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cast long shadows on her pale cheeks, and her green eyes sparkled with interest behind her thick glasses. She gestured toward Roxi with a wooden spoon that looked to be coated in tomato sauce. “Girl, you’ve got it bad.”
    “You are being silly.” Roxi pushed away from the door and pulled off her gloves. “I am cold and tired, no more. Are you cooking lunch?” Since they all had busy schedules and often missed each other coming and going at all hours, their Sunday afternoon lunches had become somewhat of a tradition over the past few months.
    “Pasta from a box, sauce from a can. And don’t change the subject.”
    Leann came up behind Gabbi. At only five foot two, she was nearly a foot shorter than Gabbi and had to peer around her roommate to see Roxi. Her eyebrows lifted and she pushed a wisp of blonde hair out of her eyes. “You’re blushing.”
    “I am cold,” Roxi repeated, slowly this time, as though speaking to two-year-olds. “My nose is running. Will you read something into that too?”
    “Have you been crying?” Gabbi frowned. “Because if a boy made you cry, I’m going to kick his ass.”
    At the mental image of Gabbi bearing down on Donovan with a wooden spoon, Roxi burst out laughing. She stepped forward and enveloped both her roommates in a hug. Though she sometimes resented having zero privacy when these two were around, she wouldn’t have traded her best friends or their tiny apartment for all the privacy in the world.
    “How was work last night?” Leann propped herself up on a leather barstool in front of the counter-style slab of wood that passed for their dining table.
    “Fine.” At Gabbi’s raised eyebrow, Roxi rambled on, “The usual. Clients came, clients went. Boss was happy. Boring day, really.”
    She tried to talk about work as little as possible, mostly because she hadn’t yet told her roommates exactly what she did at Moderne. They knew she worked at an exclusive art gallery, but they had no idea she was the art. Gabbi had assumed Roxi was an exhibition assistant, answering questions about individual pieces and bringing serious offers to her boss. Roxi had gone along with the charade, figuring she’d come up with a way to make her job seem…well, not quite so seedy. That hadn’t happened, and now she had no idea how to spill the truth after all this time.
    Seriously, what could she say? Well, you see, I am not really an exhibition assistant…I mean, exhibition assistants wear clothes, no? Yeah, that would so not go over well.
    “Is that so?” Gabbi drained the pasta in a colander balanced over the sink. A cloud of steam wafted up and coated her glasses. She took them off to wipe the lenses on her shirt. “What’s all this about a boy then?”
    The idea of anyone referring to Donovan as a “boy” was so ludicrous, it made Roxi grin.
    Leann caught the smile, and pumped her fist in the air victoriously. “Aha! So there is a boy.”
    “Well, there is a man…” Roxi sank her teeth into her lower lip. The sudden sting reminded her she did that much too often, and she made a mental note to stop before she drew blood. Again.
    “Uh huh…” Gabbi waved two fingers in the air, gesturing for Roxi to continue. “And?”
    “And nothing.” Roxi lowered her gaze and found herself suddenly occupied with tracing a small groove in the surface of the scarred table. “We work together.”
    Leann placed a hand over Roxi’s and squeezed. “Did something happen last night?”
    Roxi swallowed hard. How could she describe what went on between her and Donovan without worrying her friends? “Something did,” she admitted at last. “But I doubt it will happen again.”
    “Oh honey… Did you sleep with him?” Gabbi set a plate of pasta in front of her. The look of disapproval she tossed over her shoulder wasn’t lost on Roxi.
    She knew all about Gabbi’s theory that if a woman slept with a man before they started dating, any chance for a real, meaningful relationship was