Truth or Dare (19 page)

“Four. No, five. Wait, I don’t know if you count it as five or six when—never mind. Five. A solid five.”

Ava swallowed. “Against the wall?”

“Which wall?”

Her friend’s face pinched up and she looked like she was going to cry tears of pure joy. “Oh, little Ho-skanky, I’m so happy for you!”

Squeezing Ava’s hand, she grinned. “Me too.”

When the front door sounded, Maggie urged Ava up off her knees. “Act casual,” she whispered. “I’d rather the guys not know.”

Ava made a “no problem” face and leaned a hand against the table, crossing her legs in what had to be the least casual-looking stance of all time.

Sam rounded the doorway, flicked a glance over Ava, and let out a muffled laugh before walking past her to the freezer, where he plucked Maggie’s green lacy panties off the top of the door. “Three?”

Ava shoveled another bite of French toast into her mouth, and then pointed her fork at Maggie. “So this was strictly a six-times deal? No chance of romance or even a repeat performance?”

“Zilch. We both understand this is just about a couple of friends helping each other out. And I really think it was five.”

A sturdy waitress, probably close to fifty, slid an order of bacon in front of Sam and pinched his cheek when he asked her to run away with him. Then, without missing a beat, he turned back to the table and dug into his skillet.

“Nah, Ava’s right,” he said, chewing around his words. “That’s six. Definitely.”

Ava nodded. “So in terms of the pact, you closed out your January in spectacular fashion. Too bad it’s only the twenty-eighth. Couple more days and you could have straddled February, too.”

Gah,
the pact. Of course. “I’m not sure it would count. I mean, swearing up and down we’re nothing more than friends scratching a mutual itch doesn’t exactly smack of
open to the possibilities.
”

Sam split a strip of bacon and handed Ava half. “With sex there’s always a possibility. And something tells me the stakes were getting raised with each round, based on that full apartment-cleaning blitz.”

Maggie shrugged, quietly surprised by the pinch of regret she experienced knowing it wasn’t the case with Tyler.

She shook it off. She wasn’t interested in the possibilities with Tyler or anyone else. Too much risk and hassle.

They’d had sex. Amazing, off-the-charts, world-rocking, life-altering, expectation-cru
shingly hot sex. Her libido had been fed, and any hour now that prickly crush would burn off.

And she was absolutely not alarmed to actually be feeling closer to Tyler, more connected rather than less. They’d shared something intense and meaningful that only friends as solid as they were could share and still go back to being friends after.

That she couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d done? What more there might be if they had time…well, they didn’t. She’d get over her awe in a day or so. Easy.

“So I’ve got it straight: you don’t need to call or take her out again?” Tony asked, adjusting his jeans as he kicked back on the couch in Tyler’s living room. “No flowers or anything. It was straight sex for sex’s sake. No strings. Just a couple of friends dropping their shorts and saying let’s screw?”

Tyler looked across to the front windows where Maggie cringed, meeting him with guilty eyes.

He’d gotten her single-word text “Sorry!!!” about five seconds before he’d heard someone thundering up the stairs and the subsequent banging on his door. So far as he could tell, Maggie had spilled to Ava. Sam figured it out himself—something about damning evidence. Ford overheard Sam and Ava discussing it. And Ford, who Tyler had clearly been giving too much credit, took it to Tony. And the guy about broke his leg making a beeline to Tyler’s apartment, where after an overlong man-brace, he wiped his teary eyes and parked it on the couch to start interrogating him.

Thirty seconds and twenty-three questions later, the rest of the gang had piled in the door, too.

Now, listening to Tony’s description of the shorts-dropping call to screw, Tyler was wondering if any of them would ever want sex again.

“Yeah, that’s exactly it, Tony,” he answered with feigned enthusiasm enough to score one of Maggie’s laughs.

And he had his answer. Hell yes, he was going to want sex again. Because, that sound—nothing else got to him the same way.

Too bad it wasn’t going to happen.

Even amid all this awkward discomfort, that sound had him imagining a different life. One where all he had to do was find a way to get her alone. Murmur dirty innuendos in her ear until he earned another laugh, this one breathier, and edged with something hot—

“And then you just slap her ass and go?”

Jesus, Tony.

Maggie cut in. “No. I’m the ass slapper, but because I’m a lady with manners, I toss out a compliment before asking him to lock up on the way out.”

Nice.

Tony swallowed, and turned toward Ava—who’d already snapped up her hand, wagging one finger at him as she replied to his obvious yet unspoken question. “Not in this lifetime, bub. Don’t even ask.”

Leaning a hip against her kitchen counter, Maggie let the mixer run, beating the life out of her butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla as she assured herself it could have been worse. A thousand times worse.

Fine, maybe only a hundred times, but whatever. Tyler had been gang-grilled by her pack of friends over their previous night’s activities, something they’d agreed to keep private mere hours before. It had been embarrassing and awkward, but he’d taken the teasing without so much as the bat of an eye, even offering up beer during the peak of it.

She was impressed.

Impressed with how he’d stayed cool under pressure.

Impressed with how easily he’d maintained the space between them while it had taken everything she had to keep from reaching out to touch his hand, his hair, his arm.

Taking the mixer down to low, in went the dry ingredients. A quick combine, a scrape of the sides, and her chocolate was next.

And she was especially impressed by how, when she’d offered one last heartfelt apology as she’d been leaving with everyone else, he’d managed to discreetly lean down to her ear to tell her…and only her…it had been worth it.

Cue the belly flip and hot, achy places.

Gah.

Spooning generous scoops of the dough onto her waiting cookie sheets, Maggie slid the first batch into the oven.

Eleven minutes later, they were cooling on the rack and Maggie’s apartment smelled like home. Like Friday afternoons with her mom and every special occasion she could remember.

It should have been calming, but with the way her mind kept sneaking back to Tyler, not really. She stuffed a still-too-hot cookie into her mouth, chewing morosely.

Those five, maybe six, times with Tyler had created a monster. A sex-crazed, totally obsessed monster who was at that very minute considering the new low of using her cookies as bedroom bait. Opening the front door and wafting the melted chocolate and baked brown sugar smell into the hall. Playing like she had no idea what she was doing and just seeing what happened.

She should be ashamed.

Another cookie, only moderately cooler than the one before, met her mouth.

She
was
ashamed.

Because chances were good she was going to plow through this whole batch wishing she had just one more night with Tyler.

“Admit it, you did it again,” Ava demanded, munching on one of the few remaining cookies left from the night before. At the shake of Maggie’s head, Ava scowled, then immediately brightened, latching on to her next idea. “But you’re totally going to. Why else would you be doing all these hellacious pike roll-outs?”

Maggie stopped mid-pike, her butt high in the air, her core muscles burning like she’d lit them on fire. “Please. This torture is because I ate two-dozen cookies last night and God only knows how much dough. It’s corrective action is all.”

Ava snorted. “It’s preparatory maintenance. You love him and you’re going to get married and live happily ever after.”

Ugh.
“I
like
him. So don’t go picking out bridesmaid dresses.”

“Too late. I was thinking something in an ice blue would be nice.”

Rolling off her exercise ball, Maggie pretzeled up her legs and wiped the sweat from her brow. She reached for a cookie even though she’d sworn up and down she’d never eat another.

“Don’t rain on my after-dirty-sex parade with your wedding talk. You know how cranky that stuff makes me.” There’d been a time when she’d been so wrapped up in her white-dress fantasies she hadn’t been able to see anything else. Hadn’t been able to see the writing on the wall. Hadn’t been willing.

She’d wanted to marry Kyle so badly. Wanted everyone who suggested they slow down to go away and mind their own business so she could get on with her very own happily-ever-after.

But that’s not how it had gone.

And now, even all these years later, she couldn’t hear the word
wedding
without her stomach knotting and all the bitter lessons she’d never be able to forget pressing firmly against the forefront of her mind.

Stupid.

Selfish
.

Home wrecker.

“Sorry, I know. You’re sensitive about the wedding thing. But I guess I figured if the right guy came along that maybe you wouldn’t be?”

Maggie smiled, tucking up her knees. “Tyler isn’t the right guy, Ava. We’re friends with a single incredible night between us. But that’s all.”

Ava scooted next to her so they were both leaning against the couch.

“I kind of think you’re more than that. Maggie, you don’t let anyone in, but this guy…?”

“Yeah, this guy is pretty amazing. But a relationship between us just isn’t in the cards. Neither of us wants what we’ve got to be anything more than what it is.”

“How can you be so sure? I mean, maybe with a little time you’ll realize you want—”

“No,” Maggie cut her off, because the truth was she didn’t even want to think about maybes or anything else that might confuse what was pretty clear. “Tyler isn’t even sure he’s staying in the Midwest.”

This was where it got dicey, because Ava knew only so much about what had brought him to Chicago. There had been a woman and the relationship hadn’t worked out. She didn’t know that there had been a baby, or that the heartbreak over his loss was so great, Tyler still couldn’t share it with most people.

Rolling her eyes, Ava shoved up from the floor. “I know, I know. The courting firm from New York. But he hasn’t gone yet. What if he decides he likes it here and he wants to stay?”

If Tyler stayed, it would be because his life was essentially on hold while he waited for an opportunity to get his son back.

Working to contain the sigh fighting to get free, she answered with the truth. “It still wouldn’t be like what you’re talking about.”

F
EBRUARY

The next few weeks were a period of readjustment. Reestablishing boundaries. Drawing lines and testing them out under the framework of this newly defined relationship between them.

They were friends again. Of the reestablished
just
variety. Friends with an open awareness of an underlying attraction they’d indulged in once—or five, maybe six times—but were no longer acting on. They went out as a group or not at all.

Experience had proven it was easier to stay within the lines that way.

Or at least as close to easier as it got.

Maggie’s eyes drifted across the cluttered expanse of Ava’s living room to where Tyler was standing beside Sam, watching as Ava and Ford competed to see who could assemble their new TV stand first without using the directions.

Her one Saturday off a month, and this was how she was spending it.

“That’s my girl,” Sam cheered. “Ava, you’ve got him by at least two steps. Shit, Ford, how the hell do you function on a daily basis?”

And okay. She didn’t really have a lot of complaints.

“She’s got that all-in-one thing you bought her,” Ford groused. “Total advantage.”

Ava was silently gloating, too intent on the win to comment. But by Maggie’s estimate, Ford might be right. Sam had a late-night home-shopping habit that was the primary reason Ava’s place looked the way it did. Every time he saw something cool he thought Ava could use, he bought it. Thus, the throw on her sofa was a Snuggie. Ava’s rooms were lined with miracle exercise solutions, foot spas, and As Seen On TV debris as far as the eye could see. Maggie liked to tease, but in truth, some of this stuff was seriously handy. Like the tool thing Ava was working right then.

Ford rubbed at the back of his neck, muttering, “Besides, rules say you aren’t allowed to talk. You just told her she had it right.”

Sam wasn’t allowed to help because of his natural aptitude for all things spatial. The guy could assemble this stuff with his eyes closed and a Hooters girl straddling his lap, while Ford was more of—well, Ford. He was into deep thought and hobbies that inadvertently made gobs of money.

“First you let your baby sister shame you…and then you cry foul?
Dude!
”