Laura said nothing, then started to explain, but thought the better of it. “Nevermind.”

“You are stuck on Dylan, aren’t you?” Josie’s tone was incredulous. “Did you ever figure out who that woman was?”

“Nope.”

“And has he tried to reach you?”

Laura blew air out her nose, laughing softly. “I have 34 messages from him on the dating site.”

“Oh, he’s playing it cool, isn’t he?” Josie frowned. “But I thought you blocked him?

“He created a new account.” Josie made a low whistling sound of disbelief.

Laura smiled wistfully. “Yeah. I just can’t go there, Josie. You know how much it hurt when I found out about Ryan…” She had dated Ryan for the better part of a year. They’d shopped for engagement rings. He’d introduced her to his boss, went on double dates, and then one day she got an anonymous message on Facebook. A request to friend.

Someone with Ryan’s last name.

His wife.

Funny how he forgot that detail.

She had a pretty simple morality: don’t date people who file taxes with other people as a married couple. Her rule was pretty simple. Too hard for Ryan, though.

And now she applied the same rule to Dylan: no dating people who were involved with other people.

“If I’m going to be part of a threesome, Josie, it won’t be as the invisible third.”

“Mmmmm, a man sandwich with Laura in the middle. And those two men…” Josie licked her lips with great exaggeration.

Laura’s hands reached out to shove Josie before she could think to stop herself. “Cut it out!” Her face burned, though, with the thought. Josie just cackled.

A threesome. Menage. She’d never done it. But she sure had thought about it. As her breath hitched with embarrassment and arousal she shifted in her seat, now painfully aware of the increased heat in her nether regions.

Regions that had seen more activity – and from more men – in two days than in two months.

“Laura and Mike and Dylan, sitting in a tree – o!” Josie joked, skittering away so Laura couldn’t punch her again. Shaking her head, Laura buried her face in her coffee to hide her expression from her friend, who was about a hair away from figuring out that Laura would welcome the menage.

More than she could even acknowledge to herself, much less admit to her friend. There were lines in friendship. This was one of them. She couldn’t take back the words if she blurted them out, and right now she was just too confused and tired to deal with the fallout of admitting what her heart really desired.

Besides, there was that pesky issue of Dylan’s girlfriend. Funny how that put a screeching halt to any sandwich fantasies.

At least she had Mike.

“You still have Mike, though,” Josie mused. “Poor Laura. Have to settle for a guy who looks like something out of Asgard. Does he have a tongue like a god, too?”

Laura threw the empty half-n-half container at Josie, who just chuckled as she stood and walked out the door, leaving Laura to get ready for a torturous day at work, the hours before seeing Mike stretching out like years.

As she dressed, though, she remembered her drive home from their last date. For some reason she still didn’t understand, she’d started crying as soon as they’d gotten in their cars. At first, she’d almost jumped out of the seat and run after him, just needing something – more. More words? No. More sex? Ah – no.

Just more.

By the time she’d arrived home she had been fine, so whatever triggered the tears seemed to have settled and found its place inside her. Could sex with someone she’d only met a couple of days ago unleash emotions that strong?

Was it deeper than that? Her earring got stuck as she tried to shove the post through the ancient hole, the back of the earlobe grown over. A few layers of skin closed up the back of the lobe and she worked to center the end of the post over the spot where the lump of scar tissue was thickest. Gritting her teeth, she forced the metal rod through, the hot sting of newly-pierced tissue evolving into a throb.

Her favorite pearl earring dangled nicely. Was it worth the pain?

Sure. For the sake of wearing something that complemented her perfectly.

Maybe Mike’s the same, she thought. You had to date a lot of painful jerks before you found the one who complemented you perfectly.

Hot tears filled her mouth and eyes.

Aha. Now she understood.

And yet Dylan – she closed her eyes and full drops poured out of her inner tear ducts and down her nostrils. An ache in her throat spread to her chest. Ignoring his messages had been agony. Sheer, unadulterated pain in the form of restraint.

She had held fast, though she had faltered only once. The (gorgeous, incredible, irresistible) idiot had gone and created a completely new online dating account to circumvent her blocking him! How stalkerish and weird and creepy and –

Flattering.

Charming.

Arousing.

She had almost – almost, achingly almost nearly so close – broken down and agreed to meet him for coffee, just to hear his side of the story – which she already knew. It was a cliché upon a cliché, right?

Holding fast, though, she had simply typed:

Please leave me alone.

And, like magic, he had.

The ache that his respect for her wishes created in her was so contradictory yet so pervasive it made her question her own sanity. Why was she so drawn to this guy? What was so special that she would override her own moral code for him?

Ah, but you didn’t, her conscience reminded her.

Oh, how I want to, she retorted.

Dylan stared at the computer monitor, completely unsure and yet painfully, deeply certain of what he was reading. Mike and Laura? Mike was hitting on Laura at the online dating site? What? He scrolled through the history of the chat window and realized that – that the first chat took place the morning after his date with her.

Oof. His stomach twisted and his balls felt like lead. Stretching his neck and clearing his throat, he fought back a tearful rage. Ease up, Buddy. Last time you let your temper flare you had a $400 door to replace.

Now, he’d been a bit confused when he woke up that morning and she had been gone. But he’d had plenty of encounters where that happened – yet he’d expected her to answer one of his phone calls or his texts. She had plenty of opportunities.

While he wasn’t quite ready to stomp over to her house and hold a boom box over his head, with Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes blasting from it, he was definitely in that uncomfortable zone where he expected to have a second date with her, anticipated it – really, frankly was excited by the prospect of it and had been stymied by her refusal to talk to him.

Mike had sniped her? This wasn’t a rare baseball card on eBay, for fuck’s sake.

Even though it had been less than twenty-four hours since he last saw her, and he knew he shouldn’t be so eager, it stung. He had an inkling about why she was blowing him off now – some inkling. A 6‘5” inkling.

And according to the times on the chat window, it looked like within a few hours of leaving his bed, she was planning a date with—Mike?

Mike? Mild mannered, boring old Mike?

This didn’t make any sense! Dylan was the one who went out and found someone for them. Dylan had found Jill, who had been their one and only.

Jill.

He sighed, his shoulders slumping, and he leaned cradling his face in his hands, a wash of nostalgia, of mourning, of pain came over him. And this time he let it. Normally, he pushed it away, manned up and did what a lot of guys do – went for a run, watched the football game, ate too many wings, pumped iron. But right now he let his feelings sink in. Watching her die had been one of the most – no, the most difficult thing – Dylan had ever experienced. The helplessness had nearly killed him, too. Mike had just retreated into his own world. Running tens of miles, half marathons, day in and day out until his shoes wore out within weeks, until his feet blistered, until he put his body into a state of pain that let some of the agony in his heart leak out.

Dylan wasn’t like that. Dylan had fought and fought, and fought some more. Had argued with the doctors, had argued with Jill. Bargained with God and anyone who could help. Tried to convince her to try all sorts of alternative therapies that he had read about on the Internet, from vitamin C to certain yoga positions to chelation – and while the doctors said none of it could hurt, none of it helped.

Jill had gently accepted her own fate after a valiant struggle; Dylan had never accepted it. Ever. And now here he was, a year and a half after her death finding someone like Laura, hoping that maybe she could help to repair some of the scars that were still fresh from Jill’s death.

And then Mike goes and turns into a snake.

Why would he do this? This wasn’t Mike’s style at all. He wasn’t the type to poach a girl. Mike was the beta. They joked about it. Dylan was the alpha and Mike was the beta and that was just the law of nature and how things worked between the two of them – between the three of them, with Jill. Jill had liked Mike’s sensitive touchy-feelly, new-agey nature and she’d loved Dylan’s arrogance.

Oh, that had hurt. She had called him arrogant all the time, as if his self-confidence didn’t have a bedrock foundation for his firm grounding. Here he was a fire-fighter, a paramedic – built, a former model and he was arrogant? He could wave it away most of the time, but now he just chuckled to himself, thinking about the times she had put him in his place. Frankly, he had needed that, needed her steady, sardonic wit, her –

“Oh, stop it Dylan. She’s gone. Just stop it.” He looked up stared at the monitor again, and the nostalgia came to a screeching halt.

He narrowed his eyes.

It was time for the alpha to put the beta in his place.

Whistling some Lady Gaga tune that he’d caught in the car in the long drive home from the mountain, Mike was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He had just proven that he, on his own, could catch the same woman Dylan could catch.

And boy, what a catch Laura was. Way more than he ever expected. She was absolutely, positively nothing like Jill. And yet, he had a feeling that if the two had met, Jill would have really liked her – and probably would have given her approval. Laura accepted the fact that he was quiet sometimes and he was able to sit in absolute silence with her, out in a field, staring at the mountain. The two of them could just coexist in peace together. You couldn’t find that in many people. Very few, in fact.

Jill had been one of them. Dylan definitely wasn’t, but he had other traits that made him worth being with, hard as it may be these days to remember them. And so, as he pulled into his parking spot his mind was filled with nothing but plans to see Laura again. A niggling irritant scratched deep within his brain, though, ruining the absolute perfection of this new beginning.

Dylan.

He had to tell Dylan at some point and it wasn’t going to go well. He and Dylan had been together since high school and he knew him backwards, forwards and upside-down. Even though Mike’s intentions were pure, Dylan would view this as a threat, as a challenge, as some sort of – as Dylan put it – alpha-beta problem.