Love on Lexington Avenue Read online

  Copyright © 2019 LL Book Company

  Cover illustration © Connie Gabbert

  The right of Lauren Layne to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in this eBook edition in 2019

  by HEADLINE ETERNAL

  An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by arrangement with Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4722 6509 8

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headlineeternal.com

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Praise for Lauren Layne

  By Lauren Layne

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Don’t miss Passion on Park Avenue

  Discover The Prenup

  Meet the Wedding Belles

  Discover the men of Oxford magazine

  Find out more about Headline Eternal

  About the Author

  Lauren Layne is the New York Times bestselling author of more than two dozen romantic comedies. Her books have sold over a million copies, in eight languages. Lauren’s work has been featured in Publishers Weekly, Glamour, The Wall Street Journal and Inside Edition. She is based in New York City.

  Join Lauren at www.laurenlayne.com to get news on her latest books, or keep up to date with her on Instagram: @laurenlayneauthor.

  Praise for Lauren Layne

  Just some of the reasons to indulge yourself in Lauren

  Layne’s irresistible romances:

  ‘Chic and clever! Passion on Park Avenue comes to life like a sexy, comedic movie on the page’ Tessa Bailey, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘I couldn’t put it down! Not only is the friendship between Naomi, Claire and Audrey refreshing and inspirational, the chemistry between Naomi and Oliver is off the charts! I love a sassy heroine and a funny hero and Layne delivers both. Witty banter and an electric connection between Naomi and Oliver kept me turning the pages late into the night. Lauren Layne knocks this one right out of Park Avenue!’ Samantha Young, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘Strong characters and relatable situations elevate Layne’s bighearted contemporary . . . This vivid enemies-to-lovers romance digs into class differences, emotional baggage, and the reality of dealing with aging parents’ Publishers Weekly, starred review

  ‘Featuring wine in coffee mugs, dinner parties with ulterior motives, and Naomi and Oliver being (almost) caught with their pants down, this is perfect for readers who love the dishy women’s fiction of Candace Bushnell’ Booklist

  ‘Layne is one of the best authors writing today and I was reminded of that as I read this book. . . It was hot and sexy and sweet. I laughed and shrieked and cried, exactly what I want from a book’ Obsessed with Romance

  By Lauren Layne

  The Central Park Pact Series

  Passion on Park Avenue

  Love on Lexington Avenue

  Wedding Belles Series

  From This Day Forward (e-novella)

  To Have And To Hold

  For Better Or Worse

  To Love And To Cherish

  Oxford Series

  Irresistibly Yours

  I Wish You Were Mine

  Someone Like You

  I Knew You Were Trouble

  I Think I Love You

  Love Unexpectedly Series

  Blurred Lines

  Good Girl

  Love Story

  Walk Of Shame

  An Ex For Christmas

  I Do, I Don’t Series

  Ready To Run

  Runaway Groom

  Standalone

  The Prenup

  About the Book

  They vowed to steer clear of Manhattan’s heartbreakers – but when it comes to love, some risks are worth taking. . .

  There’s never a bad time to fall in love in the city, right? Wrong. According to the recently-widowed Claire Hayes, it’s very, very wrong. After finding out her late husband was a liar and a cheat, Claire’s focus is solely on redesigning her Upper East Side brownstone, ridding it of anything that reminds her of her philandering husband. But when she meets gruff and often-cantankerous contractor Scott Turner and realizes not all men are scumbags, Claire must decide if she’s ready to risk her heart again.

  Scott needs a change of pace from the corporate offices and swanky hotels he’s been building, and bluntly makes it clear to Claire that’s the only reason he took on her house. But when long work days turn into even longer nights, their mutual wariness morphs into something more complicated – a grudging respect, and maybe even attraction. . .? Scott knows he’s not one to settle down, but then why can’t he bring himself to move on to the next job?

  For Anth, best friend and “the one”

  Prologue

  SATURDAY, JULY 21

  It would have been downright tacky to say so out loud, but anyone who was anyone in New York City knew that the funeral of Brayden Daniel Hayes was the social event of the summer.

  Not because Brayden was at the top of Manhattan’s A-list.

  He’d been more on the periphery, the type of guy who was in the solar system but was a forgettable moon, orbiting around someone else’s more impressive planet. Brayden had money, but not big money. He’d been on the attractive side of average, but still average. Well-liked, but not adored.

  For most of his relatively short adult life, Brayden Hayes had been solidly in the oh yeah, that guy category of society. The type who came and went through life without causing much of a blip.

  Except, of course, if the way one left said life was an accidental drowning.

  At the age of thirty-five.

  With two empty bottles of sauvignon blanc rolling around one’s sailboat. To say nothing of the rumors of what he’d been doing befo
re he’d set sail. Or who he’d been doing.

  That kind of death could catapult just about anyone to Page Six for the season.

  And so, on a sunny afternoon in July, Manhattan’s elite sat in Central Presbyterian Church on Park and Sixty-Fourth, their expressions the perfect masks of somber respect, even as they quietly exaggerated their closeness to the deceased.

  Did you hear? He’d just accepted my dinner party invitation the day before they found him.

  I should have known something was up. When we caught up just last week, he wasn’t at all himself.

  He and I dated once, years ago. I can’t help but think what might have been . . .

  Others had never met the man, and so merely gossiped amongst themselves, wondering if the rumors were true that his body had been found naked. If it was true that it was an NYU undergrad who’d called the Coast Guard when he hadn’t met her at the dock as they’d planned.

  But at the heart of all the hissed whispers beneath black hats and somber suits was one delicious, looming question mark.

  Where was Claire Hayes?

  As it turned out, not everyone was at Brayden’s funeral.

  In the front pew of the church, where Brayden’s family sat stoically listening to placid words of a life ended too soon, a prime front-row seat stayed conspicuously, shockingly vacant.

  Even as the theories on why reached a fever pitch, three women who’d only just met sat a mere few blocks away on a bench in Central Park, having two vital things in common:

  1. Matching Louboutins.

  2. A very intimate connection to Brayden Hayes.

  And so, as strangers who’d barely known the man began filing out of the church, murmuring plans of mimosas and imminent returns to Hamptons vacation homes, these three women who knew him better than anyone were making a very different sort of plan altogether.

  The wife.

  The girlfriend.

  The mistress.

  They had a pact. To never, ever let one another fall for a womanizer like Brayden Hayes again.

  Chapter One

  ONE YEAR LATER

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 6

  It all started with a cupcake.

  Well, the cupcake and the cards.

  Claire Hayes stared down at the lone cupcake, with its single pathetic candle and wondered why she’d bothered. Some things didn’t need acknowledgment, much less celebration. And as far as Claire was concerned, thirty-fifth birthdays were one of them.

  Particularly the thirty-fifth birthday of a widow who was woefully short on optimism, whose metabolism was getting increasingly lazy, and who was celebrating said birthday alone.

  At least the alone part had been her choice.

  Claire’s parents had offered to come back from their retirement home in Florida to take her out to dinner, but she’d nixed that. She loved Helen and George Burchett to pieces, but the last thing Claire needed right now was her dad’s constant muttering.

  I swear, Princess, if Brayden hadn’t been such an idiot as to fall off that boat, I’d kill him myself.

  Nor her mother’s well-meaning but exhaustive concern over the state of Claire’s reproductive organs. Did I tell you that Annmarie’s daughter froze her eggs? She thought it was prudent, and she’s only thirty-two . . .

  So, no. Claire’s parents had not been what she’d needed on this particular birthday. And though she felt guilty admitting it, she hadn’t been up for seeing any of her friends, either. Partially, because friends—the real kind—were hard to come by these days. Her once thriving social circle had all but dried up after Brayden’s death.

  Some of that was on them. They’d apparently decided a widow at a cocktail party was a downer, and the invitations had stopped rolling in just as abruptly as the sympathy flowers.

  But a little of her current isolation from her old social group was on Claire.

  Even the well-intentioned friends, the ones who cared more about her than the gossip, hadn’t understood. Not what it was like to lose a spouse so young, and certainly not what it was like to lose a spouse who’d turned out to be downright odious.

  But there were two people who got it. Two friends who understood her in a way Claire’s old social set never could. In fact, Naomi Powell and Audrey Tate had been the only people with whom Claire would have considered ringing in thirty-five.

  They’d have been here in a heartbeat, and her husband’s girlfriend and mistress, more than anyone, would have understood the melancholy tone of this particular “celebration.”

  And yet, some nagging part of Claire wondered if they would truly all-the-way understand.

  Naomi Powell may not have known that Brayden was married any more than Claire had known that Brayden was cheating, but that didn’t change the fact Naomi had been the hot, adventurous mistress. The Jessica Rabbit type of seductress that men were drawn to when they weren’t satisfied at home. Men like Brayden, apparently.

  Audrey might have understood a little more. Naomi had thought of Brayden as a fling, but Audrey Tate had loved Brayden, had confessed to Claire that she’d hoped—even assumed—she’d marry him some day, unknowing that the title of Brayden Hayes’s wife was already in use. The sheer pain of the betrayal, Audrey understood.

  It was the way Audrey and Claire had emerged from Brayden’s betrayal where they were different. Audrey, with all the hopeful optimism of a woman in her twenties, was still convinced that Prince Charming was out there.

  Claire? Not so much. Sometimes a toad was just a toad, no matter how properly he was kissed.

  Her lone birthday candle now dripping green wax all over vanilla frosting, Claire blew it out with an irritable puff and turned to the other harbinger of her birthday blues:

  The stack of birthday cards.

  She’d thought the smattering of text messages and emails that had been trickling in all day had been depressing enough. Most of them had simply said Happy Birthday, resulting in balloons exploding all over her iPhone. Others had contained a chipper Happy BDay, Girl! from women she hadn’t heard from since her last birthday.

  But these—the cards that had been appearing in her mailbox for a few days now—they felt like they were from a different lifetime. Claire hadn’t even realized people under the age of sixty still sent paper cards, but alongside the expected cards from some distant relatives, there were plenty of cards from people Claire’s age.

  They were well-intentioned, she knew that. They were meant to let her know someone was thinking of her, but part of her, the new bitter, jaded part that had emerged since Brayden’s death, couldn’t help but wonder . . .

  Had these so-called friends sent paper cards because they were a one-way communication? As a way of acknowledging her birthday without having to interact with all of her tainted, depressing widowness?

  They were all expensive, as was the way of the Upper East Side elite. Glitter and rich, heavy card stock abounded. Personalized heartfelt messages did not.

  Cheers to another year, Claire.

  Best wishes, Claire!

  Enjoy your big day!

  She swallowed, fighting a wave of despondence at the realization that these generic birthday messages were the grownup version of “Have a great summer!” scrawled in a high school yearbook.

  When had she become that woman nobody thought about until her birthday popped up on their calendar? Oh yeah, her. Poor thing. Better send a card . . .

  Claire shoved away the cards and resumed glaring at the cupcake. She plucked the candle out of it and sucked the frosting end.

  So. This is thirty-five.

  Claire’s only consolation was that thirty-five couldn’t possibly be worse than thirty-four. A year ago, she’d still been dealing with the aftermath of planning her husband’s funeral. Not great. The fact that she hadn’t attended the funeral she’d planned? Worse. Much worse.

  Claire had made it as far as the top of the steps of the church. Even as her brain had dictated she play the role of grieving widow, her heart had commanded som
ething else:

  Screw him.

  Screw Brayden, and the mockery he’d made of her marriage.

  And so she’d run. Figuratively. More accurately, she’d teetered as fast as her stilettos would carry her. And so, while family and friends had gathered to say farewell to Brayden, Claire had been sitting on a bench in Central Park.

  Ironically, it had been that day, in that spot, as she’d sat both hating and missing Brayden, that she’d met Audrey and Naomi. It had been there that the three women had made a pact not to fall for another man like Brayden.

  But what Claire hadn’t said that day—what she still hadn’t told them—was that she had no intention of falling for another man. Period. She’d done the big white wedding. She’d promised to love and cherish. And damn it, she’d honored those vows. No one had told her that it would be one-sided. Nobody told her that lurking beneath the veneer of a relationship, hiding under the label of “love,” was a whole steaming pile of crap.

  Did that make her bitter? Ab.So.Lutely.

  And she was just fine with bitter.

  Claire swiped her finger along the side of the cupcake, scooping up some of the frosting that the wax hadn’t gotten to. The familiar flavor of vanilla rolled over her tongue. She scowled. Of course it was vanilla. It had long been her favorite flavor. Of cake, ice cream, coffee.

  Vanilla frosting, vanilla cupcake . . .

  Vanilla life.

  She narrowed her eyes at the cupcake, irrationally angry at the baked good for not being exciting. She could have gone with Naomi’s favorite: red velvet with cream cheese frosting, flecked with spicy little flecks of cinnamon. Or Audrey’s: double-chocolate everything, all the time, the richer, the better.

  Claire gave a rueful smile when she realized that the trio’s respective favorite cupcakes paralleled their looks. Naomi’s red velvet matched her vibrant red hair. Audrey’s chocolate fetish perfectly matched her silky dark hair.

  And Claire . . . vanilla.

  She lifted a hand to her shoulder-length blond hair. Not platinum; not really gold, either; just a flat, WASP-pale yellow. Shoving the plate aside in annoyance, Claire stood, and desperate for something to distract her, she went to the kitchen counter, determined to lose herself in her latest obsession: