Page 3 of The Boyfriend Material Novellas

Don’t flirt. Do resist. You are the consummate professional.

Except spoiler alert—I cave.

Oh hell, do I ever cave, and fast.

But our ending is one I never saw coming.

1

VAUGHN

My calendar says it’s a week after Halloween, but tell that to Manhattan.

The city has draped itself in red, green, and candy cane. Fake icicles frost the streetlamps, paper snowflakes flurry in store windows, and blue-and-white strings of lights flicker from building balconies.

As I walk past a Duane Reade display peddling Santa toilet paper—Seriously? Santa deserves way better—I snap a picture and shoot it over to my sister Callie while we chat on the phone.

“New York is a freaking winter wonderland already. How is this possible?” I ask. “I gave out Halloween candy last week, and now it’s jingle all the way.”

“Where did you give out candy? In your penthouse apartment?”

“It’s not the penthouse, and it won’t be mine much longer,” I point out as I turn onto Madison Avenue, heading toward the offices of Premiere Agency where I work.

“Last time I saw your place, it was pretty damn swank.” She sounds like she’s caught me in a fib—such an attorney.

“But it’s not the penthouse. I live on the tenth floor. The building has eleven floors, counselor.”

“A technicality,” she deadpans. “I’ll rephrase my statement: you don’t live in a penthouse on Park Avenue—you’re slumming it a story below in a tenth-floor two-bedroom. You’re sooo ordinary.”

“See? I’m just like everyone else.”

She laughs, and I know she’s rolling her eyes. “Right. Except for the three years you played pro ball for a Super Bowl-winning team and made major bank. Besides that, you’re just like the rest of us.”

The silver glint from one of the stones in my ring catches the sun as I walk. Yeah, I do love this bling, big-time. It almost takes the sting out of a too-short career on the gridiron.

“Anyway,mildly argumentative sister of mine—my point was not about Halloween candy but that the city is decked out in tinsel already,” I say as I reach my building.

“Are you worried you’re behind schedule if your tree’s not up? You do know you don’t have to start decorating in July like Mom does?”

On her end, a small voice calls out “Doggie,” and my sister tells her son proudly, “Yes, Danny, that’s the doggie.”

“Doggie, bark,” Danny says in the background.

I can’t help but smile at her almost-two-year-old cobbling short sentences together. “He wasn’t saying ‘bark’ when I saw him last month.”

“My child is clearly a genius.”

“Just like his Uncle Vaughn.”

“Yes, just like his uncle, since he’s making trouble and encouraging the dog to bark.”

“Good for him. Tell that little dude I cannot wait to see him while I’m there over Thanksgiving.” I love that town, and I love Callie and my other sister Aubrey, and all my nephews and nieces. Both of my sisters’ husbands are cool cats too.

“You’re seriously the best for seeing him so often. Greg and I appreciate it.”

“Like it’s a hardship to make sure my nephew spends time with his favorite person.”

“Goodbye,cocky brother of mine.”

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