Unexpected
Manhattan Magic #1
Eve Black
Copyright © 2019 by Eve Black
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Eve Black
Chapter 1
Pragmatic, practical, and plump Diana Bluth wished she had an ounce of her best friend’s brazen sensuality—and her lady cojones.
“I still can’t believe you actually went home with him,” she remarked as she sat facing her best friend in their favorite—and crowded—coffee spot, Perk Me Up, just two blocks from their shared office building. Diana worked at one law firm, the prestigious Kilgore, Ayers, Beecham, and her best friend, Margie, worked at another. It was a typical Friday, where the end of the week felt like it had dragged you through every hell known to man, and the only thing that would save you from total destruction by 5PM was caffeine.
“You’re usually the chill one, the one who doesn’t make impulsive decisions.” She just barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes at her sarcastic remark.
Margie laughed, nearly spitting out her double mocha latte, and pinned Diana with an incredulous look. She swallowed her latte and blurted, “Me? I’m the chill one? My God, Diana, I haven’t seen you even look at a guy since high school!”
That wasn’t entirely true. She looked at a lot of men…they just didn’t look back. Besides, that thing in high school was a look-but-can’t-touch situation. He’d been the cousin of one of her chess club co-captains, and he’d been willing to take her to the homecoming dance. For a price. She’d forked over her collection of Pokémon cards and regretted it the rest of the year. It would probably always be that way; her giving up something sacred to someone who didn’t deserve it, and then spending the rest of her life regretting it.
At twenty-four, she knew it was a cold, hard fact. She’d die a virgin; never having known an orgasm she hadn’t given to herself via Mr. Rabbit. Her clit had been getting overtime loving lately, and the releases were getting less and less…relieving. But she wasn’t willing to just hand “it” over to someone who didn’t see it for what it was…her utmost trust. Call her old fashioned if you wanted, but at least she didn’t have a string of bad decisions to face.
Scrunching up her nose, she sighed. “I’m not chill—”
Margie grunted, tearing off a piece of her chocolate-filled croissant. “Then what are you?”
Diana shrugged. “I don’t know…cautious, I guess.”
Choking on her croissant, Margie washed that bite down with another sip of her latte.
“Cautious! Diana, you’d have to have taken a risk before to be cautious now. Cautious about what? You live with your mother in the house you grew up in, you still wear footie pajamas, and you stick your nose in books all day—you aren’t cautious, you’re cloistered. Like a nun. Hail Mary, full of grace—”
Diana reached across the small café table and flicked Margie on the nose. “Stop it. I am not cloistered. I go out on dates…when I have the time.”
Margie arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “When was your last date?”
Sitting back, Diana pulled at the hem of her pencil skirt, which had the knack of sliding up her thighs whenever she sat down. It didn’t help that she filled out the skirt to nearly bursting, or that she couldn’t get enough of the chocolate espresso brownies at Millie’s Mocha Menagerie, or that she broke out in sweat whenever she spotted an elliptical machine.
Nope. She wasn’t made for thinness. So, she just lived with her thickness, and was still learning to love it. Fuck you, tight pencil skirts! Get used to it!
Margie drew Diana back to the moment with a tap of her fingernail on the table.
“My last date was…” Diana chewed her lip, thinking back to her last one-on-one date with a man. “November.” She’d treaded into the uncharted seas of Match.com and accepted a date with some guy from Edison. But he’d spent the whole evening, nose glued to his phone, answering comments on Reddit. The night ended when he’d asked if she had a cuter, smaller sister.
She’d flipped him off, finished her vodka cocktail, and left him with the bill. The ass.
“November!” Margie practically bellowed into the tiny coffee shop, making heads turn in their direction. “November was six months ago, Diana.”
Her face heating, Diana motioned for Margie to keep her voice down, but her bestie just wouldn’t take the hint.
“Will you shut it? And besides, I don’t stick my nose in books all day—I’m a paralegal! It’s my job to look through tomes of legal precedents to determine a course of action for my boss’s cases.”
“Uh huh,” Margie murmured, then shoved the last of her croissant in her mouth. She chewed slowly, her gaze never leaving Diana’s face. If they’d hadn’t been best friends since breastfeeding, she’d have felt disconcerted, even a little frustrated. But she knew Margie, and that Margie was mostly harmless. Mostly.
“What? Do I have something on my face?” she asked, full of snark, her lips quirking. She lifted her cup to her mouth, preparing to take a sip.
Margie nodded. “Yup. The look of someone who has never been laid.”
She shouldn’t have been shocked by Margie’s response but she was, choking on her mocha latte, spitting the now tepid brew all over her once crisp beige blouse. “Dammit!” She stared down at the mess she’d made of her only dress shirt—well, the only one she had with her. Usually, on Fridays, she would bring an extra set of clothes into the city so she could stay at Margie’s apartment over
