Other than her coffee, Kinsey hadn't managed to show up with much of anything but a sex hangover—that and a decided reluctance to being bought by any man but Doug. Doug, who was off to the
Rocky Mountains
for the next four days.
Funny how the weeks she'd gone without seeing him in the past seemed like nothing compared to the Doug-less days that loomed ahead. God, but she had it bad. Having it so good and so often did that to a girl.
"What is wrong with you?" Lauren asked, plopping into the chair at Kinsey's side, the bags rustling as she set the bagels on the table. "That shade of purple under your eyes would make a great color of eye shadow."
"Just your usual Tuesday morning sex hangover." Kinsey shook her tired head. "I am definitely not as young as I used to be."
"
Whoo-hoo
! I knew it." Lauren slapped the table. "You and Doug are going to be perfect for each other."
Perfect for each other or not, this distance thing sucked in a really big way.
"Though," Lauren added, waggling both brows, "I doubt your exhaustion has anything to do with your age, girlfriend. You're just not as used to sex marathons as you need to be—or as you're going to have to be to keep up with that man."
"And what would you know about keeping up with Doug Storey?" Poe pointedly asked.
Lauren shrugged. "All a girl's gotta do is
watch
the man in action to know that he pours the same energy into everything he does. That's why poor Kinsey here is so tired."
They had no idea. Even she couldn't believe how exhausted she was,
nor
how much she missed Doug already. "Too true. Plus, I'm a total sleep addict. I'm dysfunctional without eight or nine hours."
"So?" Poe inquired succinctly, pouring her tea as Lauren set out the bagel bounty.
"So, what?" Kinsey answered Poe's probing question with her own. "Be more specific. My powers of intuition aren't yet working this morning."
One of Poe's dark brows arched curiously. "I'm assuming Sunday night's dinner was the start of something good?"
Kinsey slumped back in her chair, her head lolling to one side. Bed. She needed to go back to bed. "It was definitely good, though I'm not sure if it was the start of anything."
"Two nights in a row with Doug?" Lauren gave a low hissing whistle. "I'd say that gives you bragging rights."
Kinsey frowned. "Why would I brag about my time with Doug?"
Lauren rolled her eyes. "I don't mean you have to brag. Not really, and not to me. I just know from Anton that Doug doesn't date. He hasn't dated in months."
"Hmm." Kinsey's heart gave a small blip. "I wonder why."
Poe sliced open a cranberry bagel. "Are you seeing him again?"
Kinsey nodded. "Izzy gave us tickets to next weekend's Texans game."
Lauren chose the sun-dried-tomato bagel and garden-veggie cream cheese. "Like I said. Bragging rights."
No. Kinsey wasn't going to get her hopes up. The flight to
Denver
was almost three hours. And her life, her family was here. "Three dates doesn't mean a hill of beans."
"If we were talking about any other guy, I'd agree," Lauren said, thinning out the cream cheese she'd just spread. "But this is Doug."
Kinsey still wasn't ready to buy into Lauren's scenario. "I don't get it. What makes Doug different?"
"Hello? What did I just say?"
"Doug doesn't date."
"Exactly." Lauren gestured with her knife. "Doug works. He goes to ball games with his buddies, stops off for a beer. And then he works some more."
"Has he always been like that?" Kinsey couldn't help but wonder about the girl back home who'd betrayed him, and if that entire incident had impacted Doug beyond anything he was willing to admit…
What was she saying? He was a guy. Guys were never willing to admit to anything involving emotion.
Yes, they might admit to wanting to hang around, to get to know a woman better, definitely to take her to bed, but what was that in the scheme of things when
Denver
was not exactly a reasonable commute?
Lauren nodded. "As long as Anton has known him. I think there was a girl for a while in college, but that obviously wasn't anything long-term."
Not after she married his brother, anyway. "Well, sister, don't start in with the smug face, because Doug still doesn't date."
"Perhaps he'll buy you at the auction," Poe suggested, pinching off a bite of bagel.
"I'd rather he didn't."
Which, of course, was a total contradiction to last night's teasing plea for his bid.
Kinsey wrapped both hands around her first latte. "I'd rather no one who might recognize me even knows about the auction."
"C'mon." Lauren licked a smear of cream cheese from the edge of her thumb. "It won't be that bad."
"That's easy for you to say." Kinsey suddenly wondered what had happened to her appetite. "In fact, that's easy to say for all of you who don't have to suffer the possible humiliation of bringing in the lowest bid."
"It's not about the money," Lauren said.
Kinsey countered with, "It's all about the money or else we wouldn't be doing it."
"Okay, true." Lauren nodded, considering the truth as she considered her bagel. "But what I meant was that it isn't a competition to see which one of you brings in the biggest bucks."
Poe chose that moment to interrupt. "Actually, it's completely about which of us is the most expensive. Why would you think anything else?"
Kinsey smiled semi-sweetly. "Dear, dear Poe. There are times when you really don't have to speak your mind."
"I have yet to experience any situation that required me to—"
"To bite your tongue?" Lauren interrupted. "Trust me. This is one of those times."
"Perhaps a private wager then." Poe lifted her delicate china teacup with equally delicate fingers. "As to which one of us will bring the bigger prize. The money to be donated to the cause, of course."
"You're on," Lauren said, causing Kinsey to slap at her friend's shoulder.
"Are you out of your mind?"
Lauren frowned and rubbed at the spot. "It'll be fun, and it'll give us a reason to campaign."
"Campaign?" Kinsey groaned. This was getting out of hand. "Campaign how? For what?"
"We'll enlist marketing's help. We'll paint you as a prize no man can live without."
Lauren's excitement was not the least bit contagious, and Kinsey grumbled, "This is only about one date, Lauren. Not happily ever after."
"You never know."
What Kinsey did know was that her enthusiasm was definitely waning more than waxing. But did she really want or need to tell the other women that her lack of interest in the auction was due to her recent decision to go after Doug?
That thought brought a frown. Lauren and Poe had both been there for that conversation. Had they already forgotten her plans? Either that or neither of them put much stock in her commitment to the ideas they'd laid out.
Now here they were, off on another competitive, game-playing tangent. And all Kinsey wanted to do was tell them the deal was off—the auction, the wager, all of it. She didn't want to be sold to another man when she was in love with Doug Storey.
"Kinsey? You still with us?" Lauren asked, jostling Kinsey's elbow. "You look like you got hit by a bus."
Calm, cool, collected.
Ohhmmm
. "I'm fine."
As fine as anyone could be having fallen in love with a man who only wanted to play when he wasn't working, who was but weeks away from walking out of her life.
A man who wouldn't even return a girl's bikini bottoms, and would most certainly never continue what they'd started from a distance of two thousand miles.
"You don't look fine," Lauren insisted.
"She's contemplating her imminent loss," Poe stated.
Truer words had never been spoken. Not that Kinsey was going to correct their misconception about what it was she was losing.
After all, she could hardly lose what she'd never really had to begin with, could she?
* * *
Izzy walked around the perimeter of the ashy-black and still-smoldering rubble that two days ago would have been a family's home. It was bad, this sort of loss, but definitely not the worst she'd ever seen.
The house was gone, but the love that would rebuild it, the love that would fill it, still existed and bloomed. It was the sort of love that put the needs of another before the needs of one's self. The rarest kind of love that many never had the privilege to know.
Izzy had known enough love in her lifetime to share with an entire village. At times she felt as if she'd been loved
too
much, that what was intended to be concern became confining, smothering, an attempt by her family to take charge of her life because … why?
Because they thought there was too much work to be done at home. That she needed to concentrate her charitable efforts on friends and family and not worry so much about the needs of those relying on the relief and humanitarian organizations with which she worked.
What her family seemed to forget, or perhaps saw only through eyes clouded by insular perception, was that the kind of love they shared and practiced was rare. The Golden Rule did not top any etiquette list for living on the street.
At least none that Izzy knew of. And she knew a lot, having worked with the homeless, with gang-bangers, with girls without mothers who were mothers themselves.
But her goal had always been the larger global picture, third world countries with unsanitary living conditions, rampant disease and malnutrition. And she was beginning to believe her degree in nutritional anthropology would turn out to be nothing but a waste.
Time after time, nothing changed. She'd get away for a bit, be hip-deep in dedicating her energy and resources where needed, then another calamity at home would call out her name, and she'd be back to help out her Gramma Fred and uncle Leonard and her mamma Rose.
She kicked at a chunk of burned two-by-four, aggravated by the reality. Truth be told, the calamities were usually nothing more than her mamma missing her, and Gramma Fred looking out for Mamma, and then Leonard deciding it would be in Rose's best interest for Izzy to come home.
As hard as it had been, she'd finally found the strength to say no. Saying no was the only way she'd managed to hold on and finish her education, though she was paying for it now by having her career choices openly ridiculed. And all of that done by those who claimed to know her and love
her the
most.
For some reason, their idea of love seemed to require a loyalty to her family's wishes above her own, no matter where the calling of her heart took her. They saw no reason for her trips abroad or for the energy she devoted to caring for those around the world when she could find plenty of charity work to do at home, within a distance they deemed suitable. She felt torn by what seemed to be a conditional acceptance, a qualified approval, of her career choice. A conflict that translated into wondering about their acceptance of her.
She kicked again at the two-by-four, this time with a different anger than before.
"Some kind of mess, isn't it?"
At the sound of Joseph Baron's voice behind her, Izzy caught her breath, but wasn't able to stop the shiver speeding down the train tracks of her spine. Since she'd first laid eyes on him yesterday, and spent last evening in his company, not an hour had passed that he hadn't been on her mind—even during her dreams.
In the middle of the night, she'd heard his deep voice and his laughter. She'd relived the initial rush of awe inspired by his intelligence, the thrill at discovering a kindred spirit with a calling to help others. And then, of course, as dreams were wont to do, they took him out of his clothes and brought him into her body.
That memory, though only one of her imagination, was too real not to elicit a physical response. She felt her breasts swell, showing her exactly how it could be between her and this man. Tight and intense and as bitingly sharp as a bee sting.
She pictured his hands discovering what he caused her to feel, and turning to face him brought a stabbing pain to her belly. Wanting to bed a man the way she wanted to bed this one would cause her a world of hurt—some good, some bad and some a fierce combination.
Hugging herself tightly, she nodded. "The worst sort of mess imaginable. But I suppose you see
this a
lot."
He came closer, his hands stuffed into the pockets of the baggy gray athletic shorts, which reached his knees but did nothing to hide how fine his legs were beneath. "I do."
His voice rumbled through her like storm clouds on the horizon of the life she'd determined to live serving others. She didn't want a relationship to get in the way of that dream, to conflict with her life's goal, but it was going to be hard not to wonder about this man and what might have been.
Baron went on. "But it's always tough when it hits close to home. The personal ones are what get to you."
After last night's dinner with Sydney and Ray, Izzy had wondered if she'd ever see Baron again. Ray had driven him home late in the night; Izzy knew because she'd watched from the guest room window as they left, and she'd wondered if he was returning to a woman he hadn't mentioned.