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  running in here.”

  Lariana frowned. “You sure? Very sure?”

  “Sure about what?” Shelly asked, appearing in the doorway with a smile. Her petite frame was in another pair of jeans and a long pink angora sweater that fell to her thighs. She had her hair neatly pulled back in a ponytail and a flush to her cheeks as she looked back and forth between Lariana and Breanne. “What’s up?”

  “Breanne says she saw someone in her room last night,” Lariana told her. “Standing over her.”

  Shelly gasped. “Really?”

  “A dream,” Lariana said. “On a night like last night, we probably all dreamed badly.”

  Shelly, eyes wide, nodded. “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t dreaming,” Breanne said.

  Lariana and Shelly exchanged a wordless look that probably meant humor the crazy guest.

  “Forget it,” Breanne said with an irritated sigh.

  Shelly patted her arm. “I made breakfast by getting creative with the fireplace. Cooper’s already sniffing around the dining room, waiting. Are you hungry?”

  She was starving, probably from burning up half a million calories just from trying to inhale Cooper’s body a few minutes ago.

  But could she face him? Another thing entirely. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

  “Oh, I have plenty,” Shelly offered. “I’ll get you something.”

  Everyone looked first at Shelly’s tiny frame, then at Breanne’s not-so-tiny one, no one pointing out to Shelly the difference between a size one and a size eight.

  Okay, a ten, damn it.

  “I’ll get you something of mine,” Lariana said with a hint of martyrdom. “I brought a small bag with me to work yesterday because of the storm.”

  When she’d left, Shelly looked at Breanne. “You ended up here, huh?”

  They both looked at the huge bed.

  “I didn’t sleep with him,” Breanne said.

  Shelly lifted a brow.

  “Okay, I slept with him. But not slept with him, slept with him.”

  “Does he kiss as good as he smiles?”

  Better. “Look, I’m not interested in him, okay?” Trying not to be. “I gave up on men, remember?”

  “Oh, don’t say that! You can’t. You inspired me, you know.” Shelly smiled. “Today is the day.”

  “The day for what?”

  “That I get Dante to notice me.” She twirled in a circle and laughed as she fell to the bed. “Any helpful hints?”

  “You shouldn’t take advice from someone who was dumped at the altar.” Three times.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” Shelly said loyally. “Now, come on. Give me a pointer or two.”

  Oh boy. She thought of Dante’s world-weary, old-before-his-time eyes, and then looked into Shelly’s sweet ones. “Are you sure? Because—”

  “He’s the one for me.”

  “Well . . .” Breanne wracked her brain for any advice she’d ever read about and had thought sounded good but hadn’t actually tried. “Maybe you should tell him how you feel. You know, go the honest route.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that! He doesn’t think of me as a woman!” Then she flashed that sweet smile. “Yet.”

  Breanne took in Shelly’s lovely blond hair, her brilliant green eyes, her contagious smile. And then there was that cute, nifty little body any guy would go nuts over. “He’d have to be dead not to think of you as a woman.”

  Shelly blushed. “You’re the sweetest guest we’ve ever had.”

  Breanne had been accused of being many things, but sweet hadn’t been one of them. “I’m just calling it like I see it.”

  “You really think he’ll want me?”

  Breanne crossed her fingers and hoped. “I know it.”

  “Because men are complicated creatures,” Shelly warned.

  “Not true. They just don’t think with the same head that we do.”

  Shelly giggled.

  Lariana entered again. “No kidding, men don’t think with the same head we do. You can tell a man that in order to get the best sex of his life all he has to do is pay attention to a woman and say a few nice words, and you know what he’ll hear? Blah, blah, blah, sex, blah, blah, blah.”

  Breanne laughed. “So true.”

  Shelly looked like she didn’t want to believe this.

  Lariana held up a little black skirt and a siren-red, long-sleeved spandex top with metallic sparkles woven into the fabric. Matching high-heeled boots—twice as high as hers were—dangled from her fingers. “This is what I was going to wear on my date tonight, but I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

  Oh boy. But Breanne took the hoochie-momma clothes with a combination of acceptance and good humor because there was nothing left to do but just live through this Twilight Zone episode.

  “You change,” Shelly said to Breanne. “I’ll be waiting to serve you downstairs.” She shoved Lariana out ahead of her while Breanne just stared at the outfit. “What the hell,” she muttered, and dropping the robe, pulled on Lariana’s clothes.

  To torment herself, she looked in the mirror. Oh boy. For starters, the skirt barely covered her ass. The top nearly blinded her and plunged due south nearly to her navel, only an inch above the hemline, which exposed a strip of belly. She tugged at it, but only succeeded in exposing a nipple. Pulling the shirt back into place showed belly again. Settling for somewhere in between, she slipped into the boots and gained four inches in height. Now, that she could live with. But while Lariana would look beautifully ethnic and sensual dressed like this, Breanne felt vampy and oversexed. Not a good place to be while trapped in a house with a man who revved her engines with just a single gaze. Much as she didn’t want to admit it, she needed Cooper’s sweats back, damn it.

  Hell, she needed a damn suit of armor, but the sweats would do.

  She stuck her head out the bedroom door and checked to see if the coast was clear. It was. She ran/hobbled down the hall, tugging on the skirt as she did, all the way back to the bedroom she’d deserted.

  No sweats.

  In fact, the bed had been made, and any sign of her brief stay erased. Odd how such a small thing could defeat her, but she was considering crawling back into the bed when a heavenly scent wafted up the stairs and into her nose.

  Bacon.

  Coffee.

  Her stomach rumbled.

  Fine. She’d go—what did she care? She took the stairs in the muted light of the early morning, gripping onto the handrail for all she was worth in Lariana’s heels, hoping she didn’t make an ass of herself and fall and break her ankle.

  She couldn’t afford such a thing, not when she planned to use her already-loaded Visa to get on a plane today headed for—

  Where?

  Aruba sounded good. “Or any island where there’s no snow,” she muttered. “And no mysterious hotties—”

  Dante appeared at the base of the stairs in his usual way—without a sound, making her heart kick up into her throat. “Do you have to do that?” she asked, a hand to her chest.

  “Do what?”

  “Appear out of the woodwork! Walk without a peep! Show up out of midair!”

  In the light of day, he still looked very much like a thug. He had a gray sweatshirt on over loose jeans riding so low on his hips she had no idea what held them up. Once again he wore a knit cap with the hood of his sweatshirt over the top of it, both nearly covering his eyes. His jaw was lean and square and smoothly shaven except for a goatee. His eyes were as dark as his hair, with no visible pupils. And he didn’t smile. “Should I wear a bell?”

  She paused, having no idea if he was kidding, until she caught the slight quirk of his mouth. “So you do have a sense of humor. Shelly mentioned it but I didn’t believe her.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you’re not exactly a barrel of laughs.”

  “No—I mean, why would Shelly mention me having a sense of humor?”

  Because she wants to jump your bones. “Maybe because