Free Shameless by Tori Carrington Page A

looked around in the drawers for an opener before Gauge took the bottle from him and opened it in the same way and handed it back.
    “So what do you suggest we do then?”
    “Exactly what we have been doing: stone-walling her.”
    “She’s making that awfully hard.”
    Gauge nodded. That she was.
    Since she was having a hard time figuring out which one of them she’d slept with, not a moment went by when she didn’t take full advantage of an opportunity to openly flirt with each of them, trying to get them to tell her. It was enough to make a guy crazy with lust—all that lip-licking and ass-swaying.
    He swallowed hard and then took another sip of beer.
    Seemed he’d grossly underestimated her talent for seduction. While he’d found himself idly attracted to her before, all he’d had to do before was remind himself of their friendship to cool the flames. Now…
    Now he spent every waking moment in a state of near arousal watching her plan her next move.
    “And keeping busy,” Gauge added.
    Kevin frowned. “Hard to do when you work together.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    They stood in silence for a few minutes, nothing but the sound of the heat switching on to remind them that life went on around them as usual even if their lives had been turned to utter chaos.
    “Maybe what’s needed here is a reminder that even if she doesn’t take our arrangement seriously, we do.”
    “How do you mean?”
    Gauge shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a double date would do the trick.”
    “What?”
    He finished his beer and pushed from the wall, dropping the bottle into the garbage bin. “You and me find a couple of women to go out with on a double date. Make sure she sees us. Maybe even introduce her to them. And we leave. Maybe that would make her cool her heels.”
    Kevin sighed. “She’d see through that in a minute.”
    “Maybe. Maybe not. You’re forgetting, she’s allowed her emotions to become involved. She won’t be thinking clearly. She may accept the dates for what they are: dates.”
    “In your case, yes. But in mine?”
    “Well, if she thinks you’re the one, then she’ll know you’re capable of great, anonymous sex.”
    “And if she thinks you’re the one?”
    Gauge grinned. “She already knows that I’ll nail anything that winks at me.”
    Kevin chuckled. “Cute.”
    “Ain’t it?”
    Again, silence.
    Gauge had hoped his suggestion would help allay his friend’s concerns. But Kevin’s wrinkled brow told him he was still working through a few things.
    “And if she’s hurt?”
    “She’ll get over it. She always does.”
    “Does she? Because from what I understand, she’s the one used to doing the dumping.”
    “Kevin, there is no dumping to be done because there was no loading to begin with. It was a one-night stand. Period. Exclamation point. Got it?”
    Kevin nodded as if he understood that, yet glared at Gauge as if he was a blink away from blindsiding him with a hard right.
    Gauge took the barely touched beer from him, put it on the counter, then grasped him by the shoulder and led him toward the door. “Now go home and get some sleep.”
    “I wish it were as simple as that.”
    Gauge felt the same way. Because if he had one more dream about Nina…
    He felt Kevin’s gaze on him and grinned. “It will be if you let it be.”
    “Is everything always so simple to you?” Gauge detected more than a hint of acid in his friend’s voice.
    “No. But I try to make it simple. Complicated…well, complicated is complicated. And messy.”
    He pushed him through the door.
    “Goodnight, Kevin.”
    “Goodnight, Gauge.”
    Gauge stood for a long moment watching as his friend shrugged back into his coat and walked toward his car before he finally closed the door.
    “Time has come to move on,” he heard his old man’s voice in his head.
    Gauge ran his hand over his face, cringing at the scratching of his stubble against his palm.
    “Done worn out our welcome in another town.”
    His young