Shameless

But it wasn’t her cat she was mindful of just now. No, the suggestive conversation she’d shared with Kevin and Gauge was what dominated her thoughts to such a degree that she found it impossible to close her eyes.

Naughty images trailed through her mind one after another. First, there was Gauge holding himself above her, his hair framing his handsome face as he stared into her eyes. Then she blinked and his features were replaced by Kevin’s full mouth as he leaned in to kiss her.

She caught her breath and groaned, tossing the comforter off and covering Ernie with it. While the downstairs area of the old workspace had been completely updated when the three of them had joined forces three years ago, the two upstairs apartments had been left as is, the radiator heat hard to get exactly right. It was either too cold in her sprawling, two-bedroom place, or way too hot.

Of course, she recognized that her thoughts might be just as much to blame for her overheated condition.

She licked her lips and threw her arm over her head, watching as Ernie freed himself from the blankets and twitched his tail at her before turning his back and jumping from the bed. She idly listened as his nails clicked against the areas of the polished wood floor not covered by rugs and then heard him crunching his dry food in the kitchen.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent a sleepless night thinking about a man. Correction, two men. Her best friends and business partners.

And if she had a brain in her head, she’d turn on the television in the corner and let Conan laugh her to sleep, putting a smile on her face that had nothing to do with either Gauge or Kevin or, Lord forbid, both of them at the same time.

What made secret fantasies special was that they were secret.

Okay, so, yes, she could admit to herself in the safety of her own bed, she’d had a dream once that had featured the two men in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with friendship or business. It had been last summer and on the heels of a memory that now stood out in stark clarity. The three of them had been at a garden party one of Kevin’s late mother’s friends had thrown. While everyone else gathered around the ice sculptures and buffet tables, they had changed into their suits and taken advantage of the Olympic-size pool nestled in a landscape designed to look like a mountain oasis. They’d been fooling around, splashing each other to break the boring monotony established by the stuffy gathering, then they’d graduated to dunking each other.

And then what had happened next had likely set the stage for what she was considering now….

“I don’t know why women insist on buying bathing suits like the one you have on,” Kevin had said of her red string bikini. “The way you keep having to rearrange the top or the bottom, it’s obvious they weren’t meant for swimming.”

Nina had been adjusting the top; her right nipple was in danger of peeking out from behind the wet fabric. She’d watched as her skin puckered in awareness of Kevin’s steady gaze, giving a little shiver as the material chafed against the sensitive tip.

Gauge’s voice had sounded from behind her. “They don’t buy them for swimming,” he’d said, hooking a casual finger into the back of her suit bottom.

It was something he’d done at least a thousand times before. A teasing move not unlike what a brother might do. But in the wake of Kevin’s comment on her suit and her reaction to his gaze, the air rushed from her lungs in a soft whoosh at the feel of his hot finger against her cool skin as he tugged her closer to him.

Kevin drew nearer her front. “So you’re saying they buy them to drive men like us nuts, then?”

Nina was fascinated by the way droplets of water clung to Kevin’s dark hair as he pushed it back from his face; she found it suddenly difficult to tread water. Abruptly she discovered that she wasn’t only in the deep end literally, but metaphorically, as well. And when she felt Gauge press against her from behind, and Kevin from the front, she had the sensation that she was soon going to be in way over her head.

She grasped Kevin’s shoulders to keep above the water at the same time as Gauge grasped her hips.

“Whoa there, sweetheart,” he’d murmured against her ear. “We wouldn’t want you to go under on us.”

She’d restlessly licked her lips, her heart going a million miles a minute, her body flushed with heat despite the cool water as she considered what they might have in mind.

She felt Gauge’s hands slide over her bottom and down the back of her legs even as Kevin reached for the arms she had around his neck for balance, her breasts pressed against the hard wall of his chest.

Then Gauge caught her foot and hoisted her up, catapulting her a few feet so that she hit the water face down.

The cad.

When she came back up for air, she sensed that she’d lost the battle with her top but didn’t make a move to right it. Instead she merely stared at the two of them wickedly, watching them watch her as she allowed her body to float to the surface, her breasts partially exposed, the material of her suit bottom clinging to her swollen womanhood.

“You know, you’re both right,” she’d said as she slowly did the backstroke, coaxing both breasts out. “Women don’t buy these kinds of suits for swimming. We buy them to drive the opposite sex wild.” She’d leisurely licked her lips. “Absolutely, positively, stark raving mad.”

And judging by both their heated expressions, she’d achieved her goal.

At least for one, sweet moment.

Then Kevin’s mother’s friend had come over to the pool to tell them the barbecue was ready….

Recovering from the memory to find herself not in the cool water of a swimming pool with two hot men, but in the middle of her empty bed while a winter storm raged outside, Nina groaned and rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. She hadn’t thought about that time since it had happened. Okay, maybe she was lying. She had thought about it. Usually right around the time she was about to drop off to sleep and found her hand sliding down between her legs as if of its own accord to relieve a pressure there, brought on by the obvious absence of a man in her life.

The sheets were soft and warm and smelled of lavender. The mattress was newish and cradled her aching body. She pressed her hips against it and squeezed her thighs tightly together, relishing the tiny shivers that skittered over her. Her nipples throbbed, her breasts felt heavy and she couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the need screaming through her body.

Gauge and Kevin were right. She needed sex.

Merely thinking their names made her catch her breath, and she rocked her hips more solidly against the mattress. But the tight coiling deep in her womb refused to be satisfied by the vague action. So she slid her hand down and under her right hip, seeking the V of her thighs with her own fingers. She pressed against the swollen mound through her cotton underpants, but the impersonal touch only made her want more. So she worked her fingers under the top elastic, not stopping until the tips met with her shallow crevice. She was dripping wet. Stroking the damp folds, she found the engorged bit of flesh begging for her attention and pressed.

She climaxed instantly, caught off guard by her immediate and explosive response.

It usually took her a few minutes to reach orgasm.

Occasional masturbation almost always quieted her clamoring hormones.

But not tonight.

She extracted her hand from her underpants and rolled back over, more hot and bothered now than she’d been before.

Nina gulped a thick swallow and tightly closed her eyes, willing the unwanted emotions away. Wasn’t life complicated enough wanting one man? What would she possibly do with two?

Her mind responded by offering up all sorts of interesting options.

Nina groaned just as Ernie leaped back onto the bed. She blinked at him standing at the edge of the mattress, staring at her, as if aware of what she was thinking.

“What?” she asked quietly. “Go to sleep and mind your own business.”

If only she could do the same….

TWO DAYS LATER, Kevin watched Nina pass in front of the checkout counter, her snug black pants clinging to her delicious bottom, her white apron cinched at her narrow waist. She waggled her fingers at him and gave him the same wicked smile she’d been throwing his way for the past two days.

He rang up the amount on the register and distractedly quoted the total to the customer.

“Um, I think you made a mistake,” Jeremiah Johnson said, staring at the display.

Nina moved out of view and Kevin ran the back of his hand across his forehead. “Pardon me?”

“You added a zero to the amount, I think.” Johnson waved a book. “This should be $23.95, not $239.50. Unless the price on hardcovers went up again.”

Kevin grimaced and mumbled an apology to the economics professor, canceling the transaction and starting again from scratch.

He didn’t know how long he could take Nina’s shameless flirting. While she’d always been friendly, often times bawdily so, she’d never downright tempted him the way she was doing now.

And his job performance was suffering for it. Over the past two days he’d gotten more orders wrong than right. Considering that he prided himself on customer service, his aberrant behavior only amplified his stress level.

He handed Johnson his purchase and apologized again even as Gauge walked behind the paneled counter and grabbed a few bags. “You know, one conversation will eliminate your sorry state.”

“Shut the hell up, Gauge,” he said under his breath.

But apparently not quietly enough because old Mrs. Christenberry stared at him in open-mouthed shock.

That was it. He and his friends were going to put this ridiculous topic to rest. Right now.

“Julie, man the register, please,” he said to a part-time sales associate who was stocking books nearby.

He grabbed Gauge by the arm and led him in the direction of the stockroom. “You and I need to talk.”

“It’s about damn time.”

He could say that again.

He opened the door, ushered his friend through it, and then stared at another associate who was stripping the covers off paperbacks to send back to distributors for credit.

“John, go see if the music center needs any attention for a few minutes, will you?”

The teen eyed him and a grinning Gauge and hastily left the room.

“Christ, Kevin, you’re worse off than I thought.”

Kevin stared at his friend. Gauge looked unaffected as he leaned against a table and crossed his feet at his booted ankles and then his arms over his chest. His T-shirt today was black and sported the logo from a Memphis House of Blues.

“This has got to stop. Right now,” he said, pacing one way and then back again. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I can’t ban these…images from my mind.”

“What images? Of Nina naked and moaning?” Gauge nodded. “Yeah, I’m going through pretty much the same thing.”

Kevin stopped and fisted his hands at his sides. The idea that his friend felt the same way about Nina bothered him even more than the thought of his own agitated state.

“What? You believed you’re the only one who’s been suffering since our little conversation the other night?”

“But you’ve slept with two women since then.”

Gauge grinned. “And your point is?”

“My point is that you’re an asshole.”

Gauge chuckled at that, nudging up Kevin’s already soaring stress level.

Kevin grasped Gauge by the front of his T-shirt, forcing him to uncross both his ankles and his arms.

“Whoa, watch it now.” Gauge’s smile disappeared briefly, the moment suddenly tense.

Kevin released him and took a long breath. “Sorry.”

Gauge smoothed down his wrinkled T-shirt. “No need getting violent on me. I can set you up with someone if you’re feeling that pent-up.”

“No, thank you.”

“You sure? Because I can guarantee you’ll feel one thousand percent better tomorrow morning.”

“No, you would feel better. I’d probably feel worse.”

“But what if that person was Nina…?”

4

“THERE’S SOMETHING different about you,” Nina’s grandma Gladys said, pointing a red nail in her direction. “I don’t know what it is, but rest assured, I’ll figure it out before I leave here today.”

Nina took a sheet of cookies out of the oven, placed them on the counter and then shook her hands out of the oven mitts she wore. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Everything is exactly the same as it was when we had lunch last week.”

Liar.

Everything had changed. Not physically. But emotionally, Nina felt as if a door had opened, offering views out onto a lush vista she hadn’t known existed.

All she had to do was step through that doorway and welcome the change.

And those emotional changes would then also become physical.

Through the round window in the kitchen door, she watched as Kevin chatted with Heidi Joblowski, her assistant. She gave an involuntary shiver.

“Ten years younger,” Gladys said, her gaze following Nina’s. “That’s all I’d need and that man would have been in my bed aeons ago.”

Nina nearly choked. “Ten years would make you sixty.”

Her grandmother grinned. “Your point being?”

Her point being that there still would have been more than twenty-five years between her and Kevin.

Then again, her grandmother was probably right. She would have found a way, by hook or crook, to back Kevin—or any man she wanted—into her bed.

She shook her head.

Thankfully Gladys wasn’t sixty anymore. She was seventy. And finally beginning to show it.

Nina hid a small smile as she took off her apron and then picked up the two plates she’d prepared. “Grab those soft drinks, will you? Our table’s just been vacated.”

Their table was the one for two in the far corner of the café Gladys swore was the only place to sit. “All the better to see the hot young men you work with,” she’d told her granddaughter.

Nina positioned the plates on the table and moved her chair so that she sat more next to her grandmother than across from her. She’d learned long ago not to block her view. Besides, there was always the risk of getting whiplash from Gladys asking her to quickly lean this way or that so she could get a better look at something, or rather, someone.

Of course, her grandmother had no way of knowing that she now shared her interest in her coworkers. Rather than cluck her tongue or put up her hand to ward off any unwanted comments on either Kevin or Gauge’s posteriors, she intended to appreciate the view with her.

“So, are you done with your redecorating yet?” Nina asked, waiting until Gladys was seated and had placed her paper napkin in her lap, despite her casual surroundings.

She was long accustomed to her grandmother’s oddball behavior. She might sit with perfect posture, but her sometimes purple hair, her hot-pink lipstick and her gold lamé jackets gave her an air of regal yet trashy pride.

Gladys waved her hand as she took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat. “That’s been done for weeks. Where have you been?”

Right here. And she’d enjoyed three lunches with her since then. But Nina figured it was as good a place to start conversation as any. Urging her grandmother into a monologue about the fit nature of the handyman the decorator had sent to do the more difficult work—or the good-looking decorator himself, even if he did prefer men to women—would have gotten the ball rolling.

But her grandmother wasn’t biting anything more than her sandwich as she watched Gauge entering the café for a cup of post-lunch coffee.

Her grandmother elbowed Nina so hard she almost fell from her chair.

“There he is.”

Nina relaxed back in her seat, slowly chewing her own bite of tuna sandwich. Ah, yes, there he was, indeed.

A little thrill ran up her back at the memory of their conversation the other night combined with the interesting dreams she’d been having. She told herself she should be appalled, but her own recently awakened decadent side refused the response.

“He’s a lazy lover, you can tell.”

Nina nearly choked on her food. She quickly reached for her drink.

Gladys smiled widely. “Lazy, but his endurance would be out of this world. All day. And all night. That’s my guess.”

Nina watched the lines of Gauge’s bottom in his faded jeans, and then appreciated the muscles of his back and arms in his snug black T-shirt.

She looked over to find her grandmother staring at her.

“If I didn’t know better, girl, I would think you were giving him the lover’s look.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nina said, hoping that her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “Gauge and Kevin and I have been friends forever.”

“And partners…”

“Business partners,” Nina stressed. She shifted in her chair. “I talked to Mom yesterday.”

Nothing was capable of derailing her grandmother more than mention of her daughter, Nina’s mother.

In all the world, she didn’t think there were two people less alike. Where her grandmother was a free spirit, her mother was as uptight as they came, attending church three times a week, working with Meals on Wheels and playing the role of perfect housewife to her father’s perfect corporate gentleman. While they weren’t wealthy, they were well-off. And her mother had never worked a day of her life.

Her grandmother, on the other hand, refused to let any man take care of her….

Of course, it probably didn’t help that Gladys called Helen her mistake.

Nina’s mother had never liked the attention that Gladys had showered on her granddaughter from a young age. Growing up, Nina’d never understood the feud between the two most important women in her life, but as she got older, she’d come to realize that perhaps Gladys regretted not taking more time out with her own daughter, and was determined to rectify the mistake by playing a significant role in her granddaughter’s life.

Then again, maybe the two women were too different to ever have been close.

If that was the case, what did it say about her and her grandmother? Could it be that Gladys saw herself in Nina? And that’s why she’d formed the bond?

Or could she be trying to counteract Helen’s influence so she wouldn’t turn into a “dried-up old prune,” as Gladys called Nina’s mother?

Another elbow, another scramble to keep herself from falling off her stool.

“There’s the other one.”

Nina didn’t have to ask to whom her grandmother was referring. She’d watched as Kevin joined Gauge at the cashier’s counter in the audio section, apparently having finished his own lunch. Speaking of which, Nina looked down, surprised to find she’d nearly demolished the contents of her plate, as had her grandmother.

“Now him…he’d be a generous lover,” Gladys said. “He’d be eager to please you. Loving.”

Nina watched as Kevin leaned both hands against the countertop, his shirtsleeves rolled up, revealing the coiled muscles of his forearms.

“Do you think so?” she was surprised to hear herself ask.

Gladys’s grin made her wish she hadn’t said anything. “I don’t think so, Nin. I know so.”

Her grandmother made a play at wiping her mouth with her napkin, pushed her plate away, and then went about refreshing her lipstick. “So…which one are you looking to bed?”

“Grandmother!” Nina whispered harshly when a couple of women at a neighboring table gave them a hard look.

“Don’t ‘grandmother’ me. I see those looks you’re giving both of them. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.” She put her lipstick and mirror away and closed her purse with a click. “And I know you.”

Nina grimaced. She’d never credited Gladys with knowing her well. Gladys bought her only granddaughter bizarre Christmas and birthday gifts in garish colors that were more her own style than Nina’s. Instead of taking her to Disneyland when she was kid, she’d taken her to the Windsor casinos, convincing the pit bosses that she was eighteen when she was only fourteen and earning her a spot at a blackjack table, which made things easier for Gladys because it meant she wouldn’t have to go up to the room so often to check on her, although Nina hadn’t played.

At least not until she did turn eighteen and could enjoy a hand or two on her own.

“They’re my partners, Grandma, my best friends. I couldn’t possibly get involved with either one of them,” she said, but even she knew that there was no strength behind her words. Only a vague fear.

“You’re also adults, Nina.”

If only her grandmother knew what Gauge had suggested and what Nina was hoping the men would act on. The topic hadn’t been mentioned again since that night. But, oh, how she wished it would be.

“Where are you going?” Nina asked, grasping Gladys’s arm as she started to get up.

She was half afraid that her grandmother would make a stab at a matchmaking effort—if matchmaking was the right word for a connection that would only involve sex.

“I have a date for the matinee in twenty minutes.”

Nina instantly relaxed. “It’s not like you to make plans on our lunch day.”

“I didn’t.” She smiled wickedly. “But since it looks like things are well in order here—” she spared the two men another glance “—very well in order, I’m going to give you the space you need to make your decision and go check out the new usher at the cinema. I hear his wife died last year. So that makes him prime mattress-boogie material.”

Nina gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Do you ever think of anything other than sex?”

Her grandmother shrugged into her coat and smoothed down the front, appearing to give the question some consideration. “No, I don’t. And seeing as at my age there aren’t too many opportunities, I have to take full advantage of those that do come my way.” She waggled a finger at her. “And it’s nice to see that you’re finally beginning to follow in your grandmother’s footsteps.”

5

“I’M NOT going to discuss this with you,” Kevin said emphatically.

Gauge considered his friend who leaned against the cashier’s counter. He’d been aware of Nina and her grandmother’s attention on them ever since the women had sat down to eat their lunch.

“Then what are you doing here?” he asked.

What was he doing here? Simple. He wanted all this highly suggestive talk to end. Now. It had gotten to the point where he couldn’t sleep, could barely eat, and fifty-nine minutes of every hour were spent fantasizing about what it might be like to claim Nina for one sweet night.

“I’m here to appeal to your better judgment to stop this. Right now.”

Gauge pushed off the table. “Come on, Kev, you know you’ve wanted Nina since the first moment you laid eyes on her. Here’s your chance to have her. In a completely anonymous way.”

“That’s the part I don’t like. If I…have her, as you put it, I want her with eyes wide open. Not shut.”

“Well, then, I guess that means you’ll never have her.”

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“What do you think it means? You’re the one walking around here with a constant hard-on, yet for the past three years you haven’t had the guts to ask Nina out to a movie, much less to bed. That doesn’t bode well for any future possibilities, Kevin, old boy.”

Kevin felt like punching his friend. “Yes, I admit I may be attracted to Nina. But sleeping with her isn’t even a remote possibility. There’s more at stake here than my libido.”

“Which makes the anonymous part all the more appealing. Because it puts the V in viability.” He pointed at Kevin. “Think about it. You finally get to experience what both of us have been dying to taste…all without worry of the future of the business or our friendship because she won’t know who she spent the time with. For all she knows, it could be a complete stranger. Some guy I came across at the bar.”