Wicked. Tori Carrington

city, then Lucky doing the same downtown. Had neither woman come into her and Ginger’s lives, she would very likely still be operating the way she had for the past five years.

      But they had and as a result she felt different. Wanted more. Her mind was functioning with more of an eye on the future, her future, and the bottom line.

      Truth was, she wanted a place of her own to hang her hat at night. Sure, she might be able to afford a comfortable if small condo, or even a house, but she’d like something a little bigger, a little nicer, maybe. And while she was happy living with Tabitha, her roommate’s girlfriend, Nina, made it clear she was very unhappy with the arrangement. Nina wanted Renae to move on, even though Nina had moved in three months ago while Renae had been there six.

      She pulled her T-shirt away from her damp back, questioning the wisdom of driving with the top down when the August temperatures easily soared into the nineties at this time of day. Of course, Tabitha had no clue about the animosity that existed between the two women. And Renae didn’t think it a good idea to point it out to her. Male-female, female-female, the gender of those involved didn’t matter; a threat from the outside, from a friend or neighbor, perceived or otherwise, did.

      She took a corner, the disks on the belly-dancer costume, wrapped in plastic in the back seat, jingling as she did so. She glanced down at the jeans, T-shirt and flip-flops she’d changed into at work, then back at the costume, a slow, easy smile turning up her mouth.

      Will…

      For a few sweet moments the tensions that littered her life melted away, leaving nothing in its wake but the memory of his skillful mouth and his hard, welcoming body.

      Blame it on the heat, but she couldn’t remember wanting a man as powerfully as she’d wanted Will that morning. Given the way she was raised, men and relationships had always been something to question rather than to surrender to. That’s what she’d liked about Ginger Wasserman on the spot. Ginger understood her in a way that a Suzie Homemaker type never could.

      And it’s why she’d instantly understood that dark, lost look in Lucky Clayborn’s eyes when she’d walked into the shop months back.

      Renae pushed up her large, dark sunglasses on her nose and turned up the volume on the radio, hoping to edge the heavy thoughts out of her mind with a little rock ’n’ roll. Heart’s “Crazy on You” filled the humid air and she nudged the volume level up even farther.

      Of course, it was just her luck that the tune would make her think of Dr. Will Sexton again.

      She sighed. That’s all right. She knew that a little time and effort and avoidance would put him right back where he belonged, which was solidly in flirt territory. Whenever her heart or her hormones threatened to lead her in the wrong direction—which, granted, wasn’t often—she knew that as quickly as the emotions surfaced, they could as easily die away. And if she ever questioned the philosophy, she needed only to remember the pillow-shock syndrome that nearly every red-blooded human being had gone through at one time or another. Namely that moment when you opened your eyes the following morning to find the person who had seemed perfectly suitable and lust-worthy a few hours earlier had turned into the person you wouldn’t be caught dead with on a deserted island overnight.

      And experience had taught her that the sudden, unexpected change in her playful connection to Will bore all the earmarks of pillow-shock syndrome.

      Great sex material one day.

      The date from hell the next.

      She smiled to herself as the radio station launched into another Heart tune, this one more befitting her mood: “Even It Up.” Forgetting she hadn’t meant to, she began turning into the regular parking lot at the building, then at the last minute swerved back into traffic, earning her irritated honks from the drivers behind her. She waved her apologies then swung around to the back lot and claimed the last open parking space. She glanced at the SUV to her right, thinking it looked an awful lot like Will’s….

      Then he climbed out.

      ALL RIGHT THEN, some sort of higher power had it in for him.

      That was Will’s deduction as he stood next to his SUV and stared at Renae, her long, tangled sun-kissed hair, her clingy white T-shirt that did little to hide the lacy bra she wore underneath and her big, black glasses that made her look like the one-hundred-percent luscious, hot American woman that she was.

      He flinched when the radio station she was tuned in to launched into the opening strains of the old The Guess Who song “American Woman” before she switched the ignition off and plunged them both into a shocked kind of silence.

      “Come here often, do you?” he asked with a raised brow, accepting that avoiding her now was out of the question.

      She gave him a leisurely once-over then pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head, her smile decidedly decadent. “Funny, I parked over here to avoid you.”

      He chuckled at her refreshing honesty. “Ironically, I was doing the same thing.”

      The way he saw it, the only thing to do now would be to walk with her to their building. To give her a brief wave then take off would be so appallingly rude as to make him shudder. So he waited as she pushed a button that put the top up on the hideous pink contraption she called a car, gathered what he could see was the costume she’d been almost wearing that morning from the back seat, then joined him next to his SUV.

      “I know why I want to avoid you,” she said as they began walking together down the path that would take them to their building. “But why are you avoiding me?”

      Will was amazed by the myriad emotions pulsing through his bloodstream caused by merely walking next to the woman. For one, he couldn’t seem to keep his gaze off her pretty tanned face, even though it was currently devoid of makeup. And the way he kept eyeing her T-shirt and jeans, one would think he hadn’t seen a woman dressed in that way before. But it was the fact that he was inordinately interested in her feet, wrapped in her hot-pink flip-flops, that was the cause for the most concern.

      “Are your feet actually tanned?” he found himself asking.

      Renae looked down, appearing as caught off guard by his inane question as he was. The problem was he’d never before really noticed a woman’s feet and whether or not they were tanned. And it was more than just the neon-pink toenail polish she wore. There was just something wickedly attractive about her feet that made him fantasize about seeing them sticking out of a tub full of frothy bubbles…while she sat gloriously naked on top of him.

      “Why yes, I guess they are,” she finally responded, throwing him a sexy little smile. “And you’re avoiding my question.”

      Will stiffened a bit. “Well, it’s not that I’m avoiding your question, actually. It’s just that…” He couldn’t help grinning. “It’s just that I can’t recall it.”

      “Why are you avoiding me?”

      “Ah, yes. That question.” Will eyed their building that seemed to loom outrageously far away. He felt the urge to pull at his collar, although he wasn’t wearing a tie but rather a white open-throat polo shirt. And a pair of stonewashed jeans and sports shoes he couldn’t wait to get out of.

      What was the question again? Oh, yes. Why was he avoiding Renae?

      “Well, you see,” he said carefully, “there’s this little issue of another woman that I’m seeing—”

      “The resident.”

      He squinted at her although the sun was behind him. “You know about her?”

      “Lucky filled me in.”

      “Ah, yes. Lucky. Colin’s Lucky, I presume?”

      Renae seemed interested in his mouth as he spoke. “One in the same.”

      “And she would have shared this information because…”

      “I asked for it.”

      “I