Page 31 of Reckless Kiss

My life had reached an all new level of weird.

“I’m a lost cause,” he said into the couch cushion.

“No you’re not.”

He peeked up. “A gorgeous woman asked me for sex...and I said no. I’m pretty sure that in the dictionary next to ‘lost cause’ is a picture of me.”

I’d normally agree but at the moment I was so damn happy nothing else mattered. “Well before we petition for your entry in the new edition can you at least explain what happened?”

He lifted his head just enough for me to see his eyes. “I think she might be too perfect for me.”

“What do you mean?” My heart thudded with the weight of my betrayal.

“I become a different person around her,” he sighed, rolling onto his back, throwing an arm over his eyes. “And I don’t like that guy. He’s nervous and weird. I’m a basket case around her and it isn’t getting better. Not like—” he suddenly stopped, clamping his mouth shut.

“Like?” I prompted.

He sighed even more dramatically. “Like with Hope.”

I sat forward. “Hope? As in my new friend who likes to hang out and eat all my food on Sunday?”

He nodded. “Do you hate me?”

“Hate you?” I repeated, lost, excited, and confused, all at once. Jeffry liked Esme, but he also had a thing forHope?

He sat up and faced me. “Is she off limits?”

If he only knew how idiotic that statement was when directed at me, the betrayer of best friends. “No. She’s her own person. We’re not anything to each other.”

“But...you had sex.”

“So?”

He shot up off the couch, suddenly furious. “That bonds two people!”

“Not necessarily.” Not in my case. Bonding was very rare. A couple of my dates got under my skin and into my heart. I cared about them and what happened to them, but not enough tobewith them. That was different. Caring and loving were not the same thing.

Jeffry’s jaw dropped. “Not necessarily?” he repeated slowly. “Not necessarily?”

“Hope needed to have some fun. To be a little wild. To,” I searched for the right word, “to relax. All I was to her was the dick she rode to get there. Nothing more. It was just that once. We’re friends now.” She was one of those women I cared aboutbecausewe became friends.

He dropped back onto the couch. “So you’re not upset that I might have feelings for her?”

No, actually. It was the best news I’d heard in ages, not that I was going to tell him why. “You two have been hanging out?”

“Yeah. A little. Dinner, a movie, I helped her when her car had some trouble.” He blushed. “I like being near her. She’s so gorgeous and funny and real...in a lot of ways she’s like Esme, only she doesn’t scare the piss out of me.”

“That’s kind of important—to be comfortable with the person you’re with.” Now that he mentioned it, I was baffled by how comfortable I was with Esme, how easily I was able to betray my best friend, all because I wanted to be with her.

Jeffry chuckled. “You know what? She might be better off with you...if you were ever interested in dating a woman more than once.”

My focus snapped out of my thoughts of Esme and back to what Jeffry had just said. “What do you mean?”

“She’s got as much fashion sense as you do, but she’s obviously much smarter. Gorgeous, sexy, I don’t know, it was the way she asked about sex last night. It reminded me of you for some reason.”

I was practically falling off the couch from inching forward, as if I could somehow pull the information from Jeffry by moving closer. “What did she say?”

It was probably bad form to look so interested, to feel so hopeful, but I couldn’t help it.

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