Emma and I stayed at Granny’s for dinner before heading to the youth center. Was I surprised to see Emma there when I’d shown up? Yes.

I also hadn’t expected to find her making cookies.

Another item to add to my list of things I hadn’t expected? The strange feeling I got seeing her in the kitchen with the freshly baked cookies in her hand. But it had nothing to do with the cookies…and everything to do with the intense craving to kiss her.

Right—that wasn’t the only urge I’d had. The other one I’d managed to keep from being obvious to everyone in the room by reciting my hockey stats from last season in my head.

Had I ever gone a week without sex or kissing a girl? Yes, lots of times. I enjoyed sex whenever it was available, but I wasn’t a manwhore. It wasn’t like I needed to fuck some chick on a daily basis.

Which was why I couldn’t explain the reason I had craved the feel of Emma’s lips against mine the moment I saw her.

“So you’re really okay about this weekend in Napa Valley?” Emma asked while painting the rainbow’s yellow stripe. I was crouched on the floor, working on a dolphin.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, for one, your friends don’t know that we’re not really dating. Or did you explain things to Josh?”

“Josh and Trent already knew. Josh was the one who made me think of you as a potential fake girlfriend.”

Her paintbrush paused on the spot. “What do you mean?”

“Josh figured the last thing I needed was for my fake girlfriend to fall in love with me.”

“Because that would be an awful thing to happen?” Her voice sounded a little strained but since there was no reason for that, I shrugged it off. Her gaze was still on the spot she’d been painting, her hand paused midair.

“Of course,” I said. “I mean the reason for having a fake girlfriend is to avoid having a real one.”

“Right. Guess I forgot that part.” Her voice was still slightly off, but she went back to painting the rainbow without sparing me a second glance.

“Do Kelsey and Holly know I’m not the real deal?” she asked after a few minutes.

I dipped my brush in the blue-gray paint. “I have no idea.” It wasn’t something I had discussed with the guys. Part of that was because I hadn’t originally expected the two women to actually meet Emma.

Suffice it to say, there were a lot of things I hadn’t expected to happen in the past four weeks.

I continued painting the dolphin.

“Did Josh or Trent tell you it’s a couples’ weekend?” Emma asked. “And since we’re not a real couple, maybe we shouldn’t go. It could get awkward.”

“Why would it get awkward?”

You know that look mothers get whenever they’re explaining something and the kid just isn’t getting it? Now you can appreciate Emma’s expression. “Are they expecting us to share a bed?”

“Aren’t we?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just because we’re pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend doesn’t mean I’m automatically sleeping with you.”

“Let me clarify something here. Are we talking about actual sleeping together or fucking? Because in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve already done the latter.”

Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth for a moment. “Both, I guess.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want to sleep or have sex with me?”

She shrugged. “It’s not that. It’s just I don’t know if we’re only going as friends, or if we’re keeping with the fake-couple act while we’re there.”

I straightened to my feet and stepped closer to her. “I don’t know about you,” I said hotly against her ear, “but I’d be more than happy to keep the act going while we’re there. For practice.” I ran the tip of my tongue against the shell of her ear. She shuddered as a soft whimper fell from between her lips.

And a smug smile slid onto my face. Score one for me.

I stepped away. “But there’s an extra bedroom, so you don’t have to sleep with me if you don’t want to.” And given that I wasn’t one for actually sleeping with a woman, that arrangement was even better.

“All right. Both the sleeping arrangement and practicing kissing work for me.” Her voice dropped for the next part, taking on a husky tone my cock highly approved of. “I can definitely use more practice.”

No—I was pretty sure she was already perfect when it came to kissing. But who was I to turn down the opportunity to do more of it if the occasion should arise?

We returned to painting the mural.

We’d been working on it for an hour when the door clicked open. Wes and Liam entered the room. “Hey, guys, what are you doing here?” I asked.

Emma glanced at them with no hint of recognition on her face.

“We came to check on you.” Wes inspected the mural. “Nice job. Looks like you have quite the career ahead of you once you leave hockey…between this”—he gestured at the wall, his mouth tugging up to one side—“and your stripping career.”

“Not all of us can be a brilliant-assed game designer,” was my not-so-witty retort. But he did have a point. I had no idea what I would do once I retired. For now, it wasn’t something I had to worry about. Much. “Emma, this is Wes”—I gestured at him—“and Liam, Kelsey’s brother. They both have offices in the same building as your store.”

A sudden understanding lit Liam’s face. “You’re the owner of that sex store?”

“It’s not a sex store. It’s a boutique that focuses on romance,” Emma explained. She did a great job of not rolling her eyes. She didn’t do such a great job keeping the same exasperation from her tone.

“But it does sell sex toys and adult movies, right?”

This time Emma wasn’t quite so successful at not rolling her eyes. “We have some, but I doubt they’re what you’re looking for. The store caters specifically to females.”

The disappointment on Liam’s face? Definitely genuine.

“Here’s an idea,” Wes said to Liam. “Find a girl—because, Christ, when was the last time you got laid?—and get her to watch girlie porn with you.”

“Ha, ha. You’re a real Dr. Lovejoy,” Liam said, shaking his head.

Emma stiffened next to me.

“Dr. who?” Wes asked, frowning.

Why did the name sound familiar?

“That’s the author of the weekly sex advice column in The SF Metro paper,” Liam said, paying more attention to Wes than to Emma.

“And the nominees for being in the worst possible relationship are Emma Lovejoy and Travis Hamilton.” Her words from last week reminded me exactly where I’d heard the name before. I swiveled my head at lightning speed to the side, checking her reaction to his words.

Wes laughed out loud. “If you’re reading a weekly sex advice column, you’re more hard up than I realized.”

“And when exactly was the last time you’ve been with a woman?” I asked Wes. “Of the three of us, I’m the only one who hasn’t been dealing with a dry spell.”

“Point taken,” Wes said, still smirking at Liam.

“If you two actually left your offices every now and then,” I said, “you might meet some women to hook up with.”

Liam folded his arms across his chest. “I leave my office all the time.”

“Right, but how many of your security missions have ended with you getting laid?”

At Liam’s silence, I added, “That’s what I thought. And you…” My gaze swung to Wes. “You spend your days and nights locked in your office, working on your games. Other than your computer-generated women, when have you actually hung out with a real one?”

All right—what I really meant was when was the last time he’d had a good fuck? But for Emma’s sake, I edited what I was going to say. She looked traumatized enough at the mention of Dr. Lovejoy.

He shrugged.

“Right, that’s what I thought.”

“There is one woman I might be interested in,” Wes casually said as though merely discussing the weather. But I knew Wes. What might have sounded casual was the complete opposite.

“What woman?” Liam asked, eyebrow raised. “When have you been out of your cave long enough to see a woman?” He glanced at Emma. “Present company excluded.”

With a small smile, she nodded at him. A noticeable sense of relief washed over her.

“I’ve seen her around the building a number of times,” Wes said. “She doesn’t work there though.”

“You know everyone who works in the building?” Emma asked, her tone taken aback. She might not have felt that way if she knew he was the owner.

Realizing he’d almost revealed too much, Wes just shrugged. His shoulders were getting quite the workout with this conversation. “She’s often wearing scrubs, which tells me she doesn’t work in the building.” Nice save, dumbass. His building didn’t have a medical or dental office in it. “You know, white pants. Colorful tops with cartoon characters. That kind of stuff.”

“Slim brunette with straight, shoulder length hair, right?” Emma asked.

Wes’s eyebrows rose up his forehead. “That’s right. You know her?”

“You could say that. We both grew up in foster care and lived in the same hellhole for our final year in the system. But she doesn’t exactly trust men. And while she might come off as the kind of girl who’s only interested in having a good time and not settling down, that’s just her front.

“So if all you’re interested in is having sex with her, I suggest you find another woman to sniff around.” Emma stood a little straighter, doing her best to come off as intimidating, a protector of her friend’s virtue. Except with the streak of yellow paint smeared on her face, she sat more on the adorable side of the fence than the intimidating side.

Seeing her ready to take on any guy who dared hurt her friend—no matter how big he was—gave me a whole new level of respect for her.

And it gave me another snapshot of what her life had been like growing up.

Without thinking about what I was doing, I wrapped my arm around her waist and kissed her temple.

Naturally, this amused my two friends. Dumbasses.

“Thanks for the warning,” Wes said with a slight nod of his head. “I’ll definitely take that into consideration.”

“You guys almost finished here?” Liam asked, examining the mural.

“You mean in general or for tonight?” I asked.

“For tonight. We’re heading to The Unicorn. Trent and Kelsey are going to be there, too. Thought you guys might be interested in joining us. It’s live band night.”

I glanced at Emma. “You interested?”

“I could be convinced.”

And the challenge was on.…

I murmured in her ear so the two dumbasses couldn’t hear me, “They have dancing. Which means lots of opportunities for dry humping. And maybe I could even reveal a few of my Magic Mike moves.”

She laughed. “Well, when you put it that way…”