He was saying all the right things and looking all the right kinds of handsome. In that damn navy blue suit minus the tie. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. Casual and sexy. Lickable. Part of me kept pinching myself under the table to make sure I wasn’t dreaming all this. I was on a date with Bowie, and he was pulling out every romantic stop.

I’d finally allowed the waiter to come back and take our orders and had worked my way through a very fine steak. Bowie had given me my hand back so we could use our utensils like civilized folk, and my mind cleared up a bit without the physical contact.

I picked up my beer and sipped. “So, say I do agree to date you.” I wanted to date him right on home and upstairs into my bed.

He leaned in, looking stupidly handsome like every naughty daydream I’d ever had of the man.

Testing him, I nudged my boot up his pant leg. He reacted by jumping so hard his knee hit the bottom of the table. How cute. “How exactly do I date you and keep my job?” I asked, acting as if I wasn’t climbing his leg with my foot.

“Uh. Um. Well, I think we could keep things under wraps around town. I mean, we live next door to each other. We have back door access—”

“Back. Door. Access.” I repeated, skating my foot over his knee.

He slipped a hand under the table and grabbed my boot, halting my progress.

He turned an adorable shade of raspberry. “What I mean to say is no one needs to know that we’re seeing each other at home. If we go out, we can stick to non-local venues.”

“Hmm. What if we’re both at The Lookout and a sexy, slow song comes on?”

His nostrils flared, and I knew he was thinking about our slow dance.

“Should I dance with someone else?” I asked innocently. “You know, keep everyone bamboozled?”

“No, you should not,” he said.

“So you say secret. But what about Jonah, who has seen us very nearly doing the deed? And Scarlett, who I may have called and asked if that counted as doing the deed? It didn’t, by the way.”

“It most certainly did not count,” Bowie agreed. “When it does count you won’t have to phone a friend to be sure.”

His eyes were on my mouth, and I did my best slow lick and hoped it looked as sexy as it did on TV. The grip on my foot tightened, so I figured I was doing just fine. I was a cat toying with a very attractive mouse.

“I repeat my question. What about Jonah—who you live with—and Scarlett, who is probably at this very moment flipping through her Cassidy and Bowie Wedding scrapbook?”

“You’re the one with the secrecy caveat. What do you want to do?”

The only other secret I’d kept from Scarlett was exactly what Bowie said the day after he punched the dumbass summertimer in the face for me. But I didn’t have many secrets, and Scarlett had a very large mouth. Would she forgive me for hiding an actual relationship from her? What kind of a tangled web was I weaving?

“Let’s tell them that the timing isn’t right for us right now,” I decided. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

“To be clear. You’re asking me to lie to my family about us.”

“Temporarily. I’m willing to make it worth your while. The less people who know, the better.”

Bowie grunted.

He wasn’t happy with the arrangement. But it was all I could offer right now. I wasn’t about to toss aside the job I loved for the man who’d lied to me and proceeded to keep his distance for the better part of a decade.

“How long are you willing to remain tight-lipped about our little relationship?” I asked, enunciating tight and lipped.

I watched his Adam’s apple work. If I could drive the man to sex, I felt like I’d win back a piece for my damaged teen heart. And also probably have an excellent orgasm. Or two. I remembered Scarlett oversharing on the reality of multiple orgasms and wondered if Bowie here could dole out multiples.

Yeah. The man was pumping off barely restrained testosterone like he bottled it and was spritzing people with samples at the mall.

“After all, given our unique position as such good friends, we could do some damage to both families if this little trial of ours flames out.” Thanksgiving would be awkward. Hell, everyday life would be unbearable. Running into each other at the Pop In. Sitting at the same table at The Lookout. Being invited to each other’s weddings. If this went to hell, I wanted to make sure no one was any the wiser.

“A month,” he said, the words coming out rough.

“Two,” I countered. There was no way Connelly would be wrapping his investigation before the new year. Not if he was hellbent on ignoring the photographic proof of Callie’s injuries. I needed enough time to prove to the man that I was an asset to the department, not a lovesick family legacy.

“Six weeks,” Bowie offered. “Don’t ask for more, Cass. Because otherwise people will be real shocked when I propose to you on what they think is our first date.”

And now it was my turn to turn a shade of pink only seen on sunburnt summertimers. Touché, Mr. Sexypants. “You want to propose to me in six weeks?” I hissed.

“I’d rather do it in a month,” he said, flashing that Bodine smile that ladies had been swooning over since his kindergarten school picture.

“Six weeks of secrecy, subject to renegotiation. You will not propose. And we will have sex tonight,” I ticked off my terms. A sexually aggressive woman had taken over my brain. One who kept reminding me how it had felt to have Bowie almost inside me, his lean, hard body pressed up against mine.

That woman was not going home unsatisfied.

“Six weeks. Potential proposal after two months. And we are not.”

“Bowie, Bowie, Bowie.” I flexed my foot in his hand and gained two inches up his thigh. His gray eyes sharpened. I should stop playing. I was smarter and more experienced than I’d been at nineteen, but there was still a lingering doubt that I couldn’t handle the man. “If you want to make a go of this then don’t you think it’s important to find out how compatible we are in all areas?” I scraped the heel of my boot against his inner thigh and was rewarded with the flaring of his nostrils. We were staring each other down, waiting for one to cave.

Our waiter returned, took one look at our staring contest, and hurried away.

“I plan to give you everything you want, Cass, for the rest of my life. Just not tonight.”

“Why the hell not?”