Lisa refused to feel embarrassed about that again. “Of course.”
“You never told me what three stars means.”
“That’s right. It’s none of your business,” she said cheerfully.
“Must be damned convenient to be able to turn your feelings on and off like a faucet,” he said sincerely. “I haven’t had the same luck.”
Lisa blinked and stared at him. His words shook her. “Oh, for crying out loud, I never—”
“Just because you’re gonna marry another man,” Brick said the words, and felt as if he were chewing nails, “doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, does it?”
The sudden look of confusion on Lisa’s face would have been amusing if Brick hadn’t been fighting for his life. “Friends?” she said tentatively, as if it were a new word.
“Sure. It’s a lot better than being enemies.” It’s a lot better than nothing, he added to himself.
“We’ve never really been friends,” Lisa said, her voice laced in skepticism.
Brick had to work to take that jab in stride. “With all your…dates—” Brick forced the repugnant word out “—it would be nice to have a friend around, someone you’ve known for a long time, someone who knows you, someone you don’t have to impress.” He grinned. “Someone you could tell what those three stars represent.”
Lisa laughed uncertainly and shook her head. “You’re crazy.”
“C’mon,” Brick said, putting a little dare in his voice. “If I were your friend, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
Lisa hesitated, looking doubtful. She cocked her head to one side, and Brick wished he could take off her sunglasses to read her eyes. She gave a sigh. “All right. The three stars mean the man likes women and children, and he’s not opposed to the general idea of marriage.”
“What about money, appearance, age and sex?”
Lisa gave a little shrug. “They’re all secondary to the other three qualities. Age and appearance can be settled on the first date, money by the second, and sex…”
Brick’s gut tightened.
“Sex would be last.”
Sex with another man would be never, if Brick had anything to do with it. He rubbed his hand over his mouth in restraint. “It sounds like a plan,” he muttered.
“It is. This book I’ve been reading says you can get married in less than two years. It talks about keeping a practical attitude and using your resources.”
The book again. “Using your resources?”
Lisa nodded. “One of the most interesting facts it reported was that many married couples are introduced by mutual friends, so the author suggested that you tell all your friends that you’re looking and ask for recommendations.”
Lisa looked at him and a strange expression crossed her face. Brick experienced an even stranger foreboding. In the back of his mind he could almost hear the cock of a gun. She leaned forward, and her sunglasses slipped again to give him a view of the complete sincerity in her eyes. Her lips curved into a slow, siren smile designed to drop a man at fifty paces. And Brick was at one and a half.
“Tell me, Brick,” she said sweetly, “can you recommend one of your friends to father my children?”
Chapter Three
She might as well have shot him.
Speechless, Brick stared at her for a full minute.
“Did you hear what I said?” Lisa asked. “I asked you if—”
“I heard you,” he finally managed, thinking he could use a double Jack Daniels straight up right now. Where had that breeze gone? he wondered as he tugged on his collar. “I’ll have to think about it and get back to you. I don’t usually evaluate my friends with an eye as to how good they’d be at fathering children.”
“I guess not,” she conceded, and spritzed her neck with a spray bottle of water.
His gaze homed in on the droplets dotting her chest. He wanted to lick every bit of water from her skin, spritz her, and do it again until his thirst was at least temporarily quenched. Instead he licked his lips and turned to the pool where a couple of kids played splashing games. “It sounds as if you’ve got this all planned out.”
“Some of it.” Lisa pulled a sheet of paper from her tote bag. “I got this in the mail the other day.”
Brick leaned forward to read it. “Meet your mate, not just a date. A dating service?” he said, unable to hide his horror. “Have you gone crazy? You’ll have every nut in Tennessee calling you day and night.”
She set her chin stubbornly. “It’s just one of my options. Senada’s also—”
“Senada!”
When Lisa’s chin rose another notch, Brick bit his tongue, laced his fingers together and cracked all his knuckles at once.
“She knows a lot of men.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” he muttered.
“She knows a lot more about men than I do and—”
“You always knew enough for me,” he pointed out in a dark velvet voice. “And what you didn’t know, I sure as hell liked teaching you.”
Lisa’s heart seemed to pause, then flutter wildly. She’d kept the conversation centered on her search for a husband as a means of protection because she felt more than bare beneath Brick’s gaze. She felt naked.
Every time his eyes lingered, she felt as if he’d touched her. Could he tell she was having a hard time breathing normally? Could he sense the way her nipples tingled? Did he know about the insidious moist warmth that built within her because her body simply couldn’t forget what he’d been to her? He was looking at her as if she were the only woman in the world, and despite all her resolutions her mouth was cotton-dry from his intoxicating effect on her.
Lisa swallowed hard. “You don’t understand. Senada’s had a lot more experience—”
“I know,” he said dryly.
“No.” She sighed. “Let me put it this way. Senada was the kind of girl who had five offers to go to her high school prom.”
“And?” Brick was waiting for the rest of the story. Something told him it would be important.
“And I got no offers,” Lisa admitted reluctantly. “I was in the National Honor Society, I took piano lessons, went to church like a good girl. I was great with books, but when it came to guys, I was…”
“Shy,” Brick supplied for her, feeling a twist of compassion. He recalled a few girls from his own high school days that had seemed awkward and shy with
