Love on Lexington Avenue - Lauren Layne Page 0,49

a spontaneous one-time urge or something that’s been brewing for a while?”

Claire dug her fingers into her hair. “I don’t know. I thought the attraction was just something that came up out of nowhere on Saturday night at the gala, but now that I’m thinking it through, I’m wondering if it hasn’t sort of been there all along. I thought he just irritated me, and then I thought he could maybe be an okay guy, and now . . . damn it, Naomi, I think I like him.”

“Oh dear,” Naomi murmured.

Exactly. Claire looked at her friend in desperation. “You have to help me. I don’t want to like any guy. Especially not him.”

Naomi sat in her chair and rested her elbows on the desk, face in her hands as she tapped her fingers thoughtfully against her cheeks. She stayed that way for a long while, thinking it over, before placing her hands palms down on the desk. “Okay. I’ll be honest. I’m worried.”

Claire hadn’t been expecting that. “I thought you liked Scott. And you said it was a good idea for me to get Brayden out of my system.” She didn’t mention the room full of Brayden’s stuff that remained untouched. Naomi had seen it, but months ago. Claire wasn’t about to admit that she hadn’t done a damn thing with any of it.

“It is a good idea for you to move on,” Naomi said. “And I do like Scott. He’s one of my favorite people, and I don’t like many people. You get what you see with Scott, and I love that. But you’re not . . .”

“His type?” Claire guessed, remembering the supermodel.

“More importantly, he’s not yours,” Naomi pointed out. “Remember when we watched Gilmore Girls, and you had the gall to suggest that Christopher was better for Lorelei than Luke? Come to think of it, isn’t it because Luke wore flannel?”

Claire winced. “You make me sound like a snob.”

“No, you just know what you like, and it’s not men like Scott.”

It didn’t used to be.

“Maybe it’s just a proximity thing,” Naomi said gently. “I mean, you guys are two attractive people spending a lot of time together in a relatively small space. Plenty of opportunity to be thinking about . . .” She made a childish sex motion with her hands.

“I don’t think it’ll come to . . .” She mimicked Naomi’s hand gestures.

“Do you want it to?” Naomi asked.

Claire hesitated. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like this.”

“Horny?”

Claire laughed, trying not to feel embarrassed by the frank discussion. “I guess. But it’s a little more than that, because as we’ve seen, not just any guy will do it for me.”

Naomi sighed. “Just Scott, huh?”

“You think it’s a bad idea.”

Naomi tapped her fingers and considered. “Okay, here’s what I know about Scott. He’s hot. Crazy successful, mostly without even trying. Oliver says he’s got some sort of genius thing happening. Like he sees things and does things in a way other people can’t see, and won’t do. He’s one of the good ones, and I don’t just mean that he gives a crap ton of money to charity, but that under all that gruffness, he’s incredibly kind. Rescue a kitten from a highway kind.”

“In other words, not the kind of guy we agreed to protect each other from when we made the pact,” Claire said, feeling a surge of relief at the confirmation that Scott was one of the good ones.

Naomi lifted a single finger. “I’m not done. I also know that he got his heart broken. Badly.”

Claire leaned forward. “What happened? The way he talked about Brayden, there was something in his tone that made me wonder if he’d been through what I’d been through.”

Naomi made a wincing face. “Well, Scott’s fiancée didn’t fall off a yacht and drown after cheating on him, but she did cheat. It was back when Oliver and Scott were in Columbia’s architecture program. From what I’ve gleaned from Oliver, Scott was all kinds of smitten with this woman, only to find out she’d been banging her coworker for like a solid year. All while Scott had been working two jobs in addition to school, in order to pay for the expensive wedding she insisted on.”

“I hate her,” Claire said automatically.

“Me, too. But the point is, you know how we all dealt with Brayden a little differently? I got mad, you got bitter and jaded— no offense—and Audrey’s more determined than ever to prove that love is real?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, of