Anyone but You

Chapter 6

"I just want to take care of her for the rest of my life, and she won't even consider it," Alex told Max the next night as they sat in Alex's apartment after work. "I walked into that examining room and saw all that blood and almost lost my mind just because it was her, and that's when I knew it was all over."

He looked at Max, trying not to be pathetic. "This is it. This is the one. I'm crazy about her, but as far as she's concerned, I'm a kid." He took the beer Max handed him and collapsed back onto the couch, naked except for his shorts, trying to cool off from the heat of the July evening and the heat that just thinking about Nina generated in him. The second kind was the worst.

Max sat across from him, pulled another can from the six-pack he'd just dropped on the coffee table between them and popped it open. "As far as I'm concerned, you're a kid. Take those shorts, for instance."

Alex looked down at his Daffy Duck shorts. "There's nothing wrong with these shorts. As a matter of fact, your mother gave me these shorts."

Max snorted. "Oh, that's good. You're wearing Mommy's Daffy Duck shorts. You are a kid, Alex. Face it."

Alex looked at him balefully. ''You are not being helpful."

"Sorry." Max chugged some beer and closed his eyes as it went down. He finished swallowing and sighed with pleasure. "God, that's good. Okay, let me think. You can't ask her out on a date because you're too much of a wuss."

"Thank you, Max."

"So we'll have to cut to the chase. Have you tried just asking her to sleep with you?"

"No," Alex said, "because she would say no. I have to get some moves here because just asking isn't going to do it."

"Well." Max shifted in his chair. "This isn't my way, of course, but have you tried hinting?"

"It's not my way, either," Alex said, "but hell yes, I've tried hinting. If I hint any more, I'm going to be one of those guys who goes 'heh, heh, hen,' after every sentence. It's not working, and she's driving me crazy."

Max pushed the six-pack closer to Alex. "Have a drink."

"I have one." Alex stopped thinking about Nina for a minute to concentrate on his brother. "Max, you're drinking too much."

"No, I'm not," Max said and finished his beer.

"I'm not kidding." Alex sat up. "For the past couple of months, every time I've seen you, you've had a six-pack in your hand. That's not good, especially considering our genetic makeup." He stared at the can in his own hand for a moment and then put the can on the table, still half-full. "In fact, considering Dad's little problem, neither one of us should be drinking."

Max picked up his second beer. "I've got it under control."

"Max-"

Max held up his hand. "I'm not kidding. I never drink before work. I never drink in public. I never drink alone. And a couple times a week I buy a six-pack and come over here and relax where I know there won't be any more booze once I'm finished with my three, and there won't be any hassles, and I can forget all the crap and just shoot the bull with you."

Alex stopped, dumbfounded. "This is it? This is the only time you drink?"

Max sighed. "Hell, Alex, have you seen me drinking any other time lately?"

Alex thought about it. "No. Not since Christmas, anyway. All what crap?"

Max waved the thought away. "Nothing. I just like coming over here and kicking back. Is it a problem?"

"Hell, no." Alex leaned back into the couch again. "I'm always glad to see you. Sorry. About the booze lecture, I mean."

"Don't be." Max closed his eyes. "Believe me, I know how easy it could be. I've been watching Dad for thirty-six years, remember? I wish to hell somebody had bitched at him before things got out of control." He opened his eyes and grinned at Alex, and Alex felt a rush of love for his brother that was completely out of character.

"I had a bad day a couple of months ago," Max went on. "One of many lately, and I got a six-pack on the way home and stood in the kitchen and drank the first two, and then I thought, 'Christ, two beers, standing up, alone?'" Max shook his head. "I poured the other four down the sink, and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. That's when I decided that unless I was with you, I wasn't drinking. You never screw up, so I knew as long as I was with you, I'd be fine. I swear, this is it. You're my control."

"Anytime," Alex said, touched by his big brother's faith in him. "Hey, anytime."

"Well, don't go mushy on me," Max said. "Now let me give you some advice about Nina."

Nina. Alex groaned and fell back against the couch again. "There is no advice. I have known that woman for three months. If she was at all interested, she'd have said so by now."

"No, she wouldn't have," Max said. "She's ten years older than you are."

Alex glared at him. "That doesn't-"

"Not to you, it doesn't matter," Max said. "It does to her. Women do not handle turning forty well."

Alex looked at him with contempt. "And you know this because of your vast experience in dating hundreds of women twice."

"No," Max said, sounding not at all perturbed. "I know this because I'm a gynecologist."

"Oh," Alex said. "Right."

"Forty is when they start rethinking plastic surgery," Max said. "They look at magazines and see all those damn seventeen-year-old anorexics in push-up bras, or they go to the movies and see actresses with tummy tucks and enough silicone to start a new valley, and then they look at their own perfectly good bodies and decide their sex lives are over."

Alex thought of the gelatin-mold conversation he'd had with Nina a couple of weeks back and winced. "Oh, hell."

"And if you tell them their bodies are normal and attractive, they think you're being nice," Max finished. "Sometimes, I swear to God, I'd like to set fire to the fashion industry. They're screwing with my women's heads.''

Alex raised an eyebrow. "Your women?"

Max looked philosophical. "I like to think of all women as my women. I'm just here looking out for them."

Alex nodded. "The way you couldn't look out for your mom when Dad dumped her."

Max pointed his last beer at Alex. "Don't try to be Freudian. It's not only useless, it's out-of-date. Think Jung."

"I don't want to think young. That's the reason Nina won't look at me now."

Max looked at him with disgust. "And you wonder why I drink when I'm around you." He finished his beer and put the can on the table. "I haven't met Nina, so I'm sort of working in the dark here, but my guess is that if she's spending that much time with you, she's interested."

"We're friends." Alex picked up his beer again, needing the alcohol. "She likes me."

"Well, that's a hell of a good start, Alex," Max told him. "What you have to do next is kiss her."

The thought of first Nina's mouth, soft and pink, lips parted, and then of his mouth on Nina's mouth, hot and hard, was such a jolt to Alex's system that he shivered.

"Boy, you've got it bad," Max said.

"I can't kiss her," Alex said, recovering. "She'd slap me silly and never let me back in her apartment."

Max shook his head. "Nope. You just have to pick your moment. Sooner or later, if she's interested at all, she'll give you an opening. It may be just a little one, just the way she holds her head when she looks at you, or a hesitation at the door, but she'll give you one." He picked up his last beer and leaned back. "And then, my boy, you take it and run with it."

Alex thought about Nina and the way she always looked over his shoulder when they watched movies. Sometimes he'd turn his head and her mouth would be so close, he'd almost go for it until he'd think of the look that would be in her eyes if he tried it: startled, insulted, upset. Nope. "I'll lose her. One wrong move and I'm history up there."

"Wait for it," Max said. "There'll be a moment, trust me." He took another drink. "There's only one real problem."

Alex closed his eyes. "Only one? I see about twelve."

"When you finally get your shot," Max said, "don't blow it. You'd better be the best damn kisser in North America, or she's going to remember the ten-year difference and say no."

"Thank you, Max." Alex drained his beer and cracked another one. "I'm going to drink these next two beers and throw up now."

"You can do it," Max said. "Hell, I did it under a lot worse circumstances."

"Did what?" Alex sat back with the rest of his beer. "Kissed North America?"

"No, seduced an older woman." Max smiled, remembering. "Betty Jean Persky."

Alex swallowed more of his beer, trying to remember Betty Jean Persky. "I have no recollection of this woman."

"She was a senior, I was a freshman," Max said. "They said it couldn't be done."

Alex frowned. "You're talking about college? Hell, Max-"

"I'm talking about high school," Max said. "And if you think ten years is a big difference now, you try getting a senior cheerleader to look at you when you're a freshman science geek."

Alex thought about it. "You may have a point."

Max nodded. "That's what I'm telling you. You pick your moment, and then you make damn sure she's never been kissed like that before." He shrugged. "Of course, I was a damn good kisser even at fifteen."

Alex nodded. "I remember you practicing on the dog. So how did you get Betty Whosis to kiss you?"

"Kissing booth at the Spring Boosters Carnival," Max said. "I paid a buck."

Alex grinned at him. "And?"

Max grinned back. "And that was the last time I paid a buck to kiss Betty Jean Persky. Hell of a set of lips, that Betty Jean." He grew reflective. "Helluva summer before she went off to college. She's a prosecuting attorney in Columbus now." He shook his head. "I do remember her fondly."

"I don't think Nina is going to volunteer for a kissing booth," Alex said.

"Well, then, you'll just have to wait until she volunteers for something else," Max said.

Upstairs, a couple of hours later, Nina had her own problems.

"Really, Guy," she told her ex-husband. "I'm fine. It was a bad cut, but the ER stitched it up. I'm perfectly okay."

"Nina, if you were at the emergency room, you weren't perfectly okay." Guy sat relaxed on her couch, tall, dark, handsome, sure of himself and annoying as hell. "I was stunned when they called my office for your insurance number. My wife in the hospital and nobody calls me until the next day?"

"Ex-wife," Nina said automatically. "They shouldn't have called you but they got confused. And I'm fine. See?" She held her bandaged hand up in front of her. "All fixed up and taken care of. Thanks for coming by, but-"

"But you're not taken care of." Guy leaned forward, earnest and patronizing. "You can't take care of yourself, Nina. You never have. You need someone to look after you. That's why I kept up the insurance after the divorce. I knew you wouldn't think to get any. See, I'm still taking care of you. You need me."

He looked very smug as he spoke, and Nina repressed the urge to throw something heavy at him.

It wasn't his fault he was convinced she couldn't exist without him. She'd spent a good part of their marriage convinced of the same thing. She felt sad for him suddenly, for the boy she'd married so long ago and laughed with so long ago and made love with so long ago, a boy who'd worked night and day until he'd grown up to be a successful suit without a sense of humor. That was one of the many good things about Alex; no matter how successful he became, he'd never lose his ability to laugh.

Poor Guy.

She shook her head at him. "I did get insurance through Howard Press, Guy. I'm covered. I appreciate it, but I'm covered. And I can take care of myself perfectly well. In fact, I have ever since the divorce. I like taking care of myself."

"Yes, I'm sure you do," Guy said, obviously not listening to a word she'd said. "And now that you've proved that to yourself, I think it's time we talked."

Nina gave up on tact. "We have nothing to talk about, Guy. We're divorced. We're not supposed to talk."

Guy looked deep into her eyes. "I think we could make it work again, Nina."

Nina gaped at him. "What?"

"I was wrong, I know that." Guy looked honestly guilty and honestly miserable. "I had a midlife crisis, and you got fed up and left, and I understand that I wasn't paying enough attention to you. I nearly ruined everything, I understand that. But I'm over that now, and I think we could make it work this time." He leaned closer. "I've changed."

He reached across the space between then and flicked a curl off her forehead.

Nina jerked back. She'd left him because she was fed up and wanted a new life, and he'd still managed to turn the divorce into something about him. Amazing. She tried not to glare at him. "You can't mean you want us back together."

"Yes." Guy gazed into her eyes. "I didn't realize until I heard that you were hurt how much I've missed you. How much you need me to take care of you. How much I want to take care of you. And I know you've missed me, too, living in this tiny apartment with a dog, for heaven's sake." He looked at Fred with contempt.

Fred looked back at him with more contempt.

Guy gave up and turned to Nina and shook his head. "All alone. I don't like to think of you alone."

Nina closed her eyes. He thought she'd go back to him just because he asked. Well, that was Guy for you. He was ready to be married again, so she must be, too. "Look, Guy, I'm happy in this apartment. I like-"

"Living alone?" Guy finished for her. "Sleeping alone?" He smiled at her. "You liked sex too much to be happy sleeping alone now."

Nina pulled back, indignant. "What makes you think I'm sleeping alone?"

Guy shook his head. "I know you, Nina. You're not the type to have casual affairs. And let's face it, it's not easy for women of your age to meet someone new. The numbers are against you. There are more single women than men in their forties, you know."

You smug bastard, she thought, but what she said was, "He's thirty."

Guy blinked. "Who's thirty? You have a thirty-year-old lover? You're joking."

"Why?" Nina scowled at him. "You've dated younger women since we've been divorced. Compared to most of them, Alex is practically senile."

"Alex." Guy leaned back against the couch, his confidence in place again.

"Alex." Nina nodded. "He's a doctor. A resident at Riverbend General."

"This is the kid you told me about, the one who lives downstairs, right?" Guy said. "You're sleeping with your thirty-year-old neighbor." He shook his head again. "Not you, Nina. You're a lovely woman, but you look your age. And you know how people would talk. You'd never do anything that humiliating."

Over by the window, Fred whined and scratched at the screen. "Excuse me," Nina said with exaggerated dignity and went to let him out before she picked up a knife and eviscerated her ex-husband.

Humiliating, she fumed as she unlatched the screen. Well, that was just fine. It was liberating for him to screw around with twenty-somethings, but it would be humiliating for her to make love with-

Unbidden, the thought of making love with Alex leaped into her mind, and she stopped for a moment.

It wasn't unfamiliar after three months of dreaming about him, going hot whenever he was near her, all but leaping on him every time he appeared in her doorway, but for the first time it seemed feasible, something she might actually do. Seeing Alex in the ER the night before had jarred her ideas about him considerably. His hands had been so sure as he'd stitched her up, and he'd been so focused, so controlled. She thought of his hands again, and then she thought about them on her, unbuttoning her blouse, unhooking her bra…

And then she thought of her body, softened with age, everything lower than it used to be, lower than Alex was accustomed to, Alex who dated twenty-somethings with silicone embellishments. Even if he was interested in her, he'd only seen her clothed. She could hide a lot of flaws with clothing. But naked…

Guy was right. She looked her age.

"Nina?" Guy called to her, impatient, and she remembered his "humiliating" crack.

So, all right, maybe making love with Alex wasn't something she could do, but Guy didn't need to know that. It would be great if Alex would drop by and flirt with her. Okay, that was juvenile of her, but it would be great. Just long enough to make Guy wonder.

Fred whined again, and on an impulse, Nina grabbed a pen from the table and wrote "Help!" on his collar. "Go see Alex," she whispered into his ear, and then she slid the screen out of the window.

"Alex," she whispered again as Fred tensed himself for his leap. "Alex."

Then Fred jumped, and Guy moved off the couch and over to a chair by the window to join her while she waited for Fred to come back.

Twenty minutes later, Guy was presenting another logical reason why they should reconcile, and Nina was getting ready to go down the fire escape to look for Fred the Unreliable. If Fred had been Lassie, Timmy would still be in the well, growing gills.

"I don't know where he got to," she said, peering out the window. "He hasn't done this since the first day I got him."

"Will you forget that damn dog!" Guy scowled at her. "I'm telling you, I think if we saw a counselor, we could-" The pounding on the door stopped him in mid-sentence, and he turned, his scowl changing to a glare. "What the hell-"

"Nina?" Alex's voice through the door was frantic. "Nina, open up. Fred's collar…"

Nina ran to the door, threw it open and grabbed him before he could say anything else. "Alex! Darling!"

Alex stood in the doorway in Daffy Duck shorts and a white T-shirt that was on backward and inside out with the label sticking out like a flag under his chin. He blinked at her. "Darling?"

"Daffy Duck?" Nina said, looking down.

"Darling?" Alex repeated. "What's going on? Fred's collar-"

"Darling!" Nina said again and threw her arms around him, planting a quick, clumsy kiss on his parted lips to shut him up as she tripped against him. "I was just telling Guy about us."

"About us." Alex's arms had gone around her when she'd thrown herself at him, and he looked down at her now and shook his head. "You told Guy about us. Well, I hope poor old Guy took it well."

Alex's arms felt great around her, but it was hard to think with him pulling her close. What were they talking about? Oh, right, Guy. Guy who was still there. Nina began to turn back to her ex-husband.

"Well, actually, he's still-"

"Because I'm not giving this up," Alex finished and kissed her.

Nina froze for a moment when his mouth touched hers and his arms pulled her tight against him. She made a tiny sound and then her brain shorted out, and there was a rushing in her ears, but mostly there was just Alex, everywhere, his body against hers, his mouth on hers, everything about him wiping out reality. He pulled her closer, and she tried not to moan at the ache in her breasts as they squashed against his chest, and then he slipped his tongue into her mouth, and shut down all her thoughts and her knees went away. She grabbed at his shoulders and closed her eyes, and all there was in the world was the lush heat of his mouth on hers and the glow that pulsed from her solar plexus because he was pressed against her.

"Oh, God," she breathed when he moved his lips off hers, nibbling his way across her cheek to her ear.

"He doesn't look like he believes us," Alex whispered in her ear, and the tickle of his breath made her shudder against him. "I think we're going to have to have sex on the couch to convince him." He began to pull her toward the couch, and Nina was so blasted with lust for him she would have followed him anywhere, but Guy cleared his throat.

"Oh, you're here." Alex peered toward the window at Guy. "Sorry. Thought we were alone."

"Nina and I were discussing our reconciliation. Weren't we, Nina?" Guy's voice demanded an answer, but Nina leaned against Alex's chest, clutching him to her, still mindless from his kiss, and said, "What?"

Alex grinned down at her and tightened his arm around her, and she felt the heat flare again and breathed harder. Stop this, she told herself and turned her head to look at Guy. Looking at Guy was usually a complete turnoff, so that should help her get her mind back.

Guy was surveying Alex's outfit with palpable scorn. "So this is what an up-and-coming young doctor wears these days, is it?"

"Only on his way to get laid," Alex said cheerfully, and Nina shivered at the thought and he held her tighter. "Nice suit," he said to Guy. "Bet it takes hours to get out of that."

Nina tried to listen, but she didn't give a damn what Guy said. He'd been irrelevant before, but now he was invisible. She had things to think about. Like why Alex had French-kissed her to impress Guy when Guy couldn't have known the difference. Alex must have wanted to. Of course, he did like women in general. It didn't mean anything in particular.

Don't lose your grip here, Nina told herself, and then Alex moved his hand down her side to her hip, and the heat that small stroke generated in her made her dizzy all over again, and she let her head drop to his shoulder.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow, Nina," she heard Guy say from far away, and she said, "Mmmhmm," not caring, and then the door shut behind him, and she was alone with Alex.

Nina tried hard to pull herself together. "Uh, thank you. That was-"

"Shut up, Nina," Alex said, and kissed her again, and Nina leaned into him so eagerly that she gave up any hope of pretending to herself that she didn't want him.

He had the most amazing mouth. She'd known since yesterday that he had surgeon's fingers, but this was the first she realized he had a surgeon's mouth. He could work miracles with that mouth. He could bring the dead back to life with that mouth. He sure as hell was bringing her back to life with that mouth. She wanted to tell him that, but to do that she'd have to take her lips off his, and she had no intentions of ever taking her lips off his, of losing that insanely glorious stroke of his tongue in her mouth, of…

He was pulling her toward the couch, and then down on the couch with him, and then he rolled to pin her underneath him and the length of his body was hot and hard on hers, and she clutched at him, opening her legs to bring him closer to her as he pressed against her. All the while he kissed her, his tongue teasing her mouth open, his lips on hers, and then on her neck. He shoved her T-shirt up and cupped his hand around her lace-covered bra, and she cried out at how good the pressure felt against her swollen breast. She'd never wanted any man so much, never wanted hands and mouth so hard on her, never wanted to be taken so roughly before, never wanted to be so marked and possessed. She wrapped her legs around him to bring him as hard against her as possible, and he rocked his hips into hers, biting her shoulder while she gasped and clutched at him, and then his mouth was on hers again, bruising her, and she was lost, tearing at his T-shirt, trying to rip it off. He rose a little to help her, and she pulled it over his head, clutching it in her hand while she arched up to meet him, but he said, "Nina!" and his voice was full of horror, not lust.

He jerked away from her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her up into a sitting position, and from far away she focused on her hand and saw blood.

"Oh, hell," Alex said, and she looked at him, broad and beautiful in the lamplight, his chest furred with blond hair and his muscles clenched from holding her up, his mouth dark from kissing her and being kissed, and she thought, What's a little blood? and kissed him again.

He kissed her back, hard, and then groaned and said, "Nina, love, we've ripped some stitches, let me look at it," and she moved to his mouth again.

"No," she said. "It's all right. Kiss me now."

And he did, but his kiss was gentle, not hot. "I hate this, but I have to fix your hand, Nina," he whispered to her. "You're hurt. Let me fix it."

He sounded so much like Guy that she woke up. "All right," she said, and used her free hand to pull her T-shirt down while Alex unwrapped the bandage.

"It's not bad," he told her a moment later while she was still coming down from her sexual high. "We can fix it here. Do you have a first-aid kit?"

Nina felt tired suddenly. "In the bathroom," she told him.

Alex kissed her again, still gentle. "Stay here," he told her. "Don't get any ideas about moving."

She watched him cross the floor to the bathroom, naked except for those damn Daffy Duck shorts, and she wondered if she'd lost her mind. If her hand hadn't started to bleed, she'd have been naked with him in another five minutes, and he would have been glorious-he was glorious even in Daffy Duck shorts-and she would have been middle-aged with a middle-aged body.

Good thing her hand had started to bleed.

She met him halfway across the floor, half expecting him to say, "I told you to stay put," but he just bandaged her hand again, standing there in the hallway.

"Are you okay?" he asked her when he was done. "I'm sorry. I never-"

"It's not your fault." She patted him on the shoulder with her good hand, and he looked unhappier than she'd ever seen him. She reached around him and opened the door. "Thank you for helping me with Guy."

Alex stood there for a moment, looking confused and hesitant and sexier than anybody else on the face of the earth. "Nina, could we talk about-"

"No," Nina said, pushing him gently out the door. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Nina-" he said, and then she closed the door in his face and leaned her forehead against it. Her hand throbbed from the stitches, and her body throbbed from his hands, but mostly her mind throbbed from how much she wanted him and couldn't have him and how close she'd been to disaster.

Fred licked her ankle.

"Thank you, Fred," she told him. "You did good tonight. Just like Lassie, after all."

She went back to the couch to turn off the lamps and saw Alex's T-shirt on the floor. She picked it up and held it to her face, inhaling his scent for a minute while Fred watched. "I've got it bad, Fred," she told him. "I've got t so bad I'm going to sleep in this T-shirt tonight, that's how bad it is."

Fred yawned.

"Yeah?" Nina said. "Wait'll you fall in love. It's the pits."

"You were right," Alex said ten minutes later when Max picked up the phone.

"I'm always right," Max said, yawning. "I also have to be at the office tomorrow at eight. Could you tell me about your triumph tomorrow night? I'll bring the beer."

"It wasn't a triumph," Alex said gloomily. "It was close, but then her hand started to bleed, and by the time I had her bandaged again, she said no."

"Never stop to bandage," Max said.

"That's very humanitarian of you, Dr. Moore," Alex said. "And I still don't know why she stopped. I bandaged her hand, and she looked at me and said, 'Thank you and good night.' I still don't know what I did wrong."

He heard Max sigh on the other end of the line. "Let me think for a minute." There was a long silence, and then Max's voice came cautiously. "I hate to ask this, you couldn't have been this dumb, but you did change your clothes before you went up there, didn't you?"

Alex was lost. "My clothes?"

"Hell, Alex, you're hopeless," Max said.

"Since when are you the big clothing authority?" Alex asked, annoyed. "I haven't noticed you dressing like GQ."

"Alex, listen to me carefully," Max said. "I'm telling you this as your brother and as your best friend."

"All right," Alex said. "Let's have it."

"Never wear Daffy Duck shorts to seduce a woman. You want her gasping in awe when she looks down, not wondering how old you are."

"Oh, hell," Alex said.

"I'm working on the rewrite," Charity said the next evening when Nina picked up the phone.

"Great." Nina tried to open the window for Fred while she kept the phone clamped between her ear and her shoulder. She wanted to tell Charity everything about Alex and the kiss and the couch, but she didn't want to think about it because she'd been thinking about it all night and all day and she was already half-crazy with lust. Talking dirty about Alex on the phone to Charity would not help things. Much better to discuss the book. "Did you work on a new last chapter, too?"

"Yes." Charity hesitated. "I'm making some big changes, Neen."

Nina stopped moving. "How big?"

She heard Charity draw a deep breath. "I'm making it fiction."

Nina closed her eyes in pain. Fiction. Sexy, romantic fiction. Jessica would have a fit.

"Tell me you're kidding."

"No, no, I'm serious. I'm making it fiction." Charity's voice speeded up. "The whole reading group thought it was, anyway, and it's so much better, Neen. I just changed all the names, and after I did that, I saw how funny all the stories were. And I'd already made it third person and used my middle name for the heroine, so now all I have to do is write all the chapters over again so they're upbeat and she learns something each time."

"Fiction," Nina repeated, still trying to compute that she'd gone to contract on a book of erotic fiction for Jessica's stuffy Howard Press.

Jessica's father was going to turn cartwheels in his grave. Jessica, on the other hand, would just fire her.

"Yeah, and I'm making the guys better, too. I thought about them, and I'm doing another rewrite now, showing why she falls for them so her mistakes don't seem so dumb." Charity sounded so happy that Nina tried to listen to her and be happy, too. "Which gave me the idea for a great title since it's about mistakes now instead of just bitching. What do you think of Jane Errs?"

"Jane Errs. That's great," Nina said, still trying to grasp the extent of the disaster.

"And I'm writing the thirteenth chapter now, the happily-ever-after chapter about the perfect man. His name is Raoul."

Nina stared at the phone in disbelief. "Raoul? You don't know any Raouls."

"I've always loved that name," Charity said. "I'm making him a combination of Antonio Banderas, Harrison Ford and Alex."

Nina blinked. "Alex?"

"Yeah, Alex," Charity said. "Alex is a great guy. I still don't understand why you haven't jumped him. I would have long ago."

Nina made her automatic reply. "That's easy for you to say. You don't have a forty-year-old body."

"No, I have a thirty-eight-year-old body," Charity said, her impatience clear even over the phone.

"Charity, parts of me droop," Nina said. "I don't think naked is a possibility here."

"You vastly overestimate how picky guys are about naked women," Charity told her. "A little droop is not going to bother Alex."

"Well, it bothers me," Nina said. "Now, about the book-"

"Then wear the Incredibra," Charity said. "That's about as anti-droop as you can get without surgery. I cannot believe that you haven't made a move on that man."

Nina thought about being brave and not discussing her previous night's trauma, and then she remembered it was Charity she was talking to. This is what best friends were for. "Actually, Alex made a move on me. He kissed me last night."

"Great," Charity said. "So how was it?"

Nina slumped against the couch, remembering. "It was phenomenal. I almost had a heart attack when he took off his T-shirt. He has a beautiful body, Char. Really beautiful."

"Wait a minute," Charity said. "How'd we get from a kiss to naked?"

"I don't know." Nina thought about it. "He kissed me, and the next thing I knew, I was under him on the couch ripping at his shirt. I've never been that hot in my entire life."

"Wow. Maybe you'd better rethink seducing him and dumping him. If he's that good, he might be worth keeping around for the long haul."

"Charity, he's a kid-"

"He is not." Charity sounded exasperated. "He's darling and he's fully grown, and he's obviously got all his moves. You have to get over this age stuff."

"Would you date somebody who was twenty-eight?" Nina demanded.

"Probably." Charity's voice was unsure. "It would depend on the twenty-eight-year-old."

"My thirty-year-old was wearing Daffy Duck shorts," Nina said.

"Well, that's unfortunate but not unfixable," Charity said. "Rip them off him."

Nina had a flash of Alex naked. He looked wonderful. "Absolutely not."

"How did he ever manage to get you to kiss him, anyway?" Charity asked. "For that alone, he should get some kind of seduction badge. You're so uptight about this guy, you've practically put up an electric fence."

"I was trying to make Guy jealous."

"That was very mature of you, dear. Did it work?"

"I don't know. He left while I was kissing Alex."

"You want my advice?"

Nina thought of Charity and her twelve chapters of romantic disaster plus one romantic triumph with the fictional Raoul. "No."

"Here's what you do," Charity told her. "You take off all your clothes, and put on your trench coat, and climb down the fire escape and into his window, and when he says, 'Excuse me?' you take off the coat."

"Not in this lifetime."

"Do it," Charity said. "Trust me."

"Right." Nina tried to imagine herself naked in Alex's living room. It was too humiliating to contemplate. "Even if I could do that, I wouldn't know what to do next."

Charity snorted. "You won't have to do anything. He'll take it from there. In fact, from the sounds of things, he'll take it from the minute you climb in the window. Trust me-this is going to be the easiest seduction you've ever done."

"I've never done any seduction at all."

"Well, then it's time to start. Now let me tell you about Raoul."

Nina hung up the phone five minutes later, trying to distract herself with the knowledge that her career was going to be over as soon as Jessica got a good look at Jane Errs. It didn't work. All she could think of was Alex, and Alex's body, and his heat, and his hands, and his mouth, and the weight of him against her, on top of her. Making love with Alex. The thought was so overwhelming that her mind shut down and her body took over, swelling with heat as she closed her eyes and imagined him the way he'd been the night before.

She needed him. It wasn't just gee-wouldn't-it-be-nice lust anymore. She wasn't going to be able to eat or sleep or think if she didn't have him soon.

And he wanted her. She was pretty sure that Charity was right: all she'd have to do would be crawl through his window and take off her clothes. Except she couldn't possibly do that. Not possibly.

But, oh, Alex. She closed her eyes and thought of him again, lovely and loose-limbed and broad and strong, and the heat in her thickened and became a clawing in her veins. For months she'd been wanting him, trying not to think about him, thinking about him anyway, and then last night, he'd touched her and made all her fantasies reality. She wrapped her arms around herself, pressing hard, trying to stop the itch, but it was everywhere and the only thing that could save her was touching Alex.

All right then.

She walked into her bedroom, stripped off her clothes and looked at herself naked in the mirror as positively as she could.

Gravity had betrayed her when she wasn't paying attention. Looking closely, she could see the damage. Cellulite. Fat. Bulge. Droop.

She drew a deep breath. Well, okay, so nothing was the way it used to be. But it wasn't bad. And it was all real, no gelatin molds. So she wasn't Cindy Crawford. Big deal. Without the airbrushing, Cindy Crawford probably wasn't Cindy Crawford, either.

Nina crossed her arms over her breasts and closed her eyes. It was irrelevant anyway because if she didn't have Alex, she'd die, and this was the only body she had to take him with. So her choices were either to take her clothes off and let Alex see her naked or never to sleep with him ever. And she had to sleep with him.

Maybe she wouldn't have to take all her clothes off.

"I could wear the Incredibra and keep the lights off," she said to her reflection, and went to paw through her underwear drawer. There at the bottom she found her red lace Incredibra, the one she couldn't return since Fred had dragged it down the fire escape. "This is it," she told Fred, who'd followed her into the bedroom. "I'm really going to wear it this time." She put on the bra and the red lace underpants, cut high enough to at least disguise the fact that her stomach wasn't flat and then squinted at herself in the mirror.

Her breasts had never been this high. Nobody's breasts had ever been this high. Incredibras had so much lift they could get Fred off the ground. Well, that was good. And all that red confused the eye.

She could get away with it.

She went into the living room and dug her black trench coat out of the closet. "You stay here," she told Fred while she put it on. Then she took a deep breath and pulled the screen out of the window and went down the fire escape.

Alex's window was open, and she climbed through into his darkened living room, only to freeze when she heard voices in the lit kitchen.

Oh, great. He had a date, and she'd just crawled into his living room in her underwear. She turned to escape back through the window and knocked over the floor lamp. Hell. She grabbed the lamp and righted it, and then turned to go, but Alex was there in the lit doorway in his T-shirt and Duffy Duck shorts, looking more desirable than any man she'd ever seen in her life.

"Hello?" he said, and turned on the living-room light, blinking when he saw her.

Nina backed toward the window. "I was just leaving."

"No, you're not," Alex said, and then another Alex, this one black-haired, came out of the kitchen carrying a can of beer. "This is my brother, Max," Alex said, not taking his eyes off her. "He was just leaving."

"No, I wasn't." Max looked at Nina with interest.

Alex glared at him. "This is Nina."

"I was just leaving." Max turned toward the door. "In fact, I'm already gone." He opened the door, looked at Alex and said, "I told you to get rid of those damn shorts," and left.

Alex turned back to Nina. "Hi."

"Hi," Nina said, feeling like a fool.