Skin Deep. Tori Carrington

glanced around the club, realizing that almost every pair of eyes was on her, waiting for her response to Craig’s comment.

      She tilted her head and smiled at her ex, satisfied that he looked instantly afraid of what she might say. And he had good reason to be. “Yes, well, Craig, better a dead fish than a lost cause, even with Viagra.”

      She shoved her chair under the table, which in turn hit his chair, knocking the back of it against one of Craig’s more strategic areas. He gasped and grabbed the vicinity in question with both hands, while one of Kyra’s own hands went to cover her mouth.

      “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”

      She felt fingers on her arm. “Let’s go,” Michael said in that deep baritone that always commanded her attention.

      “You bitch!” Craig said, probably meaning to shout the insult, though it came out as a high-pitched wimper. Even with her genuine remorse, she felt the voice fit.

      Michael slowed his step, and this time Kyra found herself tugging him toward the door.

      “Call her that again and you’ll be eating your teeth,” she heard Michael tell Craig.

      Thankfully there were no more exchanges in the few moments it took them to get from the table to the door. Once outside, Kyra blinked against the setting sun, then collapsed against the closed door, the thick late-summer Florida heat seeming to spray beads of sweat all over her skin. She blinked up into Michael’s glowering face. A lock of raven-black hair hung over his brow, his natural honey-colored skin looking darker yet in the waning light.

      She glanced toward the door then found herself smiling. “I really didn’t mean to…well, you know, hit him with the chair.”

      “That’s a shame, seeing as it was so fitting.”

      She blinked and the side of Michael’s mouth budged up in a grin. He really was devastatingly handsome when he grinned.

      “Have I told you lately that you really know how to pick ’em?” he asked, rolling the sleeves of his crisp white shirt up his hair-peppered forearms while his brightly colored tie flapped in the warm breeze.

      “Every chance you get.”

      “Yeah, well, I must not be telling you loudly enough.” He jabbed a thumb toward the club. “Why you let morons like Holsom get the better of you, I’ll never know.”

      “Who said he got the better of me?” Kyra quirked a brow at him. She pushed away from the door and began walking toward the parking lot where they’d parked their cars, hers a thirty-year-old Mustang convertible, his a rugged late-model SUV with two air-conditioning units.

      With each step Kyra took, she felt any amusement still lingering from the encounter seep from her muscles. On any other occasion she might blame the reaction on the intense late-summer Florida heat. But she knew that wasn’t the case now.

      Her boyfriend had just broken up with her. Worse, he’d insulted her sexuality.

      “Uh-oh. Here it comes. Phase two,” Michael said quietly beside her.

      Kyra elbowed him in the ribs. He caught her when she might have tripped over her own feet. “Shut up.”

      “Let’s see. First there’s amusement, because, well, let’s admit it, a breakup between you and one of your boyfriends is always a source for humor.”

      “Glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

      His grimace said the opposite was the case. “Then comes the grieving period. No matter how undeserving the jerk, you’re always hurt by his rejection.”

      “Key word being rejection here, I think,” she pointed out.

      Michael stopped next to her Mustang, accepted her keys, then opened the door for her. She instantly pushed the button to release the ragtop and pushed it back.

      “Then after that comes the eating. Week-long binges filled with all the stuff you gripe at me for eating.”

      She smiled at him. “As I recall, you do enjoy that phase.”

      He gave her a partial grin. “Yeah, maybe that part’s not so bad.”

      She climbed in and he closed the door after her. She turned the key and the sound of vintage Heart instantly filled the humid air. He arched a brow and she turned the volume down.

      “They don’t deserve you, you know that?”

      Kyra fastened her hair back with a ribbon she had draped around the rearview mirror. “I don’t give you this much hell when you break up with one of your girlfriends.”

      He chuckled softly. “That’s because I’m not the one in need of consolation. They are.”

      “Ah. I see.” She scanned his dark features, feeling better just talking to him. “While I, on the other hand, am nothing but a heap of sobbing female hormones in need of mopping up from the floor.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      She smiled, but even as she did, a damnable tear slid down her lower lash and splashed onto her blouse. She rubbed at her cheek in irritation. She knew Craig Holsom didn’t deserve a single look back. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. Rejection was rejection, no matter how you looked at it.

      Michael was right. She was an idiot. Although he’d never really come out and told her that.

      “Hey,” he said quietly, curving his fingers under her chin. “Are you going to be okay?”

      She stuck her chin up in the air and sniffed. “Of course.”

      “Hmm.” He brushed another tear from her cheek with a slow rub of his thumb. His gaze seemed to linger on her mouth, then he met her gaze. He gave her a coaxing grin. “You up for our normal postbreakup outing?”

      “It’s what I live for.”

      He narrowed his gaze at her, then tapped her visor to block the setting sunlight. “Follow me. I have a new place in mind.”

      Kyra watched him walk across the lot to his SUV. Tall, broad-shouldered and slender-waisted with thick dark hair and a grin that would look too naughty even in the bedroom, Michael Romero was drop-dead gorgeous. And he was her best friend.

      He paused next to his car then half turned to look back at her pensively, his profile in shadow. Kyra caught her breath, then swallowed hard.

      And he was her best friend…

      MICHAEL LAID HIS HAND against Kyra’s lower back and guided her inside the cozy little bookstore he’d found on the outskirts of town. The moment he’d spotted it, he’d known Kyra would love it. And he wasn’t disappointed. Her quiet, wide-eyed pondering of the teetering shelves that covered nearly every inch of available space told him she’d forgotten the club, Holsom, and the breakup of a relationship that was bound for the Dumpster the instant it started.

      “Oh-hh,” she said quietly, as if they were in a library rather than a bookstore. “I love it.”

      He couldn’t help grinning down at her. “I knew you would.”

      Her gaze darted from here to there then back again.

      “Lead the way. I’m right behind you.” He glanced at his watch. “But try to limit yourself to a half hour.”

      She groaned.

      “Okay, forty-five minutes. Or I leave without you.”

      She smiled at him and kissed him on the cheek, igniting all sorts of interesting emotions he wasn’t quick enough to deny. “You’d never leave without me.”

      He watched her disappear between the shelves and exhaled a long, even breath. Oh, she was right there.

      He stepped in her wake, watching as she walked her fingers over the bindings of the mismatched, different-colored books lining the shelf at shoulder level. Her brown hair