About the Publisher
“Come quickly... I am tasting stars.”
—Dom Pérignon, at his first sip of champagne
Evangeline Holly was no stranger to guilty pleasures.
Like Audrey Hepburn, she had a fondness for a nice creamy chocolate cake. In fact, she was on a first-name basis with most everyone at Magnolia Bakery’s Bleecker Street location in Greenwich Village.
She was also currently housing not just one, but two special-needs Cavalier King Charles spaniels in her very tiny, very non-pet-friendly apartment. So yeah. She had her vices.
But she also knew where and when to draw the line. Evangeline knew her limits. And for her, those limits included two noteworthy things she’d never once indulged in—bad wine and one-night stands.
Until now.
Her head throbbed. She dragged her eyelids open, and the first thing her gaze landed on was her pair of dogs snoring madly atop a man’s Armani suit jacket that had been discarded on the bedroom floor. Beside it, a pair of trousers and a crisp white Oxford shirt rested in a heap.
Okay then.
She closed her eyes and reminded herself that there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with cheap wine or casual sex. It was just that growing up on a vineyard in Upstate New York simply precluded her from experiencing the former. If she was a wine snob, she’d at least come by it honestly.
As for the latter...
Chalk that up to being involved in a devoted, monogamous relationship with the same man for most of her adult life. Also, no one actually had time for intimacy these days, did they? Evangeline had never quite believed everyone was spending as much time in bed as they cheekily hinted at.
She opened her eyes again. Early morning sunlight glinted off the pair of cuff links on her nightstand. There were cuff links on her nightstand. Cuff links from Tiffany & Co., but still.
She’d been wrong about everything. So. Very. Wrong.
Most notably the assumption that her relationship was in any way devoted. Or monogamous. On her end, yes. On Jeremy’s, not so much. Apparently, he’d been spending plenty of time in bed...with his sous chef. Not Evangeline.
She’d been enlightened three days ago. It was startling how much could change in three measly days. She’d lost her boyfriend. She’d lost her job. Basic truths she’d believed about her life had gone right out the window.
As had Evangeline’s previous avoidance of certain weaknesses.
The pounding in her head was a testament that she’d broken her no bad wine rule the night before. The evidence of her first-ever one-night stand was far more tangible—from the clothes and the cuff links to the startlingly attractive man lying beside her with his eyes closed, dressed in nothing but her nicest bedsheets.
“Good morning.” He spoke without opening his eyes, as if he could sense her staring at him. His voice was delicious, low and unfamiliar. Not at all like Jeremy’s.
“Um.” She swallowed. What had she been thinking? She’d brought a complete stranger back to her apartment, and here he was. Naked in her bed.
She blamed Jeremy. This was 90 percent his fault. The other ten percent of the blame fell squarely on the shoulders of the pinot grigio she could still taste in the back of her throat. Pinot grigio, for God’s sake.
“Good morning,” she finally said, even though nothing about it seemed good.
She didn’t know what to say or how to act. She wasn’t even sure where to look, although she couldn’t seem to force her gaze away from the owner of the cuff links. He stretched and rolled onto his back, giving her an eyeful of taut male skin and finely sculpted abdominal muscles.
Her throat grew dry. Where on earth had she found this beautiful person? And how had she summoned up the nerve to flirt with him? Flirting must have happened at some point for him to end up here, right?
Jeremy’s voice rose up from the pinot-drenched fog in her mind. Of course I’ve been sleeping around. What did you expect? You’re not exactly a sexual person, Evangeline. I just need more. Most people need more.
So that’s how she’d found the courage. When your boyfriend insinuated you were terrible in bed, you either curled up into a ball or went about proving him wrong. Two days in the fetal position had been more than enough.
The sound of a deeply male throat clearing dragged her back to the present.
Evangeline’s gaze flitted from the stranger’s trim waist to his drowsy half grin. He’d caught her ogling him. Perfect.
Her face went hot. “Look, um...”
“Ryan,” he said, tucking his arms behind his head, causing the sheet to dip even lower.
Don’t look. Do. Not.
She looked, and a sultry warmth washed over her, settling in the very same areas that Jeremy had called dead just three days prior.
“Right.” She bit her lip and met his gaze again. “Ryan. I knew that.”
“I believe you.” He winked. Clearly he didn’t, even though Ryan had been the first name that came to her once she’d spotted the RW engraved on his cuff links. “Eve.”
Eve?
No one had ever called her Eve. Always Evangeline.
She remembered hearing somewhere that Eve meant living. She tried not to think too hard about that while there was a naked man named Ryan with the body of a Greek god stretched out beside her. “Anyway, Ryan, what I’m trying to say is that I don’t typically do this sort of thing.”
“Yes, I know. You mentioned that last night. A couple of times, actually.” He rested a warm hand on her upper thigh and gave her a smile that seemed a bit sad around the edges. Bittersweet.
She felt oddly transparent, as if the man in her bed knew more about her than was possible after only a handful of hours together. Her thigh was suddenly awash in goose bumps.
“Good. So long as we’re clear—this was a one-night affair. A mistake, probably. I don’t expect you to ask for my number or anything.” She slid her leg out of reach, tucking it beneath the covers.
His smile faded. The dimples which had been barely visible beneath the layer of scruff on his chiseled jaw disappeared entirely. “A mistake?”
She nodded, because of course it had been a mistake.
A man was the very last thing she needed, even for one night. Particularly this man, whose hands she couldn’t look at without imagining them on her skin. And whose mouth made her want to linger in bed and revisit the most wicked portions of the previous evening. “Good grief, how much wine did I have last night?”
She clamped her mouth closed. God, had she actually asked that question out loud?
“Quite a bit.” Ryan’s frown deepened. She couldn’t stop saying his name in her head. Ryan. Ryan. Ryan. “Although you didn’t seem drunk. Not even tipsy. Should I be apologizing right now? Something tells me I should.”
Another