Page 58 of Home to Me

She shook her head. Not possible. Not after that kiss. Not after all she had felt coming from him as he’d held her, not after the way he’d looked at her when he’d pulled away. Not after that.

She glanced around, wondering how much longer the meeting was going to last before she could make her graceful exit, and noticed that every single person in the room was staring at her.

“What?” she asked.

Amy glanced at her watch. “Six minutes and forty-seven seconds,” she pronounced definitively. “I believe that makes Sam the winner at seven minutes. Unless we were playing with Let's Make a Deal rules where you can’t go over. I believe we were just playing that the closest guess wins, right?”

“You bet your ass that's how we were playing,” Sam said decisively. “Now hand over your ten dollars, losers.”

The rest of the girls reluctantly pulled ten-dollar bills from their purses, grumbling all the while.

Karina said, “Yeah, even if we disagreed, it wouldn't be worth getting in a fight with you about it, Little Miss Competitive.”

“Damn straight,” agreed Sam, not in the least offended.

“What is going on here?” Lauren said, puzzled.

“We had a bet going, about how long it would be until you came out of the trance you were lost in and realized that we were all sitting here staring at you. I was the timekeeper,” Amy explained.

Lauren sighed. Damn it. Now they were going to make her talk about it.

“So you know now you have to talk about it, right?” Karina asked.

“I realize that,” Lauren replied.

“I assume,” Karina continued, “that this has something to do with Mr. Hottie Co-Host, correct?”

Lauren laughed a short laugh and said satirically, “How did you guess?”

“So...are you actually in a good place with him right now?” Amanda asked. “The last I heard, things were pretty rocky between the two of you.”

“I guess. But the fact that I have no idea just exactly how present in my life he's going to be after next week, is a big part of the problem I'm dealing with.”

Amanda looked hopeful as she asked, “If you’re now hoping that he sticks around, I guess that's good. Right?”

Lauren shook her head, looking miserable. She threw up her hands as if in surrender. Amanda immediately crossed the room to sit next to her and wrapped her arms around Lauren's shoulders.

“I don't know if things are good or bad between us.” Lauren felt exhausted. “That's another huge part of the problem but I'm trying to deal with it!”

Karina said, “Okay, I think we're gonna need to take this one step at a time. The last thing we all knew, you guys were giving each other the cold shoulder, and you’d just seen him bring a girl into his room. Which you were really pissed about. Take it away.”

“What do you mean, the last thing you all knew? I only told you that,” she pointed at Karina.

Karina shrugged, grinning. “Fine. If you didn’t want me to tell them, just operate on the assumption that I kept my mouth shut. Feel free to go through the entire story again.”

Lauren shook her head. “Forget it. That’s fine. I'll pick it up from there. So the next day, I went to his trailer to have it out with him once and for all—”

“Wearing only a trench coat?” Karina asked hopefully.

“No, wearing my normal clothes.”

Karina shook her head and sighed. “When will you people ever learn?”

Lauren chuckled wickedly. “Well, it had pretty much the same effect.”

“What? You little hoochie, you. Congrats!” Karina said.

“Yeah,” Lauren said happily. “It was pretty awesome.”

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