Checking It Twice

chapter Five


Jana quickly returned to straightening the babydoll nightie hanging in front of her as Nick swung around and headed toward the entrance of the shop. Willing her fingers to stop trembling, she studiously pretended to be absorbed in her fake task. Somehow she managed to keep her eyes off the door when Woody’s laugh pealed free. Inside, she was a mass of frazzled nerves and nauseous anxiety. There’d been no mistaking Kevin’s stunned hurt when he’d walked in and seen her in Nick’s arms. For someone who didn’t want to get involved with her, he sure as hell had looked like he cared whether or not she played tonsil hockey with another man.

Well, he’d had his chance, damn it. She wasn’t going to wallow in guilt over kissing Nick. Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her head and watched Nick’s approach. Her attention fell on his mouth. Despite the grim line his lips were set in, her stomach still experienced flutters as she recalled the sensuous rasp of his tongue along hers. A corresponding beat echoed in her *. Holy damn, he knew how to kiss. All that intensity and single-minded focus. Goose bumps broke ranks across her skin at the memory.

She could only imagine what he’d be like in bed. All too easily. Great. Like she needed that erotic fuel added to the sexy fantasies she already had about him.

He offered her a chagrined smile that made his features edge farther into the territory of devastatingly gorgeous. Detailed and explicit as her fantasies tended to be, they hadn’t come close to the reality of how breathtaking he was. She’d never thought she’d meet a man capable of giving Kevin a run for the money in the sexy department, but Nick sure as hell fit the bill. God, if she was ever treated to the sight of him naked, she’d probably orgasm on the spot.

His teeth flashing white against his olive complexion, Nick loosened the buttons he’d secured on his coat before he’d dashed outside after Kevin. “Sorry for rushing out like that.”

“It’s okay.” She fiddled with the nightie for a second before freeing the wrinkled fabric from her grasp. “So how long have you and Kevin known each other?”

“We were roommates in college.” He absently scuffed his shoe on the carpet. “And afterwards, up until five years ago.”

She chewed her lip. “Huh. He’s never mentioned you.”

“I’m not surprised.”

A lengthy silence stretched between them while she waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t. She tucked her thumbs in her rear pockets to keep from fidgeting. “I kind of get the impression things are strained between you guys.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d say that’s a good assessment.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long, complicated story.”

She rocked back on her heels and tried for a casual expression. “You can share it during dinner.”

He released a slow breath, the sound of it prodding the indignant butterflies in her belly into action, along with her exasperation.

“You are not about to back out on me.” Maybe saying it would make it so. She gave a silent snort. Yeah, right. She could read the writing on the wall, and what she saw there sucked.

“Jana, I still want you. More than ever, after that kiss.” The smolder in his dark cocoa-brown eyes authenticated his declaration.

Recalling the bone-melting kiss in question, she shivered. “Then what’s the problem?”

“That’s the problem.”

She frowned. “What, wanting me?”

“Hell yeah.”

“I don’t get it. Shouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“It would be if you weren’t in love with my best friend.”

She sucked a harsh breath between her teeth. “How…?” She mentally rewound to the moment when she’d broken away from Nick’s kiss and spotted Kevin standing shell-shocked in the doorway. Her shoulders slumped. No doubt her feelings for Kevin had been stamped across her face like a neon banner. It wouldn’t have taken much for Nick to put two and two together and conclude that Kevin was the guy she’d been stupidly pining for all these years. “It doesn’t matter. I already told you he doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

She squinted. “Take my word for it. I’ve all but stripped naked in front of Kevin, with little result.” Okay, not entirely on the mark. Her naughty-elf costume had delivered spectacular, orgasmic results. Unfortunately it’d been a one-time deal with no hope of a repeat performance.

Nick choked on a laugh. Stacking her hands on her hips, she glared at him. He swiped a hand over his mouth, trying without success to hide his grin. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. But obviously if you had paraded naked in front of Kevin, this conversation would be null and void. A voyeur faced with a gloriously naked you? Poor Kev wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

Shock spiraled through her at Nick’s pronouncement. She gaped at him, momentarily struck mute as she attempted to process the startling news he’d revealed. Finally she managed to find her tongue long enough to let one word escape, the most important of them all. “Voyeur?”

Nick blinked—twice—before mumbling “Shit” beneath his breath. He scrubbed at his mouth again. “I should have figured he wouldn’t come clean about that. F*ck.” His gaze turned beseeching. “Let’s pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“No way. You think I can just forget something like that?”

Kevin. A voyeur. How many times had she all but flashed the goods at him and he’d barely responded to the bait? Even when she’d worn the naughty-elf costume, she’d had to pretty much jump him in order to break through his resistance. For all she knew, that had been a pity orgasm he gave her.

Prickling anxiety creeping up her spine, she nibbled on her thumbnail and glanced at Nick. That proved to be a mistake when the butterflies began mamboing. He was right about one thing at least. Their mutual attraction was a big ole complicated mess.

Smothering a groan, she cleared off the corner of the nearby display of thongs and bikinis and plunked her butt down. She ran a hand down her face before taking another risky peek at Nick. How many freakin’ people existed on this planet, and she had to go and develop feelings for best friends who had some kind of falling out…over God knows what? She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

A sharp, hissing breath leaked from Nick. “Jesus. You’re killing me.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Yes, you are. All you have to do is f*cking breathe and my dick reacts.” He slid a desperate glance toward his briefcase.

Interpreting that gesture as a possible attempt at escape, she quickly abandoned the table. “Please, don’t leave. I…I’m really tired of constantly being walked out on.”

Sympathy overtaking his features, Nick shifted toward her, the subtle movement diffusing her tension. “It isn’t you he’s running away from. It’s himself. It’s always been that way.”

She grimaced. “Isn’t that the clichéd line he’s supposed to feed me? Baby, it’s not you, it’s me?”

“In Kev’s case, it’s the truth. He has…intimacy issues. They make it hard for him to truly lower his guard enough to let people in.”

It was her turn to blink. “Intimacy issues. How do you know—?” Her mouth dropped open. “Were you guys lovers?” The notion probably shouldn’t have intrigued her as much as it did.

Nick’s dark eyebrows slashed upward. “F*ck no.” A rumbling laugh broke from him. “Shit, I’d pay to be a fly on the wall if you posed that to Kev. He’d probably drag you into bed just to prove he doesn’t have designs on my ass.”

If she thought she’d have a prayer of that happening, she’d gladly ask Kevin if he wanted to ball the entire defense line of the Detroit Lions. “Then mind explaining how you know about his alleged intimacy issues?”

Nick cleared his throat before his gaze darted up and to the right, a sure sign of someone with a big, fat, hairy lie in the prep stage. “He told me.”

“Ha!” She shook a finger at him. “Bull. Shit. We both know Kevin isn’t the sharing type.”

Nick choked on another cough.

Narrowing her eyes, she dropped her arm. “There’s something you’re not telling me.” Crossing her ankles, she leaned against the edge of the table and studied Nick. “If you don’t come clean, I’m going to assume you were lying about the two of you playing hide the salami together.”

Silence descended in the wake of her verbal gauntlet. Just when she thought he was going to consign himself as Kevin’s love bunny rather than tell her the real story, he gusted a heavy breath and tweaked the bridge of his nose. “We shared women.”

Out of all the insane possibilities she’d been cooking inside her head, that one hadn’t even been a blip on her radar. Her fanny plopped back on the table in perfect synchronicity of her jaw dropping on the floor. Suddenly her theory of Nick using some Jedi mind trick to fish out Kevin’s deepest, darkest secrets didn’t seem so loony. Not compared to this. “You what?”

“It was a long time ago.”

She held up her hands. “I’m not judging. It’s just…freakin’ shocking. I can’t wrap my head around Kevin…and you…manwiching some chick.” Okay, not entirely true. She’d certainly come plenty of times to the fantasy of them manwiching her. Right on cue, an image popped into her mind of Kevin grinding into her p-ssy while Nick shafted her ass. Oh God. She barely caged her whimper as her * tingled.

Nick stared at her intently for a long moment. A sizzling spark of heat shimmered in his eyes. She wondered for an awkward second if he’d somehow plugged into her thoughts. Dropping her focus to his chin, she licked her lips, willing her nipples to behave and not rat out her lusty musings. Assured she was as composed as she could be under the circumstances, she returned her gaze to Nick’s. The sizzle was no longer there. Hmm. Maybe she’d only hallucinated it.

“Why does it surprise you?”

She hugged her chest. “I just never pictured Kevin swinging that way.” Wrong. Two seconds ago she’d most definitely visualized him swinging his cock away. Inside her p-ssy. A delicious shiver tripped over her flushed skin.

“You’d be amazed by what people will do when they let go of their inhibitions.”

The husky quality of Nick’s voice was as seductive as her mental manwich. She swallowed, acutely aware of the damp, tormenting glide of her thong along her sensitive labia. Figures the one rare occasion she wore underwear would end up biting her in the ass. Or flossing her in the ass, in the case of this damn thong. “So Kevin lets go of his sexual inhibitions and hang-ups by having threesomes? With you?”

“He used to, yes. Back in college, I would occasionally bring a date to my and Kev’s dorm room. Privacy was nonexistent, as you can imagine.”

She blinked as Nick’s meaning became clear. “Holy shit balls. You screwed your dates in front of him?”

Nick’s mouth quirked. “Trust me, they didn’t mind. As for Kev…well, I quickly came to realize that watching me and those girls having sex aroused him. After I discovered it was a way I could help Kev break through his intimacy blocks, I did whatever I could to encourage him to join in on the action with the handful of my dates who enjoyed being pleasured by two men at once.”

Her innate curiosity—and okay, nosiness—perched in rapt fascination, dying to know more. To know all of it. Well, maybe not everything. If Nick provided too descriptive of details, she’d probably seethe in jealousy and consider tracking down and clocking every lucky bitch who’d been the happy filling in Kevin and Nick’s manwich. “How did you do it?”

Nick frowned. “Are you asking how we f*cked a woman together? Or how I broke through his blocks?”

Holy shitzoid. She so wanted to see what was behind door number one. The visual of her hands choking the life out of some faceless bimbette with a perfect, airbrushed, centerfold body prompted her sigh. “Door number two.”

Nick’s linebacker-sized shoulders hitched in the faintest shrug. “Mostly I just enticed him with the things that turn him on.”

Her pulse went up-tempo. To be privy to Kevin’s innermost fantasies—a part of them, even. Pandora’s box wouldn’t hold a candle to that baby. Unconscious of what she was doing, she leaned closer to Nick, enthralled. “Specifics?”

His lips hitched at one corner. “Why do I get the feeling anything I tell you will potentially put my best friend’s sanity at risk? And potentially mine too?”

She tried for an innocent shrug. “Only taking notes.” That I may or may not use for future missions.

“Uh-huh and nuh-uh.”

“Is that Native American? Because I’m not familiar with the tongue.”

He chuckled. “Your persistence is commendable, but I’m not breaking my man code and spilling all of my secrets, sweetness.”

She huffed in frustration. “Look, it’s extremely unfair to drop the bombshell you did and not give me some freakin’ details.”

“Kev’s going to kill me as it is for telling you what I have. Not exactly conducive to my goal of mending fences with him.”

Again with the mysterious strain on their friendship. What could have prompted two men who’d been close enough to share women to grow apart? “Can you at least tell me what caused the rift between you two?”

Nick remained quiet for a long spell before combing his fingers through his glossy black hair with a resigned exhalation. “About a year after we graduated college, Kev hooked up with one of our old classmates. At first it gave me hope that he’d slain his private demons and was well on his way of living happily ever after with Heather.”

“Private demons?”

A shuttered look locked over Nick’s face. “There are things in Kev’s past that have contributed to his intimacy issues. They’re a big part of the reason why he’s always felt threatened by his voyeuristic needs. Why he considers his voyeurism the enemy.”

“I don’t understand. Why would he think that?”

“Because he’s been made to feel ashamed about it.”

Indignation reared to life within her. She was all too familiar with the labels and snide comments narrow-minded a*sholes loved flinging around. She personally knew that a lot of those sticks up the butts had a shitload of kinks in their closets—literally—but God forbid they should ever own up to it. “By who?”

“Jana, I can’t get into that. Suffice it to say they’re all just pieces of the puzzle that make up Kevin’s issues and led to his breakup with Heather. And our friendship.”

The mention of the mysterious Heather caused Jana’s stomach to knot. It was ridiculous to be jealous of a woman from Kevin’s past, but knowing that his heart had belonged to Heather, even if only for a moment, was too depressing to contemplate. “What happened?”

“He invited me into their bed.”

Okay, not what she’d been expecting. She frowned as she mulled over his admission. “Wait, if you and Kevin had always shared women…?”

“Why would that time be different?” Nick supplied before grunting. “Because Kev did it to emotionally disconnect from Heather. Too bad I didn’t know it when he presented the offer. He told me he wanted to make Heather happy, give her something she’d confessed an interest in, with someone he trusted. By the time I figured out there was something more going on with him, it was too late. We’d gone too far with it.”

“How do you mean?”

Pressing a thumb into his temple, Nick eyed her. “The danger in threesomes is that emotions can get sticky. Especially when someone falls for the wrong person.”

She easily interpreted the cause for the heavy cloud cover of regret suspended over Nick. “Heather fell in love with you.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You can’t control who you fall in love with.” She knew that all too well.

Nick scratched the dark beard scruff gracing his jaw. “Yeah, I know. But I still should have known better than to get involved in a situation I damn well should have seen was doomed.”

“Why did you? Agree to the threesome, I mean.”

“I wish I could say it was strictly because I would do anything for Kev. But truthfully, I was a horny f*cker back then.” His mouth slid into a lopsided grin. “Though the more time I spend around you, I wonder how much I’ve truly changed.”

The ever-present electrical charge of awareness snapped between them again. Any more sizzle and her damn store would erupt in flames. Attempting to ignore the tight ache in her nipples, she cleared her throat. “I take it Kevin wasn’t so thrilled about Heather falling in love with you?”

“Not in the way you think.” Another weighty, gloomy silence descended on Nick. “During Heather’s confessional of her feelings, she told Kev that she was drawn to me because I didn’t distance myself from the sex like he did. She accused him of holding back, of shutting her out. He took that as a sign that I could give her something he couldn’t.” His expression still haunted, Nick wearily rubbed his brow and shook his head. “He was dead wrong, of course. But nothing I said would convince him otherwise. Then he decided the best thing for him to do was pack up and leave. We got into an ugly fight, and the next morning Kev was gone.”

An alarming twinge of recognition shuttled through her. So much of Nick’s story mirrored hers. She’d pursued Kevin—hard—the past several months. A few nights ago she’d broken past his walls of resistance enough to earn herself a doozy of an orgasm. And now he was moving.

Shit. He was running away from her. An awful queasiness sloshed in her stomach. Nick must have read the agony on her face because he closed the short distance between them and tucked her into his arms. His lips brushed her forehead, offering comfort. She automatically leaned into him, for once not letting the guilt over her attraction for him eat away at her. After the day she’d had, she was damn well going to take all the hugs she could get.

Snuggling against him, she couldn’t help thinking of the numerous times she’d sought a similar solace in Kevin’s arms. It was crazy, really, how similarly she responded to him and Nick. They were the only men she’d ever had this instant connection and chemistry with. Figures she would fall for two men who were so alike and yet so different. For cripes’ sake, they were even both chefs. One worked with food, the other edible lube.

Despite her misery, her laugh tumbled loose, muffled by Nick’s coat. His fingers grazed along her hair, a silent question. She lifted her head and gave him a wavering smile. “You really should consider renaming yourself the Sex Chef. It has a nice ring to it.”

The corners of his eyes crinkling, he chuckled. “Talk about a random thought.” He smoothed her hair back, his fingertips lingering on the sensitive hollow behind her earlobe. She shivered. His attention drifted to her lips and she waited, breathless, her nipples contracting in anticipation of his tongue once again gliding hot and coaxing along hers. The tension in his frame palpable, Nick released her and took a cautious step back.

She wanted to scream in frustration but settled for an anguished glare instead. The battle for his self-control boldly displayed in the dark, tortured gaze staring back at her, Nick sucked in a breath and released it in a ragged stream. “Jana, Kev loves you. I have absolutely no doubt of it. Don’t give up on him.”

Her heart and her stomach rolled in tandem. She’d give anything to put stock in Nick’s declaration, but she’d held so long to that invisible filament of hope, she didn’t know what to believe anymore. Then there was Nick, standing in front of her—a tangible possibility of a future, if they made that leap of faith. But even now the ghost of Kevin was present between them. If she acted on her desire for Nick, made love with him like she craved to do, she’d feel like she’d cheated on Kevin. And it was all too apparent that Nick felt the same way. Yeah, it was stupid. God, was it stupid. But there was no denying it.

Colossally messed up as things had been before, they didn’t hold a candle to the epically FUBAR state of their situation now.