Dating the Guy Upstairs

Dating the Guy Next Door

Dating the Guy Upstairs

Dating the Guy Upstairs

Amanda Ashby

INTERMIX BOOKS, NEW YORK

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DATING THE GUY UPSTAIRS

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2016 by Amanda Ashby.

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eBook ISBN: 9780698198029

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / June 2016

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that when your boss called you into their cramped office at the back of the library on a Monday afternoon and asked you to do a small favor, that the favor would neither be small nor enjoyable. It also explained why Riley Harris was now back in her apartment with the dubious honor of babysitting a yellow-haired guinea pig named Bingley.

A yellow-haired guinea pig that refused to eat.

“Come on, Bingley, you can do it. Do you know that the other Bingley was exceptionally fond of lettuce?” She dangled the green leaf into the cage. The guinea pig blinked and retreated into a small fabric hiding hut, leaving only his backside exposed.

Riley sighed. Charles Bingley, the guinea pig’s namesake from
Pride and Prejudice
, also had excellent manners, but she was starting to get the feeling that the guinea pig didn’t care. Of course she could’ve just said no to Gloria’s ridiculous request to babysit her niece’s guinea pig, but that might’ve meant saying no to becoming a permanent member of staff at the Deacon Caldecott Memorial Library.

And right now job security was all that mattered.

Especially if she wanted to pay off the huge debt that her mom, Jude, had run up after deciding to follow the latest “love of her life” to India, only to discover that he was less of a “love” and more of a “money-stealing rat bag.” At least Jude hadn’t made this guy husband number three, saddling Riley with yet another stepfamily, but it had still left her mom completely broke.

Which brought Riley back to the guinea pig.

He’d already turned up his nose at the hay pellets Gloria had provided and so Riley was just about to use the last of her carrots when there was a knock on the door. Relief pumped through her veins as she jumped to her feet. The cavalry had arrived.

Well, not the cavalry exactly, but rather ten-year-old Cameron, who lived in the apartment next door and who often came around to play Minecraft while his mom did the grocery shopping. Thankfully, he also had an encyclopedic knowledge of all things animal and she was sure he’d know how to tempt the guinea pig. She padded across the room as the faint Seattle sun was trying to push its way in through the bay window. But when she pressed her tortoiseshell glasses up to the peephole, instead of seeing Cameron’s unmistakable boy band–style hair, she was greeted with the sight of pale sea-blue eyes set against olive skin and framed by thick dark lashes.

“Will?” she yelped. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m politely waiting to be let in.” Her landlord and best friend gave her a smile, thereby releasing the two dimples responsible for causing so many women to fall for him. “I would’ve used my emergency-only key, but you made me give that back due to excessive milk stealing. Which, by the way, considering that I own the place, doesn’t seem fair.”

“No, you idiot.” Riley unlocked and opened the door and her smile increased even further when she noticed he had her favorite chocolates in his hand. He really was the perfect friend. “I don’t mean in the hallway. I mean what are you doing back home? I thought you were in Indonesia for two more months.”

“You and me both.” Will swept her up into a big hug, causing the wind to whoosh out of her lungs and be replaced with a sense of happiness that always filled her when he was nearby. “But here I am.”

“Here you are.” Riley waited until he set her down so that she could rearrange her glasses and smooth down her long red hair that was no doubt a mess thanks to Will’s impromptu fling. Then she noticed that his battered old backpack was on the floor. “Have you even been upstairs to your apartment yet?”

“Nope. I’m fresh off the plane,” he said, causing Riley to marvel at how he could look so good when he must be jet-lagged and operating on no sleep. She would’ve resembled Frankenstein’s monster. But even though there were small smudges of fatigue under his eyes and his sandy-blond hair was in desperate need of a cut, nothing could take away from his movie-star good looks. That was assuming movie stars wore faded jeans and a crumpled linen shirt that looked like it had seen better days.

She’d first met Will two years ago when he came into the library asking if he could put up a notice looking for tenants for the six converted apartments in the old Victorian property he’d inherited. And while her colleagues had admired his smooth jawline and hypnotic eyes, Riley had been much more interested in his low rent and great location. After growing up with hippie parents who’d divorced when Riley was nine and both remarried several times, always with disastrous results, she’d long ago decided to avoid romance and focus on her independence.

It had been the best decision of her life.

In the last two years she’d painted the ground-floor apartment robin’s-egg blue, hung up heavy white drapes and filled the rooms with carefully restored furniture and her huge collection of books, all giving it a homey feel. She’d also become friends with Will, and she smiled as he settled himself down in the old leather chesterfield that he’d long ago claimed as his. She knew better than to try sitting next to him, since his long legs would soon take up the entire space and she’d be reduced to one tiny corner. Instead she dropped down into her favorite reading chair.

Will spent at least half the year doing volunteer work all over the world, living off the rental income from the apartments and occasionally doing some sustainability consulting in between. He never cut his trips short.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“I take it you didn’t read the society pages.” The dimples disappeared and the smile faded.

“Not exactly,” Riley confessed. Between her job at the library, the online English degree she was working toward and the extra book club she ran for her kids from the local community center, reading the society pages hadn’t been high on her agenda. It wasn’t normally on Will’s either, but considering he did come from one of the richest families in Seattle she guessed it had something to do with one of them. “What did I miss?”

“Tucker’s getting married.”

“What?” Riley leaned forward to check that she was hearing properly. “Tucker your brother? As in the confirmed bachelor for life? As in the guy who told me that the romance section at the library should be reclassified as mythology?”

“Yup.” Will ran a hand through his overgrown hair. “And it gets worse. It was love at first sight, followed by a whirlwind trip to Paris and a wedding proposal under the Eiffel Tower. Oh, how the mighty fall.”

“Wow.” Riley couldn’t hide her surprise. Will’s brother was definitely the least likely person to ever get married, closely followed by Will, who never dated anyone for more than two weeks. Not that Riley was judging considering her own thoughts on relationships. Then another thing occurred to her and she widened her eyes.

“But if you’re going to the wedding, doesn’t that mean you’ll have to—”

“See my father and my ex-fiancée?” Will casually lifted an eyebrow, though there was no hiding the bitterness in his voice. “Yeah, it’s going to be an unavoidable side effect.”

Riley’s heart went out to him.

Will had always had an uneasy relationship with his father, who was one of Seattle’s richest property developers and had no interest in the humanitarian causes that were so important to his son. As a result Will had paid his own way through college, determined not to trade on the family name. Unfortunately, he’d misjudged his fiancée, who, once she discovered that he had no intention of ever claiming his share of the family fortune, not only called off the engagement, but six months later had married his father.

It was a match made in Freudian hell and what had prompted Will to book his first volunteer trip to Africa. That was three years and numerous trips earlier. As far as she knew this would be the first time he’d seen either of them since it happened.

“And are you going to tell me why else you’ve come home?” She narrowed her eyes as she noticed the way he was studying his hiking boots.

“You mean apart from brotherly love?” Will gave an offended sigh before a rueful smile tugged at his lips. “Okay, fine, so a friend and I have been working on plans to build an E-waste startup, big enough to create jobs for an entire community. Many of the current companies in the region are using toxic methods to strip back unwanted computers, cell phones and monitors and then leaving mountains of waste to be burned off. Because we’re not trying to make a profit, our focus is on giving jobs to people to break everything down safely and extract gold, platinum and other metals. It will literally change lives and should be self-funding in five years. Problem is that we need investors to help with the initial setup, and while Josh is the true genius behind the business, he’s not great on the people-skills thing, so finding the money is my job. I’d planned to do it when I came home in two months’ time. But now that I’m here, I figured—”

“You figured that you’d kill two birds with one stone.” Riley nodded in understanding.

“You girls aren’t the only ones who can multitask.” Will flashed one of his killer smiles. “And now that we’ve covered the reasons I’m back, I have a favor to ask. You see—” He paused as a soft rustling sound came from over by the table. Will pushed his eyebrows together and craned his neck before turning back to where Riley was still sitting. “Um, why’s there a cage on your table?”

“Hell.” Riley jumped to her feet. She’d completely forgotten about the guinea pig. She was a bad person. “I’m looking after Bingley for a couple of weeks.”

“Bingley? As in the guy from
Pride and Prejudice
?”

“That’s right,” Riley said, secretly impressed that Will even knew who Charles Bingley was. Then again, considering how many times she’d made him watch the 1995 television series with her, it probably wasn’t such a surprise. “He belongs to Gloria’s niece, though between you and me, he’s more of a Darcy than a Bingley. Anyway, Gloria was supposed to be watching him but her cat had other ideas.”

“And you got roped into doing a job that normally belongs to a fifth grader.” Will groaned with a shake of his head, no doubt meaning to imply that she was roped into far too many things. Which was completely untrue. Babysitting Bingley was a tactical move designed to get the job security she longed for.

“It’s not so bad,” Riley protested before remembering Bingley’s lack of interest in the three-day-old lettuce that she’d found at the back of her refrigerator. “Well, it won’t be once Cameron gets here. Actually, I wonder why he hasn’t arrived yet?”

“Cameron?” Will suddenly sat up and narrowed his pale eyes. “Who’s Cameron? I didn’t know you were dating anyone?”

“I’m not. He’s Mary Weber’s kid—the new tenants in apartment three. He often swings by, and I was hoping he could help me,” Riley quickly assured him, mainly because Will seemed to think it was his duty to vet anyone who seemed remotely interested in asking her out. Not that she minded. In fact it occasionally came in handy when someone didn’t want to accept that she wasn’t looking for a relationship.

“Ah.” He nodded, obviously happy with the explanation. “Well, allow me to help. One of my many talents is guinea pig feeding.”

“You?” Riley couldn’t quite hide her skepticism.

“Don’t look so surprised. My childhood wasn’t all pony rides, nannies and vacations in the Bahamas,” he scolded as he crossed the room and carefully picked up the cage, much to the surprise of Bingley, who poked his head out from his hut. Both Riley and the guinea pig watched with interest as Will lowered the cage to the floor and slowly opened the wire door. “The trick is to just relax and let them get to know you.”

“I see,” Riley said as Will lay down on the floor next to the cage and began to hum. Then she let out a small gasp of surprise as Bingley wandered out and sniffed Will’s lean, nicely muscled arm.

“You just need to let them get familiar. Build some trust. Isn’t that right, Bingley?” Will crooned in a soft voice, proving that his powers of attraction even extended to a snobbish, misnamed guinea pig. After several more minutes the small creature was happily eating the lettuce. “See, easy.”

“Thank you. I’m forever in your debt,” Riley said as she joined him on the floor, tucking her blue sneakers underneath her legs. “I’m not sure how many other landlords would include guinea pig feeding on the lease agreement.”

“You know my motto.
Where there’s a Will, there’s a way
.” He grinned. It was a long-running joke between them. Riley had even bought him a coffee cup last Christmas that had the quote printed on it. Then he sat back up, but left the guinea pig perched in his lap. “And speaking of debt, we still need to talk about that favor.”

“Sure, though if you want me to help you wash carpets again then you’re going to need to buy me more than pizza,” Riley said. Last summer, he’d roped her into helping him steam the carpets and she’d almost died of heat exhaustion.

“No carpets, I promise,” Will said in a solemn voice, which was ruined by the smile hovering around his shapely mouth. He obviously still found the whole thing very amusing. “In fact it involves being in the lap of luxury for an entire day. Your every whim catered to.”

“You spend most of your life living in a tent and then you come home to an apartment that doesn’t even have drapes because you like being woken up with natural light. Luxury isn’t normally your middle name.” And why was he doing that thing where he tilted his head? That was never a good sign. Riley narrowed her eyes. “What kind of favor is this?”

“I want you to be my guest at the wedding,” Will announced as if he’d just given her a gold-coated invitation to the party of the century.

“Your guest?” Riley repeated, to check that she hadn’t misunderstood. “You want me to go to the wedding with you?”

“God, yes.” Will leaned forward so that his face was now uncomfortably close to hers as he reached out and grabbed her hands. “It makes so much sense! If I go on my own I’ll be hounded all day about when am I coming home and getting a real job. Or worse, they might suggest I talk to my father or dance with Lisa. All I need you to do is to be a barrier so that my toxic family won’t harass me.”