“Why should I?” I said, feeling myself warm. “I don’t even like you.”

Kisten leaned over the counter as I returned. The faultless blue of his eyes caught and held mine. It was obvious by his rakish grin that he knew I was weakening. “All the better reason to go out with me,” he said. “If I can show you a good time for a lousy sixty bucks, think what someone you like could do. All I need is one promise.”

The egg was cold in my hands, and I set it down. “What?” I asked, and Ivy stirred.

His smile widened. “No shirking.”

“Beg pardon?”

He opened the tub of butter and dipped his finger into it, licking it slowly clean. “I can’t make you feel attractive if you stiffen up every time I touch you.”

“I didn’t before,” I said, my thoughts returning to the elevator. God help me, I had almost done him right there against the wall.

“This is different,” he said. “It’s a date, and I would give my eyeteeth to know why women expect men to behave differently on a date than any other time.”

“Because you do,” I said.

He gave a raised-eyebrow look to Ivy. Straightening, he reached across the counter to cup my jaw. I jerked back, brow furrowed.

“Nope,” he said as he drew away. “I won’t ruin my reputation by taking you out on a sixty-dollar date for nothing. If I can’t touch you, it’s a no-go.”

I stared at him, feeling my heart pound. “Good.”

Shocked, Kisten blinked. “Good?” he questioned as Ivy smirked.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling the butter to me and scooping out about a half cup with a wooden spoon. “I didn’t want to go out with you anyway. You’re too full of yourself. Think you can manipulate anyone into doing anything. Your ego-testicle attitude makes me sick.”

Ivy laughed as she unfolded herself and jumped lightly to the floor without a sound. “I told you,” she said. “Pay up.”

Shoulders shifting in a sigh, he twisted to reach his wallet in a back pocket, pulling out a fifty and shoving it into her hand. She raised a thin eyebrow and made another tally mark in the air. An unusual smile was on her as she stretched to drop it into the cookie jar atop the fridge.

“Typical,” Kisten said, his eyes dramatically sad. “Try to do something nice for a person, cheer her up, and what do I get? Abused and robbed.”

Ivy took three long steps to come up behind him. Curling an arm across his chest, she leaned close and whispered in his torn ear, “Poor baby.” They looked good together, her silky sultriness and his confident masculinity.

He didn’t react at all as her fingers slipped between the buttons of his shirt. “You would have enjoyed yourself,” he said to me.

Feeling as if I’d passed some test, I pushed the butter off the spoon and licked my finger clean. “How would you know?”