The Player Next Door

by Elizabeth Davis

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Two can play at this game . . . The smart and sexy new fake-dating rom-com from the author of the highly praised I Love You, I Hate You.

Logan Walsh doesn't do relationships.
Clare Thompson doesn't do casual.
What could possibly bring them together?

Finance bro Logan and tabletop game designer Clare couldn't be more different. They know this because their apartments face each other, and they've noticed. But not, you know, in a creepy way.

Still, when they get stuck in the elevator together, sparks fly and they each see an opportunity: Clare needs her co-workers to believe that she is capable of a one-night stand to get them to buy into her new role-play character, and Logan needs a steady girlfriend to prove his maturity to his boss.

After one night together, they're keen to get on with their respective plans. Except Clare can't understand why her hook-up seems to want to date her, and Logan is confused that Clare isn't responding to his flirting.

A kiss in the rain might clear up any confusion over their chemistry, but this whole 'relationship' thing is a two-player game, and both want to win. With their hearts and their pride on the line, could the prize be love?
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'Everything you love about romantic comedy - hilarious, sharply observed, smart, and sexy as hell' Rachel Hawkins

'Smart, sexy, and feminist Elizabeth Davis just became an auto-buy author for me' Annette Christie

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Raves for I Love You, I Hate You!'

This book made my heart sing . . . There's such tenderness and passion and LIFE . . . Go buy this book immediately'

'So good that I devoured the whole book in one sitting'

'You know when you find a book you love so much you accidentally stay up until well after 2am to finish it in one sitting? . . . That's this book!. . . A fun, fast paced debut romance that I could read again and again'

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: October 11, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

The lives of millions of people hung in the balance. They were moments away from complete destruction, and the fate of the entire continent of Sulzuris depended entirely on what Clare did next.

But first, she needed Kiki to pee, and she needed her to pee now. “Come on, just get on with it,” Clare said and tapped her foot, impatient with the little fuzzball’s pickiness. “Everyone is going to kill me if I’m late.” Normally she left herself plenty of time for Kiki’s walk before a Quest—especially when they were about to pick back up on a cliff-hanger like Devi left them on last week—but she lived on the fifth floor and the elevator was out. Again.

Kiki sniffed the tree and circled it for the third time. Clare sighed. “It’s the exact same spot you always pee in, you don’t need to make this a whole production.”

“Does that work?”

Clare spun on her heel and found herself face to face with none other than Mr. 6B himself, he of the unfairly handsome face and habit of eating out his lady friends on his living room couch. (Okay, it was just the one lady friend, and it was one time. It wasn’t like she was a perv. It was just that his living room was straight out her kitchen window, and she just happened to see it. It wasn’t like she watched. Much.) “Does what work?” she asked and tugged at her sweatshirt, wishing she was wearing something—anything—a little more flattering than a hoodie with Zutara Forever written across the front.

Not that she was ashamed of her hoodie—Zuko and Katara should have ended up together, as anyone who had seen Avatar: The Last Airbender would agree—but when faced with a man who looked like he stepped out of a cologne ad, she wished she was wearing just about anything more sophisticated.

“Berating your dog into peeing.”

Kiki finally got down to business. It was the exact same spot as when Clare brought her down earlier, the bark on the base of the tree still damp, and Clare had to stifle her sigh. “She’s not my dog,” Clare said stupidly, because, well, why was he talking to her? And how did people talk to him when looking at the handsomeness full-on was like staring directly into the sun?

He shifted his Smorgasbord tote into the other hand. She had heard a woman in the elevator call him Logan once, which fit. Logans were insouciant, laid-back, and cocky, and 6B fit the bill all too well. His eyes were icy blue, a fact that was utterly irrelevant to literally everything, and wow, she needed to stop gawking at him. “You just go around, stealing other people’s dogs, and then badger them into peeing faster?” he asked.

“I was not badgering,” she protested, reminding herself at the last second not to use his name. She had no reason to know it and appearing to know it would make her seem like a stalker. Oblivious to her mental panic, Logan grinned. Clare had never actually been in the direct path of one of his smiles before and she really hoped he had a permit or something because that shit was deadly. “I was just getting her to hurry up, because Kiki is fussy.”

“Still wondering how a dog that isn’t yours ended up being your responsibility.” He rested his shoulder against the young birch tree planted in the boulevard.

“Oh well, it’s simple. I steal dogs, and take them on walks, and then ransom them back to their owners.”

“Wouldn’t opening a dog-walking business be easier? And less illegal?”

“But then where’s the rush? No high to be had in following the law.”

“Oh, I get it, you’re an adrenaline junkie,” he said with a soft laugh.

Part of Clare felt like she was floating above herself, and another part wondered if she was hallucinating. Was she really flirting with him? He was so far out of her league it wasn’t even funny, but maybe that was it. He was so hot he barely counted as a person to her brain, more like a very sexy mirage who could talk. “That’s definitely me. I’m an adrenaline junkie and criminal, definitely not a dork who lives for Quest for Sulzuris and dog-sits for her aunt.”

“Okay, intrigued about whatever that quest thing is, but I see we’re finally solving the mystery of the dog’s ownership.”

“It wasn’t really a mystery, you just never asked who she belonged to,” Clare volleyed back. This was almost as much fun as fighting off a pack of orcs, a reference Sir Hotness obviously wouldn’t get, because guys with faces like that unfortunately did not play fantasy tabletop role-playing games. And Clare would know, because she didn’t just play Quest for Sulzuris, she worked for it, too. An awful lot of the players, not to mention her coworkers, were the exact stereotype people first thought of when you said “fantasy tabletop role-playing game.” She mostly worked with white dudes who had poorly maintained facial hair and assumed everyone in the world had an encyclopedic knowledge of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, and yes, they could be exactly as annoying as it sounded. Quest Gaming was working on broadening their demographic—that was the reason she had wanted to work there in the first place—and there were a lot more people who played these sorts of games than most people assumed, but some stereotypes are hard to shake. Particularly when there’s just enough truth to them to make them plausible.

“And is this dog-sitting business of yours free? Or do you charge your elderly aunt an arm and a leg for it?”

“I’m pretty sure she’d protest that elderly descriptor, but yes, it’s free. It’s a tale as old as time: girl loves dogs, girl doesn’t have time for a dog of her own, girl agrees to dog-sit for beloved aunt and pretty much anyone else who asks.”

“So if I got a dog, you’d walk him for free too? In the service of being a good neighbor?”

A flush started creeping up her neck, because it hadn’t really occurred to her that he knew they were neighbors. It was obvious why she’d notice him, of course, but it never once crossed her mind that he might have noticed her too.

Clare made herself shrug lazily. “I’d probably charge you. No reason; I just want your money.”

“You’re a shark, aren’t you?” he laughed and honestly, she’d pay him money to smile at her like that all the time. He straightened up off the tree and tipped his chin at Kiki, who was now straining at her leash toward the lobby. “Looks like your friend wants to go back inside. See you around, neighbor,” he said, striding away like this was a totally normal interaction and not incredibly surreal.

“Come on, Kiki,” Clare muttered to the dog, and watched Logan walk into the building out of the corner of her eye. “Let’s get you home so I can get back to saving Sulzuris.”

Logan ran his hand down Amber’s back, fingers gliding through the light sheen of sweat.

“Mmmm,” she sighed happily as she rolled over. She swung her long legs off the edge of his bed.

“Where are you going?” he asked. Amber never spent the night, but usually she waited a little longer before leaving.

She grabbed her panties from where he’d tossed them earlier. “Early meeting,” she said, and Logan didn’t know her that well—they didn’t exactly spend a lot of time talking—but he could tell it was a lie. She wasn’t looking at him, and there was an urgency to her movements that was out of place. He stayed where he was, watching her shimmy back into her clothes at nearly record speed. Amber fluffed her nut-brown hair out from where it was caught in her T-shirt and turned to face him, unusually fixated on straightening the hem of her shirt. She took a deep breath. “Okay, there’s no not-awkward way to say this, but tonight was the last time.”

“You moving or something?”

Amber refused to make eye contact. “You know how I was seeing that guy from Tinder, right?”

Logan made a noncommittal noise because he couldn’t say he remembered a specific guy, but he did know she was seeing other people. He was a lot more monogamous than most people thought, but when it came to casual sex partners he had no problem with them having other entanglements. Relationships meant having to care too much, in his opinion. His way meant getting laid regularly, but he never had to drive anyone to the airport.

“Yeah, anyway, I think he and I are going to go exclusive soon, so I probably won’t be seeing you anymore.”

Logan decided if he was going to get dumped, he might as well put his underwear on. “Probably? Or definitely?” he asked, pulling them on and picking up the jeans he’d been wearing when Amber arrived. He didn’t bother with a shirt. He worked hard to look this good, and he believed in showing off the results of that work.

“Depends on how the conversation goes, obviously, but—yeah, this is the end.”

Logan shrugged. He liked Amber well enough, but it wasn’t like either of them were particularly invested in this. He couldn’t even remember what her job was, although he thought it might be something that involved kids. Teacher, maybe? He didn’t think she was a nanny, if only because he probably would have made several borderline dirty jokes about that. Either way, she definitely didn’t have a meeting on a Sunday morning.

He realized belatedly she was waiting for him to have more of a response than just a shrug. “Okay then,” he said. “It’s been fun.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “It has been, hasn’t it?” she said, and he followed her out of the bedroom. “You might not be boyfriend material, but you’re a hell of a fuck.”

“I could be,” he said, more because he felt like he should protest that categorization than anything else. “I could be boyfriend material, I mean. If I wanted to be.”

Amber laughed. “Tell me one thing about myself that doesn’t have to do with sex.”

“You like red wine but not white.”

“Okay, fine—one thing about me that isn’t sex or drinking.”

Logan blinked, thinking hard. Everything that came to mind—her bra size, the fact that she liked to leave her heels on during sex—would make her point for her. “You’re a teacher,” he said finally, hoping he was right.

“What grade?” She lifted her chin, eyebrows raised, waiting.

Logan took a valiant stab in the dark. “Kindergarten.”

“So close,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “High school.”

That rang a bell. “Oh right, you’re an English teacher.”

“French,” she sighed.

This was not going well, so Logan did what he always did when things stopped panning out his way: he changed the subject. Or more accurately, he poured on the charm to distract her from the discussion entirely. He grinned, the grin that worked miracles on anyone attracted to men, and cocked his head to the side. “Maybe you have a point,” he said, and she shook her head fondly.

“Take care, Logan,” she said, stepping back into her heels and brushing a kiss to his cheek.

The door clicked softly behind her. He stood there for a moment, chest oddly hollow. Then he shook his head and put Amber out of his mind. Logan never saw the point in dwelling on women. There were plenty of fish in the sea, after all, and he was fairly irresistible bait. There was no reason to feel like this, so he simply wouldn’t.

Logan padded back toward his bedroom and noticed that one of the blinds was still open. He was high enough up that if he craned his neck, he had a view of the Hennepin Avenue Bridge from the windows on the other side of the apartment, but if he looked straight out this window it was into the units on the other side of his complex. Amber had a bit of an exhibitionist streak—and Logan was up for pretty much anything—so he’d gone down on her a handful of times on the couch that faced the window.

As far as he knew, none of his neighbors had ever complained, so either they hadn’t seen, or they enjoyed the show. The unit straight across from his never, ever opened their blinds—he might have thought it was unoccupied if not for the string of Christmas lights that went up on their balcony last November and never came down—but the one just one floor down was occupied by The Nerd.

He sort of liked The Nerd. There was an air of geekiness that seemed to surround her in an unapologetic way that he admired. He saw her often enough around the building, either in the elevator or, if the elevator was on the fritz, in the stairwell. Once he watched her trudge across the lobby with an armful of medieval weapons, loudly explaining to everyone she saw that they were both fake and for work, and please no one call the cops on her.

He saw her sometimes out on the sidewalk too, walking that tiny, fluffy dog that he only occasionally saw in her apartment. To be perfectly honest he was most curious about that part, which was why he had stopped to talk to her earlier that afternoon. He had been delighted to discover she was funny as hell, if still a little puzzling to him. Where did she take her baking every Saturday afternoon? What was with the dog sweaters? And what sort of job required fake medieval weapons?

She couldn’t be less his type, considering how much time he had spent wondering about her. He went for women like Amber—tall, willowy women with cheekbones that could cut glass and attitudes to match. The Nerd was cute, although in an off-beat sort of way. She was shorter than most of the women he dated, and certainly a little mousier, but her chin-length blonde hair always looked soft to the touch. He wouldn’t say no to fucking her, but he probably wouldn’t pursue her, either.

There used to be a guy who hung around The Nerd’s place a lot, some skinny, glasses-wearing dude who had once set up what appeared to be a diorama of a battle in the middle of her kitchen, but Logan hadn’t seen him in probably a year. He wondered about that too—did she dump him? He looked boring, so he hoped she had, for her sake. She’d been really funny about those weapons.

The Nerd was still awake. She baked a lot, sometimes late into the night. Logan liked to watch when she did, although not in a creepy, lurking sort of way. Mostly he’d just glance out his side window and try to guess what she was making, and then an hour or so later he’d see if he was right. But she wasn’t baking tonight. She was watching something on her TV—it featured lots of swords and possibly a trebuchet, so maybe medieval weapons were both a hobby and a job for her. He shook his head and spun the blinds closed. Whatever was wrong with him, spying on his neighbor was not going to fix it.

“Yaen, what’s your decision?” Devi prompted.

Clare’s palms were sweaty but she squared her shoulders and kept her voice even. She had been playing as Yaen for years. She knew exactly what Yaen would do. “I kiss him,” she announced.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” Clare ignored the sharp intakes of breath from her left and right.

“Roll for success, then,” Devi instructed her, and Clare held her own breath as the dice skittered across Toni’s dining-room table. She’d rolled a twelve and the entire party gasped. “You grab Ildash by the robes, kissing him despite everything he’s done. Your lips meet and for a moment, it seems you’ve failed. He goes still and you wonder if he’ll go through with it anyway, casting the spell that will rip the continent in two. Rain pours down around you, soaking you both—”

“Oh my god, a rain kiss?” Toni interrupted.

“You’re goddamn right it is,” Devi replied without missing a beat. “Slowly, Ildash lowers his hands, cupping your face as he returns the kiss. With tears pouring down your face, you watch as he pulls back and gasps, violet eyes flying open. The rain stops and a ray of sun breaks through the clouds.”

“Wait, he was cursed?” Clare gasped.

“Shut up and let me tell you. The golden light dissipates and Ildash is left standing before you, blinking like he’s never quite seen you before. He looks down at his hands, bewildered, and then back at you. ‘Where am I?’ he asks. ‘And what was I about to do?’ ”

“Oh my god, he was cursed,” Clare said again, a huge smile on her face. “Did my kiss break the curse?”

“Is this just Beauty and the Beast? It feels like Beauty and the Beast,” Annie pointed out.

“I’m getting there, and no, the Beast was dying so that’s different,” Devi said with a long-suffering air. “Do you guys even want me to keep going, or are you just going to keep interrupting me?”

“Sorry, continue,” Clare said.

Devi cleared her throat. “You explain everything to Ildash—the war he started, the spells he cast, the bargain he made with the Orcling King—and with each new revelation he looks more and more horrified. ‘How can I make things right?’ he asks, and you wonder where to even begin. It seems, however, that for now, Sulzuris is saved.” Devi sat back, apparently finished.

Clare preened in her chair and reached for one of her brownies. She baked for every game day and these were a particular favorite, fudgy and delicious, and she wasn’t about to deny herself some victory chocolate. But then she caught the way Devi was smirking. “Wait, seems? Oh shit, what did we miss?”

Devi leaned forward and so did Clare, Toni, and Annie, breath bated. “With Ildash freed, it seems Sulzuris is saved . . . but over on the eastern shores of Noet, an eerie calm has fallen over the land. The waves seem smaller and softer than usual, as if magic is smoothing the way for something. Even the ravens have gone quiet, their raucous calls silenced. It should feel peaceful, but there’s something sinister about the stillness. Just past a rocky outcropping that surrounds the deep, calm waters of Firesand Bay, the prow of a ship appears. And then another, and then another. The ships crowd the bay until there’s hardly any water left, it seems, just wooden vessels of war, all of them flying the same flag.”

Toni gasped and Devi sent her a stern look, the rest of the table silent as a tomb. Devi returned to her Game Master voice. “The Dragon Army has arrived.”

She may as well have dropped a bomb. “We defeated them months ago!” Annie exploded, while Clare and Toni shrieked in surprise. “They’re back?”

Devi grinned and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “You defeated some of them. But no one ever said they had entirely given up, and Ildash has a lot to answer for still. But that will have to wait until next time.”

“Fuck,” Annie muttered. “I wish you weren’t so good at this.”

Toni frowned. “Degar didn’t even get to do anything. I maintain my potion would have worked.”

“Probably,” Devi conceded, closing up her iPad with her notes. “It would have killed Ildash, but then you would have had to fight the king’s minions, and with all the damage you took storming the castle I’m not sure it would have worked. You’d be betting a lot on the dice, which is risky. Plus, Ildash-on-a-redemption-quest will be a powerful ally if you let him join you.”

“Fair enough,” Toni said. “Chase is going to be pissed he missed this, though. And I can’t believe Yaen is getting the villain romance of Clare’s dreams. How long have you been angling for this?”

“Since forever,” Clare and Devi said in unison. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Clare added.

Clare had been playing Quest for Sulzuris since her freshman year of high school, so that wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Her first group had been a bunch of quiet, nerdy boys, but they had universally looked down on Clare’s love of romantic storylines. It cheapens the game, they always said, and she had given up on making those choices for years, even after she’d left that game in a somewhat explosive fashion. But their mockery and her subsequent humiliation had stuck with her, and it wasn’t until she met Devi her first month of college that she’d found another girl who played, and who similarly thought romance adventures were actually more fun than regular ones. It was hard—okay, nearly impossible—to play Sulzuris with just two people, but they managed, coming up with solo quests for each other and trading off as Game Master until Devi met Annie at a Young Democrats meeting on campus and hit it off. Toni and her twin brother Chase joined them their first year out of undergrad, when they were all still living in shitty student housing in Dinkytown and working terrible jobs that were only tangentially related to their degrees.

Now they were on their fourth campaign together, although Chase traveled a lot for work and thus was more of an auxiliary member now. But love for Quest for Sulzuris had been a defining feature of Clare’s life for a decade now, which was why being hired by Quest Gaming two years ago had been such a momentous occasion for her. There had been some ups and downs working there, but she was creating a world that other people would get to lose themselves in, and that was enough.

“Look on the bright side,” Clare said to Toni, who was a touch bloodthirsty when it came to these decisions. “I’m sure Degar will get to kill a lot of dragons on the next campaign.”

“You will, I promise,” Devi said, and lifted her brownie toward Clare in a silent salute. “What’s new with you?” she asked Clare.

Clare busied herself picking up some minuscule crumbs and shrugged. “Not much,” she admitted. Her life had been quiet lately, and while that wasn’t unpleasant it was also, well, a little boring. She went to work, which she loved but where she still didn’t have many friends, she baked, she walked Kiki occasionally, and she came to game day. They were gearing up for a new edition at work, which would be exciting, but that pitch meeting wasn’t for weeks, and there was no guarantee her idea would be chosen.

Clare’s life was very safe, but it was also monotonous. She didn’t even have a boyfriend or crush to break up the routine, not since Reid left.

She had been with Reid for nine months, just long enough to start making long-term plans. They met at a party at Chase’s boyfriend’s apartment; some guy in the room made a disgusting joke and Reid had rolled his eyes at her, thus signaling he was one of the good ones. She asked him for his number and within a week, they were dating.

Clare had been trying to work up the courage to broach the “should we live together?” discussion when Reid abruptly announced he had taken a job at a company in Phoenix. There was no conversation about her joining him, or them even trying long-distance. Just Sorry, you know how I feel about Minnesota winters and I think I want to make a fresh start, and that was that.

She’d been sad about the breakup, but not particularly devastated. However, lately she’d felt a little bit itchy to change things up, if not quite itchy enough to download a dating app. Clare didn’t have a problem with using dating apps in general, but she found the endless Hey there cutie attempts at conversations to be soul-sucking. She wanted a connection with someone, and yeah, sex would be nice—better than nice, actually, she . . .