Shameless

A flutter of something against the skin of her neck.

Fingers, caressing, stroking. Then a kiss, lingering, hot.

Nina’s heart beat strongly in her breast and heat exploded pure and strong in her stomach.

She’d imagined this very scene countless times over the past few days. Had anticipated this moment. But nothing had prepared her for the thrill of the unknown that zinged through her bloodstream. The electric desire for the unknown, waiting, longing for touch, for connection to the stranger in her bedroom.

TORI CARRINGTON

multi-award-winning, bestselling husband-and-wife duo Lori and Tony Karayianni are the power behind the pen name Tori Carrington. Their more than thirty-five titles include numerous Blaze® mini-series, as well as the ongoing Sofie metropolis comedic mystery series with another publisher. Visit www.toricarrington.net and www.sofiemetro.com for more information on the couple and their titles.

Dear Reader,

Best friends to lovers. One of our all-time favourite themes. But what would happen, we wondered, if a girl has two male best friends? Oh, the possibilities!

In Shameless, sexy baker Nina Leonard finds that she’s turned into a serial monogamist, repeatedly mistaking one-night stands for the real thing. But when she receives an indecent proposal from hot best friends and business partners Kevin Weber and Patrick Gauge – namely to help her break her destructive dating pattern by arranging a night of anonymous sex with a fantasy stranger – Nina is hard-pressed to refuse. Especially since she’s sure that stranger will be one of the two of them. But which one?

We hope you enjoy every erotic and neurotic moment of Nina, Kevin and Gauge’s unconventional journey towards happily-ever-after. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at PO Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, USA, (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the web at www.toricarrington.net.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading.

Lori & Tony Karayianni

SHAMELESS

BY

TORI CARRINGTON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

We dedicate this book to everyone

who’s ever wondered “what if.”

Here’s to finding your own

unconventional happy-ever-after…

1

“IN THIS DAY and age, is it bad for a woman to yearn for some good, hot, anonymous sex?”

Nina Leonard sat back and took a sip from her extra-large white ceramic cup of latte, waiting for Kevin Weber and Patrick Gauge’s responses. She’d intended her words to be shocking. Had wanted them to reflect the chaos she’d been feeling lately after a long period of unwelcome celibacy.

The three of them were seated around the mammoth fireplace that dominated the middle of BMC, the bookstore/music center/café they jointly owned in Fantasy, Michigan, southwest of Ann Arbor. It was just after ten and although the three partners had officially closed the front doors, three customers still roamed around the cozy depths of the store. One of them, an elderly woman with a cane, peeked at the three around a stand of marked-down holiday cookbooks and Christmas CDs that would finally be packed away tomorrow when the calendar changed from January to February. The customer reminded Nina of her grandmother, bless her heart, who would have done exactly the same thing. But Gladys Leonard wouldn’t have stopped at eavesdropping; she would have contributed something to the conversation. Perhaps she would even have sat down next to her to share her own erotic adventures, played out during the early Motown days of Detroit, a city that lay forty-five miles to the east of the small university town.

Nina was sprawled on the flowery, overstuffed sofa, her feet crossed on the coffee table in front of her, her large cup taking two hands to handle.

Lately, she’d been craving a man who would take two hands to handle.

“Uh-oh,” Gauge said from the ottoman nearer the fire, where he sat tuning his acoustic guitar. “Have we hit the six-month mark already?”

Kevin put his own coffee mug down on the table next to the thriller he’d been reading. “Has it been that long already? Feels like just yesterday that we finally got rid of Mr. Jenkins.”

Gauge chuckled. “That’s because it was yesterday. That’s when I spotted the sorry son-of-a-bitch browsing through the makeover section, you know, the one nearer the café.”

“All the better to stalk Nina.”

Nina gave an eye roll and rested her cup in her lap, her apron with the store’s logo on the front still snowy white and feeling freshly starched. “You two think you know me so well.” She tucked her short blond hair behind her ear. “I believe you know me not at all.”

Gauge strummed a few chords of B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” and looked at Kevin. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t she say during lunch that we knew her better than anyone out there?”

“Mmm, yes. Just after we called her on her desire to go to Florida for Valentine’s Day.” Kevin glanced at her. “You love the snow and you know it.”

“Are you calling me contrary?” Nina asked.

“Not at all.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Nina took another long sip of her latte. This was usually one of her favorite times of the day, when the three of them drifted together, either at one of the café tables where they’d pick at what remained in the bakery display Nina had so carefully stocked, or in the music center where Gauge would pop in whatever blues or rock CD he’d received in that day’s shipment, or here in Kevin’s domain where original, leather-bound classics were stocked alongside the latest bestselling thrillers and romances.

But tonight…tonight Nina felt a restless something that wouldn’t be calmed by the blazing fire in the stone hearth to her left, or by the thick, white snowflakes swirling golden under the old copper streetlamps she could see through the front window.

“I caught her browsing through the erotica titles in the romance section earlier,” Kevin said.

Nina nearly choked on her latte.

“Ah, then that would explain it, wouldn’t it?” Gauge asked, giving her a long, knowing look. “She’s in need of a good orgasm.”

“And in search of one, she’ll wind up getting involved with the wrong man because she’ll mistake the fundamental desire to mate for a relationship.”

“What? Kevin Weber, you just did not use the word mate,” Nina said.

“Better than screw, I think,” Gauge said, putting his guitar aside and resting his well-developed forearms on his jeans-clad legs. He shrugged. “No matter the word choice, Kevin’s right. How long has it been since we decided to combine our stores? Two years?”

“Three,” Nina and Kevin said in unison.

“Yes, three. And in those three years, Kev here and I have watched you repeat the same cycle. First, there’s all that wistful sighing and fidgeting—”

“I do not fidget.” Nina caught herself scratching her shoulder and stopped.

Kevin sat forward. “Then there’s the flirting with every half-decent-looking guy that comes through the front doors.”

“I do not flirt with customers.”

The two men shared a glance.

Gauge chuckled and shook his head. “Then she makes her choice, she goes out on one date, then two….”

Kevin took over. “She sleeps with him, thinks that now she’s been intimate with the idiot, well, that constitutes a relationship….”

“And she spends the next six months trying to make something work that never stood a chance from the beginning.”

“All because she wanted sex.”

“And then it takes six months of her swearing off men before the cycle starts back up all over again.”

Nina gaped at them both. “That is so not the way it happens.”

“Yes it is,” Gauge told her.

Kevin nodded.

Nina put her cup on the coffee table and then crossed her arms over her chest, staring at them.

Okay, so maybe they had a point. Maybe she was caught in some sort of vicious cycle that left her with exes stalking her from various areas of the bookstore, wondering what they’d done wrong. Only they hadn’t done anything wrong. She had. She’d chosen men who held out zero hope of keeping her interest once the sex went bad.

And it always went bad, didn’t it? She’d jump into the relationship, hormones raging, and they’d spend the first few weeks mostly in bed. And then slowly, but surely, things would begin to cool off from there. Then, inevitably, would come the day when the hormonally charged air would clear, she’d look at the man across the breakfast table and finally see him for what he really was.

And she would dump him.

Okay, she wasn’t as cruel as all that. But she would find a way to wiggle out of it with excuses such as the café needed more of her attention, or she was thinking about going back to school, or she’d flat-out say that they’d probably made a mistake and maybe they should think about dating other people.

“Good thing the three of us are just friends,” Gauge said. “Or else she’d have kicked both of us to the curb years ago.”

“Mmm,” Kevin agreed.

“That’s only because I couldn’t decide on which one of you to date, so I thought it would be a good idea not to date either of you.”

Nina grinned, finally getting the shocked responses she was after.

KEVIN WEBER felt as though the neck of his white T-shirt had just shrunk three sizes, and he shifted the denim shirt he wore over it as he stared at the sexy blonde spilled over the couch like a satin sheet.

“What?” she asked with a wicked smile. “Surely you both knew I was attracted to you.”

She looked between them and then her gaze settled on Gauge.

Kevin grimaced.

In the past three years he’d been in a constant state of lust where Nina Leonard was concerned. It was more than the clingy black pants and tight white tops she favored, showing her curvy body to perfection. Often he’d catch her stretching after a long, busy day when she thought no one was watching; there was something about the feline way she contorted her body, the back arches that alternately brought her lush bottom up and the smooth, tight-tipped swell of her breasts out, that had caused the loss of more than a single night’s sleep.

Nina Leonard was smart, talented and witty. She could indulge in an hours-long open criticism of the classics while she tried out her latest sweets recipe and then dive into the latest celebrity gossip without missing a beat.

He knew everything about her. From her favorite color—deep purple—to the fact that her family was from an old, downtown section of Detroit and that she had settled inAnnArbor after attaining her business degree from nearby University of Michigan. He knew that more than once she had burned a batch of her famous bear claws because she had her nose buried in one of those steamy romance novels, and that she preferred plain white underpants over thongs because wearing the latter found her constantly wiggling to try to remove what she called a permanent wedgie. (Now that had been a week to remember.)

And he knew that she considered him little more than an older brother she was constantly trying to fix up with one of her friends. She had once come straight out to ask if he was gay.

For the record, he wasn’t.

And if he needed more reminders of that, all he had to do was think of the sudden tightness of his jeans when she admitted she’d been attracted to him.

Gauge slid him a knowing gaze. “We suspected.”

Nina made a strangled sound. “You mean you guys talk about me in that…way?”

“Of course we do.” Gauge crossed his own arms over his chest; he wore a T-shirt as Kevin did, but without a denim shirt to dress it up. Today he’d chosen a faded dark-gray one that advertised an old heavy-metal rock band. “We are just men, after all.”

Kevin said nothing; in fact, he was incapable of saying anything at all.

He picked his coffee cup back up even as Nina took her feet from the table and sat forward, causing the front of her apron to bow open. Kevin gazed at the soft mounds of flesh visible in the deep V of her shirt and then back up at her face.

“So you both have thought about…sleeping with me?” she asked.

Kevin quickly put his cup back down, afraid he might choke if he tried to swallow anything.

Gauge openly considered her. “I don’t know about Kevin, here, but you’ve landed the starring role in one or two of my favorite wet dreams.”

Kevin stared at him and said, “Probably in concert with one or two other female participants.”

Gauge shrugged without apology. “Here and there. I’m not going to hide that I’m a guy with varied tastes.”

“As if you could,” Nina said. “Nearly every woman who comes into this place always finds a way to linger in the music section.”

“Hey, whatever sells CDs.”

Kevin watched the two of them. Had Nina just given Gauge a suggestive smile?

And had she just turned that same smile on him?

He suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“What about you, Kev?” she murmured. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have sex with me?”

POOR SAP, Patrick Gauge thought. Look at him. He’s about ready to jump out of his skin.

Gauge shook his head and picked his guitar back up. Yeah, he’d freely admit that more than once he’d thought about dipping his fingers into the back waist of Nina’s tight slacks when she gave him one of her generous hugs. He was only human. More, he was only a man.

Wasn’t it his roving father who had explained to him that there wasn’t one out there woman enough to keep a Gauge happy?

He absently strummed a few notes. He came from a long line of musicians who had traveled more than they’d stayed in one place. Recently, he’d been pondering how it was that three years had passed since he’d arrived in Ann Arbor and then Fantasy, with a plan to play a few gigs at college bars and then move on farther down the line.

But he didn’t have to look too far for the answer. He took in his two best friends, the closest he’d come to any kind of real family, and he knew why he’d stayed. And why he continued to stay, trading a music career for selling CDs and working on a few CDs of his own that barely made it farther than the local college scene.

“I’d better go take care of the last customer,” Kevin said in lieu of answering Nina’s question.

Gauge shook his head again, having noticed that two of the browsers had left without buying anything, but the elderly woman who had kept her shopping close so she could listen in on their conversation had apparently been interested enough to add to her purchases.

He continued strumming an old blues tune that his father had taught him when he was seven until Kevin had followed the customer to the doors and locked them after her.

Kevin finally rejoined them, probably hoping that the conversation had moved on.

Gauge had purposely made sure it hadn’t.

As soon as Kevin sat down, Gauge placed the bottom of the guitar on the area rug and gave it a twirl. “Hey, Nina, why don’t you let Kev and I arrange that night of hot, anonymous sex you said you were looking for?”

2

NINA sat back into the couch as if pushed there by a man’s commanding hands.

Gauge’s grin was dirtier than anything a washing machine and a gallon of bleach could clean.

It seemed she wasn’t the only one looking to shock tonight.

“Christ, Gauge, what is going on in that oversexed mind of yours now?” Kevin asked, picking up the book he’d been reading and putting it in his lap.

“No, let him talk,” Nina said, intrigued. “What are you suggesting, Gauge?”

The last thing on earth Nina wanted was to be predictable. Was it possible that her friends and partners were right and that she had been running in boring cycles for the past few years? Could her bad decisions begin as little more than basic, human need? Having gone without physical intimacy for months at a time, did desire cloud her judgment? Was she choosing men who were the most convenient based on their sexual attraction rather than on an equal balance of psychological and physical appeal?

While she wasn’t one-hundred-percent ready to commit to the idea, she was willing to admit it might be a possibility.

Gauge gave her one of his easy shrugs, pulling his T-shirt a little tighter against his biceps. “Nina, honey, you need to get laid. It’s as simple as that. And I think Kevin and I can help you there.”

She looked back and forth between the two of them. “Do you mean…? Are you saying you think the three of us…?”

They stared at each other for long, heart-pounding moments.

“No….” Nina said.

“I don’t think so,” Kevin said.

“Actually that wasn’t what I was proposing, but…” Gauge said.

Nina suddenly felt dizzy as she sank slowly back into the couch again.

Wow.

Okay, so her partners were hot. Gauge was John-Mayer attractive in a fundamental way that entranced women, who probably got home before they discovered they’d spent double or triple the money on CDs they’d never listen to while under his spell. He had a musician’s easy style, his jeans looked as though they’d been made to fit him, his T-shirt held the right mixture of alpha-male dominance and devil-may-care appeal.

And she could look at his tattoos all day long and never tire of it.

Kevin, on the other hand, was Hugh-Jackman hot. Tall and slightly bookish, he had an easy grin and a set of washboard abs that she imagined he got through coaching hockey in the winter and soccer in the summer, because she never saw him doing anything more physical than what it took to unpack boxes and shelve books here. His big, dark eyes were the type a girl could lose her footing and fall into and never want to come out of again.

Yes, while she’d done her own share of bun-staring when they weren’t looking, as she knew they both did with her, she’d never really considered what it might be like to sleep with either one of them.

As for both of them at the same time…

“No….” she said again, shaking her head.

Kevin looked at her curiously, as if surprised to think she’d even consider the idea of a threesome, and then looked at her again. “That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard, Gauge. While pop culture may have become more pornified in the past decade, that’s way crossing the line for most people.”

“You’re right. You think the three of us argue during tax time now, just think what would happen if we slept together,” Gauge said.

They continued staring at him. He put his guitar down and raised his hands. “It was a joke, all right?”

Nina didn’t buy it.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never considered guy-on-guy action.” He appeared to shudder. “But I think I may be on to something here. Give me a minute.”

Kevin rose and picked up his coffee cup and novel. “I’m not giving you another second. Look at the tension the mere suggestion of sex between any combination of the three of us is causing.”

Nina waved for him to sit back down. “Hold on, Kev. Let’s see where he’s going with this.”

“Got it,” Gauge said, snapping the fingers of his left hand together. The knuckles bore the fading letters L-O-V-E he’d had tattooed on them when he was thirteen. “You don’t sleep with us—”

Kevin interjected, “Smartest thing you’ve said all night.”

“But we do arrange for you to sleep with someone….” He drifted off.

Kevin sat back down as if incapable of doing anything that required any sort of mental concentration at the moment.

Nina couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from Gauge’s striking face.

“Someone completely anonymous. No names allowed.”

Nina twisted her lips. “But how do I know I’ll be attracted to him?”

“What does it matter? You won’t see him.”

Kevin clasped his hands together between his knees as if trying to keep from slugging his friend. “What do you mean, she won’t see him? If we arrange for her to go out with someone—”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re not getting me. I didn’t say anything about her going out with someone, like on a date.” He moved from the ottoman to sit in the chair next to Kevin’s, putting him closer to them both. “This is about sex, can we all agree on that?”

Silence.

Nina didn’t know how to respond.

“About fundamental human urges. Look, we all agree that Nina’s made some bad choices because she has a tendency to go without for too long and then jump in too quickly as a result.”

“Go without?” Kevin repeated.

Nina smiled. “No, no. He’s got a point.” She gestured with her hand. “Go on.”

“So we set up something where you won’t be able to see the guy, but he’ll be able to see you.”

“What, are you suggesting she be blindfolded?” Kevin asked, looking more and more dangerous. Nina found it interesting that Gauge appeared not to notice his friend’s agitated state. Then again, maybe he did notice. He just didn’t care.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.” Gauge grinned and spread his hands wide as if his idea were the solution to all the world’s problems. “Nina gets the hot, anonymous sex she’s looking for…and we don’t have to put up with some moron boyfriend hanging around for the next six months until she boots him out.”

No one said anything.

“And then, maybe, with the whole sex element out of the way, she’ll finally find some guy deserving of her,” Gauge added.

Kevin got out of his chair and for a second Nina thought he might sucker punch Gauge. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

He instead turned to reshelf the book he’d been reading.

“Nina?”

She realized she’d been watching the fit of Kevin’s jeans as he moved and blinked to look back at Gauge. He grinned at her.

“Would the guy be either of you?”

She’d intended the question to be as forthright as his suggestion. Instead it came out as a husky whisper.

She shivered all over, her nipples growing hard, her panties growing damp.

She’d never felt so wanton in her life. An idea like this was something more up her grandmother’s alley—at least if you believed what she said when she talked about the old Motown days, and Nina did.

But now that the proposal was floating out there as a possibility, she found that she’d also never felt more turned on.

She looked at both of them leisurely. Took in Kevin’s intense, soul-searching gaze. Pondered Gauge’s sexy, suggestive grin.

“Well?” she asked, a fire igniting deep in her belly. “Would it?”

Gauge shrugged. “If it did include either one of us, you’d never know, would you?”

3

LATER THAT NIGHT, Nina lay back against her iron bedstead in her apartment above the store, staring at the ceiling. Her twenty-pound cat Ernest Hemingway’s furry body curved against her thigh on top of the down comforter, his soft snores breaking the silence.

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.