Why do I bring the damned thing with me? I asked myself. In case of a work emergency was the answer. This wasn’t a work emergency. It was from my best friend Rebecca. She wanted me to help her help somebody move.

  Like as if.

  Don’t get me wrong—I adored Rebecca, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. Unless it was help her help somebody I didn’t even know, move. In the rain.

  I stopped jogging long enough to dictate my response.

  “Not on your life.”

  I deleted my response.

  I dictated again.

  “Gosh comma wish I could period incredibly swamped period good luck with the move period.” Send.

  I put the phone away. It was time to get going.

  It was like giving a horse his head. As soon as I let them, my legs stretched out over the pavement in long, perfect strides. The legs knew the pace.

  Thamp thamp thamp thamp.

  Work, construction, gigantic poodles, even ex-boyfriends—all melted away.

  And I was gone.

  Chapter 2 />
  Moving In

  Theo

  “Christ-on-a-crosswalk! That hurt! Ow!” I was holding one end of my keyboard, wrapped in a blanket. The keyboard was in the blanket, not me. I was backing through the door to Rebecca’s building, and somehow, between me and Becca, we’d just managed to smash the fingers of my left hand between the keyboard and the doorjamb. Actually, now I was holding the wrapped-up keyboard with one hand, while I waved the wounded one in the air, trying to shake off the pain. “You know, if you break my fingers, we can just forget about the keyboard altogether.”

  “Sor-ry!” said Beccs in exaggerated syllables, still holding her end of the keyboard. I blew on my now-bleeding knuckles to make them feel better. “Little Theo get an owie?” If that sounds like a tormenting big sister, that’s because that’s exactly what it was. My tormenting big sister.

  I hate hate hate being called little and Becca knows it. I’m not very tall, I concede the point. That does not make me ‘little.’

  But Rebecca was helping me move, so I had to shut up about it. Not only was she helping me move, she was helping me move into her apartment to sleep on her couch—totally temporarily—but she was my sister, so she couldn’t say no.

  We’d managed to get the shittiest weather possible for this little move, too. Cold, rainy. It was supposed to be the first day of spring—on the calendar anyway—but in reality, it was just piss-miserable. But we had to do it today, it was the only day Beccs had free. (She has this total dregs job—she’s a lawyer at a big ugly law firm.)

  We’d already made a couple trips loading the elevator (Rebecca lived on the fifth floor) with the few boxes of clothes I had. This was after we’d moved everything down from my old flat-share—three flights, no elevator, and no help from my roommates, now ex-roommates. Becca had tried to rope in some friend of hers but he’d squirmed out of it. When I say it was ‘some friend,’ I mean it. Some friend, I thought.

  Not that I had a lot of stuff because I didn’t. I lived like a monk. The worst were the boxes of books (not a lot!), some boxes of scores (okay, those boogers were heavy), and the keyboard. Not much more than that. We’d filled the elevator and left the scores in the double-parked rental van for the next trip up.

  Rebecca, in her pink track suit, leaned against the elevator wall, sighed, and she pushed some wet strawberry-blond from her forehead (it was drizzling). Becca’s a big girl, but not as fit as I am, so it was taking a toll.

  We rode in the elevator in silence. I’m not exactly famous for being the most sensitive person in the world, but even I had the general idea that this would be a good time to shut the hell up.

  “So Theo,” said Rebecca, once we were in the apartment, “here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go back down to the van, and you’re going to unload the boxes of scores into the lobby. While I watch. Then I’m going to drive the van back to the rental place while you bring the boxes upstairs. From here on in, the only thing I’m lifting is a glass of very cold Chablis.”

  “I’m not leaving my scores in the lobby! Somebody could steal them!”

  “For the love of Mike, nobody but nobody is going to steal a box that weighs sixty pounds, not even in New York.” We’re from Iowa. We grew up on a farm even. I tell you this so you can get all your hick jokes out of the way now, since I’ve heard all the wisecracks about Mayberry already.

  “I suppose,” I said.

  The boxes were precious to me, but I recognized not everyone found the same value in conductor scores of old musicals.

  “Okay?” she continued. “By the time I come back, you’ll be done. Right?” She was looking at me for a confirmation.

  “I guess.”

  “I’ll call for pizza on my way—there’s money in the kitchen drawer if the guy gets here before me. So. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  And that’s what we did.

  So how did I get myself exiled from my flat-share, I hear you ask.

  It just wasn’t meant to be. For starters, they were always bitching about me and the keyboard being in the way. What was I supposed to do about that? I’m a songwriter, which they knew before they asked me to move in, so I needed the keyboard. I used headphones and everything, but was being silent enough for them? No. I was apparently supposed to dematerialize as well.

  And on top of that, people tell me I can be a little bit spiky sometimes, and sometimes I say things which I usually mean to be mere constructive criticism, that others sometimes consider to be mean, and which are sometimes totally misconstrued as being unforgivably cruel. For example, one of my flatmates, Beth, had asked me to read her new play. Why would she ask me to read her play if she didn’t want to hear the truth about it? And the truth about it was that it was an imitation of an imitation of a made-for-TV movie. Okay, harsh, I admit, but so is showbiz. It also seemed to me that if she really wanted to work in the theatre, she should maybe toughen up, instead of exploding into sobs the way she did in the face of the tiniest criticisms. And I told her that too.

  After that, they all hated me for some reason because it was somehow my fault that I had made Beth cry, and she was now talking about moving back to Tennessee, which was obviously unfair, since I’d never said a word about Tennessee.

  And then of course there was the whole rent thing.

  People can be so petty.

  So that’s how I got myself voted off the island, or at least out of a really cheap, really really crowded apartment-share in Alphabet City.

  I was reliving these happy moments while I lugged one incredibly heavy box after another from the elevator into Rebecca’s apartment. When everything was done—meaning boxes were stacked in the corner—we finally sat down to our favorite pizza. Hamburger. (We’re from Iowa—remember?) I was starving.

  “So, Theo,” she said midway through, “I have a surprise for you.”

  “A good surprise or a bad surprise?”

  “A good surprise, for sure.”

  “You didn’t get us tickets to a show, did you?” That would have been awesome, and I could really have used it right then, considering what I’d been through with the dipshit ex-flatmates and just how monumentally foul my life seemed to be going. I didn’t expect Hamilton, or anything, but there were plenty of other things. Any show is better than not.

  “Well, sorry, I didn’t get you tickets to a show.”

  “If it’s underwear, that would also be fantastic.” I never had any money, and when I did, I never spent it on clothes. It was a part of the homo gene I’d missed. I was the worst-dressed gayboy in Manhattan, but the underwear situation was starting to get desperate.

  Of course Rebecca didn’t owe me anything. She was already letting me sleep on her couch, and she had also paid for the rental van to move my stuff because if I’d had any money I’d still be in the flat-share with the dipshits. And of course if it weren’t for Rebecca’s couch, I’d be on a bench in Central Park or something. Or more likely I’d be on a bus back to Iowa. Which would definitely be worse. So I didn’t expect anything more from my sister. But she’d said she had a surprise, so—

  “So? What’s my big surprise then?”

  “I got you a job.”

  “A job?! Like that’s a good thing???”

  “It is. Once you get paid, you can buy yourself all the underwear you want!” My head fell forward until it thumped on the table. “As long as you’re sleeping on my couch, you’ll have a job. Or it’s back to the farm. This is not the Rebecca McPherson Unemployed Songwriters Retreat. I’m serious.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said, still without picking up my head. “Doing what? Garbage collector?”

  “Nothing so glamorous. I got you a job in my office.”

  My head came up abruptly.

  “Your law firm?!” Ugh. “Fine.” I was a brave boy, I could face my fate, no matter how gruesome. “Doing what?”


  “You won’t be practicing law just yet, if that’s what you’re thinking. One of the secretaries is getting a hip replacement, and you’ll be covering for her.”

  “A secretary?”

  “A secretary. Answer the phone, type, and be polite. You’re good at two of those.”

  “Will I get a hot boss? Not that I would ever go out with some Republican stuffed shirt of a lawyer—”

  “Hey! I’m a lawyer, too, remember?”

  “Sorry. But a cute boss would at least be a distraction.”

  “Hate to disappoint you, poops, but no cute boss. You’re working for Victoria Collins. She’s also the partner in charge of associate assignments—meaning associates like me. She can have a huge effect on my career—good or not so good.”

  “I’ll try not to sabotage you.”

  “You know how to be charming, I’ve even seen you do it, in short spurts. So make an effort. Maybe you could get me on the Hiromi case.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Big case, Japanese conglomerate, might be going to trial. Everybody wants on it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, sorry—Victoria is not remotely cute.”

  “Is there anything good about this job?”

  “Let’s see—it’s not in Iowa, and there are no literal pigs involved, only figurative ones. How’s that?” She had a point. “You should thank me.”

  “Did you tell them about the workshop?” I’m in a songwriters’ workshop that meets every Monday at four. I was hoping for a deal-breaker here.

  “Yes, and they’ll live with you cutting out at three thirty on Mondays—”

  “Damn.” They would be flexible.

  “—and you’ll make up the time during the rest of the week.”

  “Fine.”

  “Oh, and one other thing, about this job I got you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got you the job. Where I work. What you do there reflects on me. Therefore, you will behave yourself.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah.”