A flutter of something against the skin of her neck.

Fingers, caressing, stroking. Then a kiss, lingering, hot.

Nina’s heart beat strongly in her breast and heat exploded pure and strong in her stomach.

She’d imagined this very scene countless times over the past few days. Had anticipated this moment. But nothing had prepared her for the thrill of the unknown that zinged through her bloodstream. The electric desire for the unknown, waiting, longing for touch, for connection to the stranger in her bedroom.

TORI CARRINGTON

multi-award-winning, bestselling husband-and-wife duo Lori and Tony Karayianni are the power behind the pen name Tori Carrington. Their more than thirty-five titles include numerous Blaze® mini-series, as well as the ongoing Sofie metropolis comedic mystery series with another publisher. Visit www.toricarrington.net and www.sofiemetro.com for more information on the couple and their titles.

Dear Reader,

Best friends to lovers. One of our all-time favourite themes. But what would happen, we wondered, if a girl has two male best friends? Oh, the possibilities!

In Shameless, sexy baker Nina Leonard finds that she’s turned into a serial monogamist, repeatedly mistaking one-night stands for the real thing. But when she receives an indecent proposal from hot best friends and business partners Kevin Weber and Patrick Gauge – namely to help her break her destructive dating pattern by arranging a night of anonymous sex with a fantasy stranger – Nina is hard-pressed to refuse. Especially since she’s sure that stranger will be one of the two of them. But which one?

We hope you enjoy every erotic and neurotic moment of Nina, Kevin and Gauge’s unconventional journey towards happily-ever-after. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at PO Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, USA, (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the web at www.toricarrington.net.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading.

Lori & Tony Karayianni

SHAMELESS

BY

TORI CARRINGTON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

We dedicate this book to everyone

who’s ever wondered “what if.”

Here’s to finding your own

unconventional happy-ever-after…

1

“IN THIS DAY and age, is it bad for a woman to yearn for some good, hot, anonymous sex?”

Nina Leonard sat back and took a sip from her extra-large white ceramic cup of latte, waiting for Kevin Weber and Patrick Gauge’s responses. She’d intended her words to be shocking. Had wanted them to reflect the chaos she’d been feeling lately after a long period of unwelcome celibacy.

The three of them were seated around the mammoth fireplace that dominated the middle of BMC, the bookstore/music center/café they jointly owned in Fantasy, Michigan, southwest of Ann Arbor. It was just after ten and although the three partners had officially closed the front doors, three customers still roamed around the cozy depths of the store. One of them, an elderly woman with a cane, peeked at the three around a stand of marked-down holiday cookbooks and Christmas CDs that would finally be packed away tomorrow when the calendar changed from January to February. The customer reminded Nina of her grandmother, bless her heart, who would have done exactly the same thing. But Gladys Leonard wouldn’t have stopped at eavesdropping; she would have contributed something to the conversation. Perhaps she would even have sat down next to her to share her own erotic adventures, played out during the early Motown days of Detroit, a city that lay forty-five miles to the east of the small university town.

Nina was sprawled on the flowery, overstuffed sofa, her feet crossed on the coffee table in front of her, her large cup taking two hands to handle.

Lately, she’d been craving a man who would take two hands to handle.

“Uh-oh,” Gauge said from the ottoman nearer the fire, where he sat tuning his acoustic guitar. “Have we hit the six-month mark already?”

Kevin put his own coffee mug down on the table next to the thriller he’d been reading. “Has it been that long already? Feels like just yesterday that we finally got rid of Mr. Jenkins.”

Gauge chuckled. “That’s because it was yesterday. That’s when I spotted the sorry son-of-a-bitch browsing through the makeover section, you know, the one nearer the café.”

“All the better to stalk Nina.”

Nina gave an eye roll and rested her cup in her lap, her apron with the store’s logo on the front still snowy white and feeling freshly starched. “You two think you know me so well.” She tucked her short blond hair behind her ear. “I believe you know me not at all.”

Gauge strummed a few chords of B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” and looked at Kevin. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t she say during lunch that we knew her better than anyone out there?”

“Mmm, yes. Just after we called her on her desire to go to Florida for Valentine’s Day.” Kevin glanced at her. “You love the snow and you know it.”

“Are you calling me contrary?” Nina asked.

“Not at all.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Nina took another long sip of her latte. This was usually one of her favorite times of the day, when the three of them drifted together, either at one of the café tables where they’d pick at what remained in the bakery display Nina had so carefully stocked, or in the music center where Gauge would pop in whatever blues or rock CD he’d received in that day’s shipment, or here in Kevin’s domain where original, leather-bound classics were stocked alongside the latest bestselling thrillers and romances.

But tonight…tonight Nina felt a restless something that wouldn’t be calmed by the blazing fire in the stone hearth to her left, or by the thick, white snowflakes swirling golden under the old copper streetlamps she could see through the front window.

“I caught her browsing through the erotica titles in the romance section earlier,” Kevin said.

Nina nearly choked on her latte.

“Ah, then that would explain it, wouldn’t it?” Gauge asked, giving her a long, knowing look. “She’s in need of a good orgasm.”

“And in search of one, she’ll wind up getting involved with the wrong man because she’ll mistake the fundamental desire to mate for a relationship.”

“What? Kevin Weber, you just did not use the word mate,” Nina said.

“Better than screw, I think,” Gauge said, putting his guitar aside and resting his well-developed forearms on his jeans-clad legs. He shrugged. “No matter the word choice, Kevin’s right. How long has it been since we decided to combine our stores? Two years?”

“Three,” Nina and Kevin said in unison.

“Yes, three. And in those three years, Kev here and I have watched you repeat the same cycle. First, there’s all that wistful sighing and fidgeting—”

“I do not fidget.” Nina caught herself scratching her shoulder and stopped.

Kevin sat forward. “Then there’s the flirting with every half-decent-looking guy that comes through the front doors.”

“I do not flirt with customers.”

The two men shared a glance.

Gauge chuckled and shook his head. “Then she makes her choice, she goes out on one date, then two….”

Kevin took over. “She sleeps with him, thinks that now she’s been intimate with the idiot, well, that constitutes a relationship….”

“And she spends the next six months trying to make something work that never stood a chance from the beginning.”

“All because she wanted sex.”

“And then it takes six months of her swearing off men before the cycle starts back up all over again.”

Nina gaped at them both. “That is so not the way it happens.”

“Yes it is,” Gauge told her.

Kevin nodded.

Nina put her cup on the coffee table and then crossed her arms over her chest, staring at them.

Okay, so maybe they had a point. Maybe she was caught in some sort of vicious cycle that left her with exes stalking her from various areas of the bookstore, wondering what they’d done wrong. Only they hadn’t done anything wrong. She had. She’d chosen men who held out zero hope of keeping her interest once the sex went bad.

And it always went bad, didn’t it? She’d jump into the relationship, hormones raging, and they’d spend the first few weeks mostly in bed. And then slowly, but surely, things would begin to cool off from there. Then, inevitably, would come the day when the hormonally charged air would clear, she’d look at the man across the breakfast table and finally see him for what he really was.

And she would dump him.

Okay, she wasn’t as cruel as all that. But she would find a way to wiggle out of it with excuses such as the café needed more of her attention, or she was thinking about going back to school, or she’d flat-out say that they’d probably made a mistake and maybe they should think about dating other people.

“Good thing the three of us are just friends,” Gauge said. “Or else she’d have kicked both of us to the curb years ago.”

“Mmm,” Kevin agreed.

“That’s only because I couldn’t decide on which one of you to date, so I thought it would be a good idea not to date either of you.”

Nina grinned, finally getting the shocked responses she was after.

KEVIN WEBER felt as though the neck of his white T-shirt had just shrunk three sizes, and he shifted the denim shirt he wore over it as he stared at the sexy blonde spilled over the couch like a satin sheet.

“What?” she asked with a wicked smile. “Surely you both knew I was attracted to you.”

She looked between them and then her gaze settled on Gauge.

Kevin grimaced.

In the past three years he’d been in a constant state of lust where Nina Leonard was concerned. It was more than the clingy black pants and tight white tops she favored, showing her curvy body to perfection. Often he’d catch her stretching after a long, busy day when she thought no one was watching; there was something about the feline way she contorted her body, the back arches that alternately brought her lush bottom up and the smooth, tight-tipped swell of her breasts out, that had caused the loss of more than a single night’s sleep.

Nina Leonard was smart, talented and witty. She could indulge in an hours-long open criticism of the classics while she tried out her latest sweets recipe and then dive into the latest celebrity gossip without missing a beat.

He knew everything about her. From her favorite color—deep purple—to the fact that her family was from an old, downtown section of Detroit and that she had settled inAnnArbor after attaining her business degree from nearby University of Michigan. He knew that more than once she had burned a batch of her famous bear claws because she had her nose buried in one of those steamy romance novels, and that she preferred plain white underpants over thongs because wearing the latter found her constantly wiggling to try to remove what she called a permanent wedgie. (Now that had been a week to remember.)

And he knew that she considered him little more than an older brother she was constantly trying to fix up with one of her friends. She had once come straight out to ask if he was gay.

For the record, he wasn’t.

And if he needed more reminders of that, all he had to do was think of the sudden tightness of his jeans when she admitted she’d been attracted to him.

Gauge slid him a knowing gaze. “We suspected.”

Nina made a strangled sound. “You mean you guys talk about me in that…way?”

“Of course we do.” Gauge crossed his own arms over his chest; he wore a T-shirt as Kevin did, but without a denim shirt to dress it up. Today he’d chosen a faded dark-gray one that advertised an old heavy-metal rock band. “We are just men, after all.”

Kevin said nothing; in fact, he was incapable of saying anything at all.

He picked his coffee cup back up even as Nina took her feet from the table and sat forward, causing the front of her apron to bow open. Kevin gazed at the soft mounds of flesh visible in the deep V of her shirt and then back up at her face.

“So you both have thought about…sleeping with me?” she asked.

Kevin quickly put his cup back down, afraid he might choke if he tried to swallow anything.

Gauge openly considered her. “I don’t know about Kevin, here, but you’ve landed the starring role in one or two of my favorite wet dreams.”

Kevin stared at him and said, “Probably in concert with one or two other female participants.”

Gauge shrugged without apology. “Here and there. I’m not going to hide that I’m a guy with varied tastes.”

“As if you could,” Nina said. “Nearly every woman who comes into this place always finds a way to linger in the music section.”

“Hey, whatever sells CDs.”

Kevin watched the two of them. Had Nina just given Gauge a suggestive smile?

And had she just turned that same smile on him?

He suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“What about you, Kev?” she murmured. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have sex with me?”

POOR SAP, Patrick Gauge thought. Look at him. He’s about ready to jump out of his skin.

Gauge shook his head and picked his guitar back up. Yeah, he’d freely admit that more than once he’d thought about dipping his fingers into the back waist of Nina’s tight slacks when she gave him one of her generous hugs. He was only human. More, he was only a man.

Wasn’t it his roving father who had explained to him that there wasn’t one out there woman enough to keep a Gauge happy?

He absently strummed a few notes. He came from a long line of musicians who had traveled more than they’d stayed in one place. Recently, he’d been pondering how it was that three years had passed since he’d arrived in Ann Arbor and then Fantasy, with a plan to play a few gigs at college bars and then move on farther down the line.

But he didn’t have to look too far for the answer. He took in his two best friends, the closest he’d come to any kind of real family, and he knew why he’d stayed. And why he continued to stay, trading a music career for selling CDs and working on a few CDs of his own that barely made it farther than the local college scene.

“I’d better go take care of the last customer,” Kevin said in lieu of answering Nina’s question.

Gauge shook his head again, having noticed that two of the browsers had left without buying anything, but the elderly woman who had kept her shopping close so she could listen in on their conversation had apparently been interested enough to add to her purchases.

He continued strumming an old blues tune that his father had taught him when he was seven until Kevin had followed the customer to the doors and locked them after her.

Kevin finally rejoined them, probably hoping that the conversation had moved on.

Gauge had purposely made sure it hadn’t.

As soon as Kevin sat down, Gauge placed the bottom of the guitar on the area rug and gave it a twirl. “Hey, Nina, why don’t you let Kev and I arrange that night of hot, anonymous sex you said you were looking for?”

2

NINA sat back into the couch as if pushed there by a man’s commanding hands.

Gauge’s grin was dirtier than anything a washing machine and a gallon of bleach could clean.

It seemed she wasn’t the only one looking to shock tonight.

“Christ, Gauge, what is going on in that oversexed mind of yours now?” Kevin asked, picking up the book he’d been reading and putting it in his lap.

“No, let him talk,” Nina said, intrigued. “What are you suggesting, Gauge?”

The last thing on earth Nina wanted was to be predictable. Was it possible that her friends and partners were right and that she had been running in boring cycles for the past few years? Could her bad decisions begin as little more than basic, human need? Having gone without physical intimacy for months at a time, did desire cloud her judgment? Was she choosing men who were the most convenient based on their sexual attraction rather than on an equal balance of psychological and physical appeal?

While she wasn’t one-hundred-percent ready to commit to the idea, she was willing to admit it might be a possibility.

Gauge gave her one of his easy shrugs, pulling his T-shirt a little tighter against his biceps. “Nina, honey, you need to get laid. It’s as simple as that. And I think Kevin and I can help you there.”

She looked back and forth between the two of them. “Do you mean…? Are you saying you think the three of us…?”

They stared at each other for long, heart-pounding moments.

“No….” Nina said.

“I don’t think so,” Kevin said.

“Actually that wasn’t what I was proposing, but…” Gauge said.

Nina suddenly felt dizzy as she sank slowly back into the couch again.

Wow.

Okay, so her partners were hot. Gauge was John-Mayer attractive in a fundamental way that entranced women, who probably got home before they discovered they’d spent double or triple the money on CDs they’d never listen to while under his spell. He had a musician’s easy style, his jeans looked as though they’d been made to fit him, his T-shirt held the right mixture of alpha-male dominance and devil-may-care appeal.

And she could look at his tattoos all day long and never tire of it.

Kevin, on the other hand, was Hugh-Jackman hot. Tall and slightly bookish, he had an easy grin and a set of washboard abs that she imagined he got through coaching hockey in the winter and soccer in the summer, because she never saw him doing anything more physical than what it took to unpack boxes and shelve books here. His big, dark eyes were the type a girl could lose her footing and fall into and never want to come out of again.

Yes, while she’d done her own share of bun-staring when they weren’t looking, as she knew they both did with her, she’d never really considered what it might be like to sleep with either one of them.

As for both of them at the same time…

“No….” she said again, shaking her head.

Kevin looked at her curiously, as if surprised to think she’d even consider the idea of a threesome, and then looked at her again. “That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard, Gauge. While pop culture may have become more pornified in the past decade, that’s way crossing the line for most people.”

“You’re right. You think the three of us argue during tax time now, just think what would happen if we slept together,” Gauge said.

They continued staring at him. He put his guitar down and raised his hands. “It was a joke, all right?”

Nina didn’t buy it.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never considered guy-on-guy action.” He appeared to shudder. “But I think I may be on to something here. Give me a minute.”

Kevin rose and picked up his coffee cup and novel. “I’m not giving you another second. Look at the tension the mere suggestion of sex between any combination of the three of us is causing.”

Nina waved for him to sit back down. “Hold on, Kev. Let’s see where he’s going with this.”

“Got it,” Gauge said, snapping the fingers of his left hand together. The knuckles bore the fading letters L-O-V-E he’d had tattooed on them when he was thirteen. “You don’t sleep with us—”

Kevin interjected, “Smartest thing you’ve said all night.”

“But we do arrange for you to sleep with someone….” He drifted off.

Kevin sat back down as if incapable of doing anything that required any sort of mental concentration at the moment.

Nina couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from Gauge’s striking face.

“Someone completely anonymous. No names allowed.”

Nina twisted her lips. “But how do I know I’ll be attracted to him?”

“What does it matter? You won’t see him.”

Kevin clasped his hands together between his knees as if trying to keep from slugging his friend. “What do you mean, she won’t see him? If we arrange for her to go out with someone—”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re not getting me. I didn’t say anything about her going out with someone, like on a date.” He moved from the ottoman to sit in the chair next to Kevin’s, putting him closer to them both. “This is about sex, can we all agree on that?”

Silence.

Nina didn’t know how to respond.

“About fundamental human urges. Look, we all agree that Nina’s made some bad choices because she has a tendency to go without for too long and then jump in too quickly as a result.”

“Go without?” Kevin repeated.

Nina smiled. “No, no. He’s got a point.” She gestured with her hand. “Go on.”

“So we set up something where you won’t be able to see the guy, but he’ll be able to see you.”

“What, are you suggesting she be blindfolded?” Kevin asked, looking more and more dangerous. Nina found it interesting that Gauge appeared not to notice his friend’s agitated state. Then again, maybe he did notice. He just didn’t care.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.” Gauge grinned and spread his hands wide as if his idea were the solution to all the world’s problems. “Nina gets the hot, anonymous sex she’s looking for…and we don’t have to put up with some moron boyfriend hanging around for the next six months until she boots him out.”

No one said anything.

“And then, maybe, with the whole sex element out of the way, she’ll finally find some guy deserving of her,” Gauge added.

Kevin got out of his chair and for a second Nina thought he might sucker punch Gauge. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

He instead turned to reshelf the book he’d been reading.

“Nina?”

She realized she’d been watching the fit of Kevin’s jeans as he moved and blinked to look back at Gauge. He grinned at her.

“Would the guy be either of you?”

She’d intended the question to be as forthright as his suggestion. Instead it came out as a husky whisper.

She shivered all over, her nipples growing hard, her panties growing damp.

She’d never felt so wanton in her life. An idea like this was something more up her grandmother’s alley—at least if you believed what she said when she talked about the old Motown days, and Nina did.

But now that the proposal was floating out there as a possibility, she found that she’d also never felt more turned on.

She looked at both of them leisurely. Took in Kevin’s intense, soul-searching gaze. Pondered Gauge’s sexy, suggestive grin.

“Well?” she asked, a fire igniting deep in her belly. “Would it?”

Gauge shrugged. “If it did include either one of us, you’d never know, would you?”

3

LATER THAT NIGHT, Nina lay back against her iron bedstead in her apartment above the store, staring at the ceiling. Her twenty-pound cat Ernest Hemingway’s furry body curved against her thigh on top of the down comforter, his soft snores breaking the silence.

But it wasn’t her cat she was mindful of just now. No, the suggestive conversation she’d shared with Kevin and Gauge was what dominated her thoughts to such a degree that she found it impossible to close her eyes.

Naughty images trailed through her mind one after another. First, there was Gauge holding himself above her, his hair framing his handsome face as he stared into her eyes. Then she blinked and his features were replaced by Kevin’s full mouth as he leaned in to kiss her.

She caught her breath and groaned, tossing the comforter off and covering Ernie with it. While the downstairs area of the old workspace had been completely updated when the three of them had joined forces three years ago, the two upstairs apartments had been left as is, the radiator heat hard to get exactly right. It was either too cold in her sprawling, two-bedroom place, or way too hot.

Of course, she recognized that her thoughts might be just as much to blame for her overheated condition.

She licked her lips and threw her arm over her head, watching as Ernie freed himself from the blankets and twitched his tail at her before turning his back and jumping from the bed. She idly listened as his nails clicked against the areas of the polished wood floor not covered by rugs and then heard him crunching his dry food in the kitchen.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent a sleepless night thinking about a man. Correction, two men. Her best friends and business partners.

And if she had a brain in her head, she’d turn on the television in the corner and let Conan laugh her to sleep, putting a smile on her face that had nothing to do with either Gauge or Kevin or, Lord forbid, both of them at the same time.

What made secret fantasies special was that they were secret.

Okay, so, yes, she could admit to herself in the safety of her own bed, she’d had a dream once that had featured the two men in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with friendship or business. It had been last summer and on the heels of a memory that now stood out in stark clarity. The three of them had been at a garden party one of Kevin’s late mother’s friends had thrown. While everyone else gathered around the ice sculptures and buffet tables, they had changed into their suits and taken advantage of the Olympic-size pool nestled in a landscape designed to look like a mountain oasis. They’d been fooling around, splashing each other to break the boring monotony established by the stuffy gathering, then they’d graduated to dunking each other.

And then what had happened next had likely set the stage for what she was considering now….

“I don’t know why women insist on buying bathing suits like the one you have on,” Kevin had said of her red string bikini. “The way you keep having to rearrange the top or the bottom, it’s obvious they weren’t meant for swimming.”

Nina had been adjusting the top; her right nipple was in danger of peeking out from behind the wet fabric. She’d watched as her skin puckered in awareness of Kevin’s steady gaze, giving a little shiver as the material chafed against the sensitive tip.

Gauge’s voice had sounded from behind her. “They don’t buy them for swimming,” he’d said, hooking a casual finger into the back of her suit bottom.

It was something he’d done at least a thousand times before. A teasing move not unlike what a brother might do. But in the wake of Kevin’s comment on her suit and her reaction to his gaze, the air rushed from her lungs in a soft whoosh at the feel of his hot finger against her cool skin as he tugged her closer to him.

Kevin drew nearer her front. “So you’re saying they buy them to drive men like us nuts, then?”

Nina was fascinated by the way droplets of water clung to Kevin’s dark hair as he pushed it back from his face; she found it suddenly difficult to tread water. Abruptly she discovered that she wasn’t only in the deep end literally, but metaphorically, as well. And when she felt Gauge press against her from behind, and Kevin from the front, she had the sensation that she was soon going to be in way over her head.

She grasped Kevin’s shoulders to keep above the water at the same time as Gauge grasped her hips.

“Whoa there, sweetheart,” he’d murmured against her ear. “We wouldn’t want you to go under on us.”

She’d restlessly licked her lips, her heart going a million miles a minute, her body flushed with heat despite the cool water as she considered what they might have in mind.

She felt Gauge’s hands slide over her bottom and down the back of her legs even as Kevin reached for the arms she had around his neck for balance, her breasts pressed against the hard wall of his chest.

Then Gauge caught her foot and hoisted her up, catapulting her a few feet so that she hit the water face down.

The cad.

When she came back up for air, she sensed that she’d lost the battle with her top but didn’t make a move to right it. Instead she merely stared at the two of them wickedly, watching them watch her as she allowed her body to float to the surface, her breasts partially exposed, the material of her suit bottom clinging to her swollen womanhood.

“You know, you’re both right,” she’d said as she slowly did the backstroke, coaxing both breasts out. “Women don’t buy these kinds of suits for swimming. We buy them to drive the opposite sex wild.” She’d leisurely licked her lips. “Absolutely, positively, stark raving mad.”

And judging by both their heated expressions, she’d achieved her goal.

At least for one, sweet moment.

Then Kevin’s mother’s friend had come over to the pool to tell them the barbecue was ready….

Recovering from the memory to find herself not in the cool water of a swimming pool with two hot men, but in the middle of her empty bed while a winter storm raged outside, Nina groaned and rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. She hadn’t thought about that time since it had happened. Okay, maybe she was lying. She had thought about it. Usually right around the time she was about to drop off to sleep and found her hand sliding down between her legs as if of its own accord to relieve a pressure there, brought on by the obvious absence of a man in her life.

The sheets were soft and warm and smelled of lavender. The mattress was newish and cradled her aching body. She pressed her hips against it and squeezed her thighs tightly together, relishing the tiny shivers that skittered over her. Her nipples throbbed, her breasts felt heavy and she couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the need screaming through her body.

Gauge and Kevin were right. She needed sex.

Merely thinking their names made her catch her breath, and she rocked her hips more solidly against the mattress. But the tight coiling deep in her womb refused to be satisfied by the vague action. So she slid her hand down and under her right hip, seeking the V of her thighs with her own fingers. She pressed against the swollen mound through her cotton underpants, but the impersonal touch only made her want more. So she worked her fingers under the top elastic, not stopping until the tips met with her shallow crevice. She was dripping wet. Stroking the damp folds, she found the engorged bit of flesh begging for her attention and pressed.

She climaxed instantly, caught off guard by her immediate and explosive response.

It usually took her a few minutes to reach orgasm.

Occasional masturbation almost always quieted her clamoring hormones.

But not tonight.

She extracted her hand from her underpants and rolled back over, more hot and bothered now than she’d been before.

Nina gulped a thick swallow and tightly closed her eyes, willing the unwanted emotions away. Wasn’t life complicated enough wanting one man? What would she possibly do with two?

Her mind responded by offering up all sorts of interesting options.

Nina groaned just as Ernie leaped back onto the bed. She blinked at him standing at the edge of the mattress, staring at her, as if aware of what she was thinking.

“What?” she asked quietly. “Go to sleep and mind your own business.”

If only she could do the same….

TWO DAYS LATER, Kevin watched Nina pass in front of the checkout counter, her snug black pants clinging to her delicious bottom, her white apron cinched at her narrow waist. She waggled her fingers at him and gave him the same wicked smile she’d been throwing his way for the past two days.

He rang up the amount on the register and distractedly quoted the total to the customer.

“Um, I think you made a mistake,” Jeremiah Johnson said, staring at the display.

Nina moved out of view and Kevin ran the back of his hand across his forehead. “Pardon me?”

“You added a zero to the amount, I think.” Johnson waved a book. “This should be $23.95, not $239.50. Unless the price on hardcovers went up again.”

Kevin grimaced and mumbled an apology to the economics professor, canceling the transaction and starting again from scratch.

He didn’t know how long he could take Nina’s shameless flirting. While she’d always been friendly, often times bawdily so, she’d never downright tempted him the way she was doing now.

And his job performance was suffering for it. Over the past two days he’d gotten more orders wrong than right. Considering that he prided himself on customer service, his aberrant behavior only amplified his stress level.

He handed Johnson his purchase and apologized again even as Gauge walked behind the paneled counter and grabbed a few bags. “You know, one conversation will eliminate your sorry state.”

“Shut the hell up, Gauge,” he said under his breath.

But apparently not quietly enough because old Mrs. Christenberry stared at him in open-mouthed shock.

That was it. He and his friends were going to put this ridiculous topic to rest. Right now.

“Julie, man the register, please,” he said to a part-time sales associate who was stocking books nearby.

He grabbed Gauge by the arm and led him in the direction of the stockroom. “You and I need to talk.”

“It’s about damn time.”

He could say that again.

He opened the door, ushered his friend through it, and then stared at another associate who was stripping the covers off paperbacks to send back to distributors for credit.

“John, go see if the music center needs any attention for a few minutes, will you?”

The teen eyed him and a grinning Gauge and hastily left the room.

“Christ, Kevin, you’re worse off than I thought.”

Kevin stared at his friend. Gauge looked unaffected as he leaned against a table and crossed his feet at his booted ankles and then his arms over his chest. His T-shirt today was black and sported the logo from a Memphis House of Blues.

“This has got to stop. Right now,” he said, pacing one way and then back again. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I can’t ban these…images from my mind.”

“What images? Of Nina naked and moaning?” Gauge nodded. “Yeah, I’m going through pretty much the same thing.”

Kevin stopped and fisted his hands at his sides. The idea that his friend felt the same way about Nina bothered him even more than the thought of his own agitated state.

“What? You believed you’re the only one who’s been suffering since our little conversation the other night?”

“But you’ve slept with two women since then.”

Gauge grinned. “And your point is?”

“My point is that you’re an asshole.”

Gauge chuckled at that, nudging up Kevin’s already soaring stress level.

Kevin grasped Gauge by the front of his T-shirt, forcing him to uncross both his ankles and his arms.

“Whoa, watch it now.” Gauge’s smile disappeared briefly, the moment suddenly tense.

Kevin released him and took a long breath. “Sorry.”

Gauge smoothed down his wrinkled T-shirt. “No need getting violent on me. I can set you up with someone if you’re feeling that pent-up.”

“No, thank you.”

“You sure? Because I can guarantee you’ll feel one thousand percent better tomorrow morning.”

“No, you would feel better. I’d probably feel worse.”

“But what if that person was Nina…?”

4

“THERE’S SOMETHING different about you,” Nina’s grandma Gladys said, pointing a red nail in her direction. “I don’t know what it is, but rest assured, I’ll figure it out before I leave here today.”

Nina took a sheet of cookies out of the oven, placed them on the counter and then shook her hands out of the oven mitts she wore. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Everything is exactly the same as it was when we had lunch last week.”

Liar.

Everything had changed. Not physically. But emotionally, Nina felt as if a door had opened, offering views out onto a lush vista she hadn’t known existed.

All she had to do was step through that doorway and welcome the change.

And those emotional changes would then also become physical.

Through the round window in the kitchen door, she watched as Kevin chatted with Heidi Joblowski, her assistant. She gave an involuntary shiver.

“Ten years younger,” Gladys said, her gaze following Nina’s. “That’s all I’d need and that man would have been in my bed aeons ago.”

Nina nearly choked. “Ten years would make you sixty.”

Her grandmother grinned. “Your point being?”

Her point being that there still would have been more than twenty-five years between her and Kevin.

Then again, her grandmother was probably right. She would have found a way, by hook or crook, to back Kevin—or any man she wanted—into her bed.

She shook her head.

Thankfully Gladys wasn’t sixty anymore. She was seventy. And finally beginning to show it.

Nina hid a small smile as she took off her apron and then picked up the two plates she’d prepared. “Grab those soft drinks, will you? Our table’s just been vacated.”

Their table was the one for two in the far corner of the café Gladys swore was the only place to sit. “All the better to see the hot young men you work with,” she’d told her granddaughter.

Nina positioned the plates on the table and moved her chair so that she sat more next to her grandmother than across from her. She’d learned long ago not to block her view. Besides, there was always the risk of getting whiplash from Gladys asking her to quickly lean this way or that so she could get a better look at something, or rather, someone.

Of course, her grandmother had no way of knowing that she now shared her interest in her coworkers. Rather than cluck her tongue or put up her hand to ward off any unwanted comments on either Kevin or Gauge’s posteriors, she intended to appreciate the view with her.

“So, are you done with your redecorating yet?” Nina asked, waiting until Gladys was seated and had placed her paper napkin in her lap, despite her casual surroundings.

She was long accustomed to her grandmother’s oddball behavior. She might sit with perfect posture, but her sometimes purple hair, her hot-pink lipstick and her gold lamé jackets gave her an air of regal yet trashy pride.

Gladys waved her hand as she took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat. “That’s been done for weeks. Where have you been?”

Right here. And she’d enjoyed three lunches with her since then. But Nina figured it was as good a place to start conversation as any. Urging her grandmother into a monologue about the fit nature of the handyman the decorator had sent to do the more difficult work—or the good-looking decorator himself, even if he did prefer men to women—would have gotten the ball rolling.

But her grandmother wasn’t biting anything more than her sandwich as she watched Gauge entering the café for a cup of post-lunch coffee.

Her grandmother elbowed Nina so hard she almost fell from her chair.

“There he is.”

Nina relaxed back in her seat, slowly chewing her own bite of tuna sandwich. Ah, yes, there he was, indeed.

A little thrill ran up her back at the memory of their conversation the other night combined with the interesting dreams she’d been having. She told herself she should be appalled, but her own recently awakened decadent side refused the response.

“He’s a lazy lover, you can tell.”

Nina nearly choked on her food. She quickly reached for her drink.

Gladys smiled widely. “Lazy, but his endurance would be out of this world. All day. And all night. That’s my guess.”

Nina watched the lines of Gauge’s bottom in his faded jeans, and then appreciated the muscles of his back and arms in his snug black T-shirt.

She looked over to find her grandmother staring at her.

“If I didn’t know better, girl, I would think you were giving him the lover’s look.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nina said, hoping that her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “Gauge and Kevin and I have been friends forever.”

“And partners…”

“Business partners,” Nina stressed. She shifted in her chair. “I talked to Mom yesterday.”

Nothing was capable of derailing her grandmother more than mention of her daughter, Nina’s mother.

In all the world, she didn’t think there were two people less alike. Where her grandmother was a free spirit, her mother was as uptight as they came, attending church three times a week, working with Meals on Wheels and playing the role of perfect housewife to her father’s perfect corporate gentleman. While they weren’t wealthy, they were well-off. And her mother had never worked a day of her life.

Her grandmother, on the other hand, refused to let any man take care of her….

Of course, it probably didn’t help that Gladys called Helen her mistake.

Nina’s mother had never liked the attention that Gladys had showered on her granddaughter from a young age. Growing up, Nina’d never understood the feud between the two most important women in her life, but as she got older, she’d come to realize that perhaps Gladys regretted not taking more time out with her own daughter, and was determined to rectify the mistake by playing a significant role in her granddaughter’s life.

Then again, maybe the two women were too different to ever have been close.

If that was the case, what did it say about her and her grandmother? Could it be that Gladys saw herself in Nina? And that’s why she’d formed the bond?

Or could she be trying to counteract Helen’s influence so she wouldn’t turn into a “dried-up old prune,” as Gladys called Nina’s mother?

Another elbow, another scramble to keep herself from falling off her stool.

“There’s the other one.”

Nina didn’t have to ask to whom her grandmother was referring. She’d watched as Kevin joined Gauge at the cashier’s counter in the audio section, apparently having finished his own lunch. Speaking of which, Nina looked down, surprised to find she’d nearly demolished the contents of her plate, as had her grandmother.

“Now him…he’d be a generous lover,” Gladys said. “He’d be eager to please you. Loving.”

Nina watched as Kevin leaned both hands against the countertop, his shirtsleeves rolled up, revealing the coiled muscles of his forearms.

“Do you think so?” she was surprised to hear herself ask.

Gladys’s grin made her wish she hadn’t said anything. “I don’t think so, Nin. I know so.”

Her grandmother made a play at wiping her mouth with her napkin, pushed her plate away, and then went about refreshing her lipstick. “So…which one are you looking to bed?”

“Grandmother!” Nina whispered harshly when a couple of women at a neighboring table gave them a hard look.

“Don’t ‘grandmother’ me. I see those looks you’re giving both of them. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.” She put her lipstick and mirror away and closed her purse with a click. “And I know you.”

Nina grimaced. She’d never credited Gladys with knowing her well. Gladys bought her only granddaughter bizarre Christmas and birthday gifts in garish colors that were more her own style than Nina’s. Instead of taking her to Disneyland when she was kid, she’d taken her to the Windsor casinos, convincing the pit bosses that she was eighteen when she was only fourteen and earning her a spot at a blackjack table, which made things easier for Gladys because it meant she wouldn’t have to go up to the room so often to check on her, although Nina hadn’t played.

At least not until she did turn eighteen and could enjoy a hand or two on her own.

“They’re my partners, Grandma, my best friends. I couldn’t possibly get involved with either one of them,” she said, but even she knew that there was no strength behind her words. Only a vague fear.

“You’re also adults, Nina.”

If only her grandmother knew what Gauge had suggested and what Nina was hoping the men would act on. The topic hadn’t been mentioned again since that night. But, oh, how she wished it would be.

“Where are you going?” Nina asked, grasping Gladys’s arm as she started to get up.

She was half afraid that her grandmother would make a stab at a matchmaking effort—if matchmaking was the right word for a connection that would only involve sex.

“I have a date for the matinee in twenty minutes.”

Nina instantly relaxed. “It’s not like you to make plans on our lunch day.”

“I didn’t.” She smiled wickedly. “But since it looks like things are well in order here—” she spared the two men another glance “—very well in order, I’m going to give you the space you need to make your decision and go check out the new usher at the cinema. I hear his wife died last year. So that makes him prime mattress-boogie material.”

Nina gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Do you ever think of anything other than sex?”

Her grandmother shrugged into her coat and smoothed down the front, appearing to give the question some consideration. “No, I don’t. And seeing as at my age there aren’t too many opportunities, I have to take full advantage of those that do come my way.” She waggled a finger at her. “And it’s nice to see that you’re finally beginning to follow in your grandmother’s footsteps.”

5

“I’M NOT going to discuss this with you,” Kevin said emphatically.

Gauge considered his friend who leaned against the cashier’s counter. He’d been aware of Nina and her grandmother’s attention on them ever since the women had sat down to eat their lunch.

“Then what are you doing here?” he asked.

What was he doing here? Simple. He wanted all this highly suggestive talk to end. Now. It had gotten to the point where he couldn’t sleep, could barely eat, and fifty-nine minutes of every hour were spent fantasizing about what it might be like to claim Nina for one sweet night.

“I’m here to appeal to your better judgment to stop this. Right now.”

Gauge pushed off the table. “Come on, Kev, you know you’ve wanted Nina since the first moment you laid eyes on her. Here’s your chance to have her. In a completely anonymous way.”

“That’s the part I don’t like. If I…have her, as you put it, I want her with eyes wide open. Not shut.”

“Well, then, I guess that means you’ll never have her.”

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“What do you think it means? You’re the one walking around here with a constant hard-on, yet for the past three years you haven’t had the guts to ask Nina out to a movie, much less to bed. That doesn’t bode well for any future possibilities, Kevin, old boy.”

Kevin felt like punching his friend. “Yes, I admit I may be attracted to Nina. But sleeping with her isn’t even a remote possibility. There’s more at stake here than my libido.”

“Which makes the anonymous part all the more appealing. Because it puts the V in viability.” He pointed at Kevin. “Think about it. You finally get to experience what both of us have been dying to taste…all without worry of the future of the business or our friendship because she won’t know who she spent the time with. For all she knows, it could be a complete stranger. Some guy I came across at the bar.”

“Don’t you dare….”

“I didn’t say I would.”

“And what about you?” Kevin asked him. “Why don’t you offer yourself as candidate?”

Gauge seemed to consider this. “I would, but…”

“But what?” Kevin waited impatiently.

Gauge grinned. “But I know you’d never forgive me.”

“You’re damn right about that.” Kevin paced back and forth and then back again. “I can’t believe we’re even discussing this.”

“So let’s stop discussing it and make a plan.”

“Not in a million years.”

“What are you so afraid of, Kevin? That you won’t be attracted to another woman if you sleep with Nina? May I remind you that your sex life is about exciting as a rerun of The Brady Bunch. You haven’t been out on a date for more than a year—”

“Stay out of my sex life.”

“I’d be happy to. If there were a sex life to stay out of.” Gauge cursed. “Come on, man, what do you have to lose? The way I see it, you’d be doing Nina a favor. And us. Lord knows the last thing anyone wants is for her to hook up with another loser we’ll have hanging around the place for months until she comes to her senses again.”

Kevin shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Fine, then. If that’s the way you want it, I’ll find someone else to take care of business.”

“Yourself?”

Gauge shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. What do you care? Nina doesn’t.”

NINA WIPED the last corner of the counters and then leaned against it. The kitchen was a study in old-world charm and modern convenience, with thick wooden counters and hulking stainless-steel appliances. She shifted her watch from the inside of her wrist. Past ten.

She draped the wet cloth to dry, picked up her cup of decaffeinated latte and then stepped from the room, pushing open the door as she went.

The store was unusually quiet. Right about now she would normally hear the guys chuckling or talking wherever they’d decided to gather to unwind after a long day. But she heard nothing as she walked from the café into the music center and then into the empty bookstore. The front doors were locked and the Closed sign had been turned out.

Neither Kevin nor Gauge could be found anywhere.

Huh.

She took a long pull from the latte, wondering where they’d gotten to.

Actually, this was the third time in as many nights that this had happened. Ever since the night their conversation had turned toward all things suggestive. She felt slighted, missing the company of her friends.

It wasn’t like them to leave without saying goodnight at least. It had become a ritual for them, a way to let the others know that no one was tending to the till in their area as well as a common courtesy. But neither of them had said anything to her.

Strange….

She stepped over to the gas fireplace, still blazing. She stared into the blue-green flames and sipped slowly from her cup. Probably she should just go upstairs, feed Ernie, and climb into bed with a good book after a long, hot shower. Only she didn’t feel like leaving the shop just yet. Instead she turned toward the overstuffed couch, her favorite seat in the place, and sank down into the generous cushions.

Immediately she caught sight of a scarlet envelope in the middle of the table.

Nina’s heart thrummed thickly. She leaned forward, tightly gripping her mug as she looked at the envelope. Her name had been printed neatly on the outside, leaving no doubt who it was for.

She looked around, trying to see if anyone was about, looking for her response.

There was no one.

Hands trembling slightly, she put her cup down and reached for the envelope, fumbling with it slightly before finally holding it in both palms and staring down at it.

It was still a good ten days before Valentine’s Day, so she knew it had nothing to do with the holiday set aside especially for lovers. She ran her fingertip over the carefully written letters. She had little doubt that Kevin had penned it. She smiled, imagining the two men arguing over the envelope. She could see Gauge saying that they didn’t have to write her name, that she would know who it was for, and Kevin debating that in a situation of this gravity, they shouldn’t risk someone else mistakenly assuming the envelope was for them.

Both would have been right.

Nina settled back into the cushions and propped her feet on the edge of the coffee table, creating an easel with her legs against which she propped the envelope. She sat staring at it for long, uninterrupted minutes. She didn’t have to wonder what was inside. She knew without looking.

They were taking the next step….

She realized she was holding her breath and let it out slowly, the action bringing little relief to her singing nerves.

Over the past few days she’d often found herself wondering about the change in climate around the store. She’d begun to question whether it had been wise even to discuss a union between the three of them. Because surely that one conversation was to blame—or to credit—for the change in their friendship.

But just like a hiker who’d found herself halfway up the mountain, it was easier to go forward than back. There was no retreat from such a journey once it was begun.

Were Kevin and Gauge as restless as she’d become? She’d wanted to ask them, but hadn’t had the courage, afraid that perhaps they’d ignore the fact that the conversation had ever taken place. But there was difference in the way they both looked at her now. While there had existed a mild sexual interest in her movements, now she felt their gazes as surely as if they’d reached out and touched her.

But it wasn’t until she surrendered her mind to her dreams at night that she got to play out a more intimate connection to one or the other, often both at the same time.

Until now.

Nina swallowed hard and turned the envelope over, noting that it had only been sealed at the end of the V. So simple to open.

Then why did she feel as if she were Pandora and that the contents of the envelope would forever change her life?

She absently worked her fingernail under the flap, the slight tearing of the seal filling the quiet store. She peeked inside to find a simple, white sheet of paper.

Simple. Now that was a word that didn’t seem to fit the situation.

Then again, maybe it was custom-made for the state of affairs. Perhaps she was making far too much out of this entire thing. She might even venture a thought that she was doing exactly what the guys had originally accused her of, the entire reason for their discussion at all: the fact that she confused sex with love.

Is that what she was doing? Reading more into a simple matter that involved nothing more than the meeting of two needy bodies?

Nina dropped her head onto the sofa back. “Oh, for God’s sake, Nina, just read the damn thing and get it over with.”

For all she knew the letter would be a truce of sorts. A retraction of the offer and regrets that it had ever been extended to begin with. An attempt at a return to normalcy when everything had been far from it over the past few days.

She reached in and tugged the paper out, carefully opening it. It had been typed rather than printed. She smiled at the formality. Done to keep her from knowing which of them was speaking? She chanced a yes.

She licked her lips and smoothed the single sheet out and read:

Nina,

You are invited to a one-night-only, not-to-be-missed event. At midnight tomorrow, leave your apartment door unlocked and your inhibitions behind and put on the enclosed blindfold…and nothing else….

Nina shivered all over. She picked up the envelope again and looked inside. In the shallow depths lay a single silk ribbon that didn’t seem wide enough to shield her eyes. She shook it out, realizing that it was folded and that it was, indeed, wide enough.

The slinky material warmed beneath her touch as she raised it to her eyes and then fastened it around her head. The front had been cut as a mask, making allowances for her nose so that she wouldn’t be able to peek out the bottom.

For all intents and purposes she was blind.

Anticipation spilled over her like warm honey as she sat for long minutes. Her own breathing sounded loud to her own ears. She was keenly aware of the thrum of her heartbeat. Made out the sound of a car passing outside.

She gasped and quickly took off the mask.

Could she really do this? Turn herself over to whichever one of them planned to enter her apartment? Put on a blindfold and trust that whoever arrived would bring her pleasure and no pain?

Her throat tightened as she picked up the letter again.

Lights off, heat on, be prepared for the most erotic night of your life….

6

THE MINUTES of the day ticked by with agonizing slowness. Nina stared at the clock, willing the hands to move, for the day to be over so that she could rush headlong into the mysteries of the night.

“Is the second batch of bear claws ready?” Heidi asked as she came into the kitchen.

Nina blinked, forgetting for a moment where she was. Half an hour had passed, and she still hadn’t made the glaze for the fresh batch of treats.

“No,” she said, turning instead to a plate of frosted heart-shaped cookies baked in honor of Valentine’s Day. “But these are ready.”

Heidi sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on with the three of you today. I swear, if it weren’t for Brad, John, Julie and I, this place would probably close down.”

Nina rushed around the table. “How do you mean?”

Heidi blinked. “Just look at you. You’re acting like you’re suffering from advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. And I hear the same thing is going on with both Kevin and Gauge.”

Nina’s tongue seemed suddenly too big for her mouth. “Both of them?”

“Are you going to make me repeat everything I say?” She shook her head. “Forget it. You probably aren’t listening to me, anyway.”

She left the room and the door swung back and forth slightly before finally coming to a rest.

Of course, Heidi was right. She wasn’t listening. Had stopped listening the instant the girl had said that both Kevin and Gauge were as distracted as she was.

Could it be…? Was it possible that…?

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and forced herself to walk to the other side of the table. Wasn’t it bad enough that she’d barely slept since last night? And that when she had finally drifted off, her dreams had been so vivid that she’d have sworn they were real?

God, just look at her. She was a wreck. She’d forgotten to set her alarm and had been late this morning, forgoing her usual shower as she hurried to get dressed to unlock the store, today being her day to open. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and wore only minimal makeup, determined to throw herself into work to help the time fly by.

Instead it seemed at a standstill.

She sighed heavily and tried to focus on making the glaze for the bear claws.

IF THE DAY had passed by with agonizing slowness, then the moments leading directly up to midnight were pure torture. Nina knelt in the middle of her bed, the blindfold tied tightly, the material of her nightgown rasping against her breasts with every deep breath she drew in.

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