James, Julie - Love Irresistibly

All right, fine. So she’d almost made him smile with that one, too.

“If you want to ask her out when this is over, be my guest,” Cade said.

“You hesitated,” Vaughn noted in a sly tone.

“Not at all.”

Huxley glanced over from the driver’s seat. “Actually, you did. There was a definite pause there.”

Cade sat back in his seat, shaking his head as he stared at the road in front of him.

Of course, now they decided to agree on something.

LATER THAT EVENING, Brooke dropped by Ford’s loft apartment. When he slid open the heavy steel door, she held out three tickets for Sterling’s skybox at Wrigley Field.

“Cubs/Sox. Figured I’d see if you, Charlie, and Tucker want to go,” she said, already knowing the answer to that. There wasn’t a person in Chicago who would turn down free skybox tickets to the Crosstown Classic between the city’s two baseball teams.

Ford grabbed the tickets without hesitation. “Skybox? Hell, yes. I love it when they bring in that dessert cart.”

“One of my strongest selling points as a girlfriend, apparently,” Brooke muttered as she stepped inside.

With its open floor plan, exposed brick walls, and raised ceilings, Ford’s condo was nearly double the square footage of Brooke’s high-rise apartment in the Gold Coast. Whenever Ford gloated about that fact, Brooke went into her usual spiel—the same one she’d given her parents when she’d bought her place—about how she wanted to be able to walk to work, wanted to be close to the lake, and felt safer, as a single woman, living in a high-rise building with a doorman.

Really, though, she just liked being near the fast-paced action of Michigan Avenue.

“I thought you were taking the Hot OB to the game,” Ford said as he followed her into the kitchen. “Is he on call that day?”

“The Hot OB and I broke up earlier today.”

Ford’s arms fell to his side. “What? That’s the third guy in eighteen months.”

Brooke glared. “Thank you, I’m aware of that.”

Right then, Tucker and Charlie stepped through the sliding glass door, coming in from the deck. They were Ford’s former college roommates, and around a lot, seemingly never having any work to do—or anything else to do, really—and somewhere along the way Brooke had just sort of adopted them as friends, too.

“Hey, Brooke. Ford didn’t say you were coming over.” Charlie helped himself to a beer from the fridge and handed another one to Tucker. “Are you coming with us to Firelight?” he asked, referring to a popular upscale nightclub in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood.

She shook her head. “I just stopped by for a short visit. I have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

“On a Saturday?” Charlie made a face to show his strong distaste for that notion, then pointed with his beer. “Hey, how are things going with the Hot OB?”

“He broke up with me this afternoon.”

“Oh. Sucks.” He paused for a moment, as if trying to come up with more, then threw Tucker a look for help.

“Don’t look at me,” Tucker said. “I’m still trying to figure out why she and Ford haven’t hooked up.”

“Never gonna happen,” Brooke and Ford said simultaneously, probably for the five-hundredth time since they’d become friends over twenty years ago.

Ford reached into the refrigerator and pulled out two Amstel Light bottles. He held one out to Brooke. “Should we go to the Spot and talk?”

She took the beer from Ford, smiling despite everything that had happened that day at the reference to their childhood hangout, a shady bank next to a tiny creek that they’d nicknamed “the Spot.” Not the most creative of names, but then again, they’d only been ten years old at the time. “Sure. Although I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version: it’s pretty much the same story as the last two guys.” She followed Ford outside and took a seat in one of the outdoor couches on his deck.

“So what happened?” Ford led in, sitting in a chair across from her.

A warm breeze blew Brooke’s hair into her eyes, so she undid her ponytail and readjusted it. She’d changed into jeans and flip-flops before coming over—a far cry from her customary high heels and pencil skirts, but it was Ford. She hadn’t worried about what she looked like in front of him since . . . well, ever. “He said I’m not a ‘big-picture’ kind of girl.”

Ford glared. “That’s a dick thing to say.”

Brooke appreciated the loyalty. But she’d done some thinking ever since she’d left work and she’d begun to think there was a lesson to be learned here. “No kidding. But that doesn’t change the fact that something isn’t working with these guys. I keep investing four months of my time into these relationships, only to end up right back where I started. And you know what? It’s not all that much fun to keep coming back here.”

“Maybe you need a Plan B,” Ford said.

“Cut back on my hours?” Brooke shook her head. “Not possible right now. With this sports and entertainment division I’m helping to build at Sterling, there’s too much going on.”

“Actually, I was thinking that maybe you should stop trying to shoehorn a relationship into your life. Especially since you’re only halfway into these guys, anyway.”

“Hey, that’s not fair.”

“Oh, right. The Hot OB was the love of your life.”

Well . . . okay. Maybe not. But she’d enjoyed being with those guys in her downtime. All thirty minutes a week she had of it.

With a sigh, Brooke leaned her head back against the chair. “I think I need to go on a relationship sabbatical.”

“It worked for me,” Ford said.

That got a slight smile out of her. Ford, the king of casual dating, had been on a relationship “sabbatical” for years. Hopefully, hers wouldn’t last quite that long. But after three breakups, it was time to face facts: in light of the demands of her job, relationships simply weren’t a good fit for her right now.

And, come to think of it, she was tired of feeling like she needed to apologize for that.

She worked hard; she didn’t deny that. Frankly, she’d worked hard her whole life—and she was proud of where that had gotten her. She and Ford had grown up in Glenwood, an affluent Chicago suburb that, with its elegant tree-lined streets and big, fancy houses with wide, beautifully landscaped lawns, looked like something out of a John Hughes movie.

Except, that is, for the part of town where she and Ford had lived, which was slightly more modest.

Actually, a lot more modest.

Nicknamed “the Quads” because each building contained four townhomes per unit, Brooke’s childhood subdivision was considered a “hidden gem” because of the fact that it offered very affordable housing within Glenwood’s school districts, which consistently ranked among the top in the state. Brooke’s father, a butcher, and her mother, a day care instructor, had made the decision to leave the city of Chicago after the public school Brooke had been attending slipped to the bottom quartile in Illinois school rankings.

Brooke had always done well in school, had always wanted to do well in school—and, frankly, at the Chicago public school she’d previously attended, it hadn’t taken a lot of effort for her to be at the top. But that all changed when she moved to Glenwood.

In Glenwood, the kids had private tutors. And nannies and stay-at-home moms who could help them with projects after school. Her classmates in Glenwood took piano lessons and dance lessons and every other kind of lesson imaginable from the top instructors in the area, and they learned foreign languages like German and Japanese in summer-break immersion programs.

When Brooke got to high school, things turned even crazier. She heard stories about parents who hired the most popular teachers in school to work with their children over summer vacation, and by her sophomore year all the parents and students had begun focusing on college, and the fact that the Harvards and Yales of the world would likely only take one or two students from Glenwood—the guidance counselors had repeatedly reminded them of that—no matter how accomplished they all were.

Brooke realized early on that, in many aspects, she couldn’t compete with her far-wealthier classmates. Her parents couldn’t afford a private tutor or a bazillion lessons in things that would look good on her college applications; in fact, at times they struggled to make their mortgage payments on their townhome. And, unlike many of the other students, her parents didn’t have any “connections” with the top universities, or alumnae in the family who could help grease a few wheels. Which meant that if Brooke wanted to be a contender for those top university spots, she needed to do it the old-fashioned way.

By working her butt off.

As a result, she studied a lot in school. Her parents had given her the opportunity to attend one of the best high schools in the state, and she’d be darned if she didn’t do her best to capitalize on that.

Fortunately, all her hard work had paid off, and to this day she could still remember the look of pride on her parents’ faces when she’d received her acceptance packet from the University of Chicago. But what stuck with Brooke even more was the pride that she, personally, felt in knowing that she’d done it all by herself.

She was a competitive person, and that pride, that feeling of achievement, similarly pushed her to do well in undergrad and law school. By the time she’d graduated from University of Chicago Law School and began her legal career, that was simply a part of who she was. She gave one hundred and ten percent to whatever it was she was doing, and basically had one speed when it came to her career: full speed. And since she genuinely enjoyed working at Sterling Restaurants, she’d never minded that.

Her three ex-boyfriends, on the other hand, obviously had been less enthralled with the situation.

“You know, I’m not sure I’m feeling the proper level of sympathy here,” she told Ford. “I think we need a little more rallying around the dumpee. If you were a woman and I’d told you that the third guy in eighteen months had broken up with me, right now we’d be drinking lemon drop martinis and giving each other female empowerment pep talks about how we don’t need a man in our lives to feel complete. And then we’d watch The Notebook and drool over Ryan Gosling.”

Ford flashed her a grin as he stretched an arm across the back of his chair. “Sorry, babe. But when they handed out best friends, you drew the straw with a penis attached. That means no Ryan Gosling.”

“Just my luck,” she grumbled.

A comfortable silence fell between them as they both looked out at the incredible nighttime view of the Chicago skyline.

“Do you ever take a moment to look at that,” Ford pointed at the view, “and wonder how we got here?”

She smiled at that. “Not bad for two kids from the Quads.”

“Any regrets?” Ford asked her.

She could tell that he was being serious, so she gave some thought to his question. “Not a one.”

“Then screw all these guys,” Ford said. “If they don’t fit into your big picture, they’re not worth your time, anyway.”

Brooke looked over at her friend. Sometimes, penis and everything, he knew exactly the right thing to say. “Thank you.”

He winked. “Anytime, babe.”

Charlie opened the sliding door and poked his head out. “Is it safe yet for Tuck and me to come outside? We don’t want to interrupt if you two are still making out or whatever.”

Brooke and Ford shook their heads at each other. Make that five hundred and one times. They answered in unison.

“Still never gonna happen.”

PROMPTLY AT SEVEN A.M. on Sunday morning, Cade, Vaughn, and Huxley rode the elevators that would take them to the entrance of Sogna. A hostess desk, made of dark mahogany wood, stood empty before a set of wide etched glass doors—doors that were open.

“I guess that’s our invitation,” Cade said. He led the way inside Sogna and looked around curiously. He’d heard great things about the restaurant, but had never dined here himself. Sogna’s signature, eight-course $210 prix fixe menu made it a “special occasion” kind of place for a man on a government salary, and none of his recent relationships had quite made it to the “special occasion” level.

The lights inside the restaurant were off, but the natural light coming in from the windows revealed a modern décor, with dark mahogany tables and booths offset by chairs covered in ivory fabric. A staircase made of glass and steel snaked its way to the second floor of the split-level dining room, which Cade knew, from the online research he’d done the night before, could accommodate nearly two hundred seats between the two levels. Striking floor-to-ceiling windows looked out at Michigan Avenue, the Drake Hotel, and Lake Michigan—the same view, on a much larger scale, as the one from Brooke’s office.