He grinned. “That’s why I love you, Kat. You don’t take my shit.”

“I don’t take anybody’s shit.”

“Except Cole’s.”

I frowned, because I had to silently admit he had a point.

Because this was Pity Katrina Day, Flynn gave me a pass on our usual deal where he cooks and I clean. So while he gathered the plates, rinsed, and loaded the dishwasher, I looked idly on, my mind wandering over the conversation.

The truth was, even if there wasn’t the whole awkward friend thing hanging between us, I still wouldn’t sleep with Flynn. I rarely slept with anyone, actually, because I knew damn well what would happen. How I would react. How I would shut down.

That’s the main reason I knew that this craving for Cole was legitimate—and why I had to either pursue it or shut it down hard and fast and forever. Because even though I knew what would happen—even though I knew what I would remember, and even though I was certain that the shadows would creep up and consume me—I still wanted him more desperately and more tangibly than I’d ever wanted any man.

I caught myself shivering, and I hugged myself to ward off the memories.

Flynn caught the movement and frowned. “You okay?”

“Just a chill. I slept crappy last night.”

“Big surprise there.” He finished off his drink and looked at me hard. “You need to talk to him, plain and simple. You know that, right? If you’re not going to just drop it, then you need to suck it up and have the conversation. The guy wants you. You want him. You’ve come damn close, and yet he hasn’t laid you out and tossed up your skirt. You need to ask why.”

“I’ve tried.”

“Try harder.”

I shrugged. I was getting tired of this being all about me. “You’re still cool with renting a room in the house, right?”

He didn’t answer for a second, and I was afraid he was going to comment on my very obvious tactic to change the subject. To my relief, when he answered it was to say, “Hell, yes. But you really should let me split the mortgage.”

“No way. It’s my house. Or it will be next week. You’re renting a room. We already made this deal.” I knew that money was tight for him. The airline kept cutting his shifts, and the tips for tending bar only went so far. I really didn’t want him to go back to the gigolo thing, but if money got tight, I was afraid that he’d do just that.

I pushed back from the table. “Thanks for the breakfast and the conversation. I should get out of here. I have errands and then wedding planning and then I’m going to crash early, because tomorrow I’m spending the pre-dawn hours slinging coffee. My life is so freaking glamorous.”

“I know I’ve said it before, but it’s pretty damn cool the way you managed to pull together buying a house on a barista’s salary.”

“I’m the kind of girl who gets what she wants,” I said, not mentioning that my plan had required faking a job at the gallery and pulling the down payment from the safe deposit box where I stored the cash I’d saved over the years from my various cons.

“Is that what this is about?” he asked.

I looked at him, baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“Cole,” he said. “Are you pushing so hard because he’s something you want but didn’t get?”

“No,” I said automatically. “Of course not.” But as I walked to my room to finish getting dressed, I had to wonder. Was everything I thought I felt for Cole just tweaked pride? Or was it truly something deeper?

And when you got right down to it, how the hell was I supposed to know the difference?

Since I thought that Flynn might be right, I decided to blow off a few house-related errands in favor of going by the gallery to see Cole.

“He hasn’t come in yet,” Liz said. She was a pretty blonde who used to be one of the dancers at Destiny.

One of the cooler things that the knights did was help the girls who worked at the club find the kind of jobs where they didn’t have to take off their clothes if they didn’t want to. They even paid for school or vocational training, and Tyler owned a placement agency that a lot of the girls used when they were ready to move on.

The really cool thing was that a number of the girls had been snared in a white trafficking ring, and the guys had managed to get them cut loose and gainfully employed. It was a low-profile operation, but both Angie and Sloane were so proud of what their men had done that I had heard about it as well.

Now all three of the knights worked on and off with a federal task force that had taken down the ringleaders of the trafficking scheme. The case was still being investigated, but I imagined there would be a huge, media-circus-worthy trial one of these days.

“The gala went over great,” I told Liz. “You did an awesome job putting it together.”

“Thanks,” she said, looking pleased. “Do you want to leave him a note or something?”

I wasn’t sure that I did, but it seemed odd to show up and not say a thing. Besides, leaving a note was what civilized people did. “Can I just go back and put it on his desk?”

“Sure,” she said, giving me a winning smile.

This time, when I walked down the corridor of offices and workspaces, I saw that the door to Cole’s studio was open. I caught a glimpse of something familiar and paused, then found myself drawn in by the image of a woman’s naked back—an image I’d seen before.

The canvas was propped on an easel, and though I’d originally thought that this was the same portrait that had intrigued me last night at the gala, I soon realized that the angle of this one was slightly different. It was another study of the same woman.

There was, however, one very obvious difference. This one was signed in a familiar scrawl.

Cole.

I remembered our conversation and bit back a smile. No wonder Cole had said the gallery would continue to feature the artist’s work.

Without realizing it, I’d walked all the way into the studio. Now I was only inches from the canvas. The perspective on the woman was almost the same as that of the portrait displayed in the gallery, with some subtle yet important differences.

Like the original portrait, the woman in this painting suggested beauty and purity. She seemed vibrant, yet in control. Alive and aware and exceptional. A goddess, only here on earth.

It was a testament to Cole’s skill that he could evoke such a range of emotions and such vivid interpretations simply from his paintbrush. I’d known he was talented, but standing here now I was struck by the fact that his talent edged up against genius.

I took a step back, wanting to simply soak in the image. Right then, it was as close as I was going to get to Cole, and I didn’t want to waste the moment or the opportunity.

Unlike the portrait hanging in the gallery, this image wasn’t shielded by the fountain, and so there was no barrier between the woman and the audience. The details of her back were more clear, including a tan line that gave her a more human quality. On top of that, the image dipped lower, showing a few more inches of her hips and the two small dimples just above the swell of her ass.

I had dimples like that. When I was a kid, I’d hated them. Now, I considered them an asset. A little sexy, a little flirty. I had to assume Cole thought so, too, otherwise why choose—