Love on Lexington Avenue - Lauren Layne Page 0,19
a frothy pink beverage.
“Claire?”
She turned toward the familiar masculine voice, a smile already breaking over her face. “Oliver!”
She hugged Naomi’s boyfriend. Oliver Cunningham had been a casual social acquaintance when she and Brayden were married, but since he’d started dating Naomi, she’d come to count the handsome Oliver as a good friend. As usual, he wore a suit, paired with a light blue tie that matched his eyes. It was hard to believe that perfectly groomed, impeccably mannered Oliver could possibly be friends with the rough and surly Scott.
“What brings you to this part of town?” she asked, since Oliver and Naomi lived downtown, and his office was on the West Side.
“Visiting my parents’ friends at the old stomping ground. My former neighbor just a had a hip replacement, so I took over some flowers and a basket of pears that my assistant informed me people like.”
“Nice touch. You really are one of the good guys. And I always forget you used to live just around the corner from me.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” he said with a grin. “Sometimes I worry everything about me still screams Upper East Side as clearly as if I had my zip code tattooed on my forehead.”
“Oh, everything about you does still scream that,” she said, patting his arm. “Once a Park Avenue prince, always a Park Avenue prince, though you wear it well.”
“You want to grab a table?” he asked. “It’s been too long since we’ve caught up. You kick off the renovation?”
“Yup, as of this week it’s officially begun. So far so good, though your contractor buddy and I aren’t getting along nearly so well.”
He grinned. “That’s what I want to hear about.”
“Ah, so you did know what you were getting me into,” she teased with a smile, stepping forward to retrieve her drink as the barista called her name.
“That is one pink beverage,” Oliver marveled as she returned to his side. “Is it good?”
“I’ve never had it before,” she said, as she pushed the green straw into the frothy Frappuccino and took a sip. “Oh! It is good!”
Better, perhaps, than her trusty vanilla. Or maybe it was merely the change that tasted good.
“Table opening up by the window,” she said, gesturing with her drink.
“Go. I’ll be along with my boring brown beverage as soon as it’s up.”
Claire swooped in on the table and was just using a couple of napkins to clear off cranberry scone crumbs when Oliver joined her. He swiped her drink from the table and took a sip.
“It’s good, right?” she asked, sitting across from him.
“It’s something. I’d offer you my double espresso, but I’m afraid you’d find it a bit dull.”
“I never did understand people who don’t put sweetener, or at least cream, in their coffee. Isn’t that the whole point?”
“You and Naomi. I swear her coffee to creamer ratio is nearly one-to-one these days. And I think us black coffee drinkers would argue that it is you who misses the point of, um, coffee?”
She sighed and shook her head. “You and Scott.”
“Ah yes,” he said, leaning back, and his presence was as commanding in a small wooden chair at a bustling Starbucks as it was in a boardroom. Oliver was an architect who’d started his own firm, but she could have just as easily seen him at the head of a conference room table if he’d followed in the footsteps of his well-known businessman father.
“Is he really that bad?” he asked.
“No,” she said on a sigh. “I can handle him. It wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t going to be practically living at my house for the next month or so. If we kill each other, it’s on your head.”
Oliver laughed. “Scott does know how to alienate people when he’s on a project. Though I thought you were made of stronger stuff, Hayes.” His smile slipped slightly. “I’m sorry. I’ve never really asked. Did you . . . Are you . . . Did you change back to your maiden name?”
“I thought about it,” she admitted. “I asked myself if I really wanted to continue sharing the name of a man who apparently forgot to mention we were in an open marriage. But I don’t feel like Claire Burchett anymore. For better or worse, and there was admittedly a lot of worse, I’m Claire Hayes now.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll be Claire something else,” Oliver said softly. “Or is that too old-fashioned of me?”
She gave a rueful smile. “You mean if I got married again? It’s not the