Wicked Games

“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.”