“You make it sound so easy,” she muttered.

He looked down at her. “Isn’t it? What am I missing that makes it more complicated?”

Oh nothing. Just the itty-bitty, minor fact that I think I’m falling in love with you.

But she couldn’t. She’d promised.

Not just him, but herself. No more falling in love with men who don’t love you back.

She’d played fast and careless with her heart once, and the darn organ still felt like it had a hole in it.

Never again.

If she and Cole were going to do this, they stuck to the rules. Colleagues during the week, sex on the weekends if they felt like it.

And she definitely felt like it.

It would be enough. It had to.

But then he took her hand again and launched into a new idea he had for a spread on the top college football recruits, and Penelope decided to give herself the rest of the walk home to pretend that it could be like this every day.

It was the happiest ten minutes of her life.

Chapter 20

After rifling around in her purse without finding anything resembling a lipstick, Penelope dumped the contents on her desk.

Surely she had a lipstick in here. Any lipstick would do.

Of course, even if there were a lipstick tube mixed in with the tampons and pens and ever-growing assortment of tickets to various New York sports events, there was no guarantee that it wasn’t expired.

Did lipstick expire? It was stuff like this that Penelope had never thought to figure out. Most of the time she didn’t even think to put lipstick on, much less know where it was.

Cole Sharpe’s other women likely knew their way around lipstick. Take, for example, that gorgeous blonde with her tongue in Cole’s mouth whom she’d walked in on not so long ago…

Penelope pushed the thought aside. It was Monday. For today, and the next four days, Cole Sharpe was her colleague. He could kiss whomever he wanted.

And if that person wasn’t her, she’d splinter into a million pieces.

“No,” Penelope muttered to herself. “You are a strong, independent woman. You don’t need a man to complete you. You don’t need lipstick to be a better person.”

Which was a good thing. There was no lipstick anywhere in this mess of stuff. She’d just have to go to lunch with Julie Greene as she was.

At least she was wearing a dress today.

It was one of the few that she owned, but after her sleepover at Cole’s last night that involved, well, not much sleep, she’d been feeling feminine and pretty.

The light green sweater dress had called to her.

High heels, on the other hand, had not, but her comfy yellow flats worked with the dress. At least, she was pretty sure…

Penelope’s cell rang as she was in the process of putting everything back in her purse. She picked it up. “Hey, baby sister.”

Janie made a huffing noise on the other end. “Finally. I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for over a week.”

Penelope felt a stab of guilt. “I know, I’m so sorry. Work’s been crazy, and Mom hogs all the phone time I do have. And Dad. Did you know he’s taking up fishing? Can we please veto that?”

“Working on it,” Janie said. “But why do I get the feeling you’re trying to change the subject? I’ve sort of been hoping there was a more interesting reason why you haven’t called me back. Maybe someone tall, dark, and handsome…”

Tall, blond, and handsome, actually.

The words didn’t come out. If she was going to tell anyone about the weird thing going on between her and Cole, it should Janie. But her sister would ask questions that Penelope didn’t know the answers to.

Or worse, questions she did know the answers to, but wasn’t ready to say out loud. Or in her head. Or at all.

“The new job has been crazy,” Penelope repeated instead.

Not a total lie. Even with Cole as co-editor, the fast-paced world of Oxford was more than enough to keep her busy.

“Tell me you love it,” Janie demanded. “It’s the only way I’m going to let you stay in New York instead of inciting you to get your tiny, cellulite-free butt back to Chicago where it belongs.”

“I do love it,” Penelope said, as she sat down in her chair. A quick glance at the clock told her she had a few minutes before she needed to head out to meet Julie for lunch. “New York’s…crazy. But good crazy.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Janie said. “But please, please tell me you booked your flight for Fourth of July. You know I’m no match for mom’s overindulgence with the red, white, and blue food coloring without you.”

“Yup, was going to do that today,” Penelope said, pulling a sticky pad to her and writing Book flight home.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t looking forward to seeing her family in July. She missed them like crazy. It was just…

Well, oddly enough, Chicago didn’t feel as much like home as she thought it would at this stage.

It was like New York had very slowly, very subtly sunk its teeth into her.

Her phone beeped, and Penelope sighed. “Okay, there’s no way Mom doesn’t have some sort of radar for when we’re talking on the phone.”

She pulled her phone away from her face to check caller ID and froze.

It wasn’t her mom. Or her dad.

It was Evan.

What to do?

Her brain was screaming at her to ignore it. To send him straight to voicemail.

Her heart, on the other hand…