“Interesting,” Brooke said, looking amused.

“Don’t ask,” Ford grunted. Those damn lollipops kept popping up everywhere—that was the third one he’d found in his loft today.

Holding it by the stick, Brooke wagged the purple penis pop in front of him. “Yeah . . . there’s a zero percent chance I’m not going to ask about this, so you might as well start talking.”

“The short version is that I ended up entertaining a bachelorette party last night.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “Are you moonlighting as a stripper now?”

Ford threw her a look. Cute. Well aware that the quips and running commentary wouldn’t end unless his friend got the information she wanted, he proceeded to tell her about last night.

Tuck, Charlie, and he had hung out at The Violet Hour with the bachelorette group until nearly closing time, when someone—and by “someone” he meant Tuck, who clearly had been trying to buy more time with the redhead—had the bright idea that they should continue the party at Ford’s place, since he lived right around the corner. And although Ford had come to the conclusion, somewhere around midnight and his third drink, that at age thirty-four he was probably a little too old for these kind of “Bachelorette party—whoo-hoo!” antics, he’d gone along with the plan for Charlie’s and Tuck’s sakes.

Big mistake.

When they got back to his loft, one of the women, a brunette named Charlotte, made it abundantly clear she was into him. Actually, if anything, she came on a little too strong, breaking out the dirty talk in his kitchen while everyone else was partying in the living room. Nevertheless, when she stuck around after the others left, stripped off her top and skirt, and headed for his bedroom, wearing nothing but a thong, high heels, and a coy smile, he’d followed without thinking much about it.

Hey, he was a single guy. Of course he’d followed the woman wearing nothing but a thong and high heels into his bedroom.

But when they got there and began fooling around, something felt off. Yeah, his body was responding in a physical sense, and, no doubt, some part of him kept thinking, Hey, asshole, you have a dirty-talking, half-naked woman in your bed—what’s the damn hang-up? But mentally he just . . . wasn’t completely into it.

He was hardly a saint when it came to sex. He’d always had an easy time getting along with women, probably the product of having a female best friend, a sister, and a mother he respected the hell out of. He liked women, enjoyed talking with them, flirting with them, charming them, and yes, sleeping with them. He hadn’t had a lot of luck with long-term relationships—and, admittedly, he rather enjoyed the alternative—but he never lied, he never cheated, and he was always careful to make sure no one got hurt.

And he’d never used anyone for sex.

But he realized in that moment, as he and Charlotte fell onto the bed and his eye caught sight of that stupid hole in his wall, that most of the evening he’d been going through the motions, trying to let his friends, and the bachelorette party, and alcohol distract him so that he wasn’t just sitting at home thinking about the regrets he had about his dad. And while he didn’t need some deep, emotional reason to have sex—hell, sex was fun, who needed more reason than that?—he also prided himself on not ever having sex for a bad reason. Like sleeping with a woman he wasn’t even into just because he could.

So with that in mind, he’d told Charlotte that he thought they should slow things down.

This . . . did not exactly go over well.

She was surprised at first, and then her eyes filled with tears as she began pouring out her story to him. How this was her first night out since breaking up with her boyfriend, whom she’d been with for six years. How he’d panicked about getting married and had dumped her, which had totally wrecked her self-confidence, and so tonight she’d wanted to do something fun and wild, like picking up the hottest guy in the bar so she could say screw you to her ex and feel back in the game again.

Naturally, Ford had felt like shit after hearing her story. So to compensate, he drew on the primary thing he’d learned while being best friends with a woman for over twenty years.

He’d simply listened while Charlotte talked.

Somewhere along the way, she began asking for his opinion, as a guy, about the situation with her ex. Thinking this was a great way to keep them in the friend zone and ease over the earlier awkwardness, he stayed up for two hours chatting with her, and then covered her up with a blanket after she passed out on his couch. In the morning, he woke up to hear her rustling around in the living room. Embarrassed, she immediately apologized for falling asleep, so to be a nice guy, he made her a cup of coffee and acted like this kind of thing happened all the time. And when she cheered up after that and asked if he’d like to get together sometime for drinks and talk more, in order to not hurt her feelings, he’d said sure.

This was the part of the story when Brooke interrupted by thunking him—literally thunking him—on his head.

“You just said you aren’t even into this girl,” she said incredulously.

They’d moved out onto the deck while Ford had been telling her all about his adventures the previous night. Leaning against the brick ledge, he rubbed his head. “First, ouch. Second, just because I’m not into her doesn’t mean I have to be a dick.”

“I guarantee she left your place this morning thinking you’re interested in her.”

He waved this off. “No way. After I said we should slow down, we just hung out and talked. You know, like you and I do.”

She rolled her eyes. “You men can be such boneheads about these things. She doesn’t know you the way I do. She’s vulnerable right now. Her ex turned out to be an asshole and then you come riding in—”

“There was no riding.”

“—being the good guy, looking the way you do”—Brooke gestured to him—“wanting to talk and slow things down and be all sensitive with your coffee and your little blanket. What woman could resist that? My God, why didn’t you just cuddle a puppy shirtless while you were at it?”

He mentally filed away that seduction technique for future reference. “So, you’re saying I was supposed to just toss the crying, heartbroken woman out of my condo in the middle of the night?”

“Of course not. That would’ve made you an asshole.”