Kiera instantly yelled at me. “Kellan Kyle! Are you in a restaurant!”

Fuck. Guess I hadn’t muffled the phone well enough. Damn it. Hoping humor would diffuse the bomb, I said, “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call this a restaurant…greasy spoon, maybe.” The waitress lightly laughed as she left our table. Evan just kept shaking his head at me.

Kiera sounded mortified. “Please tell me you are not about to be arrested for indecent exposure.”

I had to laugh at that. “No, I’m not.”

“You faked all that? Why would you do that to me?” She sounded stunned, and I immediately felt guilty.

With a sigh, I said, “I never expected you to go along with it and when you did, well, I wasn’t about to stop you from having your moment.” Lowering my voice, I told her my simple truth. “Even if I can’t come right now…I want you to.”

She was quiet a moment, then she said, “I may have exaggerated my part in it…but I was thinking about it.”

I laughed at that. She couldn’t really be mad if we were both faking, right? “Well, we’ll call that a practice round then. Next time…I’ll be somewhere private, and you will actually touch yourself. Deal?”

As she murmured, “Yeah,” Justin leaned forward, a huge grin on his face. “Kellan, tell her hi for me.”

Frowning, I shook my head at him. No, I wasn’t going to let her know that he was right here listening, that they all were. She’d kill me. Unfortunately…Kiera must have heard him say that. “Oh my God, please tell me that you’re sitting alone.”

Well, shit. Will I get in more trouble if I tell her the truth? Or will she appreciate the honesty? “Um, well, no…the guys are here…and Justin. He says hey, by the way.” No point in not telling her hello now. Justin lowered his head to the table as he laughed.

Kiera screeched, “Oh my God!” And then the line went dead silent.

“Hello? Kiera? Are you still there?” Lowering the phone, I saw that the call was definitely over. Damn it. With a frown, I looked over at Evan. “She hung up on me.”

He started laughing so hard, his eyes watered. “You’re such a dick,” he said around chuckles.

I pursed my lips at him, then looked around the table; they were all dying of laughter. “I wasn’t trying to be a dick. I was trying to be nice.” That just made them laugh harder. Their laughter was getting to me, and I started chuckling too. “Guess I got carried away…” Maybe I should have gone somewhere else to do that. It just hadn’t occurred to me at the time. Oops.

Wiping his eyes, Griffin said in a half snicker, half singsong, “Kellan Kyle, you’re my hero.”