as we locked gazes. Those eyes weren’t just green, they were emerald green and brighter than any jewel I’d ever seen. I blinked and stepped back as her fingers closed around the bottle.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Zoe. My name is Zoe Shannon.”
Zoe.
“Well, Zoe, I’m assuming you know where the spare towels are, seeing as you’ve searched my entire apartment.” I turned to my friends. “Now, the rest of you can get the fuck out. I love you, but I don’t really like you at the moment.” I grabbed a box of whatever takeout was on the coffee table and left them all sitting in my living room as I climbed the stairs.
Ironic. They were all so concerned for my sobriety, yet they’d just saddled me with the one woman who could drive me to drink.
My lips lifted slightly. At least they’d given me something to do between shows. It was going to be a shit ton of fun to see just what it would take to get under her skin.
2
ZOE
“How’s the egotistical asshole?” Naomi asked through the phone. My best friend was more than aware of my general feelings about my current roommate.
“Still an egotistical asshole. How’s my brother?”
“Taking your nephew to daycare,” she answered. “He’s gained two pounds this month, by the way—Levi, not Jeremiah.”
“Glad to hear it’s my nephew and not my brother growing.” I sipped my coffee and looked out over the Seattle skyline from my seat at the patio table, then turned slightly to appreciate the magnificence of Puget Sound.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Speaking of your brother, that’s him on the other line. I’ll call you back after my shift?”
“Don’t stress. We’ll catch up when you’re not working. Love you.”
“Love you!”
I hung up and sighed. I missed my family.
Naomi would freak if she saw Seattle from this vantage point. Nixon Winters might have been a giant, flaming jerk, but he had great taste when it came to real estate. The view was breathtaking. Then again, when you made millions a year, you could afford a great view. It was nothing compared to the Rockies, though.
My fourth-floor apartment sported a view of a brick wall, but that was okay. It was all part of paying off my student loans, and I was almost there.
This little section of his enormous deck had become my morning haven over the past week, giving me a tiny slice of much-needed calm in the swirling vortex of chaos that was Nixon. I flipped open my planner to today’s date, then placed my phone next to it, making sure the schedules matched as I reviewed the day’s appointments.
“Not that he’ll actually stay on schedule,” I grumbled to myself.
We’d cleared Nixon’s calendar of all professional appearances until the first show, which was in a little over three weeks, but he demanded to stay busy. Knowing that idle time was an enemy in this stage of his recovery, I couldn’t blame him, but the man had seriously dragged me to an axe-throwing range yesterday. He had a call with his rehab therapist at ten, but other than that—
“Why do you do that?”
I startled, fumbling my coffee, but I managed to avert disaster as Nixon appeared behind me. “What are you doing up so early?”
“It’s eight thirty.” He rubbed his sleep-mussed, carelessly sexy hair with one tattooed hand and carried a steaming cup of coffee—black, of course—with the other as he walked out onto the deck. Shirtless. He was shirtless.
Lord, help me.
It didn’t matter how many times I’d seen him run around the stage half-dressed, the sight of his inked, ripped torso never failed to make my mouth water. I might not have liked the guy, but I wasn’t blind. He was pretty much a walking, talking advertisement for sex and bad decisions.
There was a reason People magazine had given him the title of Sexiest Man Alive.
Any girl with the internet could find his stats. He stood six three, at two hundred and ten pounds post-rehab, with dark blond hair and fuck-me-now brown eyes. Those stats didn’t mention how tiny he made me feel as he towered over me. Nor did they reveal the way his back tattoos rippled with his movements as he walked across the deck, or that his ass could make sweatpants cool again.
Nope, those were facts you could find only in my head. I knew way too much when it came to Nixon Winters because I was the one tasked with cleaning up his messes, including anticipating the ones he hadn’t gotten