She nodded, making his head bob slightly, in turn triggering a grin on his lips. “That would be an inauspicious first date. ‘Woman eaten by bear.’”

“Why do you assume the bear would eat you?” He laughed and opened his eyes. She was looking at him with a half-smile.

“Because I have more body fat and you can run faster.”

“I would help you climb a tree.”

“Guys do that so they have an excuse to stare at our asses.”

He craned his head behind her body and looked down. “I don’t need an excuse.”

She blushed and looked up, a tight, amused smile on her lips. Had he gone too far? “First date?” she said. She seemed to be forcing herself to make eye contact.

Puzzled, he frowned. “Uh, yes?”

“That implies there might…”

“…be a second?”

She nodded.

“That’s up to you, Laura.”

Not telling Dylan about Laura really was going to kill him, but he needed this second date to confirm his suspicions. When he came out of his bedroom and found Dylan hunched over his laptop, naked except for his boxer briefs, shoulders curled and face staring intently at the screen as he chowed down a bowl of cereal, Mike couldn’t help himself. He snickered.

Dylan practically climbed the walls, startling, his face panicked and body spidery with a fight-or-flight stance. “What the fuck, Mike? Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Creep up on people like that!” He had one hand on his heart. “Fucking gave me a heart attack.”

“Hey, I didn’t do anything weird. I walked into my own kitchen to grab breakfast. You’re the freak. Why are you in another world?” A quick glance at the screen gave him his answer: the online dating site.

With Laura’s picture and profile.

Fuck. Suppressing his jealousy, Mike opened the fridge door and grabbed a half gallon of milk to pour a glass as he popped two pieces of bread in the toaster.

“I’m – ah, hell, I guess I’m stalking Laura.” A rush of protectiveness hit Mike in the solar plexus like a punch. He knew Dylan wasn’t going to harm her. Knew it was just because Dylan was crazy about her. Knew all that.

Still reacted.

“But I thought she blocked you?”

“She did. Wait – I told you that?”

“Yup.”

“Well, I made a new account and am trying that way.”

Mike blinked. The toast popped. Dylan returned his attention to the screen. As Mike grabbed peanut butter, he asked, “So you created a new identity to try to trick her into talking to you?”

“No. My new account says it’s me. I’m not that crazy.”

Yes, you are, Mike thought. Almost said it. Held back. Smearing the peanut butter, he shredded the toast with too much force, making the piece collapse and slime his hand and wrist with nut butter. What a mess.

Yeah. What a mess.

“Aren’t you worried she’s going to be creeped out by you? I mean, she blocked you. Case closed. Move on.”

Dylan shook his head and sighed, his six pack folding in and then out, the muscles rippling up through his chest. Mike admired it with a contentment, like looking at fine art. He didn’t need to touch it; just seeing it was satisfying enough. Knowing it was there when he wanted it sufficed.

“Seriously, Dylan. Any woman would be freaked if some guy went around chasing her like this. You tried messages on her old account. She blocked you. You tried calling – same. Now you’re getting unhinged.”

Beep-blip! “Woot!” Dylan shouted. “She’s responding!”

Mike rushed across the room to see. A swirl of good and bad mixed within him, for if she wanted Dylan again, would she stop seeing Mike? Or, hope against hope, would she consider seeing them both?

Please leave me alone, she wrote. Mike couldn’t contain a snort of laughter. Dylan scowled.

“Fuck!” Schadenfreude aside, Mike’s inner thoughts mirrored Dylan’s, because in the end while this was amusing, watching Dylan twist in the wind, the fact that he wanted to share Laura meant that somehow he had to find a way to make her see his partner again, to clear up whatever misunderstanding had developed that one night they’d been together.

Of course, Dylan couldn’t know that Mike was dating her – man, when had this become so complicated?

When you asked her out, Dumbass.

Oh. Yeah.

“How many messages have you sent her?”

“Thirty-four.”

“THIRTY-FOUR?” Mike howled with laughter now, unable to hold back, leaning against the counter and spilling the last bit of milk in the half gallon carton as it toppled over, sideways, then plummeted to the tiled floor. “Shit!” he shouted, grabbing a hand towel and bending down to clean it up.

“Is that a metaphor?’ Dylan muttered, typing something in the chat window.

“What are you writing?” Mike split his attention between the milk mess and Dylan’s mess.

“I’m asking her to meet me for coffee.”

“No chianti and fava beans?”

“Shut up.” Dylan’s glare turned from simple annoyance to a simmering fury. OK. Mike knew when to let up. Half a minute later and the milk was cleaned up; time to get out of the house and let Dylan find his way through his heartache. He had a date tonight.

One that required some serious planning to pull off. What was Laura thinking right now, facing her own screen as Dylan tried again and again to talk to her? Was she scared? Intrigued? Pissed? She kept turning him down, and that didn’t bode well for a future triad.

All Mike could do now was “wow” her with tonight’s date. He left half-naked, brooding Dylan to find his way through her roadblocks, the man grousing about all the ways he might have screwed up on their date.

Same mountain, new date. Or, it seemed like the same mountain. They all seemed the same to her as her vision blurred, her veins unaccustomed to blood pumping this hard through her body for any reason other than sheer arousal.

Arousal was an issue here, though, too.

The view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking and Laura probably would’ve appreciated it more if her attention weren’t completely focused on Mike. He was all she wanted to watch as he surprised her. He’d carried a back pack at his side through much of the walk. Not wearing – just carrying it. And now like some sort of a magician’s hat, he pulled out a blanket, two bottles of red wine, a couple of glasses, a container filled with five or six different kinds of cheese, most of them names she couldn’t pronounce, and a set of grapes and strawberries, a couple of them chocolate covered.

“What’s this?” she said.

“I thought I’d surprise us with a light dinner.” He smiled shyly. “I’m too much of a gentleman to take a woman out and not feed her at least something. I may have dragged you along for this crazy hike and ruin my chances at the second date, but I’m at least you can’t say we didn’t have dinner.”

She surveyed the layout before her. Some sort of a camping blanket; thin, but well-worn. Actual stemware, wine glasses that he kept in a special case. And as he inserted the cork screw into the first bottle of wine, and very deftly opened it, she sampled one of the cheeses.

“Mmm, sheep’s cheese?” she asked.

His eyes lit up. “Yes! You can tell from the taste?”

“Yeah,” she said, “it’s one of my favorites.”

“Well, hot damn! Who knew I’d find someone who knows their fromage?” he said, biting his lower lip, and smiling and nodding at the same time, as if he quietly celebrated a minor success.

“Yeah,” she said quietly, “who knew?” Her face shifted in an expression of wistfulness, of serenity, of being very much in the moment.

She felt she could breathe around him, that she could appreciate each breath. And as he handed her the glass of red wine, she sniffed it, then took a sip. “This is good.”

“Guess?”

“Guess what?” she asked.

“Guess what kind of wine this is.”

She surveyed the bouquet, sniffing a couple of times, lapped at the red wine very ostentatiously, took a zip, and looked at him grandly, with as much pretension she could muster, and declared, “It’s red.”

He burst into laughter. “How sophisticated.”

She shrugged. “Sorry. I may know something about cheese, but I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about wine. But I like this.” She reached for his hand as they stood and stared out at the valley. “I like this a lot.”

His warm palm closed over her shoulder and he looked down at her, standing a full foot above her frame, his neck leaning toward her, his face an inch away. “Yeah. I like it a lot too.”

Making love outside, in the fresh air, had never been part of her bucket list. In fact, it was more a part of her anti-bucket list; bright light, no covers, on the hard ground? Who would find that appealing?

Uh, her. Right here. Right now.

As Mike stared at her, eyes burning with an intensity she fell into, an abyss of wanting, she found herself startlingly interested in trying this new experience. Was this why he had gone to so much trouble – the wine, the special blanket, the fromagerie of cheeses and such? It dawned on her that he wasn’t just being a sweetheart, giving her a lovely, gourmet picnic for their second date.

As a matter of fact, what they had eaten was just an appetizer.

She was the entree.

His kiss wasn’t a surprise; what shocked her most was the preternatural urge that welled up, unbidden, as his hands seized her ass and hips, his body knowing exactly what – and who – it wanted. He shifted, like he had on their first date, from a mild-mannered, lanky, zen-like dude to a ferocious, sexual alpha male.

And she – she – had triggered all that. It excited her almost more than his touch, the way his tongue conquered hers, how his palms were greedy for so much of her skin, his chest pressed into hers, the thick outline of his erection in such stark relief against her inner thigh she could probably sculpt it out of clay from memory. When he urged her, gently, to kneel, then recline, on the blanket, she knew her outdoor sex cherry was about to be popped, and the inner burst of need that felt like a thin membrane of restraint about to give way told her she was more than ready to bare all before nature.

“Mmmmmmmm,” she sighed. His mouth moved from hers, hands tracing patterns of lust and hold on her breasts, as if he were memorizing the terrain, his flattened palm stealing down her ribcage as his lips caressed her neck. She had worn a skirt today a just in case move that she was grateful for, now, because the easy access meant that this would be so much simpler, more direct, less complicated.

Like Mike.

And, thankfully, she had shaved. Landscaped, if you will. Going nearly bald had been a new experience, the little landing strip like a giant, glowing neon sign pointing to her clit. She almost smiled to herself; would he like it? Hate it? Not care?

Barely functioning nerves kicked in and she couldn’t turn off the lopping thoughts, the cluster of fears and insecurities, even with this gorgeous athlete’s hands greedily touching every part of her, even as his lips brushed her abdomen, her hands in his hair and – oh! He was going…