Shameless. Tori Carrington

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