From Chapter One...

©Mira Lyn Kelly

“So you take your reckless adventuring like you take your coffee: lukewarm and watered down?”

Nichole Daniels stared first at the shu mai being jabbed in dumpling accusation from across their small table, and then at the gleaming blue eyes centering her best friend’s face beyond. “Hypothetical reckless adventuring. And, for clarification, I want to enjoy my coffee. Not get hurt by it. So I take it hot, but not scalding. I like it brewed strong, but cut with something creamy to avoid heartburn.”

Maeve snorted. “You cut it with skim milk. Cripes! The whole point of this was to embrace the no-consequences element of a fantasy we weren’t planning to live out. I mean, seriously, I don’t want to be trapped on a deserted island at all. And if I actually was, I’d hope it would be with some kind of mechanical genius who played survival games of the non-cannibal variety in his spare time. But for the purpose of this chatty lunchtime game girlfriends play...in a context separate from reality...for one single night without consequences maybe you’d want something robust...rich... Oh, my God...something topped with whipped cream!”

“Enough, enough.” Nichole laughed, cutting into Maeve’s ramping excitement before the whole restaurant started staring at them. “I get the concept. Honestly, I’m just not interested.”

Maeve narrowed her eyes. “It’s a fantasy. How can you not be interested?”

Echoes of a distant conversation teased through Nichole’s mind—accusations and blame, heartbreak and humiliation, and the fantasy she’d bet her future on revealed for the nightmare it was. Everything she’d lost. Everyone.

She’d been down that road. Twice already. No thanks for a third.

It didn’t pay to pretend. Not even over a dim sum lunch with her best friend.

“I’m just not,” she managed through a stiff smile.

“Hence your overnight-on-a-deserted-island order for a male of unspecified looks who’s safe, honest and can keep up his end of a conversation.” Another jab of the chopsticks. “Lame.”

“Not lame. Maybe my reality is everything I want it to be. How about that? I’ve got a kickass career, a button-cute place in a cool neighborhood and the greatest friends in the world,” she said, batting her eyes at the best of them. “What more could a girl ask for?”

“Do you want me to start down at the toes or up at the head... Or should I just start in the middle, ’cause that region might make my point a little faster.”

“None of the above! Now, stop taunting me with your dumpling or I’m going to eat it.”

Maeve snapped her chopsticks back, popping the shrimp bundle into her mouth with a grin. On finishing the bite, though, her look became more contemplative than teasing. “I’m serious, Nikki. It’s been three years. Don’t you ever get lonely?”

Nichole stared back, the word no poised on her tongue. Only as the seconds stretched, the single word that was the lie she’d been telling herself for all too long suddenly wouldn’t form. Her life was so right—in all the ways that mattered—she hadn’t let herself think too much about those times when the stillness of her apartment left a sort of hollow feeling deep in her chest. Or when the empty chair across her table kept her from using the bay window breakfast nook that was half the reason she’d signed the lease in the first place. But they were there, nonetheless, apparently lying in wait for the right opportunity to glare at her.

Maeve slumped back in her chair. “I should have given you the last shu mai.”

“Please, it’s not so dire as that,” she assured her, starting to stack the plates cluttering the table. “I’m just not interested in another relationship.”

“But what about—?”

The strains of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” cut in, signaling a call from Maeve’s brother.

Hallelujah.

With Maeve scheduled to leave town for business the next day, Garrett Carter would probably keep her on the line for the next twenty minutes, reassuring himself she wouldn’t leave the coffeepot on, let anyone—anyone—into her hotel room, or accept candy from strangers in general. Only the reprieve proved short-lived when Maeve thumbed the call through to voicemail.

Nichole reached for her wine as an unholy gleam lit her friend’s eyes.

“I should set you up with Garrett.”

The crisp, fruity vintage burned like acid as it hit her sinuses. Napkin to her mouth, lungs wrestling to expel the alcohol in exchange for oxygen, she choked out a strangled, “What?” Then, wheezing, “I thought you were my friend.”

“I was thinking maybe you could learn something from him.”

“Like what? The most effective antibiotics for treating—?”

“Hey.” Maeve cut her off with a stern glance. “Uncalled for. He’s not so bad.”

Nichole cocked a brow at her. “They call him The Panty Whisperer. I’ve seen his name on the ladies’ room wall. And my mother warned me about men like him.”

Maeve chuckled, a sisterly combination of worship and irritation filling her eyes. “You could be dating Attila the Hun and your mother would be delirious with the whole breathless ‘he’s so powerful’ business. Trust me, she’d take Garrett with open arms.”

Nichole shook her head, knowing it was true.

“And, between you and me, Mary Newton wrote that on the wall to get even with him for putting her off when she offered up the goods. I know you’ve never met him, but Garrett’s actually a pretty decent guy.”

“‘Domineering, hypocritical, arrogant, womanizing, workaholic control freak.’ Gee, where did I hear that from, I wonder?”

Maeve shook her head. “Okay, take it easy. I’m not serious about setting you up. And even if I were he wouldn’t go out with you. He’s got a rule about dating his sisters’ friends.”

Handy. Because Nichole had a similar rule. She’d lost enough friends because of broken relationships. People she’d already considered family—

Fingers snapped in front of her face. “Chill! I told you I was kidding.”

The muscles down her back relaxed. “Your point, then?”

“Just this. Maybe it’s time to dip a toe back into the dating pool. Test the waters and see how it goes. I know in the past your relationships have always been...serious. But they don’t have to be. Look, Garrett’s the only guy I know as commitment-phobic as you. But you can bet he isn’t lonely. He’s proof positive a couple of dates for the sake of some non-platonic company can be just that—a couple of dates. Simple. No big deal.”

Yeah, except the last time Nichole had gone on “a couple of dates” she ended up with a white dress she’d never worn, thousands blown on non-refundable deposits, the very fabric of her life torn asunder and an aversion to fantasies and forever powerful enough to keep her out of romance for three years running.

As it turned out, that fateful “it’s not me, it’s you” speech had been the best thing ever to happen to her.

She’d been lucky to escape a marriage that, despite what she’d believed at the time, would have been a train wreck. Lucky to have chosen Chicago as the city to clean slate her life in. And luckiest of all to have picked the open treadmill next to Maeve’s that Friday that had, in essence, been the first day of the rest of Nichole’s new life.

She hadn’t been tempted to even the merest flirtation since. Not once. And she honestly couldn’t imagine that changing anytime soon.

But, seeing Maeve about to come at her from another angle, Nichole held up a staying hand. “How about this. If I happen to meet someone who actually makes it hard to say no, I promise I’ll give Garrett a call to talk me through The Panty Whisperer’s six-step guide to keeping it casual—”

“Ha-ha. Very funny,” Maeve grumbled, flagging the waitress for their check.

“But until then I’m not dipping my toe in anything.”