My legs felt like jelly as I slowly made my way through the floor to the office I shared with Lola and Daphne. I was walking in a complete fog. It was a wonder I didn’t run into any walls or trip over my own feet.

I dropped my purse on my desk and started removing my coat on autopilot, barely conscious of my movements. It wasn’t until Lola spoke up that I snapped out of my stupor.

“Whoa. What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

There was a strong possibility that I would if I didn’t get myself together, not that I’d be willing to admit that. If I gave Lola even an inkling that I was feeling anything for her brother at all, she’d be like a dog with a bone. She was only slightly less annoying than her mother when it came to wanting me brought into the family fold.

“Nothing,” I lied. “I’m fine, just feeling a little off. I think I might be coming down with a cold or something.”

She and Daphne shared a dubious look before she turned back to me. “You feeling all right? Do you need to go home?”

Home was the last place I needed to be, all alone with nothing to keep myself from thinking about Dominic. “I’ll be just fine,” I told her, doing my best to smile sincerely.

She didn’t look any more convinced. “You sure?”

I sucked back more of the vanilla latte and looked at my girlfriends with determination. “Positive. Now could you quit fussing over me? We have a show to do.”

Luckily that got them off my case, and we went about our morning as usual. Only difference was that my mind was completely preoccupied with the one person I shouldn’t even be thinking about, and my entire body felt like it was still hot and tingling from the inside out.

It was so bad that I was having trouble paying any attention to the people calling into our radio show, Girl Talk, Washington’s most popular talk radio show. We gave relationship advice to women in need. We’d grown so popular, we were something of local celebrities. My job was typically something I thrived on. Leave it to that asshole to screw with my head and take my focus off something I loved.

The name of our next caller popped up on the computer screen in front of me just as Lola wrapped up with the current one.

“Well, this is interesting,” I said with a smile into my mic. “Looks like we’ve got our first male caller in a long time.” I smiled at my girlfriends. It was extremely rare for men to call in to our show, but when they did, it was always quite amusing.

I leaned closer to the microphone and put on the subtle sultry voice I used when men called in. It wasn’t enough to make them think I was flirting or interested, but it helped in making them less defensive. “Good morning, Craig. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Uh… m-morning,” the guy spoke. His voice wasn’t very deep and had a nasally quality to it. He sounded nervous, so Daphne went into mother mode to try and soothe him. That was her specialty, keeping Lola and me in line and making the callers feel comfortable.

“Hey, Craig, we’re so glad you called in. What can we do for you?”

“Um, well… I called in because of your topic.”

“How to get your dream guy?” Lola asked, her curiosity peaked. “You want us to help you land the guy of your dreams?”

“Oh no. I’m not… I don’t… I like women,” Craig clarified. “It’s just I’ve listened to the show occasionally, and I feel like some of the advice you’ve given is kind of hypocritical.”

“Really?” I asked. “And how’s that?”

“Well, you told that one lady who called in that if the guy she was interested in couldn’t see she was a catch, then she should just cut her losses and move on.”

All thoughts of Dominic fled from my brain. I could focus on nothing but the interesting conversation I was currently having. “And you don’t agree with that?”

“No, I do agree. But it’s been my experience that women only take or give that advice if the man in question is handsome. If the guy’s built and rich, then he’s worth their time, and if he doesn’t return her feelings she needs to move on. But us regular guys, guys who might not have a ton of money or good looks aren’t even worth considering.”

“That’s not true at all,” Lola cut in.

“Really?” Craig asked. “So you’re saying that if your new fiancé was ugly you’d still have given him the time of day?”

Once again, my thoughts turned to one man in particular, and I couldn’t help but ask myself if I would have fallen for Dominic as hard as I did if he’d looked different. Granted, that was what first drew me to him, and there was no denying the physical attraction I felt every time I looked at him. But it had turned into so much more than that. When we were together, it was like I was with my best friend. He knew me in a way no one else did. What I’d felt for him exceeded something as trivial as what he looked like. I believed that down to my bones.

“Looks have nothing to do with it,” I said before Lola could. We were on shaky ground already with the powers to be as it was. The three of us weren’t necessarily known for being on our best behavior, and Lola was the feistiest of us all. The last thing we needed was for her to go off on a caller and get us slapped with a hefty fine. That money could go toward designer shoes and expensive wine, my weaknesses. “It’s a man’s personality that makes him the most attractive. Good looks are just icing on the cake. They aren’t a requirement.”

“So you’re saying that if you got to know a guy without knowing what he looked like, you’d still want him if you discovered he wasn’t good-looking?” Craig asked in a mocking tone. “I don’t buy that.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying”

“Please,” he scoffed. “You’re hot. There’s no way you’d give a guy like me a shot.”

I laughed into the mic. “First, let me just say I’m flattered that you think I’m hot. And secondly, I absolutely would. If I got to know a man without seeing him, and built something solid because I found his mind and personality attractive, I’m not vain enough to turn him away just because he might not meet society’s standards of what handsome is. Looks fade. I’d rather have a man who challenged me on an intellectual level my whole life than someone who looked good standing next to me for the next few years before age started setting in.”

“I’m not buying it,” Craig said, still wholly unconvinced.

“We’ll prove it!” Lola exclaimed excitedly. My head snapped up. Lola was smiling at me in a way that would have given the Joker the creeps. I didn’t like that look on her face one bit. It was the one she got when she was plotting and scheming. It didn’t give me a good feeling.

Craig’s voice sounded in the studio. “And how would you do that?”

“We’ll have a contest of sorts,” Lola carried on, and that knowing discomfort in my belly continued to grow. “We can have men fill out questionnaires and pick contestants based on the answers.”

It was scary how fast she was coming up with all of this.

“That’s a great idea!” Daphne chimed in. “And Sophia can start conversing through e-mail, text, that sort of thing.”

Wait… me? My eyes bugged out at my friends, but they were too engrossed in what they were saying to give a shit that I was freaking the hell out.

“What would the winner get?” Craig asked, clearly getting into my friends’ evil plan.

“They’d….” Lola trailed off, deep in thought before it dawned on her. “They’d be her date to my wedding in three months! Between now and then, Sophia will get to know each of the men picked from the questionnaires. At the end of the three months, the man who Sophia has the strongest bond with will be her date to my wedding.”

“That’s perfect!” Daphne cried out.

“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “It’s perfect.”

I was going to murder my best friends.

* * *

“Are you insane!”

I looked around at all the excited faces in the conference room. Clearly I was the only one thinking straight.

“It’s a brilliant idea,” Sam, our station’s program director, stated. “There are still some people giving the show hell over what happened with the last In the Act segment.”

He was referring to the segment we occasionally did to help women catch their significant other cheating. A few months back we had a woman call in claiming her boyfriend was cheating on her. Turned out the man was none other than Grayson Lockhart. And he wasn’t her boyfriend. The chick was certifiable. Poor Grayson was the innocent party, and the segment was a clusterfuck of epic proportions that snowballed. Luckily it all ended well and Lola found the one man capable of breaking through her walls. Now they were madly in love to an almost sickeningly level.

“This is exactly what the show needs to win back those listeners.” I turned my attention from Sam to Carmen, our PR rep.

It was Casey from Marketing who spoke next. “We’ve expanded on Lola’s plan. Five men will be picked from the questionnaire. No real names will be included in order to keep the guys anonymous. Each week you’ll share how the communication between each man is going. At the end, you’ll announce your choice on air, and you’ll meet him in the studio for the very first time for all the listeners to hear two weeks before Lola and Mr. Lockhart’s wedding.”

“Uh, excuse me.” I lifted my hand in the air to get everyone’s attention. “Is everyone here forgetting that I didn’t actually volunteer for this?”

“Oh, come on,” Daphne chided. “It’ll be fun!”

I shot her a murderous glare as Lola spoke. “Just think about it. You could actually meet the love of your life doing this. It’ll be like a fairy tale.”

“You know, it’s kind of gross just how much of a romantic you’ve become since you and Gray got together.” She stuck her tongue out at me playfully. “I don’t want to meet the love of my life,” I answered. “I’m perfectly content on my own.”

Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t get her brother out of my head.

“Then forget about love,” Sam said. “Think about ratings. No one’s going to hold you to anything past the wedding. If you don’t like the guy, you never have to see him again. But this is a public relations goldmine.”

“Just think about it,” Lola pleaded. “It could be fun.”

I let out a slow breath and looked down at the table, tapping my nails on it as I contemplated everything they’d just said. Finally, I relented. “Fine, but if I’m going to do this, I’m going to be in charge of the questions on that sheet, got it?”

“That’s fine,” Sam answered, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.

I wasn’t excited by a long shot, but maybe my girls were right. Maybe I’d meet a man who would be able to make me forget all about Dominic Abbatelli.

But I wasn’t counting on it.