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more than Apartment Two…he needed to stay the hell away from her.

Chapter Five

Tyler hadn’t been doing half bad in his effort to disengage with Maggie. Four days he’d kept it civil, resisting her stairwell taunts no matter how tempting the opening she left him. He was doing the right thing, but apparently it was too much to hope he’d get a little karmic credit for his efforts and the universe would cut him some slack.
    He’d been propped against an open stretch of wall inside The Groove, listening to one of the guys he was partnered with on the Lyla Textile ad campaign playing sax with his jazz band, when he’d glanced back toward the bar and there she was.
    Maggie.
    Her hair done up in a way he hadn’t seen before. Soft, with a kind of understated sexy that made a man think about getting his fingers into it—before he’d realized he had no business thinking like that at all. She was wearing high heels and this long, fitted overcoat with a filmy midnight scarf at the neck and a hint of something silky in a rusty red flirting around the break at the bottom.
    Damn,
she looked pretty.
    This had to be the date Sam and Ava mentioned she was going on. The one he’d tried not to get too curious about but still somehow managed to learn they called Hot Doc, that Ava thought he was a class act and totally deserving of his moniker, that Sam knew people who knew people at the hospital and his sources claimed the guy wasn’t a total douche, and that Ford was of the opinion Maggie almost looked like she wasn’t dreading the date…which didn’t make a whole lot of sense until Ava had given him the broad strokes of this pact she and Maggie had going. Hell, who was he kidding? It
still
didn’t make sense. But since he wasn’t curious, he’d kept a rein on the sixty-odd questions that had immediately sprung to mind.
    Like he was keeping a rein on the questions he had now. Because Maggie and her date weren’t his problem. Even if she had walked in alone and was worrying that freaking lush bottom lip of hers while she stared at her phone.
    Not his problem.
    She found a couple open seats at the far end of the bar and sat down, shaking her head at the bartender.
    Tyler scanned the place, taking it in with a different eye than when he’d shown up earlier to support a colleague. Being Wednesday, it wasn’t busy. There were a few clusters of after-work-looking dudes who’d apparently decided to make a night of it. Some couples. A group of women who were putting their coats on to leave. And a small crowd toward the back half of the place, obviously there more for the band than the bar.
    Not exactly packed with predators, but still, with Maggie coming in alone, looking the way she looked…it was too much to hope there wouldn’t be one—like the schmo already pushing up from his table to amble over to the vacant seat beside her.
    Not his problem.
    But even as he thought the words, he felt the muscles along his neck and shoulders tense and some wholly misguided territorial instinct kick up.
    Maggie didn’t need him.
    She could handle herself.
    The guy leaned in, throwing her his line. Maggie answered without looking up from her phone. No smile. Zero encouragement. Still, he flashed his table one of those too-confident grins that wouldn’t let him back down for at least a few more minutes.
    Not. His. Problem.
    Her date would be there any minute, probably falling all over himself for being late, because seriously, to have a woman like that waiting…
    Another line from the barfly and Tyler’s molars ground down. This time, Maggie didn’t even speak, offering only a shake of her head. She was going to be fine. Without him.
    —
    Leo had seemed like he’d make such a perfect date.
    Charming and attractive. Confident without being arrogant. Interested without coming across desperate. And thanks in part to a rotating schedule at the hospital, working the kind of limited availability that fit Maggie’s pact needs