“Same,” she said, giving his fingers a quick squeeze. “But.” She leaned in. “It doesn’t explain why you’re acting like a nervous virgin in here.”

Clarke barked out a quick laugh. “I am, aren’t I?”

She arched her eyebrows with a silent mm-hmm expression.

“Honestly?” he said, glancing around at the walls covered in tiny bits of lace and silk. “I haven’t spent much time in lingerie stores. I’ll confess I feel completely out of my element.”

“I suppose,” she said thoughtfully, pulling her hands away from his, picking up a peach-colored thong, and giving the elastic a very gentle tug, “that it must be different seeing all the unmentionables in their original habitat and not being peeled off some woman’s naked body.”

Clarke felt heat rush from his face to his groin, immensely grateful that Audrey was staring thoughtfully around the store and not at him, because his body’s response to her words was immediate and unrestrained.

His brain’s response was panicked.

Because the naked body that had flashed through his mind at her words wasn’t some faceless woman of his past. It was Audrey.

Clarke dragged a palm over his face, grateful when Michelle returned with a beer and glass of wine in hand. “See anything you like?” she asked with a smile, handing Clarke the beer.

He managed an inarticulate grunt.

“You’ll have to excuse my fiancé,” Audrey said with a reassuring smile at the saleswoman. “His testosterone’s flaring up.”

Michelle laughed. “It’s a very feminine space. We sometimes joke about putting a flat screen in the back just to make the guys feel more at ease.”

Clarke didn’t need a flat screen. He needed a cold shower.

He followed Audrey and Michelle to the back of the store. The two women were discussing panty lines, and before he could order his eyes to keep to themselves, his gaze dropped to the backside of the brunette he would be marrying in a month’s time.

Interesting that after all these years being her friend, he’d never noticed how shapely her butt was, how perfectly—

“Clarke?”

He dragged his eyes back up, saw that she was looking over her shoulder at him with a puzzled look on her face. “Michelle asked if we had any plans for the honeymoon. I was telling her you’d insisted it be a surprise.”

Clarke had insisted on no such thing. He and Audrey had never talked about a honeymoon, but he was sure as hell thinking about it now. Thinking about her in a tiny bikini or one of the skimpy white nightgowns in the front window of the store or wearing nothing at all…

He shook his head. This had to stop. It was Audrey, for God’s sake.