“If you mention that motherfucker one more goddamn time I am going to kick your ass all over this fuckin’ airport.”

Angelina calmly stared at her over her sour apple martini. “Hmm. Those sound like the tense cuss words of a woman that needs to get laid.”

Miki snarled. She seemed to do that a lot around Angelina these days. Mostly because she wouldn’t stop mentioning “Sweet, adorable Conall”.

How anyone could think that man was sweet was beyond her. Not with those eyes of his. Those beautiful blue eyes were anything but innocent. The man was a marauder. A conqueror. And he was looking at Miki like unclaimed territory in ancient China.

“We’re not having this discussion again.”

“Okay. Fine.” Angelina was silent. For about fifteen seconds. “But you do know that a vibrator can’t really be your boyfriend.”

Miki dropped her head into her hands. “I will not discuss Mr. Happy with the likes of you.”

Angelina sighed. “I find the fact that you named your vibrator disturbing on so many levels.”

“Best relationship I’ve ever had.”

Angelina sipped her martini and eyed Miki over her glass. Miki picked up her Shirley Temple and stared back.

“I didn’t know insanity ran in your family, Kendrick.”

“We got it from yours, Santiago.”

Angelina crossed her legs and Miki immediately looked around to watch the men watch Angie. Remarkable. The woman had the ability to distract every man in the room and she never seemed to notice. Or care.

“So, did you talk to Sara today?”

Relieved Angelina decided to back off the Conall discussion and not wanting to hit a beautiful woman in the face with her laptop computer, Miki answered, “Like four times. You’d think I wouldn’t be seeing her in a few hours.”

“I don’t know why you’re going to her house first. Why aren’t you flying straight to Seattle?”

“Sara booked the tickets. She arranged this little stopover. I guess she misses me.”

“Well, you’ll like her place. It’s nice. Just needs a porch.”

Angelina had already been to Sara’s new home in Northern California. Miki hadn’t gone, instead opting to stay in Texas and plow through her thesis rewrites. She knew Sara understood, but she also knew Sara had been hurt. She missed her two friends, almost as much as they missed her.

“Whatever. At least I’ll have a place to relax before I head up to Seattle. I’m already so stressed about all this shit. I keep rereading my notes and analyzing my thesis.”

“And writing lists.” Angelina gave her a warm smile. “Don’t worry, Mik. You’re going to be great.”

“And what if I blow it, Angie?”

“What if you do? So? The world won’t end.”

Close enough. She had her whole future riding on this. Angie would never understand. Everything always came so easy to her. And Sara, being the canine that she was, never really asked for much. Miki, however, was being left behind and she knew it.

But not anymore. An assistant professor position at the university was hers once her dissertation was completed. She simply had to make sure she didn’t blow it. The fact they wanted her at all still amazed her. She and her Seattle friends were infamous. Not only in the university where she got her undergrad and graduate degrees. But in schools across the country. From the time she dumped her clothes on the dorm room floor her freshman year, she’d been up to all sorts of hijinks and shenanigans.

Surprising to many, Miki only got busted once. In high school. The judge could have sent her off to juvenile detention or even tried her as an adult, but her mother had died the year before and the entire town turned out to make a plea on her behalf. Sara had even shown up using crutches. She’d never used crutches before in all the years Miki had known her up to that point. But there she stood in front of the judge, making a tearful plea for Miki while leaning on her pitiful crutches. It was quite the display and Miki would have laughed her ass off if she hadn’t been scared to death she was going to prison.

In the end, she got one year of house arrest and three years of no computer or phone use. You would think that would have been enough to get her to keep the hijinks to a minimum once she got to college. Yet when you’re eighteen, you always think you’re untouchable. And for some unknown reason, she had been. The Feds couldn’t find anything to nail her with and they’d tried. Then Miki disappeared. Okay, not really. She just went home. She had only begun working on her graduate degree when her grandmother became ill. At twenty-one she had no idea what the hell she wanted to do with the rest of her life anyway and could easily finish her degree long distance. She thought a year home would help.

But it was eight years and two master’s degrees later and Miki was still trying to figure out what the hell she was going to do with her life.

“Trust me,” Angelina insisted. “You’ll be fine.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Angelina grinned. “You know a massage would really help you relax.”

Miki liked the sound of that. Maybe she had a few extra bucks in her tragically poor bank account to hit one of those fancy spas up near Sara.

“And dirty, filthy monkey sex with a hot guy like Conall is good, too.”

Miki slammed her drink down on the table. “All right, let’s analyze this, shall we?”

Angelina’s head fell back. “Oh, God. Not the analyzin’.”