“Now you’re just mocking me,” he says with mock despair. “I kind of like this other fridge over here.” Before he can walk away, I grip his arm and pull him back to the other one.

“If it were me, I’d go with this one.”

“I have news for you, M.” He leans in with a half smile and presses his lips to my ear. “It’s always going to be you.” He winks and walks away and I’m left in a puddle of mush. God, he says the sweetest things at just the right time. I can’t even remember why I was so pissed last night. He’s mine.

He stops at the end of the aisle and turns back to me with that naughty smile still in place. “Let’s pick out a dishwasher and we might as well grab a washer and dryer while we’re here.”

“You’re spoiling the house rotten.” I walk toward him and bite my lip when his eyes roam up and down my body, then smile when he reaches my face.

You’re spoiling me rotten.

“It’s for you,” he says simply with a shrug, as if men say things like that every day, threads his fingers through mine and leads me to finish choosing the appliances for our house.

***

“I didn’t realize we’d be painting the cabinets today,” I say and load my brush with more white paint and spread it over the sanded wood. “You must have cleared this all out while I was gone.”

“I did. I finished sanding them down the night before you got home.”

I’m standing on the old Formica countertop, painting the tops of the cabinets bright white. We’ve been working on them all afternoon and are almost finished.

Mark’s phone vibrates on the countertop by my feet and I glance down at it to see Lena’s name flashing with the incoming call.

“Lena’s calling,” I say and hand Mark his phone.

“Hello?” He winks at me and smiles when the other woman begins talking. “Wow, he’s willingly coming out? Sounds fun, but let me check with Mer.” He lowers the phone from his face. “Lena and Colin would like to take us out for dinner tonight. I’m warning you, Colin is pasty white, like Luke in Nightwalker. The man never goes outside.”

I chuckle and finish painting my end of the cabinets. “Sounds good to me.”

“We’re in,” he says into the phone. “Great. We’ll see you then.” He hangs up and helps me off the counter, lifting me into his arms. I plant my hands on his shoulders and kiss him quickly, then rub at a spot of paint on his cheek.

“How much time do we have?”

“About an hour.”

“Good.” I help him gather our dirty brushes and clean up our mess then take his hand in mine and lead him to the stairs. “You need to finish what you started in that store today.”

“What did I start?”

“Horniness.”

“Oh, I can definitely finish that, baby.”

***

“So then, he told the professor to kiss his ass and flipped him off on the way out of the lab!” Lena exclaims, laughing hard.

“You did?” I stare at Mark, who is blushing bright red.

“Yeah. He pissed me off. I was right.”

“You were right, but you also got yourself thrown out of that class and had to repeat it the next semester.” Colin shakes his head and takes a drink of his beer. Colin is not pasty white. In fact, his skin is a dark, rich mocha and he has the kindest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. He’s very tall, at least six foot five, and lean. He shaves his head bald.

Colin and Lena make a very unlikely couple, but they clearly couldn’t be more in love with each other.

They’re also all incredibly smart. When they start talking about work, I can’t keep up.

“English,” I beg and hit my forehead with the palm of my hand. “Speak English, not Super-Smart-Genius. I can’t understand you.”

“It’s all boring anyway,” Mark says and pulls me against his side.

“It does sound kind of sexy when you pull out the genius-speak,” I say and kiss his cheek. “Kind of like a foreign language.”

“You like that do you?” He smiles that naughty smile. “I’ll tell you all kinds of things later.”

“Awesome.”

“Does my vast rocket science knowledge turn you on?” Colin asks Lena while wiggling his eyebrows.

“Oh, yes, definitely.” She snorts and sips her sparkling water.

He leans down to whisper in her ear and to my surprise, she blushes bright red. “Now that turns me on,” she says.

“Why do I feel like we just witnessed something we shouldn’t have?” Mark asks with a frown. “Should we leave you alone?”

“Nah, I just gave her something to think about for a while,” Colin replies and winks down at his wife.

Lena clears her throat and sips her drink again.

“I need more dirt on Mark’s college years,” I inform them. “Tell me everything.”

“There isn’t any dirt,” Mark insists.

“Come on. Frat parties? Girls lined up at his door? Spring Break trips to Daytona?”

“Not really,” Colin replies. “He was too focused on graduating early. Which he did. A full year early.”

“I’ve never known anyone to get both a bachelor’s and master’s in five years,” Lena says and shakes her head. “He was like a man possessed.”

“I told you,” Mark says with a shrug. “If I worked my ass off, I wasn’t thinking about you.”