“Bollocks, I can play that game too. You want to go without? I can remove certain things from the menu as well.”

You can’t let him take that off the menu . . .

Dammit. He had me. A day without oral is simply a day not worth living.

So here we were, in the guest bathroom, inches and inches of glorious shaggy blond hair on the floor around us, as his grin got bigger and bigger.

And my frown got, well, frownier and frownier.

By the time he felt I had butchered it successfully, I was almost in a full-on meltdown.

“Jesus, George, I ruined it!”

It was sticking up in places, flat in others, and just generally a disaster area. It looked like a five-year-old had cut it.

“Hmm, it does have a sort of whacked look to it, doesn’t it, love?” He laughed, running his hands through it, throwing an errant curl to the floor.

“I may vomit,” I whined, setting down the scissors.

“Come on, Crazy, finish it.” He pressed the clippers into my hand.

Clippers? “Finish it?”

“How many grunts do you know without a buzz cut?” he asked, trying on his new southern accent. Alabama by way of London, interesting combo.

“When you said you needed to get ready for this movie, I had no idea I was going to have to bear the brunt of it.” I sighed and picked up the clippers after he adjusted the setting. He’d dialed it way down. This was gonna be short.

“How exactly are you bearing the brunt of this?” he asked, pulling me between his legs as I stood before him.

“I’m the one who has to look at you, Sweet Nuts.” I winked.

“Buzz me,” he commanded, eyes twinkling.

I buzzed away. As the hair continued to fall, we talked about our schedules, all the changes that were to come.

Jack’s name was on every woman’s lips across the world, in every woman’s dreams, and on every casting director’s hot list. Holly, my best friend and Jack’s agent as well as mine, had been flooded with offers. Directors, producers, talk-show hosts—everyone wanted a piece of him.

And I had a piece of him. Frequently.

Before the success of Time, a movie based on a series of popular erotic short stories that had been released this past fall, Jack Hamilton had been your average, ordinary British-guy-about-Hollywood. At only twenty-four, he had been in a few small, independent films and acted a bit in repertory theater, but once he was cast as Joshua, the Super Sexy Scientist Guy who traveled through time, seducing women across the centuries, his life changed. He was now one of the hottest young actors in Hollywood, and Holly was determined that he would not just be another flash in the pan.

Holly Newman was a great friend and a great agent. She had a killer instinct and was known for finding new talent. She had carefully crafted the careers of several of the most respected actors currently working, and she was poised to do the same for Jack. Declining several big-budget action films, she now guided Jack to a smaller film: a gritty, documentary-style picture about soldiers in Afghanistan. Jack could easily have headlined a huge summer blockbuster, but instead he chose to work in an ensemble cast, where the story was important.

And what was really important right now was shaving his head. He was a young soldier from Alabama, and he needed to look the part. Sigh.

“Did you just sigh, Grace?”

“I did.” I took one last pass with the clippers and smoothed my hand over his shorn scalp.

“Is it really that bad?” he asked, nerves flitting over his face.

I smiled and scratched at his head. He leaned into it, just as he always had, and I looked carefully at him. The green eyes were the same, beginning to darken just the tiniest bit as my hand stroked the back of his neck. His hands tightened on my hips, drawing me close again. His hair was gone, but the heat was still there. In fact, his features seemed even stronger now. Cheekbones, jaw, everything even more chiseled, and his two days’ worth of scruff even sexier than usual. His tongue dipped out of his mouth just so, teeth then nibbling on that lower lip in the way he knew would evoke a response.

“I have to admit, now that I can truly appreciate it, it’s kind of . . . hmmm,” I ventured.

“Kind of . . .”

“Sexy?”

“Sexy. Really?” His thumbs traced a tiny pattern along the skin just above my drawstring. Which he was now tugging on.

“Yes, yes, it’s true. Even with my butchering your hair, you’re still the sexiest man in America.” I sighed again, this time in a different way, as his thumbs fumbled apart the buttons on my shirt.

“Only America?” He laughed, his newly cropped fuzzy head tickling at the skin below my jaw as he nuzzled into my neck.

“You’re pushing it, George,” I warned, my stern voice giving way to giggles that broke free as he pushed me up against the bathroom door.

“Only America?” he insisted, raising my hands and holding them over my head.

“Okay, the Americas. North and South combined.” I bumped my hips into his as he pressed into me.

“Speaking of south,” he breathed into my ear, one hand slipping slowly beneath my . . .

Ding dong.

“Who the hell is that?” he muttered, keeping me pushed against the door, hand continuing its path toward my . . .

Ding dong. Ding dong.

“It might be Michael. He said he might stop by tonight.” I slid out from in between Jack’s body and the door and looked at myself in the mirror. Rumpled, flushed, happy.

“Bloody Michael,” he grumbled, grabbing for me as I made for the door.

“Bloody nothing. You two are friends now. Behave yourself.” I laughed, dancing away from his grab as I headed out into the hallway and toward the front door.

“Finishing this later!” he called after me, and my heart skipped a little.

“I’ll hold you to that,” I called back, thinking of all the ways he could and would finish this. And how I would most certainly let him. Since Jack and I had started seeing each other last year, the chemistry between us had been and remained off the charts. He’d finish it. He’d finish me right off a cliff.

I laughed as I heard him groan, knowing he was adjusting himself not so discreetly now. I straightened myself up a bit, then opened the door to see my friend Michael smiling back at me.

“Sure took you long enough,” he chided.

“I was detained.” I gestured for him to come in as he looked at my feet and laughed.

“You look like the missing link. Something you want to tell me?” He pointed down.

I looked and noticed I had clumps of Jack’s hair between my polished toes.

“Ah, well, haircut gone bad,” I explained, waving him inside as I went to the kitchen to get a broom. I had left a trail.

“Haircut gone great, you mean,” Jack corrected, coming into the kitchen and running his hand over his head.

“Wow, what happened to you?” Michael chuckled, brown eyes full of mischief.

Michael and I had gone to college with Holly and had been friends for years. Well, we had been friends, until a one-night stand clouded everything that had been good and made it ugly. We didn’t speak for years, and then through a series of coincidences, he ended up casting me in his new musical a few months ago. This time another near miss of a one-night stand had almost ruined everything, but we came to our senses and remained great friends.

And more. While the musical we had worked on together in New York didn’t go anywhere, there was enough interest in the project to keep it alive in a new way. Right after the holidays we found out that there was a production company interested in developing it into a TV show. In the vein of HBO and Showtime, Venue was the new cable channel everyone was watching. Edgy comedies, dark dramas—their TV lineup was making a lot of waves. We brought a few of the original cast in from New York, shot a quick pilot, and Venue bought it. And they were putting Michael’s new show right in the middle of their fall lineup.