Kindra laughed. "That may be true. But if love and marriage were there, you wouldn't say no to them, would you?'

No, she supposed she wouldn't. But the thought of love and marriage at all, let alone in relation to Lucas-well, it gave her hives. She literally itched and ached to get out of her own skin.

"And you can't tell me you aren't completely preoccupied thinking about Lucas, because you haven't even once mentioned how you hate my outfit, which is usually the first thing you say when you see me."

Well, now that Kindra mentioned it. "Those shorts do look kind of outdated, Kindra. They go practically to your knees."

“My fiancé doesn't seem to mind my clothes." She grinned. "Though truthfully, he prefers me in no clothes at all. And given the look on Lucas's face, I bet he would love to see you naked."

The doorbell rang. Ashley stood up, relieved to escape any conversation that mentioned love, nudity, and Lucas in the same sentence. "Sometimes it's better to leave things a mystery."

Kindra cleared her throat, a smile on her face. "And sometimes the real thing, with a man who adores you, is better than any sex toy could ever be."

Ashley couldn't dispute that. "I'm not arguing with you Kindra, but before I can even consider falling in love and start planning my own wedding from hell, I need to sell some sex toys and get my credit card debt down into the single digits. And even if I did fall in love and get married, it wouldn't be with Lucas."

She didn't think. It would be highly unlikely. Even if she did already love Lucas, it wasn't love. Or was it?

The thought had her rushing down the stairs too quickly, stumbling, and nearly breaking her neck before she skidded to a stop at the front door. She threw the door open. "Hi! Thank you so much for coming."

The next ten minutes were spent answering the door and giving greetings. Then Ashley was knee-deep in her demos, passing lotions and candles around for her friends to smell.

It should have been enough of a distraction to turn her mind from Lucas. Instead, it only made it worse. With every laugh, every bawdy remark someone made, every product she picked up, she thought about Lucas and his strange, arousing behavior.

It didn't help that her brother Jason's girlfriend, Hope, was there, showing an incredibly inappropriate amount of interest in every single item. Hello. Boyfriend's sister here. Didn't Hope know that she was getting all sorts of gross mental images?

Of course she had invited the girl, but she had just thought Hope would come along and buy some shaving cream out of charity. Her brother's girlfriend was a medical student, aspiring to be a surgeon. She wore glasses. She wasn't supposed to be coveting a book on sexual positions.

Ashley's friend Trish was glancing through the book with Hope. "Ooh, that's a good one."

"Done it already," Hope said.

"No kidding?" Respect crept into Trish's voice.

Bile rose in Ashley's mouth. She turned and grabbed her glass of wine.

"It's the scientist in Jason," Hope continued. "He likes to try and defy gravity."

Eeew! She so did not want to know that about her brother. And God, did that mean Lucas would be the same way? Huh. Now that was kind of sexy.

"So he just has to hold on here with his…"

"Hope!" Ashley blurted out. "TMI-too much information! Come on, this is my little brother you're talking about.”

Hope blinked those innocent looking brown eyes behind her owlish glasses. She giggled. "Oh, sorry, Ash."

Her cousin Jenny stopped sniffing the strawberry edible lotion to demand, "Bring out the vibrators and stuff, Ashley. We want to get to the good stuff."

Pasting a smile on her face, Ashley held up Pinky and gave her little rehearsed speech about his many features, including being waterproof. All of her guests had wish lists she'd passed around, so they could write down the names of products that they were interested in as they came around.

Everyone started writing after viewing Pinky, except for Trish and their friend Violet, who looked speechless.

"Aren't you going to write this one down?" Hope asked Violet. "It looks like a good one, and that's a great price."

Violet just swallowed hard and shook her head. "I don't think I would even know what to do with that."

Ashley laughed, though she had a feeling Violet wasn't kidding. She'd seen Violet's latest boyfriend. Sweet, but a total geek. Which about summed up all of Violet's boyfriends.

Hope turned to Trish. "Well, what about you? Didn't you like this one?"

Ashley took a gander at Hope's wineglass. Empty. It figured. She had a strong feeling Hope was drunk. At least she hoped she was, or Ashley was going to have a little chat with Jason.

"I don't do vibrators or dildos or whatever you want to call them."

"Why not?" Hope looked genuinely puzzled.

Trish stuck her pencil behind her ear, where it jutted through her short hair. "Because you all have boyfriends and it's okay to play around with stuff like that. I'm single. So if I get a vibrator, that's all I've got going on. And I don't want to become dildo dependent."

The room erupted with laughter. Ashley snorted before she clapped her hand over her mouth. "Dildo dependent?"

"Yes, I've heard women get so dependent on their vibrators, that they can't have orgasms without them. They have to wean themselves off the machinery. I just don't want to go there."

Three people scratched Pinky off their lists.

Ashley glared at Trish. She could see her point, but she was trying to make a quick buck here. She was going to pay her bills off and reform. She was going to stop buying clothes beyond her means. But first she needed to push some product.

Trish gave her a sheepish look and mouthed sorry. Then her voice rose enthusiastically. "But I'm definitely buying those colored condoms. A single woman always needs to have condoms on hand."

Violet patted Trish's leg. "Nice save."

Ashley was starting to think she was learning way more than she ever wanted to know about her friends' and her family's sex lives.

Lucas peered through his blinds at the street. It looked like the last of the cars crowding their driveway and the front of the house had pulled away. The wild eruptions of laughter and loud female shoes traipsing back and forth above his head had stopped. The front door slamming over and over had quieted.

He was almost positive Ashley was alone.

And he was tired of waiting.

Watching TV and playing computer solitaire had done nothing to curb his desire for Ashley. If anything, the three hours spent in itchy anticipation had made him more eager than before. And sweaty.

Standing on top of the central air-conditioning vent to cool himself off, he called Ashley's apartment.

"Hello?" she said breathlessly after four rings.

Lucas swallowed hard, and shifted so the cold air would shoot straight up his boxer shorts. "It's me. Everybody leave?"

"Yes."

"Can I come up?" He held his breath, eyes closed.

"Sure."

Thank you. Lucas strove to sound nonchalant instead of desperate. "Cool. I'll be up in a second."

"The door's open."

He hung up the phone, ran across his apartment in a fast sprint, and turned his shower on cold. He stripped off his boxers and took a thirty-second shower to remove the stickiness from his skin and to shrink his erection. He didn't want to lay all his cards on the table when he walked in, so to speak, and a big old boner would be doing just that.

Two minutes later he was locking his front door, his hair hanging wet over his forehead. He stuck his keys in his jeans pocket and looked at the bottle of beer in his hand. He'd picked it up for a swallow on his way past the coffee table and had forgotten to set it down. Oh, well. He wasn’t taking an extra three seconds to return it.