Maybe now he'd realize how perfect they were for each other. Three years she'd spent living next door to him, three companionable, let's-be-pals, excruciatingly platonic years. Last night everything had changed.

Oh, boy, how it had changed. Feeling giddy, Chloe snuggled closer to Nick's warmth and fought the urge to wake him up just to tell him how happy she was. That wouldn't be fair, not after the late night they'd spent together. He deserved at least another ten minutes' sleep.

Maybe five.

Nick snuffled and turned over. His arm whipped from her waist and sailed toward her head like a sleepy stealth missile. Chloe ducked just as it smacked into her pillow. Whew. She never knew sleeping with a guy could be so dangerous.

Too excited to sleep anymore, she used his movement for cover and slipped out of bed to go freshen up. Maybe she'd even put together a little breakfast à deux. After last night, they could both do with a recharge.

Her feet hit the floor. Behind her the covers rustled and Nick gave a soft muffled moan before going back to sleep, and Chloe's heart skipped a little higher. Nick was in her bed!

Nick was with her.

Oh, sure, she and Nick had never shared more than a hug before last night. And yeah, he did happen to be just slightly on the rebound from what'shername, the mean, commitment-hungry brunette he'd been dating until yesterday. But, Chloe told herself as she emerged from the bathroom and pattered down the hall, that was all in the past. From now on things would be different. Way different. Last night he'd seen another side to her, and things could never go back to the way they were before.

Never go back. In the kitchen, the thought of losing all the closeness she and Nick had shared over the years made her pause. Could their friendship survive becoming lovers? What if they'd ruined everything? What if they broke up?

What if she was jumping to conclusions? We can do this, she told herself. We'll be a match made in heaven. So what if they were sort of an unlikely combination? So were her clothes most of the time, and they still managed to work okay.

Chloe glanced down at herself, taking in the purple polka-dotted boxer shorts she usually slept in, the bright orange bra she'd substituted for her T-shirt in the name of maximum sexiness, and the way her fingers were shaking, and tried to gather her courage. It was just Nick, for Pete's sake. Her Nick. There was nothing to worry about.

Right. Before she could angst any further, she got busy putting together breakfast-a pot of coffee, a box of chocolate donuts, and a bowl of dried banana chips. Okay, so it wasn't exactly health food, but it would have to do for now. Juggling the wicker basket she'd put everything into, Chloe stopped at the threshold of her bedroom and warily looked in.

Sunlight rushed in between the slats of her bedroom's white window shutters and brightened the midnight blue walls, streaking glimmers of gold across plants and pictures and the man sprawled across her bed. Discarded clothes-his and hers-trailed across the snowy carpet, making a path to the arched foot of her big wooden sleigh bed. Chloe tiptoed to it and set the breakfast basket on the bureau beside it, unable to wait any longer. It was time for Nick to wake up...and she was just the woman to make sure he did it in the nicest possible way.

A plaintive meow came from beside the bed. Moe, her fat orange tabby, arched against the footboard and meowed louder, the sound filled with feline reproach at not being first as usual on Chloe's morning agenda. "Shhh," she told the cat, giving him a fond rub between the ears. "Just give me this one morning, and it's Fancy Feast for a week. I swear."

Praying for cooperation, Chloe lifted the bed covers and slid beneath them. Warmth surrounded her. Geez, Nick's body heat could power a whole city if they could find a way to harness it. She ought to ask him about that for his next invention. Smiling in the dark, Chloe took her own turn at inventiveness, sliding her palm over his hairy shin, his knee, his hard, muscular thigh...a game of blind man's bluff for grown ups. He stirred and moaned, encouraging her without words to roam higher. She did.

Nick's fingers wandered to the nape of her neck, stroking and teasing, and the feel of his hand against her skin called forth a million memories from last night. With a sigh, Chloe crawled higher. Morning breath be damned. She wanted to kiss the man she loved.

She raised the covers and poked her head out. Nick's linebacker-sized shoulders, tousled honey-streaked hair, and adorably rumpled face filled her vision. Slowly, groggily, he opened his eyes and blinked his baby-blues in her direction.

Her heart softened. Some part of her was obviously a sucker for the little-boy-lost look. If possible, she felt even more in love with him than before. Nick blinked again, and Chloe realized it wasn't tenderness that made him look like that-it was poor eyesight. His natty wire rims were still lying on the bedside table where he'd left them last night.

"Nick?" she whispered, smoothing her hand across his chest. "Good morning."

His mouth opened. He blinked harder. "Chloe?"

The raspy, intimate sound of his voice thrilled her. "Mmmm hmmm, it's Chloe." She twirled her fingertips in a heated whorl of his chest hair and smiled in a way she hoped looked worldly and sophisticated. "Good morning...darling."

"Aaack!" Nick shot upward, his eyes widening. His head cracked into her sleigh bed.

"Oh!" She reached for him, crooning whatever comforting things came to mind as she tried to examine him for headboard-induced injuries. Yanking his head out of reach, grimacing at the movement, he scrambled higher onto the pillows. Obviously, Nick wasn't an early riser.

Or at least his whole body wasn't. She wouldn't have guessed that about him.

"Are you all right?" How could she have known he'd wake up so grumpy? She'd never slept with him before.

Frowning, he pushed himself up on his elbows, and her gaze drifted to his bare chest and stomach. Grumpy or not, Nick did keep a surprisingly attention-getting body hidden beneath that stupid white lab coat he was always wearing. Who'd have guessed?

He saw her ogling and jerked the sheets higher. What was the matter with him? Why, a person would think he hadn't...that they hadn't...

Oh, God.

His expression matched her thoughts.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Nick blinked harder. His mouth straightened, then gaped open again as Chloe crawled all the way out of the covers and sat up. His gaze went straight to her sheer orange bra. "You-you-you're not even dressed!"

He glanced around him, looking increasingly incredulous. "Is this your bedroom?"

Chloe handed him his eyeglasses.

"It is your bedroom!"

She wouldn't have thought things could get worse-until they did. Shock made her nipples perk tight against her wispy bra, drawing his attention in the only way she had absolutely no control over. Feeling her face heat, Chloe drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

Nick's gaze dropped to her snug purple-dotted silk boxers, and something akin to pain flashed across his face. "Aww, hell."

This time she recognized that gruffness in his tone for what it was-the remnants of a massive hangover from the Kahlúa, coffee, and sympathy she'd served him last night.

"Tell me this isn't what it looks like, Chloe."

Hurt stole her breath. His pleading glance finished her off. He didn't remember.

"Tell me I didn't take advantage of you last night," Nick went on. His hand fisted in the sheets, but she imagined it caressing her cheek instead, pretended he'd smile and tell her he'd been kidding. Just a little morning-after humor, ha ha.

"I-" Her voice cracked and faltered. She frowned briefly and tried again. "Well, I, uhh-"

He must've sensed something was wrong, because he stopped her with a touch and curled his fingers beneath her chin. He tilted her face upward, looking at her carefully with that analytical scientist's expression of his. It wasn't a cheek caress, but it was near enough to tenderness that Chloe closed her eyes to savor it.

"I couldn't stand it if I thought I'd hurt you," Nick said. "I know how it feels to be used, remember?"

She remembered, all right. He meant what'shername. The one who'd decided her ticking biological clock couldn't handle Nick Steadman standard time any longer. The one who'd broken his heart and sent him straight to Chloe's door for solace.

"Chloe?"

There was nothing else to do. She loved him too much to tell him a truth he so obviously didn't want to hear. So she opened her eyes and gave him a choked little laugh.

"Who, me? And you?" She rolled her eyes at the notion. "Nah, don't flatter yourself, genius. Nothing happened here last night except too much Kahlúa, too much talking, and way too much sympathy." She put her hand to his forehead and tried out a wobbly-feeling smile. "I think it's gone to your head."

"But-"

"Your virtue's safe with me." Chloe levered herself off the mattress and inadvertently treated him to a full-on cleavage shot. Geez. Maybe he'd think she always dressed this way to sleep.

"Your virtue's safe, but your body," she added to distract him, ". . . well, that's another story."

She bounced off the bed and shrugged into the lab coat he'd left on her bedroom doorknob last night, giving herself double bonus points for hiding the tears in her eyes and getting herself covered up all at the same time.

"My body?"

"Yeah-your hangover. Sorry about that."

The bed creaked. Chloe, busy swabbing surreptitiously at her burning eyelids, didn't dare look to see what Nick was doing.

"It's not your fault." His voice was muted, hoarse with hangover mouth and leftover sleepiness. "I brought it all on myself. I knew me and-"

"What'shername?"

"-weren't headed in the same direction. I wanted hot sex-"

"I'm not listening," she sang out, putting her hands over her ears.

"Yes, you are. I see your pinkies lifting. And anyway, you must've heard worse last night."

"You don't remember?" Her voice sounded as hoarse as his-but for different reasons. Funny that grief and Kahlúa would have the same disastrous side effects.

"After the fourth cup of your demon Kahlúa and coffee, it's all kind of a blur," Nick admitted.

The admission made her heart twist. The most life-changing night of her life, and he couldn't remember a minute of it.

She heard the sheets rustle, and pretended to button the lab jacket she had on as an excuse not to face him. Why torture herself with ogling what she couldn't have?

He mumbled something about missing underwear, then, ". . . What was I saying?"

"Hot sex."

"Oh, yeah." The bed creaked again. "I wanted hot sex, and she wanted two-point-four kids and a dog. It just wasn't meant to be."

Not that he seemed too broken-up over it this morning. Chloe guessed the worst had passed.

Maybe he was getting used to it. Eventually, every relationship he had smashed to smithereens over the same issues: setting down, getting married, having kids. With Nick, his inventions and the work that subsidized them came first. To his credit, he was always perfectly up-front about it.

Unfortunately, most women he dated didn't believe him. They took one look at that smile, those shoulders, and the wit behind those baby blues...and decided they'd be the one to reform him.

Ha.

"Good thing I have you to pick up the pieces of my mangled love life, Chloe."

"What are friends for?" she choked out, giving him an offhanded wave.

"Drinking beer, watching football, and cruising for chicks," Nick said.

The mattress groaned, the bedcovers rustled, then came the sound of denim being dragged across the carpet. She pictured him naked, stepping into his jeans and snugging them up over his...

"Not necessarily in that order," he finished one zip later.

"Ha, ha. Chicks, huh?" How could he banter with her like this? If she didn't get away from him soon, she'd be a bawling mess of tears and confessions. "That's really evolved of you, Nick."

The familiar, beloved sound of his laughter made Chloe feel warm all over. No one could turn her to mush faster than Nick could. No one could...stop it! She took a deep breath and steeled her resolve. If he didn't want what had happened to have happened, then she'd be the last person to break the news. Nick might be a straight shooter at heart, but this was one little white lie she felt sure he'd forgive.

Besides, it hurt no one but herself. That, she could deal with.

"Thanks for being there last night." He put his hand to her shoulder, turning her to face him. "You're a pal, Chloe."

He tousled her hair and grinned. All it lacked was for him to slug her on the arm like Wally and the Beaver. Chloe felt more miserable than ever.

"I'm the pal who gave you the hangover from hell, remember? You need my patented hangover cure." She pointed to the coffee and donuts, then edged toward the doorway. "I'll just, umm, go grab the, uh, newspaper."

She escaped the bedroom on legs too wobbly to carry her all the way to the kitchen and flattened against the striped wallpapered hallway. Clutching the ends of Nick's lab coat with trembling fingers-it was too big on her, but comforting all the same-Chloe peered toward her bedroom, half-expecting Nick to follow her. He didn't.

Darn it.

It looked like she'd pulled it off. She'd convinced him their platonic-ness remained intact as ever. He wouldn't suspect she loved him, wouldn't bolt with terror at the thought she might want his kids, his ring, his undying love and a white picket fence to match. Wouldn't consign her to the ex-girlfriend pile a month from now. Wouldn't think of her as anything more than his old pal Chloe, keeper of Kahlúa and bolsterer of bruised hearts.

What was she, crazy?

No, she answered herself. Just a girl who wants to keep her best friend.

In the bedroom, Moe issued a feline yowl. "Uh, Chloe?" yelled Nick. "Can you call off your psychotic cat, please? I think he's trying to mate with my shoe."