“Need you all the way naked,” he says, gruff and wildly sexy, reciting the hero’s next lines.

  “So you can have your way with me,” I say, like the heroine does. I take another step, then one more.

  He’s right behind me, and I don’t know what’s coming next. He’s supposed to yank my skirt up.

  But he hasn’t touched it.

  Instead, I feel a faint brush of strong fingers on my waist.

  I shudder. The sensation is almost too much for me to make it to the top of the stairs.

  But he nods, urging me on, his hands on me till I hit the landing.

  This isn’t how the scene unfolds in the book. I should be naked by now. I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be doing when he joins me at the top. I feel every sensation in my body, keenly aware of him behind me and of the thread of possibility that winds around me. What will happen next? What will Tristan do?

  I look up at him, my breath in my chest, my heart in my throat, his eyes on me.

  “It’s safer here,” he whispers.

  And I understand completely what he did.

  He abandoned the moves to get me up the stairs safely.

  My heart thumps harder.

  “And this is where I take your dress off like he does in the book.” His words send a shock wave trembling through me.

  I know what to do. I know what to say. I don’t recite the heroine’s lines. I use my own.

  “Take it off,” I say, feeling daring.

  And daring feels spectacular.

  Like taking a chance. Like putting myself out there.

  His hands dart out to the hem of my little black dress. With a rough swallow, he slides it up. He’s not hesitant. He doesn’t delay. He lifts it to my waist, only pausing when the bottom of my black teddy appears. His gaze lingers for a moment, then he’s back to the job.

  The whisking off.

  He yanks up the dress to my breasts.

  The trembles I felt before? They’re nothing compared to the full-body shudder I experience as I record this moment.

  His hands. The set of his jaw. The fullness of his lips.

  One more swoosh of fabric and the dress goes over my head. His fingers brush my arms, my shoulders, my hair. The faint little touches set me aflame as he lets the dress fall to the floor.

  I’m hotter than a sidewalk in summertime as I stand before him wearing only a lace plunge teddy and black heels.

  The question he asked at the bottom of the steps reverberates in my mind.

  Do I trust him?

  He must know the answer. He must know how much.

  Because I’m here, nearly naked, and he made sure I didn’t fall.

  But sometimes you need to say it twice.

  “I trust you.” It feels like jumping off a cliff.

  “Same,” he says, like it’s hard to speak even that one word. My gaze slides down his body. His fists are clenched by his sides, and it’s as if I’ve walked in on him in a private act, so I return my focus to his face.

  But that feels even more personal because he doesn’t stop staring at me, nor do I want him to.

  I know that look. It’s how I devoured him the other night.

  With hungry eyes.

  He’s drinking me in, eating me up, and I want everything about this moment to stretch long into the night.

  I want to be gazed at this way forever—with adoration, with lust, and with something I’ve never seen before.

  Something I don’t know how to name.

  The air is thick with desire, wrapped up in the fading notes of one of the sexiest songs I’ve ever heard and its final warning not to fall.

  He breaks the trance. “Nice teddy.” His voice is a mere rasp.

  “Thanks,” I manage to say.

  For a long, delirious moment, the hero’s next words hover between us.

  Now let me see how sexy you look on my bed, wearing nothing but that naughty grin.

  I can feel them pulsing in my body.

  But he doesn’t say them. We’ve already gone off-script. We’re writing new lines, trying new scenes.

  And I don’t know what happens next.

  Tristan scrubs a hand over his stubbled jaw, swallows, and glances away as if it pains him. He bends, grabs the dress, and hands it to me. “Want to go get something to eat? I’m starving.”

  No, I want to shout. I don’t want to eat. I want to finish the scene. I want you to find me on your bed, wearing nothing but a naughty grin.

  And yet, I can’t want that.

  My disappointment is chased with relief that he suggested food, an exit.

  I need to get out of this zone with him. This lawless land where I’m entertaining wildly dangerous thoughts about my best guy friend.

  I have to reset right now. Or else I’ll do something we’ll regret.

  “Yeah, I’m ravenous,” I say.

  But not for food.

  16

  TRISTAN

  Greasy food.

  That’s the only solution to tonight’s dilemma.

  Cheap, grungy, hole-in-the-wall grub.

  Something to kill the mood of the black dress, the send-all-the-blood-rushing-south teddy, and that precipice.

  That fucking precipice at the top of the steps where all I wanted was to haul her in for a kiss. To slide my hands through that silky curtain of hair. To bring her close and tell her I can’t stop thinking about her and need to have her.

  Instead, I choose a Mexican joint that’s as dingy as winter is long. We order tacos, chips, guac, and two Diet Cokes, then snag a Formica booth at the back of the shop, the sharp scent of cleaning supplies from a nearby closet making my nose sting.

  I’m not thinking of sex now. I have bleach nose.

  Nor am I picturing that teddy I bet she’s still wearing under the hoodie and jeans she changed into. Fine, I am thinking of the teddy, but I’m trying not to.

  I divert all my brain cells to the guacamole as I dip a chip then crunch into it.

  “What’s Barrett up to tonight?” she asks.

  “More play rehearsal. The theater department at his school is intense, especially as the show gets closer. He’s working on the set designs. He seems to really like it.”

  She picks up her taco and takes a bite, then says, “I could see him being a set designer someday. Like for Broadway.”

  I smile as I snag another chip then chase it with a drink of soda. “Definitely. And if not that, he’ll be a scientist. He digs science a lot. But hell if I know what it takes to be a scientist. I was terrible at any science classes.”

  “Same. I wish there had been a way to be a psych major without taking chemistry. But alas, I couldn’t escape it.”

  “You were dead set on studying psych,” I say, recalling our college days—business for me, psychology for her. “Did you ever want to be a shrink or a therapist?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I just like understanding what makes us tick.”

  “Ah. Have you figured it out yet, Gingersnap?”

  “Still working on it.” She digs into her taco, taking another bite and swallowing before she says, “How is he doing though?”

  I wipe my mouth with a napkin. “What do you mean? With the set design?”

  She shakes her head and sets down her half-eaten taco. “No. Just in general. I know it’s been two years since your mom died, but how do you think he’s holding up?”

  Ah, the million-dollar question. I ask myself that daily, but hardly anyone else does anymore. A few months, maybe half a year, seems to be some kind of statute of limitations on grief, when people stop inquiring.

  But Peyton never followed those rules. She didn’t follow them in college when my dad passed away, and she didn’t follow them, either, when I lost my mom.

  Ironic, in a terribly cruel way, that my mom died right when she’d finally started dating again. She’d met a guy she liked. She was moving on from her own grief, moving ahead into the next phase of her life.

  But fate has a way of fucking with you, and the bitch had a field day screwing with my mom. One sunny summer afternoon, as she was heading to see her new guy and Barrett and I were at the movies, my mom suffered a heart attack in the park.

  She died on the way to the hospital, no one with her but the paramedics.

  Watching my fifteen-year-old brother break down, kneeling, bawling, clutching the hospital bed when we arrived damn near broke me too.

  I was twenty-seven, and the pain of losing her was excruciating. But I’d lived a quarter-century already. I’d made it through my teenage years with both parents, and through most of my twenties with one.

  My kid brother was fifteen and had no one but me. I’d have to be enough.

  He moved in with me a few days later, and somehow we’ve fumbled our way through. I found a therapist for him, and over time, he navigated to the other side of grief.

  I take a bite of my taco, putting it down before I answer Peyton’s question. “I think he’s doing okay. And I mean the good okay. Not the eh non-committal okay.”

  She smiles softly. “Good okay is definitely all right.” She takes a sip of her drink and sets it back down. “A lot of that is because of you. You know that, right?”

  The praise feels undeserved, and I wave it off. “Nah, he’s a good kid. We had good parents. And he had a good shrink.”

  She reaches for my hand, squeezing it. “Yes, that’s true. But mostly what he has is you. You’ve been there for him. You’ve helped him.”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t do anything special. I did what anyone would do.”

  She shoots icy death rays at me with her stare. “Stop. Seriously. Why is it so hard for you to accept a compliment?”

  I shrug, sliding my hand away from hers. “Maybe because I don’t feel like I did anything. And maybe because that wasn’t how I was raised.”

  She doesn’t back down but grabs a chip, scoops some guacamole, and lifts her chin defiantly. “Well, I was raised that way. And I believe in draping the people I love in compliments. Heck, I give compliments all day long at my store to strangers. But you?” She points at me with the loaded chip. “I want you to hear this. You need to hear this. You’re amazing. And you’ve given your brother support and security. That you feel it’s what you had to do doesn’t negate that.”

  She stabs the air again with the chip, the scoop of green wobbling on the edge. “You’re there for him every day. You listen, and you encourage him. You set boundaries and give him what he needs. You’re only twenty-nine, and you’ve had to be a parent—and not at a starter level. You need to accept this compliment. Because you’re incredible.” She finishes her speech with a final jab of the chip, and the dip splats onto the Formica.

  A laugh bursts from my throat.

  She stares fiercely at me again. “Don’t think the errant guacamole exempts you from taking my compliment.”

  I chuckle. “It kind of does.” Reaching for a napkin, I clean the mess. When I look up, the stern stare is gone and she’s looking at me sweetly.

  “Tristan, you’ve done good with him. I’m so amazed. And I admire you so much.”

  Her kind voice, her good heart, together they unlock something in me. Maybe it’s the seven layers of self-protective armor. Or possibly it’s plain stubbornness.

  “Thanks,” I say, finally accepting what she’s giving me, emotion clogging my throat. “I appreciate it. I’d do anything for him.”

  Her smile is so soft, so endearing, that it nearly makes me forget I was this close to clasping her face on the stairs and growling, Kiss me.

  Right now, she’s the friend she’s always been—warm, caring, loving.

  She’s everything she’s ever been to me.

  And I have to steer this conversation far away from warm fuzzies and mutual admiration. “So, what do I need to wear to homecoming?”

  She wiggles a brow, going with my 180. “Depends if you want me to rip off your shirt.”

  God, yes. I pick up my taco and bite into the rest of it, putting off a response with a full mouth.

  “But I think wear what you usually wear,” she says.

  “All I own are Henleys and jeans. Some sweatshirts. And the shirts I bought for the button experiment.”

  “You’re not wearing a sweatshirt.” Peering at my eyes like she’s studying them, she hums, then says, “My vote is for a forest-green Henley. It’s very you, so you’ll feel good in it, and it’ll also make your eyes pop even more.”

  I laugh. “You sound like you’re talking to a customer.”

  “Is that so wrong? Besides, you would look good like that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You always look good, Tristan.” There goes my heart again, skipping beats like the idiotic organ it is.

  “I don’t think I have one that color,” I say, needing to segue to brass tacks. “I’m not even sure what forest green is.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I’ll handle it. Don’t think twice about it.” She sets her chin in her hand. “But what should I wear?”

  “I thought you were going as Marie Antoinette?”

  “I was just playing around. But I do think I’ll wear a dress.”

  “Color me shocked.”

  “Barrett will be so bummed I’m not in costume,” she says with an aw-shucks snap of her fingers.

  My mind latches onto Barrett’s comments the other night. “I think he has a crush on you.”

  She scoffs, her answer emphatic. “He doesn’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “He just doesn’t. He likes me in a friendly, big-sister way. The way you turn to the sister of a buddy.”

  “Some guys like the sisters of their buddies,” I point out.

  She shakes her head. “He doesn’t think of me like that. His interests are elsewhere. Trust me, I’d know.”

  My eyebrows rise. I’m intrigued by her comment, curious if all men are that transparent to her. “How would you know?”

  She nods, taking another bite. “Younger guys tend to give that stuff away easily.” She gestures to her face. “You can see it in their expressions, their eyes, their gestures.”

  Ah, that makes sense. “Do older guys do that too?”

  She stops, studies me, then shakes her head. “No, they don’t give away their feelings so easily.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

  After I walk her home and say goodbye on her steps, she yanks me in for one of those classic Peyton hugs.

  When I’m this close to her, inhaling her scent, feeling her body, I wonder if I’m giving anything away.

  If I’m transparent.

  But then, what would I have to be transparent about? What I felt tonight is what any guy would feel when a pretty woman stripped down to nearly nothing. Just a normal bit of lust, that’s all.

  After we pull apart, she waggles her fingers goodbye. “See you Saturday, Fred. Isn’t that your busiest day?”

  “Of course it is. But I’ve hired good people, so I’m all set.”

  “Then I’ll see you on Saturday. I’ll be the woman wearing red.”

  The image of her in that bra I picked up the other day flashes before my eyes. Taunting, teasing.

  It’s just lust. It’s just desire. Nothing more.

  I can’t act on it.

  For so many reasons, but chief among them is this: I don’t want to lose another person I love.

  I care about her too much as a friend to risk what we’ve built. That’s what matters.

  When she reaches the door to her brownstone, I call out in my best friendly, sarcastic, buddy voice, “See you this weekend, Gingersnap.”

  I hope it fools her into thinking I only see her as a friend.

  17

  PEYTON

  The Lingerie Devotee: Don’t Try This at Home

  Blog entry

  The name says it all.

  A lace plunge teddy.

  And plunge I did.

  I plunged to my butt. I plunged to my elbow. I plunged nearly all the way down the stairs.

  Wait.

  Is “plunge” one of those cringeworthy words?

  Now that I write it over and over, I fear we might need to send “plunge” the way of “moist,” “pucker,” and “Uranus.”

  Let’s not use words like “plunge” when referring to sexy lingerie, shall we agree?

  So what if the makers of this satiny garment call it a lace plunge teddy? I say we give it a new name. The lace V teddy, because it cuts a V down my neck, between my breasts, to the top of my belly button.

  V indeed.

  And last night, it gave me confidence. It helped me radiate desire, and it boosted my spirits.

  But the thing is, asking a man to disrobe you while you walk up the stairs in heels is like trying to run the egg-and-spoon race while also carrying a wily cat in your arms and balancing a bucket of water on your head.

  IT DOESN’T WORK.

  Or, really, it works phenomenally well if your goal is to twist your ankle.

  My handsome scene partner and I reenacted the staircase strip four times last night. Each time, we landed on our butts, elbows, hips, or the wrong side of our feet.

  The problem is, you’re not supposed to land. You’re supposed to parade upstairs, looking sensual, shooting sexy-times eyes at your lover, and sashaying to Sade.

  But where there’s a will, there’s a way.

  We were determined to make this scene work, so we found a way. Or, rather, he did.

  He took the lead, whispering naughty words and deeds in his smoky, gravelly voice as he followed me up the steps.

  Then, when we reached the top step, he whisked off my dress.

  In one bold, swift, commanding move.

  Like a hero in a romance novel, casually, coolly dropping the fabric to the floor.

  And my silky black clothes pooled by my feet as I stood wearing only heels and a teddy that exposed most of my flesh.

  Most.

  But not all.

  Plenty was left to the imagination.

  And that’s why I say don’t try the staircase shimmy at home. But do indulge in a piece of clothing that will make you feel adored when the one you want tugs everything else off you.