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“No.” With a vigorous shake of her head, Lauren shared a kernel of her wisdom. “Show him how you feel.”
Kinsey moved her gaze from one woman to the other to the next. “You’re talking about sex.”
Poe folded her used napkin into a precise square and placed it in the center of her plate. “Aren’t we always talking about sex?”
Feeling suddenly bullied, Kinsey crossed her arms. “You’re only talking about it because you’re not getting any.”
“Is that so?” Poe replied, her dark eyes giving nothing away.
Calm. Calm and collected. Deep breath. In and out. Ohhmmm. Kinsey slumped back in her chair. Her usual ability to relax and blow off stress wasn’t working. She had a feeling nothing was going to work this time.
She hadn’t been looking where she was going and had stepped off into a big pile of emotional poo. Ask her a month ago, and she’d never have believed it possible that what she’d thought was friendship was actually more.
But with the specter of Doug’s departure hanging over her head…
She blew out a frustrated breath. “So, what do I do?”
Sydney looked to Lauren, Lauren to Poe, Poe back to Sydney, then all three turned their attention on Kinsey. Sydney was the one who finally spoke. “I think we need to put a few of the Web site’s gIRL gUIDE tips into play.”
Kinsey closed her eyes, shook her head. This was exactly the reason she kept her private life private. Glancing around at her girlfriends, she said, “I’d really rather not become a gIRL-gEAR project.”
Puffing up her cheeks so she looked like Dizzy Gillespie, Lauren pushed away her plate and scooted her chair back from the table. “Get over it, Kinsey. The rest of us have had to put in time as test cases. It’s what keeps us honest and makes the site’s advice columns such a success. We know of what we speak.”
“Besides,” Sydney said, a teasing smile blossoming as she glanced from Kinsey to Poe. “It’s time for you two holdouts to take the relationship plunge so those of us who have can return the grief you’ve given us now for months.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t need six hovering fairy godmothers when Doug comes running should I decide to crook my finger.” Now if only her bite lived up to her bark, Kinsey ruefully mused.
Sydney laughed. “C’mon, Kinsey. You know I’m kidding.”
Lauren butted in promptly. “Ha! You’d better be only partially kidding, because I am quite in the mood to return the relationship harassment Kinsey has been so generous in doling out.”
“And what about Poe?” Kinsey was not going to suffer the payback alone. “Ms. Cool-As-An-Asian-Cucumber over there is hardly the picture of innocence.”
Poe’s chin and nose went up. “I certainly hope not. I work hard at my cosmopolitan image.”
“You just wait.” Lauren pointed a finger. “Some guy is going to come along and take you down so hard and fast you won’t have a clue what happened.”
“I welcome the challenge,” Poe said, keeping a straight face as she added, “Many have tried. All have failed. Most have begged for another chance.” Even the hand holding the china cup remained steady, as if serenity were the woman’s middle name.
Kinsey, on the other hand, sputtered the tea she’d been drinking. “Poe, you crack me up. Truly. And manage to make me envious at the same time.” She pressed her lips together in a grimace of sorts. “If I had even a smidge of your confidence, I’d go after Doug in a heartbeat.”
“It’s not about confidence,” Poe said, her fingers now drumming thoughtfully on the arms of her chair. “It’s all about the game. You have to know your opponent’s weaknesses. And then you dig in.”
Pondering that, Kinsey shook her head. “I’m not sure Doug has any weaknesses. But I’ve never thought of him as an opponent.”
“Then you need to change your way of thinking. If he’s standing in the way of something you want, then he’s an adversary. And you have a decision to make.” Poe waited. One heartbeat, two. “How badly do you want it?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know if a relationship with Doug is what I want.” Kinsey gave a slight shrug. “Maybe I’m overreacting, and once the shock of his moving wears off I’ll be first in line to throw him a bon voyage bash.”
Lauren leaned forward. “Do you want to find out?”
That seemed to be the question of the day, didn’t it? No matter the denial that leaped to the tip of Kinsey’s tongue, her first flustered response to the news of Doug’s move had been too strong to discount as meaningless.
What would it hurt to explore the chemistry they’d largely ignored this past year? As long as she kept her eyes wide open and did nothing as stupid as putting her heart on the line, no harm, no foul, right?
It wasn’t as though she was going to set a trap, then watch him gnaw off his leg trying to escape. If he decided to stay, she didn’t want it to be because she’d crippled him.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I like him a lot.” She toyed with the cherry tomato on her plate, stabbing at it with the tines of her fork. “We have loads of fun, and I don’t want to screw that up. I don’t want to lose a good friend because I was desperate and stupid.”
“Then don’t be desperate and stupid,” Lauren said with a shrug, reaching for her diet soda. “Promise yourself you won’t do anything you’ll regret.”
“That sounds all well and good in theory, but in practice?” Kinsey shook her head. “It’s more like I’ll seduce Doug, we’ll get married and have three children, then we’ll turn forty or so and realize we have nothing in common. That’s when the regrets will set in. And divorce and child support. I just can’t deal with it all,” she said, and with one last stab, her tomato went flying.
While Poe rolled her eyes and poured herself another cup of tea from the white ceramic pot she kept at the office, Sydney took the fork out of Kinsey’s hand. “Kinsey? While you’re not being desperate or stupid, why don’t you try not borrowing trouble? You have no idea where you’ll be five years from now, much less fifteen.”
“Where she won’t be is running a five-star kitchen,” Poe said, eyeing the tomato on the floor.
“See?” Kinsey slumped in her chair. “I can’t even manage something as simple as testing the theory that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
“Let me tell you a little secret.” Lauren pulled her chair back up to the table, braced her elbows on the edge and leaned forward. “A man has only one organ he wants taken care of. And it’s neither his heart nor his stomach.”
Sydney nodded. “For the most part, Lauren’s right.”
“I never had any doubt,” Poe added sagely.
“So?” Lauren asked. “Yes or no? Do you want to explore the untapped possibilities between you and Doug?”
With an enthusiasm that continued to grow the longer she considered the question, Kinsey glanced from one woman’s inquiring gaze to the next. “Yeah, I think I do.”
Lauren rubbed her hands together gleefully. “I love the chance to put a plan in motion.”
COLLAPSING ONTO the leather sofa in Anton Neville’s office, Doug Storey stretched out his legs, laced his hands behind his head and gave in to exhaustion.
Who knew flying between Houston and Denver three times in one week could take so much out of a guy?
Either he was getting old or he needed to find more time to work out. Sleep wouldn’t hurt. Whatever. Something had to give before he collapsed like a bad knee.
He had decisions and deals stacked one on top of the next, and needed a working body and a fully functional mind. Right now he felt as if the only thing working was his ability to sit still and not move.
Anton finished his phone call and cradled the receiver, his hand lingering on the phone, his eyes lingering on Doug as if something vital hovered on the tip of his tongue.
Finally, with a shake of his head, Anton walked around to the front of his desk. He dropped into one of the office’s visitor chairs and waited—the way he always waited, sitting and thinking and driving Doug crazy.
Doug had to be on the go all the time, which he was rapidly coming to learn was not as easy to manage when his going was spread from the Gulf Coast to the Rocky Mountains several times a week. He’d be glad to get settled in Denver at last.
“Man, I can’t take much more of this,” he said, shaking his head and stifling another yawn. “If this is what it feels like to be eighty, I’d rather go out in a blaze of glory at thirty-one.”
Anton snorted. “If you’re what blazing looks like, remind me not to light a match.”
Doug rolled his eyes. “What? You’d rather sit behind your desk than burn up the street?”
“No, dude.” Anton leaned back and squared an ankle over the opposite knee. “I’d rather get out of here by seven and take my butt home to Lauren.”
Dragging both hands down his face, Doug grunted. “Damn marital bliss. I remember when I wasn’t the only one around here ordering in pizza and chicken teriyaki. We got a hell of a lot of work done after-hours back then.”
“I still do. It’s just business I don’t want to be taking care of up here. Especially with you for an audience.”
“Your discretion is much appreciated.” Ah, but it felt good to be able to smirk. “I don’t think I could take it, seeing you snowed under by a honey-do list.”
“Oh, yeah. Funny,” Anton said, flipping him off.
“Hey,” Doug said with a slow-rolling shrug and a grin. “I just call ’em like I see ’em.”
“Then you need to clean the dollar signs out of your eyes, because work is making you blind.”
“And here I thought it was all that stroking I’ve been doing on the road.”
“Man, you need help. Hell, you need a woman, at the very least.”
Doug scooted forward to sit on the sofa’s edge, knees spread wide, elbows braced on his thighs. “No woman. Women. Plural. One woman means complications, expectations. And honey-do lists.”
This time it was Anton who smirked. “One woman also makes for a much warmer bed.”
“Except when you’re sleeping on the couch.”
“Whoever’s giving you advice about women is charging way too much.” Anton grunted. “You don’t know jack about what you’re saying.”
“Maybe not. But I know more than jack about what I’m seeing. Especially on the soccer field. You guys who’ve shacked up or gotten your butts married? You suck. Leo can’t defend a goal worth a crap anymore.” Doug liked his life fine just the way it was. He had no plans to put his nuts on the line to be snipped.
Anton didn’t even bother with a comeback. “Speaking of soccer, are you planning to make the scrimmage Sunday night? What with you being eighty and all?”
“Nah. I’m having dinner with Kinsey.” Slumping into the cushions again, Doug grinned and waggled both brows. “She’s cooking.”
Anton did that waiting thing again. Then that smirking thing. “You know Lauren will kick your butt back to the Rockies if you hurt that girl.”
“Screw you, Neville. It’s just dinner.” Though Doug almost had trouble convincing himself that Kinsey didn’t have more on her mind. When he’d picked up his voice mail on the way to the airport earlier today, he’d been surprised to hear her message.
And even more surprised at the invitation.
Her tone and the words she’d chosen made him think she wasn’t just wanting to put food in his stomach. He couldn’t help but remember that breakfast-time kiss they’d shared while vacationing last year on Coconut Caye.
Not to mention the tabletop pole dance he’d watched a very tipsy Kinsey perform, her head thrown back, her blond hair swinging down to the red thong bikini bottom that bared her fantastic ass.
Then there was that night on the veranda when they’d both had too much to drink. A night neither of them had spoken of again. A night he wished he could better recall because he had a feeling he’d forgotten a hell of a lot he needed to know—though the most important part he did remember.
Oh, yeah. He remembered.
He cleared his throat, slumped lower where he sat. “It’s just dinner.”
“You said that already.”
“Well, I’m just making sure you heard me.”
Anton leaned to the side, shifting his weight onto one elbow. “You sure you’re not trying to convince yourself instead?”
“Of what? The fact that Kinsey and I are only friends?” Doug snorted and picked a loose string off the knee of his khaki Dockers. “She knows I don’t want a relationship.”
“Just dinner and…dessert?”
“Dinner.” He shrugged. “Dessert’s up to her.”
“Right. It’s not like you’re on a Kinsey-free diet or anything.”
Doug didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say. He liked Kinsey a lot. If he’d been the type to settle down with one woman, she’d be there at the top of his list. Correction. She’d be his list. But he just didn’t see himself ever giving up the freedom that let him live his life without baggage or…honey-do lists.
“Does she know about Denver?” Anton asked.
Doug shook his head. “Dunno. I plan to tell her Sunday night.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, and then what? Then I go home and sleep for six hours or so, get up and pack.” That was the routine he’d settled into of late. “I’m flying out again first thing Monday morning.”
Anton narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to have to decide about Reuben buying you out, you know. Especially considering how he bailed you out with Media West this afternoon. We can’t afford to screw up this remodeling job.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Doug hated that his late flight had cost him the Media West meeting, hated even more that he would’ve been on time if he hadn’t rescheduled to make one more contact in Denver. A contact that had been a big waste of time.
“Hey. Don’t blow this off,” Anton barked. “You’re lucky Reuben runs with Marcus West’s boys or you’d be eating crow for a very long time to come.”
“As a matter of fact, Reuben and I have tickets to tomorrow night’s Rockets game. A few beers and it’ll all be good.” This decision was the hardest one Doug faced. Not the beer or the basketball, but the firm. He was no closer to making a decision tonight than he had been a month ago.
He and Anton had made their original Neville and Storey plans while at the University of Houston’s College of Architecture, nearly ten years back. The move to Denver felt like an upward move on the career ladder. Doug had been wooed by the biggest boys on the block, and that was something that came along only once in a lifetime.
It was just that selling his share of their architectural firm made him feel as if he were giving up on a dream, as well as selling out and betraying his very best friend. He’d thought the change would bring a sense of calm to his restlessness of late. He’d been wrong.
And that was what was keeping him from signing on the Denver group’s bottom line.
“You’ve got time,” Anton said, pensively studying the leather arm of his chair. “And I’d rather you take it than do the wrong thing.” He pushed to his feet then, shaking off what seemed to be a remnant melancholy. “Now, me? My time’s up. Lauren’s waiting.”
Doug slapped his palms to his thighs and forced himself to follow. “Yeah, I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.”
“And all I’ve got is a honey to do.”
“POE, I THINK you’re the only one here who doesn’t know Isabel Leighton, a friend from further back than I care to admit. Izzy, this is Annabel Lee, known fondly around the office as Poe.” Sydney made the only introduction necessary, then turned and gave Kinsey a grin of devious proportions. “Kinsey, who everyone knows, is the reason we’re here.”
Where they were was in the kitchen of the suburban home Sydney shared with Ray Coffey. Sydney, Lauren, Izzy and Poe had all come to help Kinsey put together a meal guaranteed to make Doug weep. And weep in a good way, not because her cooking sucked. Since her woefully understocked kitchen sucked, as well, Sydney’s state-of-the-art setup made for a much better classroom.
It was definitely good to see Izzy again. Though Kinsey had lost touch with the other woman once both were busy in school, the two of them had been fast friends as young girls. They’d spent hours running wild at Kinsey’s parents’ home where, for almost twenty years now, Izzy’s uncle Leonard had worked magic with the Grays’ lawn and tropical garden.
