Joy laughs lightly and glides her thumb across his full bottom lip, wiping off the lipstick. She’s surprised there’s still tint on her lips given the amount of champagne she’s consumed. A circle of lipstick dirties the rim of her champagne flute. It’s an irritating side effect, and the main reason she forgoes wearing any brand of lipstick aside from on special occasions. It leaves its mark everywhere. She’ll have to address that with Vintage Chic’s long-lasting lipstick line’s product manager. Their eighteen-hour wearable shades wear off in less than seven. It’s one of their customers’ chief complaints. The line needs to be rebranded or the formula reworked. Unless Joy comes up with a new formula first. Hmmm, she thinks. She can present the solution to the department head. The promotion from lab technician to junior cosmetic chemist she’s had her sights on would be hers.

Mark twirls her and draws her into his chest. “What do you think would have happened if your backpack didn’t leap from the chair, hmm?” Mark rubs his nose against hers, pins her with his gaze.

Joy gasps in mock horror. “Backpacks don’t leap. Someone . . .”—she taps his chest—“tipped the chair.”

“You have no proof.”

Joy pinches his ribs and he laughs.

“Cheater. I was pushed,” he adds.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Joy teases.

But he’s right. Mark had been pushed, and Joy assumed he tipped the chair and her backpack slid off the seat. Though she didn’t see it happen. Her attention had been on Mark’s impressive coffee-balancing skill.

She’d met him midway through her sophomore year at UCLA. He was in the master’s program studying business analytics. Joy was majoring in chemical engineering and had just nabbed the last table at an off-campus coffee shop to study for her physics final. The café-style tabletops barely had space for her coffee cup and textbook, let alone room for someone else’s mug and their study material.

Joy settled into a chair and dropped her backpack on the empty seat beside her so that she could easily access her notes and pencils. She launched her laptop, textbook open in her lap, and started working through a practice exam when a shadow fell over her table.

“Is this seat taken?”

Joy looked up into a pair of warm brown eyes. It was the guy who’d been behind her in line. Cute and of average height, just shy of six feet. His broad shoulders tapered to a lean waist and muscled thighs. He wore a Bruins rugby sweatshirt.