The following evening, Travis and I were busy preparing the wall at the youth center that we would be painting. Normally the room would’ve been filled with kids, but their activities had been temporarily relocated so Travis and I could work.

Or at least try to work. All I could think about was the elderly woman’s psychoanalysis of me in the hardware store.

Okay, truthfully? I was still dwelling on how Travis might be my only opportunity to ever get laid again.

I mean, sure there was always a chance I would meet a guy and trust he wouldn’t hurt me like so many others had. But there was also a chance a plane would land on me while I crossed the street. And let’s just say the odds were looking more favorable when it came to the plane squishing me.

“How did you get the scar on your chin?” Travis asked.

The scar in question? It was a small scar that one of my foster mothers had given me. I was fourteen at the time and she accused me of seducing her husband. No idea why she had believed that. The guy made a sumo wrestler look anorexic.

“You know the superstition about how stepping on a crack will break your mother’s back? Turns out, tripping on a crack will cause you to cut your chin.”

Well, more like having someone jab you with a broken beer bottle, but close enough.

“Do you have any scars?” I asked. At least he couldn’t see the ones on my chest.

He laughed. “I’m a hockey player. Scars are part of the game. Mine aren’t too bad. Not like some of my teammates.”

“And at least you still have all your teeth,” I said as I dipped the roller into the paint. I glanced at him, doing my best to ignore how hot he looked in his shorts and the T-shirt stretching nicely across his chest. “You do have all your teeth, right?”

I hadn’t noticed any missing when I kissed him—not that I’d done a thorough inspection with my tongue the other day.

“Yep—definitely still have them all.” He was quiet for another few minutes as we continued painting. “Can I ask why you ended up in foster care if your parents didn’t die? But if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, too.”

“There’s not much to tell. Never met my father and my mom wasn’t cut out to be a mother. She abandoned me when I was eight.”

“Shit,” he muttered.

I laughed, the sound filled more with humor than the bitterness that had once kicked me hard in the ass. “Shit’s about right.”

Time to lighten things up. “How about we play a game?”

“What kind of game?”

“Kind of like Truth or Dare.” Although I had no idea what dares I would make Travis do.

“All right. You go first.”

“What’s your favorite ice cream?”

“Christ, Emma, you really know how to ask the scary questions.” The sexy smirk, which the ache between my legs greatly appreciated, slid back on his face.

“Just answer the question, sir, or you’ll have to do the dare.”

“Oooh, now you really have me scared.”

I lifted my chin. “You should be scared. And you do realize there’s a time limit, right? Sounds to me like you’re stalling. Is this your way of saying you don’t like ice cream? Because if that’s true, I’ll need to rethink this whole fake girlfriend arrangement.”

“Chocolate.”

I expected him to ask me a similar question. Did he? No—he went in for the kill. “The first time you had sex?”

“Are you talking about how old I was?”

“How about the who and the where?”

“That’s two questions.”

“Which I combined into one. You didn’t specify in the rules I couldn’t do that.”

“That’s because it’s a given you can’t.” Roll. Roll. Roll.

Travis chuckled. “You might want to put some paint on your roller.”

Slight technicality.

I dipped it into the paint, taking the time to ensure it didn’t have too much on it.

“You’re stalling,” Travis said. “Is this your way of saying you’re still a virgin?” He sounded like he believed that as much as he believed in the Easter Bunny.

“I’m not stalling.” I straightened and returned to the wall. “It was my college boyfriend and we were in the apartment Hannah and I shared.”

“Sounds like fun.” Nope—he clearly didn’t believe that either. “Your turn.”

“What’s the most exciting place you’ve had sex?” Oh crap! Did I really just ask him that? What the hell was I thinking?

Oh, right—apparently I wasn’t.

He actually had to contemplate it for a moment. Either he was trying to remember such an event, or there were so many to choose from.

My bet was on the latter.

“That would have to be several years ago. A group of us were hiking in the woods near where we were camping. One of the girls we had met the previous night and I slipped away.” The wistful smirk on his face made me wonder if there was more to it than that. Maybe they’d had hot sex while swinging from a tree. Like Tarzan.

What—Tarzan didn’t have sex with Jane while they swung from tree to tree? Sure, he did.

“What about you?” Travis asked, breaking me from my thoughts about sex with Tarzan.

“What about me?”

“What’s the most exciting place you’ve had sex?”

Double crap! “You can’t ask the same question I just asked,” said the woman who had been fine if he asked me the question about my favorite ice cream flavor.

“Says who?”

“It’s in the rules?”

His eyes sparked with amusement and challenge. “Prove it to me.”

“Fine,” I said with a huff. “I’ll answer your question.”

Now here lay the problem. The only place I’d ever had sex was in bed.

No, that didn’t sound lame at all.

I strained to remember an exciting place mentioned in the romances I’d read over the past few years. Some had been erotic romances. Nothing got a girl in the mood for a night with their own Alejandro than a steamy erotic romance. Read one of those sexy scenes before turning on your orgasm buddy, and you were bound to come hard and fast.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the exciting place dilemma. In one book I’d read, the hero and heroine met up in a bar and he caused her to come while they were sitting at the table. Then they hooked up in a bathroom stall.

“That tough to come up with an answer, huh?” Travis asked.

“I’m thinking. Give me a second.”

He chuckled again. “Except you don’t have the look of someone who’s reminiscing about some hot fuck sessions. You have more of a constipated look.”

“I don’t look like that.” Do I?

“Yes, you do. Which means you can’t remember any exciting places where you’ve done it.”

I moved my shoulders in a whatever shrug. “Hot sex can happen in bed. It doesn’t need to be somewhere exciting for it to be hot.”

“True. But counter and shower sex are fantastic, too.” He winked at me and my girlie parts gave a dreamy sigh.

Paint. I need more paint on my roller!

I fussed around for a minute with the paint pan, making sure the roller was adequately coated. The entire time, my girlie parts worked hard to remind me of yesterday’s conversation in the hardware store. No, not the one about my fear of abandonment. The one about me getting laid. By Travis.

Naturally, my brain thought it was a bad idea. My body told it not to be so hasty—maybe they could come to some sort of compromise. A compromise that involved my body getting its way.

Given my newfound revelation that I was commitment phobic, maybe my body had a good point. What was wrong with having some fun? Didn’t I deserve it?

“Okay, my turn to ask a question,” I said. “Do you have any hobbies?”

“Don’t really have time for hobbies during hockey season. And even off-season, I don’t really have any hobbies that I regularly do. I don’t even sketch as much as I used to. I’m more of a do-whatever-I-feel-like-doing-at-the-time guy. Mostly training. Hanging out with the guys. Stuff like that.”

“Fair enough. Your turn.” I continued painting the wall.

“How long has it been since you last fucked a guy?”

Seriously? That was the question he was going with?

And what was it with all the sex-related questions?

He’s a guy, the logical voice in my head reminded me. What did you expect?

Good point!

Since lying wasn’t my thing, I blurted, “Two years ago.” Not once did I stop painting or look at him when I said it.

I could feel him staring at me as though I had announced I was running away to join a convent. Considering I was practically a born again virgin, it was always a possibility…if you ignored the part that I wasn’t Catholic.

“You’re shitting me, right?”

“Why would you think that? Not everyone does one-night stands. Some of us prefer to go out with the guy a few times first.” The indignant tone? Totally justified.

“So you’re telling me you haven’t dated in two years—or you just haven’t had sex for two years?”

“More like both.” I shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”

It wasn’t like single men normally came into the store. Usually if a guy came in, he was with his wife or girlfriend or boyfriend. So that didn’t leave me with many opportunities for meeting guys these days.

Travis went back to painting. “So how many boyfriends have you had?” His tone was casual, non-judgmental—nothing but pure curiosity.

And because I was beginning to view Travis as something more than a fake boyfriend—a friend—I went with the truth. “One serious boyfriend in college. Nothing since then.”

His eyes widened as if I had confessed to loving chocolate covered ants. “Why did you guys break up?”

“The guy was a prick. He convinced me that he loved me”—Keep rolling on the paint. Don’t look at Travis whatever you do—“and he convinced me to have sex with him. Then right after he came, he was out the door. Never heard from him again after that.”

I kept on painting, still not looking at Travis. The air was silent other than the wet sound of my roller moving against the wall.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Wish I were,” I said. “But that’s okay. Lesson learned.”

“So why no more boyfriends after that?”

“Hey, isn’t it my turn to ask you a question?”

“Sure, if we were still playing the game. But we’re not.”

I guess that also meant I couldn’t take a dare instead of answering him. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve increased my standards and no one has met them yet.”

If the woman from the paint store was here, she would no doubt claim I’d increased my standards to make it impossible to meet Mr. Right—which might be true given the recent additions to my requirement list: sexy smirk and dirty talk.

I mean, really, what was I planning to do? Audition guys to see if they could talk dirty?

I mentally laughed at that—doing my best to ignore how Travis already met those two requirements.