“Well, maybe it is. And that’s not fair of me, but the fact that you and Jane have history, and the fact that Jane continues—” she broke off again, her cheeks turning pink. Her gaze fell to the table, her long black lashes dropping to hide her eyes. She pushed the saucer again. “She’s my friend, my good friend, and I don’t want to create problems for you, or her, or me.”

“Most admirable,” he said, meaning it, finding everything about Taylor interesting and refreshing. “But you do know that Jane and I were friends before we dated, and we dated briefly as an experiment—an experiment that didn’t work out—but we managed to preserve and protect our relationship, so that we continue to be good friends today.”

“How long were you… together?”

“I don’t know that you could say we were ever truly together.”

“Jane was in love with you!”

He frowned. “I know she says that—”

“You doubt her feelings?”

Troy stifled a sigh. He shouldn’t have ever gone down this path. “No, I don’t,” he said firmly. “But Jane and I only dated for a couple weeks. Two and a half. Three. For a total of five dates. I knew it wasn’t right on date one, but I liked Jane so much. I liked her fire and ambition. She’s a great girl, and a marketing genius. It was easy to spend time with her. But at the end of the day, I didn’t have… romantic… feelings for her.”

Taylor stared at him from across the table, her eyes wide, expression somber. “Then you shouldn’t have slept with her.”

Troy’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“You should never sleep with a woman you don’t have feelings for.” Taylor’s soft full lips pressed into a hard, uncompromising line. “Women fall in love through making love. It’s a bonding thing for us. Hormones and chemicals and—”

“We never slept together,” he interrupted, irritated, not just by the direction their conversation had taken, but by Taylor’s low opinion of him. “We never had sex. Jane and I had too much history to just jump into bed together.”

For a moment Taylor said nothing, gazing at him intently from behind her big glasses.

For the first time since they’d sat down she seemed to have nothing to say.

Good.

He was fed up with this conversation, as well as having to defend himself. He didn’t even know why he felt compelled to defend himself to a little mouse. Except for some ridiculous reason he wanted her to understand how the relationship with Jane had been. Not how Jane had wanted it to be.

“Not everybody clicks,” he said crisply, battling his impatience and annoyance. “Not every man and woman belongs together.”

He saw a flicker in her wide green-brown eyes and a tiny pulse begin to dance at the base of her throat and he wished to God he could read Taylor’s mind right now and know what she was thinking. Feeling.

Did she truly have no feelings for him at all?

Or was she that protective of Jane?

Or was she simply… scared… that they were so different?

“A relationship can’t go the distance without friendship and mutual respect,” he said, “but there must also be chemistry.”

“Chemistry,” she repeated, before chewing on the inside of her soft lower lip.

He eyed the lip, seeing how her white teeth bit down into the pink plumpness and he wished it was his mouth on hers.

If only to know if they had chemistry.

It would be such a relief if there wasn’t anything between them.