Chapter 1

No Snarkasm in Love

I have a smart mouth.

Sure, it’s a defense mechanism against a world that seems to rarely ever do me any favors, but why mess with the status quo?

Take, for example, my late-morning bicycle ride into work on Friday for my usual twelve-hour shift. It was cloudy after a recent rain burst. And cold. The streets were wet, and I avoided puddles with care. Motorists, however, weren’t as solicitous, which meant I was soaked through and freezing in a matter of minutes.

Shouldn’t it make a difference that I wore a bright green reflective vest, and had reflectors and lights on both me and the bicycle, whether day or night? Apparently not. I even wore vivid clothing so I didn’t blend in with my surroundings. I got no respect on the road.

When I reached the next traffic light, I rode up to the dude in the shiny puke-yellow convertible who’dbeen the last to splash me, and said, “You blind or something?”

Dude looked at me and smirked, then rolled his eyes and went back to checking his hair in the rearview mirror. Ooh, was that a bald spot?

I couldn’t resist. “Must be compensating for something with a car that ugly. It won’t get your hair to grow back, though. Get laid much?”

“Hey!” he said, but before the man could say more, the light changed and I turned to the right while hewent straight ahead. I might have heard “faggot” as his tires screamed down the road, but hey, whatever. I was proud of the rainbow sticker on the back of my vest.

I would be the first to admit—maybe—that being snarky wasn’t the way to make friends and find lovers, but being nice hadn’t done that in the first place, so I’d either find someone who could handle it, or die alone.

And at forty-two going on ninety, the latter was highly likely.

* * * *

“Nye, not again.”

Ingrid Norris, my business partner in the small, thriving courier service where we both worked six daysa week, sighed and shook her head. “It’s as if the universe has a bull’s eye on you twenty-four-seven.”

I grunted as I walked by, uncomfortable and squishy in my soaked attire as I headed to the small locker room in the back. “You’re probably right.” Once I was changed and dry, if not in better spirits, I clocked in and went through my inbox, which was piled high, as usual.

“I don’t know why I ever let you talk me into this crazy business ten years ago,” I said, grumbling asI tossed the junk mail in recycling and separated bills from the other detritus. She handled the early shift, and I worked until closing, which was around eleven at night, depending on the delivery schedule.

“Drink your coffee. You’ll feel better,” Ingrid said. True enough.

I let her pat me on the shoulder before going to the kitchen. At the coffee station with our fabulous Keurig, I chose a dark roast cup, which I brewed at twelve ounces. It would be the first of many for the rest of the day. Sure, I was grumpy and snappish as a matter of course, but without coffee? I was intolerable, or so I was told.

After practically inhaling two cups of the black brew, my world was mostly right again, until I heard Ingrid swear all the way from her office near the front. I took my third cup of heaven-on-earth with me as I went to see what was wrong.

“Problem?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe as she glared daggers at the phone receiver in her left hand.

“That was Hogan calling in sick. Again. For the third time in two weeks. We have a pickup from that architectural firm on Spring Lane in half an hour, and it needs to go to the blueprint place immediately, and then wait to take the documents back to the firm. I don’t have anyone to spare.” She looked at me and I knew what was coming. “I hate to ask you this, but—”

“No.” There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to get me to do this. The managing partner of the firm in question, Donal Soames, was a man I’d encountered a few times, the first when we negotiated our contract back in the spring. “Hard-ass” didn’t even begin to define his character. A smile would likely break his handsome, if austere, gray-eyed face. Just because he was hot and fit and fucking fine didn’t mean he was God’s gift to every sex dream I’d ever had since we’d met. Or something.

I had seen Donal around town on occasion because he seemed to work late hours, just like I did, and needed to eat. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever noticed me, but I’d sure noticed him, as did a whole bunch of people who he ignored as a matter of course.