a chemistry problem he couldn’t solve.
Not one single data point from his doctoral thesis had provided clues to this puzzle. Nothing he’d researched in the name of his hit TV show, The Science of Seduction, had revealed even a hint of an answer. Even the work he’d done on proving the effectiveness of quantum chemical models for protein analysis—which had nearly landed him a Nobel Prize—hadn’t helped. And Dante was beyond frustrated by the lack of progress in unraveling this chemistry problem named Dr. Harper Livingston.
Dante and Harper had been friends for a decade. She was the standard by which he judged all other women. Which meant Dante spent a lot of energy being irritated that he could never find a woman as beautiful or as smart as Harper. She did it for him, in all the right ways.
Or wrong ways, more like. Because they were friends. His relationship with Harper was the one constant in his life, the only thing he could count on. They had a sacred bond he valued, one he refused to disrupt.
Dante had pretty much convinced himself the only reason he had such a thing for Harper lay solely in her unavailability. Surely if they tried taking their relationship to the next level, it would be a dismal failure. Once he had a taste of that forbidden fruit, Harper would instantly lose her attractiveness. He’d never think of her that way again.
The problem was that once he’d started imagining just how delicious that fruit would be, he couldn’t stop.
This morning, Harper had called to say she was at the Dallas airport, about to get on a plane and would be at his doorstep in two hours. She hadn’t come to visit him in Los Angeles in the three years since he’d moved here. Something big was up. Seemed like the opportune time to solve his chemistry problem, one way or the other.
LAX was one screaming baby short of hell. Like always. Only Harper could drag him to the airport when he had no plans to fly. Dante checked his Breva watch, which featured an anemometer that he’d geeked out over even though he didn’t sail. Harper’s plane had landed ten minutes ago but no passengers had disembarked yet.
Finally, a stream of people carrying backpacks, pillows and water bottles burst through the gate. Dante leaned against the nearest post, arms crossed, to wait for the woman he’d come to collect.
Harper wasn’t hard to spot. Her flame-red hair stood out from the crowd, and she carried herself differently from everyone else, barreling ahead with no fear. In Harper’s world, hesitation was for losers. It was his favorite of her qualities.
She caught sight of him and instantly lit up with a whole-face smile that whacked him in the gut with unexpected heat. Before he could process that, she dropped her bags and flung herself into his arms. Automatically, he balanced his weight to take on hers, snuggling her deep in his embrace, because holy God she felt good.
“Hey,” he murmured into her hair, breathing it in.
Harper’s perfume wound through his senses, infusing his blood with her essence. Which was not how perfume worked. At best, the scent should remind him of food and thus something his body needed to survive. It was supposed to smell nice, not make him want to kiss her until she couldn’t breathe.
He ignored the heat. It wasn’t easy, but he did have a lot of practice.
Harper—mercifully—pulled back enough that Dante didn’t have to worry about her noticing the inappropriate stuff going on down below.
“What are you doing here?” she exclaimed as she drank him in with her bright gaze. “No one has picked me up at the gate since 9/11. I forgot how nice it is. How did you get past security without a plane ticket?”
He chuckled. “Simple. I bought one. Surprise.”
Dante traveled so often for his job as a TV show host that he could always change the ticket later when he planned to actually use it. Or if not, so what? Harper was worth blowing a few hundred bucks over.
She socked him on the arm. “You didn’t have to do that. But I love that you did. I thought you were filming today. I was totally expecting to take a cab.”
And if she’d been anyone else, he’d have sent a car. Shrugging, he picked up her carry-on bag and shouldered it. “We finished early and now I’m off for two weeks, which I plan to spend with you. Perfect timing for an impromptu visit.”
Perfect timing to figure out how to kill his attraction to her. Surely it would only take a kiss. One simple kiss, it would be weird and he’d be done. Back to being friends.
“Your girlfriend won’t expect to spend time with you? The supermodel. What’s her name?” Harper snapped her fingers a couple of times as if to jog her memory.
“Selena,” he supplied. “Actually, we’re not really an item anymore.”
He’d lost interest in Selena as soon as he’d started seeing her, what, like six months ago? But it was good for his career to be photographed with her, and the sex wasn’t terrible, so he’d held on much longer than he should have. She was a sweet girl in a long line of sweet girls who developed instant Vacant Eye when Dante dared throw X-ray crystallography or self-synthesizing materials into conversation. Harper was the only woman he’d ever been able to talk to about anything and everything.
“That’s too bad. I’m sorry. But I’m sure it’s for the best since there’s no way she was good enough for you.” Harper grinned. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Cass is pregnant.”
“That’s fantastic,” he said and meant it. Babies were great. For other people.
Harper and Cass had been friends a long time, since college, when they’d devised a plan to open a company together, along with two other friends, Alex and Trinity. Fyra Cosmetics had thus been born and Harper had made a place for herself as the chief science officer. He was so proud of what she’d accomplished since getting her doctorate in analytical chemistry. Dante had known all four ladies for a decade, but as he had the most in common with Harper he’d naturally become closest to the redhead.
“Gage is making a big deal out of it.” Harper sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes. “As husbands go, he’s perfect for Cass. But I would shoot him if he treated me the way he does her. ‘You’re working too much,’ he says. ‘Let me take care of you.’ And my favorite, ‘You might be craving potato chips, but you need to crave vegetables.’ Men. Like they know anything about pregnancy.”
Dante couldn’t imagine a woman as fierce as Cass letting Gage railroad her. “His heart is in the right place. How is Alex doing, speaking of pregnancy?”
“Much better now that she’s further into her second trimester. No more morning sickness.”
He hadn’t realized so much of what was happening with Harper’s friends revolved around babies. The whole subject made him vaguely uncomfortable, no doubt because of his own history. Sure, people started out wanting kids, but no one could know that they’d still want one next year, or the year after that. After being shuttled from home to home as a foster kid, Dante knew that fickleness firsthand.
Dante guided Harper toward baggage claim. She laced her fingers with his and held his hand as they walked, chatting about her friends and business partners.
It was companionable. Or at least that was probably how she viewed it.
Dante had a burning awareness of her that was only heightened by the glow radiating from Harper’s
