Page 156 of The Friends and Rivals Collection

Henley taps the toe of her combat boot against the sidewalk as if she’s going to jackhammer a hole through the concrete. She takes an inhalation so deep it makes her shoulders rise. Breath seems to puff from her nostrils.

Let’s play Why Does Henley Hate Me Today?

Might it still be because I kicked her out of my house? We haven’t exactly played the what makes a good girlfriend or boyfriend game since that night. Or is there lingering animosity over the pink slip I gave her five years ago? Let’s just be safe and assume it’s both.

The coffee I picked up for her isn’t likely to abate her disdain. I’ve got a steaming cup in each hand from the deli around the corner, the only place nearby open this early on a Sunday.

I walk the final distance to her, crossing the small lot in front of my garage and hand her a cup. “Good morning, sunshine.”

She doesn’t take the cup. “I don’t like coffee.”

“Who doesn’t like coffee?”

“People who don’t like coffee, that’s who. I’ve never liked it,” she adds with a defiant little lift of her chin.

“Never?” I arch an eyebrow skeptically. “When did you last try it?”

“Shortly after college. Didn’t like it then, either.”

Shortly after college is when she worked for me. “You should try it again.”

“Does coffee change?”

“No. But tastes do. Maybe your tastes have changed.”

She stares at me over the top of her sunglasses, pink with sparkles on the frame.

They make me think of the unicorn shirt she wore to the meeting at Thalia’s—they’re that cute.

They contrast with her eyes, so dark this morning they’re nearly black.

“I highly doubt my tastes have changed in five years.”

Five years . The subtext of this conversation isn’t lost on me.

I raise my hands, the two blue cups I’m holding like white flags. “What do you like to drink, then?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she takes one of the cups, yanking it from my hand. “Do you have sugar?”

“In my pocket,” I say, grabbing a few packs for her. “So you like it sweet?”

She adopts a too-big smile. “Sweetness helps. We’ll see if this is enough.”

She stuffs the sugars into her giant black purse.

Something silky hangs over the edge of the purse, like she has a change of clothes in there.

She jams the fabric back inside. In her other hand is a pad of paper.

It looks like the kind you snag from a hotel.

I check out the name. The Hudson over on 58 th , not far from here.

The wheels in my brain turn. The Hudson is the ultimate boutique hotel for the young and beautiful and horny.

It’s the kind of hotel you check into when you want to have hot hotel sex.

Maybe that’s why she arrived early. Maybe that’s why she has extra clothes in her bag.

Maybe she fucking spent the night in one of those no-sleeping-allowed-only-fucking-is-permitted beds.

I burn with jealousy. “Late night at the Hudson?”

“Seriously?” Her eyes try to laser off my face as she waggles the note pad in her hand, like it’s a weapon she could fire off at me any second. “This is our to-do list. We have a lot to tackle today. I was hoping you would’ve been early.”

I make a big production of looking at my watch. I tap the face. I show her the hands. “It’s nine a.m. sharp. This is when we agreed to meet.”

“I was here at eight forty-five,” she says, straightening her shoulders.

“Would you like a gold star for punctuality?” I ask as I slide the key into the lock and open the door. The alarm sounds its warning, and I enter a series of numbers, then another set before it turns off.

“No, I don’t care about whatever little rewards you do or don’t feel like bestowing at your whim.”

“You think I bestow stars at whim? There’s a detailed system in place listing qualifications for gold, silver, and bronze. No whim involved, Tiger,” I say, then down some of the coffee. It’s burn-your-tongue-off hot. Somehow, this suits me fine today.

She huffs. “My, my, aren’t you a particular one.”

“Says the woman who’s giving me a hard time for showing up on the dot.”

“I’m here early because I’m worried about the seat,” she says, as she follows me into the small front office. I unlock the side door into the garage. It’s like a bank vault in here some days, given what we store inside.

“What about the seat?” I survey the garage, confirming the vehicles that slept over are still here.

The Lambo is safe and sound, as well as a canary-yellow 1971 Dodge Challenger that Sam has been taking the lead on restoring.

He asked me the other day for a little help on the engine to make it sing, but otherwise he’s doing a great job on his own, coming in after hours and on weekends to work on it. We’ve got a Chevelle here, too.

I inhale deeply. Ah, the scent of motor oil and leather. It’s better than freshly ground coffee.

Henley sets her purse on a chair. She takes the lid off the coffee, tears open a few sugar packets, and pours them into the drink. “I did some research on Brick’s height,” Henley says, as she drops the empty packets into a nearby trash bin.

“Okay,” I say, as I run a hand on the cherry-red hood of the Lambo. “Did you sleep well last night, girl?” I whisper to the car.

Laughter booms behind me. I swivel around. Henley cackles, her mouth wide open. “Did you just talk to the car?”

“Of course,” I say, owning my affection for this beauty. I stroke the hood, as if she’s a loyal dog and I’m petting her in the morning. “She likes a nice, tender touch when she wakes up.”

“Don’t we all,” she mutters, and I snap up my head and meet her eyes. Her sunglasses are off now; she wears them like a headband.

“Do we all?” I ask, turning her words around on her.

She narrows her eyes. Bitter dark chocolate is their color. “The seat, Max. Let’s talk about the seat.”

“What’s wrong with the seat?”

She grabs her phone from her back pocket, stands next to me, and shows me a browser window with Brick Wilson’s IMDB info.

“He is six foot four, right?” I take another drink of the near-boiling beverage. I pretend it’s a vitamin that fortifies me against her.

A small smile plays on her lips as she shakes her head. “I was researching him last night. Don’t get me wrong. He’s one tall man, but he’s not six foot four.”

“How do you know?”

“I watched the video of the three of us, then I studied the publicity shot.”

“And?” I ask, intrigued to see where she’s going.

“He’s shorter than you,” she says, a hint of excitement in her tone, as if she’s uncovered a clue to buried treasure. “By about an inch.”

I scrub a hand over my jaw. “You could tell in the pictures and videos that he’s six foot two?”

She points with two fingers at her eyes. “These work. And women are always being lied to about how many inches something is, so I’ve learned that a girl has to be able to tell size on her own.”

“ Tell size ? Is that like telling time?”

“Yes. But you can only do it fully at certain times . . . so it can be harder . Unless you’re really, really good. Like me.”

I rein in a grin. I want to tell her well-played . But we wound up back in this barbed-wire boat after too many dirty innuendos that went too far. “So we don’t need to move the seat back as much as we planned?”

“Nope. The network must have given us his glamour height by mistake, not his real height. So we slice off two inches,” she says, and I cringe, picturing her as a demon barber, ready to cut.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Just a little uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of the word slice next to inches .”

She rolls her eyes. Their shade is lighter now, like a walnut. I need to develop a cheat sheet to read her emotions, but I think this color corresponds to amused. “You have to know I’m not a woman who likes less inches. It pains me, too.”

My jaw nearly comes unhinged, but I resist the urge to tell her that with me, she’d get all the inches she wants and then some. I resist it with another scalding drink of coffee.

She takes a sip of hers. Her nose crinkles, and her lips curl in clear dislike.

“I take it your tastes haven’t changed?”

She shakes her head and sets down the coffee on a workbench. My heart sinks the littlest bit. I wanted her to like the coffee, or at least to have another sip. To give it a chance.

Maybe to give something else a chance. Some one.

I shake off that thought.

She’s all business now. “We should call David and tell him about the discrepancy.”

I flash back to the comments I made to Sam when he went out with Karen at John Smith Rides, then to my own concerns about getting too cozy with someone who works for my main rival. “All business” is how I should behave, too.

“Absolutely. And I’m impressed with your attention to detail,” I say.

After all, lack of attention to detail on the Mustang is what got her into trouble with me years ago.

“I’ve had to learn from my mistake,” she says, an emphasis on mistake .

And it’s unmistakable that she’s referring to my comment during the tub incident.