Page 25 of Breaking the Ice

Samantha ushered her over to the couch then flipped the door sign to closed as she motioned for Nick to get a coffee – cappuccino on oat milk just the way Sally liked it.

Nick lifted an eyebrow at her but Samantha wasn’t sure what was going on until Sally unburdened. She’d been dumped. Her boyfriend of a year had dropped her like a hot cake. “He said I was getting fat,” she cried and her voice wobbled and the tears fell anew.

Samantha was incensed as she patted Sally’s back, waiting for the tears to subside. Sally was five foot ten and perfectly proportioned. How dare he screw with her head like that? How could anyone take a perfectly nice, pretty young woman like Sally and break her heart with such callous disregard?

Sally would go on an instant crash diet and be screwed up about her body for the rest of her life. “Nick,” Samantha demanded as he delivered the coffee. “Tell this girl how gorgeous she is.”

“Sally, if I was a decade younger, I’d be nuts for you.”

Samantha could have kissed him when Sally blinked through damp lashes and gave him a wobbly smile. NickHawkeyeHawke had said exactly the right thing.

By the time Sally was composed enough to leave, Samantha had convinced her that Darren was a low-life slug who would come to a nasty end if there was any karma or justice in the world. And that Sally didn’t need him. In fact, women didn’t need men at all. They were pleasant distractions with which to decorate your life but they weren’t essential and sisters could well and truly do it for themselves.

Did she feel like a hypocrite given her own desperate search for a demographically acceptable male specimen? Sure. But it had worked.

“Thank you, Sam,” she sniffed. “You’re so good at this. How do you know all this stuff?”

Samantha looked into her bright young face and knew she wasn’t going to tell her the truth. Sally didn’t want to hear that she’d had her fair share of low-life slugs and had let too many ofthem slime her. Or that she’d been dumped more often than she cared to remember.

“Experience.” She dragged Sally into a hug. “Now, remember. Be kind to yourself tonight. Do not beat yourself up. On the way home buy vodka and Oreos. Works every time.”

Thirty minutes later, Nick was shutting the door after Sally who’d left with a crammed bag of books. “She’s right,” he said as he turned the sign back to open. “You are good at it.”

“Well when you’ve been dumped as often as me you tend to know a few survival tricks.”

Settling back on the couch, Samantha picked up her book but she was aware of Nick behind the counter watching her, his gaze like a caress against her skin. “What?” she demanded, after a few moments, looking up from her Western.

“Have you really been dumped a lot?”

“Yep.” There seemed little point in denying it now he knew.

“Have you ever done any of the dumping?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t seem too cut up by that?”

Looking over her book at him, Samantha shrugged one shoulder. She’d learned early on that men and a career weren’t compatible. “It’s usually well and truly fizzled out by that time. I get pretty absorbed in my work.”

That was why she’d gone for the arty types in recent years. They kept odd hours and tended to be egocentric, absorbed in their own world. They didn’t care that she often didn’t get home till midnight or cook them dinner. And they weren’t emasculated by her superior income.

Nick stared at her askance. “You do know men need to feel needed, right?”

Right, like she had time for that. “Nick… I’m an independent woman. I’m super organized, well paid and have my life mapped out. I can look after myself. I don’t have time for men who need their egos stroked.”

“Then why do you bother with men at all?”

Good question. “I like the company. And it’s handy having someone to kill the spiders.”

Nick blinked. “Is thatit?”

She shrugged. “I like the way they smell.” Samantha especially liked the wayhesmelled. She remembered the musky heat his skin had pumped out the night of the tattoo when she’d been gripping his shirt.

“There are some great male fragrances,” he agreed, sounding slightly discombobulated.

“I don’t mean cologne. I mean just that clean, healthy skin smell. You know that just-out-of-the-shower smell.” Samantha tried and failednotto imagine him emerging from the shower, his skin still beaded with water as he stood still and let her sniff him all over. “It’s… I don’t know… so…male.You know?”

“Yeah. Pheromones.”

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