“Luke told me that you own a shop?” Anna’s date said three nights later at Tuck’s. He cut a slice of his steak and popped it into his mouth, chewing and chewing and chewing until Anna swore the man was eating a stick of gum as opposed to filet mignon.

She sighed, swirling her fork around her crawfish pasta dish. Aside from the obnoxious chewing, there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with Jason Rush. There just wasn’t anything particularly right about him either. From the crewcut hairstyle to the polo and jeans he’d donned for their date, Jason was . . . safe.

She hid another sigh as she sipped her wine. How bad was it that the one quality she’d desperately wanted in a guy had become the one quality that she found off-putting? After receiving Luke’s brusque text that he’d found her perfect match, Anna had felt desperate to make this one work.

How many dates could she go on before she realized that the men weren’t the problem—she was.

She’d hoped for sparks to ignite the moment Jason’s hand had clasped hers. Instead, she’d been oddly aware that his hands were freezing even though he’d just removed a pair of gloves. Which brought her to her next complaint: gloves in November just weren’t necessary in New Orleans.

As they’d taken their seats at a table in the back of the bar, she’d hoped for the conversation to prove engaging. While it wasn’t un-engaging, she certainly wasn’t on the edge of her seat with any amount of anticipation.

And then the chewing . . .

To hell with it, she decided, dropping her fork to the plate. The silver clattered loudly and caused Jason to pause mid-bite. Anna couldn’t find it in herself to be sorry. “Why did you agree to this date?”

Chew, chew, chew. His swallow was audible, even amidst the sounds of chattering guests and soft jazz playing. “Excuse me?”

It was too late to turn back now. “This date,” she repeated, “why did you agree to it? I know why I agreed to it, but why did you?”

He tossed a panicked look about the bar. “Luke’s an old buddy of mine . . .”

Luke, Luke, Luke! In the three weeks since they’d met, he’d somehow managed to take her life and put it through a meat grinder. And, yes, she understood that she had no one to blame but herself. She’d been the one to dare him into this dating challenge. She’d been the one to push him into finding her Mr. Right.

But he’d been the one to enlist Julian as his personal dog walker, a job that Jules adored more and more every day. Especially when Luke let Anna’s son stick around the house and talk football, Julian’s favorite topic.

And she certainly couldn’t forget this past Sunday, when Luke had been the one to tell Jas and the rest of the costume crew that they were dating. It was his fault that she’d spent the last three nights tossing and turning in bed wondering what dating Luke O’Connor would mean.

The loss of your good sense, that’s what.

She was already there.

Picking up her glass, she swirled the wine in the bottom of the bowl and took another sip. She knew that Luke was watching her from his spot in their booth—knew, too, that he could hear every word that she said.

His hip might be shot, but his hearing was just fine.

Good. She wanted him to hear every word of this conversation.

She smiled tightly at the man opposite her. “So, is this a pity date?”

“What?” Jason’s slack jaw snapped shut. “This isn’t a pity date.”

“Then why, when you went to the restroom ten minutes ago, did I hear you ask Luke over there”—Anna sarcastically wiggled her fingers in the booth’s direction—“for my name again?” Another sip of her wine and Anna leaned back in her chair. It was sadistic of her, she knew, but she was wholly enjoying watching Jason Rush squirm.

“I remembered your name.” Jason stuck a finger beneath the collar of his polo and tilted his head to the side. “Amber.”

She experienced a moment of second-guessing before closing the door on her conscience. If he couldn’t even remember after being told a third time . . . “It’s Ashley.”

“Fuck.” He ran a hand over his short hair and gave an awkward ha-ha that couldn’t have sounded faker had he practiced for a week straight. “Ashley, right, right.” He narrowed his eyes. “You do own a store, don’t you? Something with clothes and, uh . . .”

There came a crossroads in every woman’s life. At the age of thirty-two, it seemed Anna had just hit hers. She could either get angry or she could have fun. At least the latter would provide great material for when she next spoke with Shaelyn and Jade about her dating misadventures.

Planting her elbows on the table, Anna propped her chin on her upturned hands. “I do own a store,” she murmured, “a pet supply shop. We sell everything from leashes to flea medicine to doggie clothes.”

“Uh, that’s great.” He shoved another cut of filet into his mouth. Chew, chew, chew.

Luke O’Connor was going to die.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Guuulllppppp. “Sure, yeah.” Jason guzzled his beer. “A secret, that’s cool.”

“When I have sex, I prefer to be on top.”

Instant desire flooded her date’s eyes. “Yeah?” he asked in a voice some might describe as silky. “I like my women on top. Keeps me from getting tired, you know?”

As in, so you can be lazy as the woman does all the work. Anna could read between the lines, and Jason Rush wasn’t even making it difficult for her. “Mhmm,” she hummed, letting one hand drop to trace idle circles on the tabletop. “I don’t mind getting dirty.”

The guy one table over started coughing.

From the awed expression on Jason’s mouth, he wasn’t that far behind. “How dirty?”

“Very dirty,” Anna confirmed. “So dirty that I always need to attend confession afterward.”

His gaze grew unfocused with lust. “Always?”

“Always.” She leaned forward to conspiratorially whisper, “Especially after I put on my strap-on and have my way with you.”

She waited smugly for the fog of lust to fade.

Three . . .

His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.

Two . . .

“You’re . . .” He shook his head, as though hoping to clear his mind.

She sipped her wine. “I’m quite good. Very gentle. Of course, there are some prepping steps but you don’t have to do a thing.”

The cougher next door shoved his chair away from the table and stumbled over to the bar. Anna turned back to her date. “What do you say?”

She stifled a smile as he, too, scraped his chair back. “You’re a freak!” he hissed, throwing a cautionary glance over his shoulder to see who else might have heard. “No way am I letting you fuck me in the ass.”

Anna lifted a finger, wagging it back and forth tauntingly. “Very gentle.”

She watched in amusement as Jason Rush tore out of the bar, with not a single glance thrown back at their table. After flagging down a server for the check, Anna deliberately kept her attention on her wine and the half-eaten food spread before her.

“Here you are, Miss.” The server placed the black checkout book on the table. “Whenever you’re ready. No rush.”

She’d been ready forty-five minutes ago when she’d first sat down. “Give me a second and I’ll get that card for you right now.” Digging through her purse, she withdrew her wallet and placed her card on the checkout book. “Here you go,” she said, feigning a smile she didn’t feel.

When the server promised to be right back, Anna finished her wine and slid into her jacket, untangling her hair from the hood and letting the strands fall down over her shoulders. She needed to get out of here, fast, before Luke stalked her down for a chit-chat she most desperately did not want to have at the moment.

Right now, if your name wasn’t Ben & Jerry, Anna wasn’t interested in talking.

Lady Luck was clearly not on her side today because it wasn’t more than thirty seconds after the server had disappeared with her card that Luke dropped into Jason’s chair. She allowed herself a quick glimpse of his face and found herself completely unsurprised by the frustration tugging at his rugged features.

He waited for the cougher next door to resume his seat, then snapped, “What the fuck was that, Anna?”

She stood. She could just as easily wait for the check by the hostess stand.

The slow, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of Luke’s cane indicated that he had no intention of letting her slip off into the night as she wished he would. The server found her easily enough, handing out the checkbook. Anna scrawled a tip onto the receipt, along with her signature.

Without another glance behind her, she stalked outside and headed for her parked car a block away.

“Blondie.”

His voice was a gruff command, and, as though connected to him by a string, her feet ceased moving. She twisted around to stare at the man who plagued her thoughts every moment of the day. It really wasn’t fair, especially as he didn’t seem the least bit moved by her presence. “I don’t want to talk to you right now, Luke.”

He didn’t get the hint and waved his arm toward the restaurant. “What the hell was that?” he demanded, one muscular arm settling over his chest. When the position appeared to be too uncomfortable for him to hold, Luke shoved his hand into his front pants’ pocket and waited.

He’d be waiting for a long time.

She turned sharply on her heels, once again heading for her car.

Once again, he followed. If not for the cane crunching against the gravel, his footsteps would have been silent. A reminder that this man was not one to piss off.

Too bad Anna had reached her boiling point. She stayed quiet until they reached her car, which was parked in a secluded part of the neighborhood, away from the hustle and bustle of St. Charles Avenue, one of New Orleans’ main streets. It was nearly ten at night and no one was out and about—except for the two of them.

In a deathly soft voice, she asked, “You almost out of old high school buddies to set me up with?”

“I’m not following.” He stopped behind her, and she could feel the warmth radiating off his big frame.

His close proximity was unsettling. Enticing.

No.

Clutching her car keys tightly, Anna faced him, pressing her back up against her car. His face was cast in shadows, the wide breadth of his shoulders all that she could see. She lifted her chin defiantly, steeling herself against his innate masculinity. “Don’t even pretend with me, Luke. You agreed to three dates, two of whom you’ve known since high school. I’m sensing a trend.”

“That’s not a trend.”

Her mouth fell open. “How is it not? I know the whole challenge started as a lark, but, really, you could have tried a bit harder. At this point, you’ve set me up with a guy who wanted to know if and what type of panties I was wearing, and Mr. Jason Rush thought my name was Amber.”

His deep baritone cut through the silence. “An honest mistake.”

“The gross lingerie comment or the mixing up my name bit?”

“The second one. Anna, Amber . . . I’m sure the guy was just nervous. You can be very intimidating, you know that?”

She’d heard as much over the years, mostly from her peers. While her friends had been going out partying and getting wasted, Anna had been at home taking care of her son and doing her damned best to make something out of nothing. She may not have shed physical blood but the tears had been real.

The sweat, too.

Looking up at Luke, she wished his face wasn’t hidden in the shadows. His ambivalent tone gave away nothing. Neither did the stiff way he held his big body. And maybe it was because she couldn’t gauge his reaction that she tossed hell to high water and went with her gut.

“Do you want to know why your choice of men don’t do it for me?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice level when she was oh-so-tempted to fly off the handle.

But Anna Bryce didn’t lose her temper. She hadn’t as a debutante in high school or when Julian’s father gave her the slip with nothing but a wave and a see-ya-later. She hadn’t when her parents took off for greater parts of the world, leaving Anna to take care of her own “mistakes.” And, damn it, she’d even managed to keep her cool when the world as she knew it had shattered last year and nearly broke her relationship with Julian.

Anna wasn’t fiery—she left that role up to her cousin, Shaelyn.

She breathed in through her nose, then let the frustrated air expel from her mouth.

She was good. Totally good. She’d never been better.

“You know what?” She cocked her head to the side, jiggling her keys in her right hand anxiously. “Let’s not even go down that road. I’m going to go home. Consider the challenge called off.”

His hand latched onto her wrist as she turned to open her car door. His grip was firm, strong, and she felt an answering tingle in places she’d rather not be tingling in under the current circumstances.

In a low rasp, he ordered, “Tell me what you were going to say.”

He was behind her now. Massive body mere inches away from her back. A masculine hand still encircled her wrist. Her knees felt close to wobbling, just as they had that day at Herbal Heaven, and she was all too aware of the way she itched to lean back against his chest and let her weight sink into him.

“I don’t think so, Luke.”

“You wanted to thirty seconds ago,” he countered. His hand drifted up to just above her elbow, where it remained as he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I’m sensing a trend.”

She jerked around. “Are you kidding? You can’t just”—she waved her hand, rattled to find how close he’d stepped toward her—“use my own words against me. There isn’t a trend.”

“Isn’t there? Not once since we’ve met have you told me what you want in a partner. I’m no fucking matchmaker, sweetheart. The only thing I’ve ever matched before is a magazine with its rifle.”

“I told you, Julian—”

“Needs a good father figure in his life. Yeah, I got that part.”

His nonchalance intensified her frustration, making it harder to remember that she did not lose her temper. Ever. “Then, excuse me if I’m wrong but neither date seemed up to snuff.”

“For you, maybe. Ever think to ask them about how they felt about you having a son?”

Conversation with Luke’s dates had started and ended on Anna’s business, although tonight’s had taken an unexpected turn. Still, it seemed that the concept of lingerie had the ability to halt grown men in their tracks and turn them into horny, untried virgins. She eyed Luke speculatively, amending that thought to fit only some grown men. On both occasions that Luke had visited La Parisienne, he hadn’t had any trouble forming coherent sentences.

Shrugging off a flare of self-consciousness, she admitted, “We didn’t get that far.”

“I know, because if y’all had, you would have learned that both Jason and Aaron have kids. Now”—he lifted a hand, warding off any argument on her end—“Aaron turned out to be a prick. I’m not denying that. But I didn’t pick them out of a fucking hat, thinking, ‘yeah, this dirt-bag will work perfectly for Blondie. I can’t wait to see her miserable for two hours tonight.’”

The vehemence in his voice set her back on her heels. She and Luke barely knew each other, but she couldn’t help but wonder . . . “Then what were you thinking?”

The hand on her arm tightened imperceptibly, though she felt the gentle squeeze all the way down to her toes like he’d set a clamp around her heart. She suddenly found it hard to breathe, and she only wished it was because of his nearness. If only it wasn’t because she wanted him to admit that the attraction was mutual. That she wasn’t the only one tossing and turning at night, and glancing out the window of her boutique during the day in the hope that he might stroll in.

She forced her gaze to meet his, seeking answers in the darkness of the night.

“You don’t want to know,” he finally said, huskily.

“Yeah, I do.”

She heard him swallow. Was he nervous?

Almost without thinking, Anna pushed away from the security of the car and took a half step toward him. Now there was no mistaking his sharp inhale, nor the way his fingers readjusted their grasp to cup her elbow and jerk her close, erasing that final gap between them.

The subtle spice of his masculine cologne hit her, and, oh man, but it was utterly delicious. She wanted to press her nose to his neck and inhale, maybe even run her tongue along the outer rim of his ear before begging him to claim her mouth with his.

Her hand found the hard plane of his chest, the fabric of his cotton T-shirt bunching under her fingers. “Now who’s evading?” she taunted with a half-grin.

She still couldn’t make out his expression, so it came as a surprise when she found her back abruptly pushed up against the car again.

His hands captured her wrists, tugging them up to the roof of her car, just above her head. And, oh my God, but he made no attempt to shield his hips from hers. He was packing, that was for sure. A pistol formed exclusively for a woman’s pleasure.

He settled his hips between hers, dropping his head to her ear to rasp, “What exactly are you asking for here, Blondie?”

Anna’s tongue felt swollen, clumsy. Anticipation, maybe. Five years’ worth of pent up need, most definitely. “I told you,” she whispered, her voice sounding rough even to her own ears, “I want to meet a nice guy who will learn to love Julian.”

Though the words were true, they hung hollow in the night air.

“That’s not all you want,” he said gruffly, his mouth so close to the column of her neck that, as he spoke, his lips grazed her sensitive flesh, drawing out goosebumps and a shiver down her spine.

Their entire relationship had been one set after another of challenges, games. Who was she to stop that now? She shifted her lower body to better cradle his hips, making them both moan at the intimate contact. “Tell me what I want then, since you know all.”

His mouth brushed the underside of her chin. “Me.”

The blunt answer startled her and she instinctively pulled back.

Luke didn’t let her, tightening his hold on her wrists and tangling his fingers with hers. Stretched out against the car, with his body aligned against hers, it was the most erotic position Anna had ever found herself in. She resisted the urge to roll her hips, only out of the desire to limit any possible embarrassment.

One slip up and he’d discover how much she craved this connection with him.

“Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” His thumbs caressed hers, a deceptively lulling motion that made her desperate for more. More of his touch. More of him. “You want me.”

Yes. “No.”

He chuckled softly. “Liar.”

“It’s not a lie.” Anna tossed her hair back, determinedly lifting her chin. “You’re the one who stalked me down after I left the bar tonight, even after I told you that I didn’t want to talk.”

“You told Jason you’d use a strap-on to fuck him,” he said drolly. “How am I supposed to let a conversation on that slide away?”

She rolled her shoulders. “By pretending it didn’t happen, that’s how.”

Although she couldn’t make out his features, she could have sworn he narrowed his eyes. “Do you really have a strap-on?”

“Sounds like you’re interested.”

“I’m not.”

“You sure? I could give you the same treatment I promised him.”

“Fuck yes, I’m sure,” he growled. “When I’m with a woman, sex toys aren’t necessary.”

Well, that was good to know. Sucking back her curiosity, she forced a nonchalant tone to her voice. “Because you’re above them.”

If he caught her pun, he didn’t say so. “Because there isn’t anything a damn toy can do better than when I’m sliding deep into a woman, my name on her lips.” His voice turned to a pitch no higher than gravel. “Is that what you want to hear, Blondie? You’ve been in my head for weeks now, driving me fucking insane. I told you that I wasn’t looking for anything.”

She gave in to temptation, rolling her hips against the bulge behind his customary sweatpants. “I’d say there’s a part of you feeling differently right now.”

Just then, he moved his head slightly, and a slice of light spilled across his features, revealing glittering green eyes. She sucked in a breath, wondering, for the first time, if she’d perhaps pushed him too far.

His thumbs centered on the beating pulse of her inner wrists, gently pushing down. It didn’t hurt—if anything, the weight on her body’s pressure points eased the butterflies in her stomach. He was trying to scare her off, she could see that. But what he didn’t realize was that the more he tried to push her away, the more Anna wanted to see him drop his steel walls.

The Mr. Darcy effect, obviously.

Hadn’t she told herself not to go after the Mr. Darcys of the world?

She had. She’d been telling herself that for years now, and she still hadn’t learned her lesson. Clearly.

“I think you want to,” she said, interrupting the still air. “I think you want to kiss me.”

“Then why don’t I?”

“Because you’re scared.”

His chin pulled back. “I’m not scared.”

“No?” Anna tilted her chin up, not the least bit surprised when Luke instinctively leaned down and hovered over her mouth. Then, she said the words that sealed her fate: “I dare you to prove it.”