LITMIR.BIZ

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won’t. For once, I appreciate your directness. I hate playing games. We’ll just forget this happened, go back to our own private lives and back to being old childhood...”

      “Combatants?”

      Her joke lifted the tension even more.

      “Something like that.”

      Agreed, they took another moment to ease back into this new version of normal, then they turned and exited the hallway, heading toward their friends and teammates. Chaz watched her beeline for another table, taking a seat beside one of the women on her team. Darrell, he noticed, had stood up and was lurking near the door. When he saw Lulu choose another table, he ducked out of the bar without any goodbyes. Which was for the best...it meant Chaz wouldn’t have to threaten his life or anything.

      Not out of jealousy, of course. But because friends looked out for each other.

      Friends. Just friends.

      He sat back at his own table, ignoring Tonia’s curious stare questioning why he’d been gone so long, and flagged down the waitress for his check. Chaz just wasn’t interested in having another beer or socializing. He was too confused to relax and enjoy himself. Confused over that kiss, how he’d reacted to it, and how it had compared to the ones he’d exchanged to the woman haunting his dreams.

      Lulu was as familiar to him as a family member, dark-haired, sassy-mouthed, not mysterious. The witch he’d met on Halloween had been entirely different.

      So why was he having such a hard time separating them in his mind? And why did the memory of Lulu’s kiss have him so on edge and curious?

      He just didn’t know. He needed to go home and think things through before he found reasons to ignore every decision he’d made regarding Lulu.

      Then, something happened that changed everything. The door to the bar opened, bringing in a strong autumn breeze, some dried, tumbling leaves, and three women. A brunette, a blonde, and...

      “A redhead,” he murmured, unable to tear his eyes off the woman in the middle. The tall one with the long, windblown hair, and the dark eyes.

      His heart skipped a beat. He blinked, staring at her again, wishing he were closer.

      He couldn’t be sure, not until he talked to her—heard her voice, got a better look at her mouth. After all, Washington, D.C. was a big city. There had to be thousands of attractive women with red hair. Tens of thousands.

      But stranger things had happened.

      Maybe fate was tossing him a bone after he’d experienced that momentary insanity with Lulu, and then intelligently agreed to never repeat it. Perhaps his luck was turning. A week ago, the mysterious woman he’d met on Halloween night had captured his full attention. It was now time to put his focus back where it belonged—on a woman who’d intrigued him, who’d wanted him, and who must have had a damn good reason for leaving the way she had.

      Not on the woman he’d just agreed he could never—ever—have.

8

      “HER NAME IS HEATHER, and he thinks she’s me. And she apparently is letting him think that. Could you just die?”

      Lulu threw herself back in her chair, swallowing a big mouthful of wine, waiting for her friends to start commiserating and giving her lots of You go girl!s.

      They didn’t.

      Viv merely watched her with a half smirk on her full lips, and Amelia wore a look of sad disapproval.

      The three of them had met at a restaurant near Viv’s place in Georgetown, Lulu badly needing a girls’ night out after the way things had been going the past couple of weeks. She wanted her friends to be indignant on her behalf and rain curses on the evil Heather’s head, and do all the things girlfriends were supposed to do when one of them was feeling betrayed.

      And she was definitely feeling betrayed.

      Men could be so totally dense. Especially when they were being led around by their dicks.

      After that insanely erotic, wonderful, sexy kiss she and Chaz had shared, he’d agreed that they couldn’t let things go any further, and had gone right back to obsessing over the redhead he’d met on Halloween night.

      Which was Lulu.

      Only she couldn’t let him know that.

      And now he thought the redhead he’d met minutes after that wonderful, erotic kiss was his mysterious Halloween witch.

      It was too confusing to dwell on for long. All she knew was, the witch—literally speaking, only in her mind she usually referred to Heather with the b-word instead—had apparently not made it clear to him that she wasn’t the woman he’d been searching for. The two of them appeared to be getting very cozy. Grr.

      “He even invited her for Thanksgiving dinner, can you freaking believe it?”

      That should definitely have earned a few That skank, bet she’s not even a real redhead comments from her gal pals. But she didn’t get them.

      “You have to tell him the truth,” Amelia said, her pretty blue eyes warm and supportive.

      Amelia was the nicest young woman Lulu had ever met. She never had a mean word to say to anyone, and probably did a lousy business of running her craft shop because she believed every sob story she ever heard.

      But man, did she have a way of making a person feel guilty about not doing the right thing.

      Lulu slunk in her chair, running her finger along the rim of her glass. “It’s too late.”

      For once, Viv, who was as daring as Amelia was conservative, agreed with the other woman. “She’s right. It’s your own fault he’s hooking up with a lying ho-bag instead of you.” She grinned evilly. “You lying ho-bag.”

      “Oh, shut up,” Lulu snapped, not in the mood for any ribbing.

      “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t played games with him,” said Amelia.

      “Exactly. None of it would have happened. I wouldn’t have had an amazing time with Chaz that almost led to—” She cut herself off before continuing. Lulu hadn’t given them all the details of what had happened after she’d left on Halloween night. She might kiss and tell, but she didn’t blow and tell.

      “Or,” Amelia said, presenting an alternate scenario, “maybe if you’d been honest from the start, you two would have had a drink, caught up on old times, danced, and still left together. Only you wouldn’t have felt the need to run out on him and pretend you were someone else.”

      Viv tossed down the rest of her second margarita. “You never did tell us exactly what happened that night. Did you two fuck or not?”

      “Viv!” Amelia exclaimed.

      “What? It would help in my advice-giving if I knew how far things went.”

      Lulu just growled.

      “Okay, I take it that’s a no on the uck-faying?”

      Rolling her eyes as she translated Viv’s pig Latin attempt at gentility, Lulu replied, “Take it however you want.”

      Honestly, she wasn’t sure how to answer. “Sort of,” seemed a little too ambiguous, and she did not want to go into details. How could she explain that she’d had just a taste of him inside her, but the memory of that heated moment was enough to make her shiver with the need to finish what they’d started?

      “It’s a no,” Viv said with a laugh. “You’ve been acting like a woman who’s been put away wet without having been ridden hard.”

      She could have had somebody ride her hard. Two or three somebodies, probably. She’d certainly had some offers lately, including from a couple of

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