Page 93 of This Heart Of Mine (Chicago Stars 5)

“I’ve got everything to lose. You don’t have anything.”

Just this fragile little heart of mine.

He ran his thumb along the stem of his wineglass. “The truth is, a few nights of sexual dalliance might help your writing career.”

“I can’t wait to hear this.”

“It’ll reprogram your subconscious so you don’t send out any more secret homosexual messages in your books.”

She rolled her eyes.

He grinned.

“Give me a break, Kevin. If we were back in Chicago, it wouldn’t occur to you to even think about having sex with me. How flattering is that?”

“It sure as hell would occur to me if we were together all the time like we are here.”

He was deliberately missing the point, but before she could tell him that, the waitress appeared to see if there was anything wrong with the meals they weren’t eating.

Kevin assured her there wasn’t. She gave him a full-blast smile and began chatting with him as if he were her best friend. Since people reacted the same way to Dan and Phoebe, Molly was used to this kind of interruption, but the waitress was cute and curvy, so she found it annoying.

When the woman finally left, Kevin settled back in his chair and picked up the one part of their conversation she most wished he’d forgotten. “This celibacy thing… how long has that been going on?”

She took her time cutting a small piece of chicken. “A while.”

“Any particular reason?”

She chewed slowly, as if she were thinking over his question instead of trying to find a way out. There wasn’t any, so she attempted to sound grand and mysterious. “A choice I made.”

“Is this one more part of that good girl thing everybody in the world believes about you except me??

??

“I am a good girl!”

“You’re a brat.”

She sniffed, a little pleased, but not letting on. “Why should a virtuous woman have to justify herself? Or semivirtuous anyway, so don’t think I was a virgin before I lost my mind with you.” But in some ways she was a virgin. Although she knew about sex, neither of her two affairs had taught her anything about making love, and neither had that awful night with Kevin.

“Because we’re friends, remember? Friends tell each other things. You already know a lot more about me than almost anybody.”

She didn’t like being more embarrassed about this disclosure than she’d been when she told him she’d given away her inheritance, so she tried her best to look pious by putting her elbows on the table and making little prayer hands. “Being sexually discriminating is nothing to be ashamed about.”

In some ways he understood her better than her own family, and his raised eyebrow told her she hadn’t impressed him.

“I’m just—I know a lot of people treat sex casually, but I can’t do that. I think it’s too important.”

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Well, then, that’s it.”

“I’m glad.”

Was it her imagination, or did she detect a little smugness in his expression?

“You’re glad about what? That you’ve had a stadium full of easy women while I’ve been keeping my legs crossed? Talk about a double standard.”

“Hey, I’m not proud of it. It’s programmed in those X chromosomes. And it hasn’t been a stadium full.”

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