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watching a game or a movie—and she’d had to move to the chair in order to resist the urge to touch him.
    “Be that as it may, I can’t sell you in my store.” Mira gave him an unabashed once-over, from the forehead wave of his thick brown hair down to his polished loafers. “Although I think you’d fetch top dollar.”
    “Kind of you to say. In point of fact, at a charity auction last year, I was sold for the whopping sum of three thousand dollars. Highest bid of the night.”
    Ben nipped a piece of bacon off Gib’s plate. “Dinner with you can’t be worth a quarter of that. Not even if you treated them to steaks and a bottle of Dom at Gibsons.”
    “Who said I stopped at dinner?” Gib waggled his eyebrows and smirked with a full dose of male smugness. The intimation sent Daphne’s R-rated imagination down the wrong and very dangerous road yet again. The one where she pictured his hair tousled, and a sleepy morning smile as the only thing he wore... It helped distract her from the sharp ping of jealousy that hit every single time he talked about his many, many conquests. The jealousy she could never let him see, or their friendship would be horribly damaged.
    “Look, you don’t have to believe that what you’re eating is an aphrodisiac. You just need to let me know if everything tastes good and works well together.”
    “Very well. For the lovely Mira, I will do it.”
    The room closed in around Daphne. This must be what it felt like inside bubble gum when it popped. The air vanished, and the walls almost folded in on her. In a panic, she backed through the doorway into the kitchen. It didn’t help. Her apartment had an open floor plan, so there wasn’t a comforting wall hiding Gib from her view. Backing away even more, she circled past the refrigerator to land in the hallway. Pressing both palms against the wall, Daphne concentrated on breathing.
    “What is going on with you?” Mira poked her head around the corner.
    Ivy put a hand on Daphne’s forehead. “You’re acting wacky. First you stress-cooked, and now you’re as white as a wedding gown.”
    “Don’t make me do it, Mira,” she begged in a shaky whisper.
    “Do what?”
    To prevent the slightest chance of being overheard, Daphne hustled them all into the bathroom. With the door firmly shut, she used the cool white tiles for support, as though facing a firing squad. “Have dinner with Gib.”
    “I don’t get it,” Mira said. “He’s one of your best friends in the world. You guys have dinner together all the time.”
    “That was—before.”
    “Before what?”
    God. She wouldn’t be able to talk Mira out of this horrible idea without revealing her secret. Daphne’s knees bent of their own accord, and she slid down the wall to the bare wood. “Before last night.”
    “Sounds like a bad movie title from the eighties,” Mira snickered.
    Ivy just looked confused. “What are you talking about? We were together all last night. I didn’t see you and Gib get into a fight.”
    “We didn’t. We went the other way.” Daphne sucked in a deep breath. “I’m his mystery kiss.”
    “Really?” Two sets of eyes, one hazel and one blue, goggled at her. Both women sank to the floor, hands loosely hugging bent knees.
    “Trust me. I wouldn’t kid about something this cataclysmic.”
    “How was he? Gib’s got such a reputation as a ladies’ man. He’s super hot, and an amazing flirt, so I’ve always wondered if, well, he could possibly live up to the hype.”
    “This is a crisis, Mira. You really want to start by me grading his kiss?”
    “Well, yeah.”
    Ivy chimed in with a, “Me, too.”
    Now that the secret was out, she wanted to tell them everything. Except the more she talked about it, the more she’d sink into her own personal emotional quicksand of wanting Gib, who she absolutely, one hundred percent could not have. “He’s spectacular. He’s everything you expect him to be. He knows my lips better, more intimately