Page 11 of Hold Me Today

When faced with Mina’s enthusiasm and crazy sense of humor, I almost regret walking away from the calm that is Savannah Rose. Almost, but not quite.

Pushing off the wall, I bump Mina out of the way with a hip-check and jab the button for the closest floor. The elevator skids to a stop, and I’m half expecting hotel security to be waiting to cart the two of us away when the doors swing open.

Thankfully, the third floor is blessedly empty.

“Nick?” comes Mina’s inquisitive voice behind me. “Wedding is on the fifth floor.”

The sole of my shoe connects with the maroon carpet, and I swallow a sigh of relief to be back on solid ground. Glancing at my sister’s best friend over my shoulder, I meet her hopeful gaze.Don’t fall for it, man.She had her chance to talk. It’s not my problem if she wasted it by playing verbal volleyball. “I’m taking the stairs.”

Another step that leads me away from the only person I’ve ever met who can send my temper from zero to a hundred in the span of minutes. I never lose my cool. Never raise my voice or say things I’ll regret later on. But Mina . . . she’s the black to my white, the heavy rock to my classical, the bungee-jumping-crazy to my downward-dog-yoga.

She drives me fucking insane.

“But—”

“Foreplay’s over, Ermione.” Against my iron-clad will, my gaze sweeps lower than her cleavage. Her black dress hugs her curvy frame, its slinky material glittering under the soft lighting as she darts out a hand to keep the elevator from closing on her face. She’s not classically beautiful—her nose is just a little too big, her jaw a little too sharp, her eyes a little too luminous. But she wears confidence like a second skin, and there’s never been a man I’ve met in the last decade who can turn Mina down. “Find someone else to tango with.”

The elevator whines with its urge to get a move on, and Mina claps her right hand over her left, prolonging our staring contest.

“I actually do really need to talk to you,” she says, that always-there confidence of hers visibly waning. “I got carried away with trying to prove a point. I-I don’t even remember the point, though that’s always the way with us, don’t you think? We each always want the last word. It’s our thing—if we had a thing. Which we don’t.” She laughs awkwardly. “But I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’m having trouble, but . . . I, uh, I bought a place. A hair salon. I’d love to maybe know—if you have the time, obviously—if we could talk about a renovation contract. In private. Maybe. If you have the time.”

I’ve never heard Mina ramble before. Or, at least, not since our school-day years when she sat quietly in the back of the Greek school classroom and stammered whenever the teacher—KyriaYiannoglou—called on her to answer a question or conjugate a verb.

Learning Greek came easily to me, probably because my parents spoke nothing else in our house while I was growing up. But Mina . . . she’d struggled, and the more she panicked, the more she rambled, and the more she rambled, the more she liked to tap her fingers.

My gaze cuts to her hands now, which are still locked over the elevator.

Her slender fingers curl in and stretch out, as though fighting the urge to tap away to their heart’s content.

My heart gives an erratic thump that might as well be synonymous for,Oh, c’mon, man. Let her squirm a little before you concede the battle. It’d be in my best interest to show that Mina can’t push me to react. For one, she will, and always will be, an annoying pain in my ass. And, second—

“Meet me at my office on Monday. 8 a.m. Don’t be late.”

I don’t wait around to see if she has a comeback.

I’m not a bad guy, but I’d be lying if I said that Mina doesn’t pluck at all my good-guy feathers and make me want to go rogue.

5

Mina

At seven-forty on Monday morning, I’m loitering outside Nick’s office and contemplating my life decisions.

Life decisions that will not be remedied with Tito’s, thank you very much.

Instead, I’ve opted for two cups of coffee—one for me and one for Nick—that I picked up from Dunkin’s on my train ride into Watertown. Only the little cardboard cutouts keep my palms from scorching as I pace the cracked sidewalk and crane my neck back to stare at the white-painted sign hanging over the front window.

Stamos Restoration and Co. is located in the heart of downtown Watertown, a suburb not even ten minutes outside of Boston. UnlikeAgape, which takes up the first floor of a nineteenth-century brownstone, Nick’s office is located in a contemporary building with gray-stucco walls. He’s sandwiched between a dance studio and a hair salon, and it takes every bit of self-control not to peek into the salon’s windows and scope out their setup like a peeping Tom.

With the hum of cars rushing down the Massachusetts Turnpike behind me, I juggle the coffees into one hand and ring the doorbell.

Thanks to nerves and a bad habit of losing my mind around Nick, I missed my window of opportunity to talk to him aboutAgapeat the wedding. I could blame my scatterbrain for my inability to close the deal with him—orinitiatethe deal in the first place, if we’re getting into the details—but I’m not one for pretense.

Nope, I straight up cornered that man in an elevator and proceeded to bust his balls like I was back in kindergarten—when kicking a guy you like in the nuts was the surefire way to announce the two of you were destined for marriage.

Yeah, not my brightest moment.

I’m hoping to make up for it today.

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