The Man Next Door. Gina Wilkins

his mouth washed out with soap, had his stepmother heard it. Mike merely laughed.

      “Hey there, sexy. It’s been a while.”

      Both men turned in response to the throaty drawl. Callie had strolled to their side of the room, accompanied by a tall, slender brunette who was eyeing Mike in blatant approval. Cleavage prominently displayed, Callie touched Teague’s shoulder with a perfectly manicured hand. “So where have you been?”

      “Oh. You know. Around.”

      She laughed huskily, and he remembered just how that laugh sounded in a dark, steamy room. “Yeah. Me, too. So, maybe we’ll end up in the same place again sometime soon?”

      “Yeah, maybe we will.” He knew it would only take a word from him for that “sometime soon” to be that very night. If he’d had any sense at all, he’d have said that word right then, before she found someone else to have fun with that evening. But instead he made a lame excuse about wanting something to drink, and he wandered off to the bar, leaving Mike to entertain the women on his own.

      * * *

      Dani had just finished an assignment for a Monday-morning class when someone rapped on her door Sunday afternoon. Closing her notebook, she crossed the room and looked through the peephole, thinking her caller might be Mrs. Parsons.

      Seeing Teague in the hallway instead elicited her usual reaction; she ran a quick hand through her hair and glanced down to check that her chocolate-colored top and khaki pants were reasonably neat. For some reason Teague always made her conscious of her appearance, though she’d tried to put less emphasis on that during the past year.

      She opened the door. “Are you hungry again?”

      He chuckled. “No. Bored.”

      “And what am I supposed to do about that?”

      He gave her an enticing look similar to the one that had earned him a cup of hot chocolate and a sandwich just over a week earlier. “I thought maybe you’d like to go see a movie with me.”

      “Oh. I—”

      “It’s not a date,” he assured her. “I won’t be making any moves on you during the movie or afterward. I won’t even buy you popcorn, if that makes you feel any better. I just hate going to movies by myself and all my other friends already have plans.”

      It was hardly the most flattering invitation she had ever received—and yet it had the result of making her feel relatively comfortable about accepting. If Teague really didn’t see this as a date, or a preliminary to anything of the sort, then there was no real reason she should turn him down, right? If her own imagination got away with her during the evening—well, that was a problem she would deal with at the time.

      “Okay,” she said, because she could use a couple of hours of relaxation herself. “What movie do you want to see?”

      He looked both pleased and a bit surprised that she’d accepted so easily.

      “Just as friends,” she reminded him.

      Holding up a hand in an I-swear gesture, he nodded. “I hope you like action movies. I don’t do tear-jerkers.”

      “Neither do I. Give me an action movie any day.”

      His smile widened. “My kind of friend. How does the latest superhero film sound to you?”

      “From what I’ve heard, it’s got enough eye candy to keep us both entertained. Let me get my bag.”

      She heard him chuckle as she turned away, and if there was a hint of smugness in the sound, she chose to ignore it.