One Night Stand-In (Boyfriend Material #3) - Lauren Blakely Page 0,13

the word on her tongue. “That works. Though personally I like to call him ‘The Happy-Go-Lucky Sadist.’”

I scrub a hand across my chin, considering this nickname. It’s not bad. Not bad at all. But I can’t give an inch to this woman. She is a ferocious tiger, and she’ll pounce. Like she did when I ran into her at an industry conference a year ago. Checking out the paperback jacket on display at one of the booths, she’d said my design for the memoir If Found, Please Return was a top candidate for the new award category Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery, since she claimed it was the spitting image of a cover from another publishing house.

My cover had released first, I pointed out. Then I told her that her cover for Fashion Roadkill looked like it was drawn by a pigeon on speed.

That was a red-hot lie. That cover was earth-shatteringly good.

“I’ll stick to ‘Ringmaster,’” I say, furrowing my brow as I laser in on the mission. Trouble is, I’ve been noodling on the first item all day, but I’m not positive where my brother and his girlfriend met. Hell, does Rowan even know? Doubtful. But I bet Lola knows, since that’s the type of stuff girls gab about. “So, do you know where Luna and Rowan met?”

“Of course I do.” She parks a hand on her hip, like the answer is so obvious. “The Cute As A store.”

I lift a doubtful brow. “What are you talking about? What store?”

She huffs, flapping her arms, pointing down the tree-lined street. “It’s ten blocks away. The button shop,” she says, taking a beat like she’s waiting for me to connect the dots. But the dots remain disconnected. “As in, ‘cute as a button.’ Luna was hunting for a new plaid dot button to go with her good-luck plaid skirt, and Rowan needed one for his Anakin Skywalker costume for a party he was going to. A Halloween party.”

I blink, shaking my head like I can clear the ridiculous from it, though it’s hard to know where to begin sorting out that infodump. I start at square one. “Is there actually a store called Cute As A instead of Cute As A Button?”

She laughs lightly, the gold flecks in her eyes twinkling as she does. “It’s a pretty bad one as far as names go.”

I gesture to the sidewalk in the direction of the store. “I’d say it’s officially trying too hard.”

“Right? No one knows what it is when you first say it. You always have to fill in the gap,” she says as we walk past the brownstones then a gourmet mustard shop tucked between two buildings. “Just call it what it is, right?”

“There is definitely way too much let’s-try-to-be-clever going on in this world. Like specialty mustard shops.”

“And toe-ring stores,” she adds.

I swivel around, scanning for such an offensive jewelry boutique. “Please tell me there is no such thing.”

She snaps her gaze to me and lifts a hand like she’s taking an oath. “I swear on a stack of Anne Rice novels. I actually passed a store in Soho the other day called This Little Piggy, and it sells all sorts of toe rings. Coral, platinum, and rose gold. They size your toes, measure them, and custom-make toe rings too.”

I cringe. “I feel like I might need to unlearn everything you just said.”

“Oh, trust me. I’d like to go back to the days when I was more innocent too. Alas, I’ve had to accept we live in a world with This Little Piggy. And Mightier Than.”

My mental wheels turn, trying to place that name, then it clicks. “The designer pencil shop? The one in Queens? With carpenter pencils? Vintage pencils? And pencil sets with all colors of the palette?”

“Don’t forget you can buy an old-fashioned schoolhouse pencil sharpener there too,” she says.

“How could I forget that? Especially since I’m always in the market for something that reminds me of elementary school,” I deadpan.

“Next thing we know, there will be Play-Doh shops for adults.”

I shudder. “Stop. Make it stop.”

We reach a walk sign at the crosswalk, scanning left and right to make sure it’s safe. “We can’t make it stop. The world only spins forward, and next thing you know, the Play-Doh shops will have wine and spaghetti-hair-making classes too,” she says as she steps into the street. Out of nowhere, a motorcycle whizzes toward her, hell-bent on running the light. Pulse spiking, I grab her arm, yanking her