The One Night Stand Next Door Read online

  Whoops.

  “Do you mind if I rinse off in your shower?”

  I waved a hand at him in a ‘go ahead’ motion and rolled over, sprawling out across the bed.

  The click of the door announced his departure, and I blew out a long breath. Last night was probably the best sex I’d had in my life, and I wasn’t too keen to see him this morning. I was pretty sure that would be written all over my face.

  So yes, I was going to stay here, in bed, until he’d gone.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I could go back to sleep. It looked early. I’d had a kind of late night, and I didn’t have to work until four this afternoon.

  The shower started. The water pounded against the shared wall of the rooms, and it took me all of five seconds to realize one very sad fact.

  I was not getting back to sleep.

  It was annoying. I was one of those people who, once you woke them up, were awake.

  I sighed.

  After a small fight with the sheets, I extracted myself from the bed and grabbed a pair of pajama shorts from the dresser. I put them on and headed for the kitchen to make some coffee.

  My phone was still on the island counter, and I blushed when I looked at it. Our clothes were still strewn across the floor, so after turning on the coffeemaker, I did a quick sweep around the apartment for our clothes.

  I put Kai’s on the end of my bed and tossed my own in the laundry basket.

  Now, how did he take his coffee?

  Wait, screw that. I needed to clean my island countertop. There was no way I needed an unexpected visit from my grandmother when I hadn’t yet cleaned, well, you know, off the top.

  That took a further five minutes. By the time the entire counter was clean and dry and sparkling again, Kai was done in the shower and had darted into my room wrapped in a gray towel.

  Not that I’d looked.

  Much.

  I put the cream in my coffee and hit the button on the machine to fill his mug. I didn’t know how he took his, or even if he liked coffee, but I had a feeling he wasn’t going to leave immediately.

  I was right.

  He walked out of my room wearing nothing but his jeans. His socks were clearly tucked into his pocket, and the waistband of his boxers peeked out from the ball he’d made of his shirt.

  I eyed him. “Are you trying to announce to the entire building we had sex?”

  “If I were, I’d have crawled home naked last night.” He grinned. “Do I smell coffee?”

  I pointed to the Eeyore mug on the counter. “I don’t know how you like it.”

  “Cream, two sugars.” He proceeded to add both to his mug, stirred, and took a seat on one of the stools at the island. He hesitated before putting his mug down. “You cleaned this, right?”

  I hit him with a flat stare. “Unless my vagina smells like bleach, then yes, I cleaned it.”

  “Good point.” He took a large mouthful of coffee before setting his mug down. “Sorry for waking you.”

  “It’s fine. I’m a pretty light sleeper. I’d get woken up by my own shadow.” I sipped my coffee. “About last night—”

  Kai held up his hands. “Only last night. I know. As far as anyone else is concerned, it never happened.”

  My cheeks flushed and I tucked some hair behind my ear. “Good. Good. Okay.”

  “Ivy, you don’t need to blush.” He picked up his mug and cradled it. “It’s not your fault I’ll be thinking about bending you over a counter for the next week.”

  I choked on my coffee. “Stop that!”

  “But it’s so fun to embarrass you.”

  “Oh, go away.” I tossed a dishcloth at him. “I have to shower and do laundry. Go on. Go away.”

  “Do you often kick men out of your apartment before they’ve finished their coffee?”

  “I don’t have men in my apartment!” I threw another cloth at him, and he laughed, catching it. “We’re not mentioning last night ever again, do you hear me?”

  He slid both cloths across the island at me. “Don’t worry, Ivy,” he replied, then finished the rest of his coffee. His mug clinked against the counter and he scooped up his clothes. “As far as I’m concerned, I only get to do that to you in my dreams.”

  With one final wink, he grabbed his phone and keys out of his pocket and left my apartment.

  I stalked over and slammed the door behind him, a tight groan escaping my throat.

  God, he was infuriating.

  At least we were both clear about one thing: we were never, ever going to mention last night again.

  Thank God.

  The End… For now.

  Ivy and Kai’s story continues in THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, coming on July 21st, where that one-night stand isn’t quite as one-night as they’d planned… Read on for a sneak peek!

  THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

  One accidental pregnancy. One fake husband. What can go wrong?

  There’s nothing like starting your Monday morning with a positive pregnancy test.

  Trust me, I know. Because I’m looking at one right now.

  All I can think is: Oh, hell. My grandmother is going to kill me.

  This might just send her to an early grave, so there’s only one option—pretending the father is my new husband.

  If only he’d agree to fake it.

  Kai Connors was supposed to be nothing more than a one-night stand. A long, dirty, one-night stand fueled by one too many tequila shots, where the only promise was to never speak of it again.

  But if my unfairly sexy next-door neighbor gets his way, this fake marriage could turn out to be very, very real…

  CHAPTER ONE – IVY

  Wet hair stuck between your thighs after a shower.

  If you’d asked me the worst part about being a woman three weeks ago—hell, even three days ago—that would have been my answer.

  Now?

  Now, my answer was very different.

  The three minutes it took for a pregnancy test to reach its determination about whether or not you were about to spend the next eight months incubating a tiny human?

  Hands down the worst part about being a woman.

  Not to mention the scariest. Peeing on that stick was simultaneously the most terrifying and most awkward thing I had ever done.

  And the messiest.

  Look, I wasn’t winning any awards for my aim with the pee, okay? My poor hand had been scrubbed red raw in the last sixty seconds, and I was sure as hell never going to yell at a man again for missing the toilet.

  As long as he cleaned it up himself.

  Needless to say that if I ever had to do this again, I was going to pee in a pot first. Less room for error and all that.

  I checked the timer on my phone.

  Ninety seconds left.

  Then I could pull the pee stick from the top drawer of my bathroom dresser where I’d unceremoniously dumped it to stop me from torturing myself.

  In reality, that hadn’t happened.

  For one, I knew. You know how you get that gut feeling that tells you someone is an asshole? Or that the chicken is off? Or that your best friend really did steal your blusher and isn’t giving it back?

  Yeah.

  I knew.

  My period was two weeks late. My boobs were so tender they hurt when I looked at them, and I could smell a coffee from a mile away.

  Speaking of that, I couldn’t stand the smell of coffee anymore.

  So yeah, I knew. I knew what the test was going to say, and I had no idea what I was going to do about it.

  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t considering anything other than keeping the little alien who was almost certainly growing in my womb. I didn’t believe in anything else, and weirdly enough, that wasn’t the scariest part about this.

  Nope. It would be telling my staunchly Catholic, Jesus-loving grandmother that I was pregnant. Unmarried. From a one-night stand.

  That was going to go well.

  Not.

  Not to mention the fact I woul
d have to tell my next-door neighbor that our drunken, one-time escapade a few weeks ago had knocked me up.

  That was also not going to be fun. As far as I knew, Kai Connors had absolutely no intention of having children anytime soon. He’d spent weeks avoiding Amanda, a single mom in the building who had kids for no reason other than she had kids.

  But that was fine. If he didn’t want kids, I would move and figure it out by myself.

  I checked my phone again.

  Sixty seconds.

  I had no idea how this had happened, either. Sure, we hadn’t used a condom because we’d been drunk and I’d assured him it was fine, but I never ever missed a pill. It never crossed my mind this would happen. I was OCD about taking my pill. I took it out every single morning when I brushed my teeth and took it immediately after, and I’d checked the package every single day for a week while I’d built the confidence up to take this pregnancy test.

  All the days were clear. I’d taken it every day.

  Forty-five seconds.

  Oh, shit.

  I knew.

  The day my grandmother was rushed to the ER. That was it. That was the day. She swore she was dying but it turned out she was constipated. I’d taken my pill out, but now that I thought about it, I had no recollection whatsoever of taking it.

  It was so normal for me to do it that it’d never crossed my mind that I might have forgotten that I had not, in fact, taken it.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  It was all on me.

  Kai was going to kill me.

  I couldn’t not tell him. No matter what he did, he had the right to make a decision about what he wanted to do. But I also had to admit this was my fault. It was my mistake that had led to this.

  Thirty seconds.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t believe I’d been so damn stupid. I never should have said it was fine to do it without a condom. Such an idiot.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Really, by now, with our technology, it didn’t need to take three minutes for a pregnancy test to work its magic. Thirty seconds was all that was needed.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and paced the length of my bathroom. I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn’t know the first thing about babies. I had no idea how to change diapers or breastfeed or how to stop little humans running into roads.

  Oh, God, I was going to drop my baby, wasn’t I?

  My phone sprang to life. The high-pitched chirping of the alarm ricocheted off the walls, and I stopped the alarm that signified the end of the worst three minutes of my life before it made my headache any worse than it already was.

  I set the phone on the dresser and stared at the drawer that held the test. All I had to do was open it, flip the test over, and I’d get my answer. I would know one way or the other. I would know if it was a baby or just stress.

  After all, I’d read that sometimes the stress of worrying about pregnancy would delay a period, creating a vicious circle.

  Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath and tried to center myself. It didn’t work. My heart was pounding at a thousand beats a minute, and I swore I was going to faint.

  I grabbed the test from the drawer and perched on the edge of the bath.

  I was going to do this. I was going to look. I was going to find out.

  Right now.

  I opened my eyes and flipped the test.

  Pregnant, 3+.

  COMING JULY 21st! Available for pre-order now on all retailers. Visit www.emmahart.net/thegirlnextdoor for links.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Emma Hart is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of over thirty novels and has been translated into several different languages.

  She is a mother, wife, lover of wine, Pink Goddess, and valiant rescuer of wild baby hedgehogs.

  Emma prides herself on her realistic, snarky smut, with comebacks that would make a PMS-ing teenage girl proud.

  Yes, really. She’s that sarcastic.

  You can find her online at:

  www.emmahart.org

  www.facebook.com/emmahartbooks

  www.instagram.com/EmmaHartAuthor

  www.pinterest.com/authoremmahart

  Alternatively, you can join her reader group at http://bit.ly/EmmaHartsHartbreakers.

  You can also get all things Emma to your email inbox by signing up for Emma Alerts*. www.emmahart.net/newsletter

  *Emails sent for sales, new releases, pre-order availability, and cover reveals. Each cover reveal contains an exclusive excerpt.

  BOOKS BY EMMA HART

  Standalones:

  Being Brooke

  Catching Carly

  Casanova

  Mixed Up

  Miss Fix-It

  Miss Mechanic

  The Upside to Being Single

  The Hook-Up Experiment

  The Dating Experiment

  Four Day Fling

  Best Served Cold

  Tequila Tequila

  Catastrophe Queen

  The Roommate Agreement

  The Accidental Girlfriend

  Kiss Me Not

  Kiss Me Tonight

  Kiss Me Again

  Frenemies

  Number Neighbors

  Hot Mess

  The Girl Next Door:

  The One-Night Stand Next Door

  The Girl Next Door

  The Vegas Nights series:

  Sin

  Lust

  Stripped series:

  Stripped Bare

  Stripped Down

  The Burke Brothers:

  Dirty Secret

  Dirty Past

  Dirty Lies

  Dirty Tricks

  Dirty Little Rendezvous

  The Holly Woods Files:

  Twisted Bond

  Tangled Bond

  Tethered Bond

  Tied Bond

  Twirled Bond

  Burning Bond

  Twined Bond

  Tricky Bond

  By His Game series:

  Blindsided

  Sidelined

  Intercepted

  Call series:

  Late Call

  Final Call

  His Call

  Wild series:

  Wild Attraction

  Wild Temptation

  Wild Addiction

  Wild: The Complete Series

  The Game series:

  The Love Game

  Playing for Keeps

  The Right Moves

  Worth the Risk

  Memories series:

  Never Forget

  Always Remember