Arrange Me: a married-at-first-sight romance (The Arranged Duo Book 1) Read online

  I step into a carpeted hallway, waiting for him to join me and lead the way. I follow him to another door, and once we’re inside, he flicks on the lights. We’re in a lounge/dining room area that’s pretty swanky.

  “This is…nice.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Lulu and Harvey—they’re the owners—meet clients here. You know, to plan private events.”

  “People have private events at Tidewaters?” I’ve always just thought of it as an after-work watering hole.

  “Yeah, sometimes,” he says. I look up and realize he’s staring at me—hard—and I cross my arms over my chest. Caught gaping, he blinks at me, clears his throat, then walks over to a closet in the corner of the room. “Umm…Lulu keeps extra T-shirts in here.”

  The room’s walls are painted navy blue and decorated with Broadway playbills, which doesn’t totally mesh with the ocean theme of the bar and grille. “Who’s into Broadway?”

  “Lulu,” he says. “She was a chorus girl in the sixties.”

  I’m standing in front of a framed playbill for Miss Saigon when Josh comes up behind me.

  “This should work,” he says, his voice a little husky.

  I’m aware of him. God, I’m so aware of him.

  Without turning around, I ask, “Have you seen it?”

  “Miss Saigon? Yeah.”

  “I loved it,” I say. “It’s my favorite.”

  “You like musicals?”

  “Mm-hm. And plays.”

  He snorts softly, nudging my arm with the T-shirt. “I’ll turn around so you can get changed.”

  As I peel off my blouse, I ask, “What was that scoff for?”

  He pauses for a second, then asks, “What’s your favorite play?”

  I throw my shirt on the floor and look over my shoulder to be sure he’s turned away before unclasping my bra. “Umm. I guess…Cyrano de Bergerac.”

  “Rostand. Huh.” He sounds surprised.

  “‘Huh’ what? Not a favorite?”

  “No, it’s just…you know the difference between plays and musicals. I was ready for you to say Miss Saigon.”

  “Of course I know the difference,” I say, pulling the T-shirt over my bare breasts and feeling a little salty about the way he’s judging me.

  “You’d be surprised how many people don’t.”

  “Well, I do.” I turn around, smoothing the blue T-shirt over my damp skirt. “All set.”

  When he pivots to face me, his face is gentle again, like it was right before I was doused in cosmo.

  “You look good.”

  I smile, that warm feeling from last week returning in a wonderful rush. “If things don’t work out at DeWitt, maybe I’ll apply for a job.”

  “Do you really like plays?” he asks, his voice serious, like the question is important.

  “Yeah, I do. A lot.”

  “My, um—my roommate is staging an updated version of Romeo and Juliet at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater. It’s at—”

  “—Lincoln Center,” I finish for him. My mother is a big patron of the arts. “I know where it is.”

  “You wanna go?” he asks, his voice so soft I wonder for a second if I heard him right.

  “Are you asking me out on a—?”

  “Forget it,” he says, running a hand through his hair and turning away from me.

  “No, wait. I don’t want to forget it.”

  At the door, he turns back around, and I let my eyes linger on him, this Adonis whom I’ve always thought was out of my league. He’s tall and beautiful, with dark brown hair and full lips. For a split second, I imagine how those lips would feel on mine, and a thrill rips through me like lightning, its white-hot trail of fire pooling between my thighs like lava. I gasp softly, and his blue eyes visibly darken as they stare into mine.

  “You want to go or what?” he rasps.

  Do I want to go? Do I want to go to a play with Josh-the-brooding-bartender?

  My mind races.

  I know very little about him. So very little. I mean, I’ve seen him flirting with nearly every woman who walks into this place, including my friend and excluding me…until now. Where the heck is this coming from? Other questions pile on: What does he do when he’s not here? Is this his dream job, and if it’s not, what is? And when he looks at other women the way he’s looking at me right now, do they feel as naked as I do? As vulnerable? As utterly conquered?

  Yes, I do.

  I do want to go to a play with hot Josh.

  “Sure,” I say.

  He looks shocked at first, his eyes wide and surprised like he never thought I’d say yes. A second later, his expression morphs into annoyance, his eyebrows furrowing like he’s angry with himself, like it was a mistake to ask me to go but now he’s stuck.

  Well, if that’s how he feels about it…“We don’t have to—”

  “Meet me in front of the theater on Sunday.”

  I nod, leaning down to pick up my soiled clothing. “What time?”

  “Four.”

  “Four o’clock. Okay.” I want to smile at him, but I’m confused by everything happening between us—not to mention his expression, which is so intense, I can’t. We stare at each other from across the lounge, he with his hand on the doorknob and me cradling my damp clothes in my arms.

  Finally, I gesture to the T-shirt. “Thanks for the—”

  “No problem,” he says, our mutual trance broken.

  He turns and pushes through the door, leaving me alone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Josh

  I asked her out.

  I fucking asked her out.

  Fuck. What was I even thinking?

  First rule of bartending: “Don’t ask your customers out.” Second rule: “If you feel like asking out a cute patron, refer to Rule #1.”

  The very reason the expression “don’t shit where you eat” was created, it’s just not smart to mix business and pleasure. Add to this, Lulu and Harvey have made it clear that it’s strictly forbidden to “fraternize with the customers.” Totally off-limits. I actually had to sign something when I was hired at Tidewaters that said I wouldn’t date the customers. Be charming, listen, smile, and flirt a ton? Sure. But make an actual move? No. It’s verboten.

  So, what the fuck was I thinking?

  And shit! I don’t even know if Sammy has extra tickets to her Shakespeare reimagining, and even if she does, I’m not sure she’s going to be thrilled that I offered one to someone she doesn’t know, who isn’t even in the theater business. It’s hard as hell to get a venue as awesome as Lincoln Center. Every seat is gold and can’t be squandered on just anyone.

  I stare at my reflection in the bus window, shaking my head at my stupid face.

  What the actual fuck were you thinking?

  But then I hear her voice in my head—the words she said to Dina coming back to me as easily as memorized lines:

  If you get sick of this—of flirting and one-night stands and stupid guys who never call back—you can just ask your parents to arrange you…You have an escape hatch. You have loving parents who will do their best to find someone worthy of you, someone amazing. I don’t have that. I have to go on two hundred more bad dates. Two thousand. Hell, I might have to put up with a million jerks to try to find someone nice. Do you know what that does to a person’s heart?

  I was straining to hear every word while she was speaking, especially after I gathered that she’d signed up with some bullshit “arranged marriage” service on the Internet. And although I was unaccountably furious that she’d pulled a stunt like that—God only knows who she could end up with—when I listened to the longing in her voice and turned around to see her eyes full of tears, my anger evaporated.

  And then, when she was already feeling low, some shit-faced asswipe dumped a cocktail on her.

  I get a strong mental picture of her standing in the breakroom looking like a soaked kitten, her shirt plastered over her ample chest and the sight of her nipples straining against the cold fabric making b
lood pump into my cock.

  And there it is, folks! The reason I made such a dumb error in judgment by asking her out: male weakness.

  Like every other hot-blooded guy on the face of creation, the sight of gorgeous tits in a wet blouse was enough to make all reason fly out the motherfucking window.

  The bus stops at the intersection of Forty-Second and Tenth. I slide out of my seat and walk the three blocks to my apartment building in Hell’s Kitchen.

  Even though it’s almost three o’clock in the morning, there are people on the sidewalks, which is still a marvel to me. Not that it’s bustling, but it’s alive, as it always is, and it reminds me why I love New York so much. In Minnetonka, your parents’ pastor will call them up and tattle if you’re loitering in front of the Taco Bell on Route 7 after ten o’clock on a Saturday night.

  Speaking of home—if I’m at the play with Courtney, I’ll miss the weekly call from my parents on Sunday afternoon. They call every Sunday, after they’ve returned home from services, coffee, and bible study at Bethlehem Lutheran. I take out my phone and make a note to catch them before they leave for church, to say a quick “hello.” I don’t want my mom to worry.

  My parents are good people who raised three sons, two of whom stayed in Minnesota, and one of whom ventured into the wilds of New York. The two of them met in high school, and I can’t remember a single morning that my dad didn’t kiss my mom’s cheek before leaving for work. They’re like peanut butter and jelly. I can’t imagine one without the other.

  I can already hear Sunday’s conversation in my head, since it doesn’t vary much from week to week.

  Dad: “What’s on the docket for today, Son?”

  Joshua: “Seeing a play at Lincoln Center.”

  Mom: “Oh, fer fun, honey!”

  I will not mention that Courtney is meeting me, because that will just open up a big can of worms, including questions about “her folks,” whether or not she cooks, and if she is a “nice girl.”

  I chuckle softly as I take the brownstone stairs of my building two at a time and open the front door with a key. Two more sets of stairs and I’m at my door, which I open with another key.

  Our apartment is like a shitty version of the apartment on the show New Girl—it has the same hardwood floors and exposed brick but is about an eighth of the size, with five people living there instead of four.

  Jenna, who’s trying to make it as a Broadway actress, is asleep on the couch in the living room, and there’s no light coming from under the door of the room I share with my college friend, Mike, so he must be asleep. There is, however, light coming from Max and Sammy’s room, so I rap on the door softly.

  “Come in.”

  I open the door and peek in to find Sammy—my good friend, former roommate, and someone whom I dated for a split second after college—sitting up in bed with her laptop open, while her boyfriend, Max (who assists the head of lighting design at the Roundabout Theater) snores softly beside her.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  She grins. “Just getting home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good tips tonight?”

  “A little under six hundred.”

  “Look at that! You made rent in one night!”

  I only work at Tidewaters on Thursday and Friday nights and Sunday mornings, but I generally manage to bring in anywhere from $1,200 to $1,500 a week in tips alone. Unlike some of my coworkers, though, I claim the earnings and pay taxes on them. If I ever make it big, I don’t want anyone looking back through my tax returns and discovering I stiffed Uncle Sam.

  “Hey, listen…just wondering…do you have any tickets left for Sunday?”

  “A few. Who wants to come?”

  “A girl I know.”

  “What does she do?”

  What Sam’s really asking is this: How can said girl be helpful—is she a critic? A reviewer? Does she work for a Broadway director? How are you putting one of my tickets to good use?

  “She’s a friend. Her name’s Courtney Salinger.”

  “Salinger.” Sam’s eyebrows raise. “Like—”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Name’s the same, though. And she’s from Greenwich.”

  She pushes her laptop to the side and gets out of bed. Clad in underwear and a tank top, she crosses to her bureau, opens the top drawer, and takes out a ticket. As she hands it to me, she scans my face.

  “A friend, huh?”

  Fuck. She knows better. What is it about previous girlfriends that means they can read your face like a book?

  “She hangs out at Tidewaters.”

  “Ha. Then she’s off-limits, huh? That sucks.” Sam grins like the Cheshire cat. “Listen, whether she’s related to the venerable J.D. or not, maybe she could give me a soundbite? The surname may be enough to matter.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure she can do that.”

  “Cool,” says Sam, leaning up on tiptoes to kiss my cheek before getting back in bed. She pulls her laptop back onto her lap and waves at me to go. “’Night, loverboy.”

  “’Night, Sammy,” I say, pulling the door shut behind me.

  ***

  At four o’clock on Sunday I’m standing in Hearst Plaza, at the corner of the Paul Milstein pool in front of Lincoln Center, and scanning the crowd for any sign of Courtney.

  At work this morning, I made a very important decision: I can’t date her. We can only be friends, and I need to make that clear to her. Today. As soon as possible.

  While $6,000 a month may not sound like much to some people, my salary and tips from working at Tidewaters allow me to pursue my real passion, playwriting, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. I’m one of fifty playwrights-in-residence at the New Dramatists, which is great, but I don’t get any money from them. They give me a place to write, free Wi-Fi, use of the meeting spaces and practice stages to workshop my plays, and peer and alumni support. I need my bartending job to pay rent, keep my MetroCard full, and eat. I can’t lose my job. If I lose my job, I lose my dream.

  Which means I can’t be sidetracked by Courtney Jane Salinger. No matter how much I might want to date her, I can’t.

  It was possibly that realization—that I actually want to date her—that shocked me more than anything else this morning. But maybe it shouldn’t have. I mean, girls like Dina, for all their flirtation and hotness, aren’t really my type. Not really. I’ve always had a thing for the girl-next-door. For girls exactly like Courtney: fresh-faced and blue-eyed, with big tits and a kind heart.

  I’ve mentally practiced what I’m going to say to her this afternoon, but unfortunately, nothing prepares me for seeing those blue eyes under the spring sun when she taps me on the shoulder and I turn around to face her.

  First of all, she’s not dressed like “work” Courtney; gone are the stiff gabardine skirts and grandmotherly cashmere cardigans. Dressed in jeans with a white, button-down shirt open at the neck and rolled at the arms, she looks completely different. She’s wearing heeled sandals, black sunglasses, and a bunch of bracelets on her wrist clinks together when she raises her hand in greeting. With her part-Marilyn Monroe, part-Kim Kardashian hourglass figure on display and her pretty smile lighting up Lincoln Center, she’s stunning, and for the first time I can ever remember, her hair is down. Parted in the middle, it falls past her shoulders in honey-colored tresses. I’m weak for hair like that. It’s all I can do not to reach out and wind a lock around my fist so I can pull her face to mine.

  “Hey,” she says.

  I’m staring. Stop staring. Say something.

  “H-Hi,” I say. I’m still staring, but at least I get my mouth to work. “You, uh—Wow. You look different.”

  “I’m more casual on the weekends,” she says, fixing the sunglasses on top of her head.

  She’s wearing little cream-colored pearl earrings, and I’m suddenly wondering what noises she makes when someone sucks on one of her ear lobes. The thought makes my cock twitch, and I consider what other noises she might make with other parts
of her sweet flesh between my lips.

  “Josh?” She tilts her head toward the theater entrance. “Should we go in?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Um, but wait. I have to say something first. To you.”

  She blinks at me. “Okay.”

  “This is awkward,” I mutter.

  “Just say it.”

  “This isn’t a date,” I blurt out, which sounds nothing like the line I’d rehearsed about how awesome she is and how any guy would be lucky to take her out.

  “Oh.” Her smile reverses until her lips are flatlined. “Okay.”

  “I don’t—crap. I mean, any guy would be lucky to take you out.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Tidewaters—my bosses at Tidewaters—they don’t let us date the customers.”

  She gives me a look that reads: “What a crock.”

  “Really,” I insist.

  “Josh. I’m a regular. You flirt with every girl who walks in there.”

  I do. Except you. It’s like I knew deep inside that you were my kryptonite, and I was trying to protect myself.

  “It might look like that—”

  “It is that.”

  “—but I swear to God, Courtney, it’s just flirting. I’ve never dated a customer. Never even met someone outside of work until now.”

  Her little pink tongue darts out to lick her lips, and I swallow a groan as my cock pulses again. This would be a whole lot easier if I weren’t so fucking attracted to her.

  “Fine. We’re not on a date. We’re just two human beings sitting next to each other at a play. Okay?”

  Not okay. Not feeling okay at all.

  “Yeah. Thanks for understanding.”

  “No problem,” she says, heading toward the theater doors. “I’m—I mean, I’m sort of busy anyway. Not dating.”

  “You’re busy not dating?” I ask, following her inside the theater.

  “No. Well, yes. I’m not dating anymore. Ever. It’s soul-crushing.” She clears her throat. “I’ve got plans.”

  Right. Your stupid arranged-by-website plan.