TWICE SHY Harlequin Duets November 2000 EXCERPT Amy Donatelli ripped her gaze from Matt Burke’s very fine set of gluteus muscles, which were making their eye-catching way to her kitchen, and focused on the suggestion she fervently hoped she hadn’t heard one of her guests make. “What did you say?” Amy asked, already feeling guiltier than her kindergarten students at Ambrose Academy when she caught them finger-painting each other rather than their art projects. “I said now that I’ve captured my OWGA,” Zoe O’Neill answered, giving Jack Carter a big smile and his arm a little squeeze, “it’s time you and Matt try your luck with yours.”

Unfortunately, nothing was wrong with her hearing. Amy’s stomach pitched and rolled as she accepted the fact that Zoe really had brought up the dreaded OWGA, the acronym for the One Who Got Away.

She might have sunk to the floor in guilty horror if she hadn’t already been sitting on the living-room carpet around the super-sized coffee table she’d suggested the four of them use as a dinner table.

As it was, she swayed and had to grab the end of the table for support. The only thing that had gotten away from her was her common sense when she’d made up that big, fat lie about having an OWGA.

She still didn’t know what had come over her, because lying was not her thing. It had started honestly enough when she, Matt and Zoe had gotten into a conversation about OWGAs a month or so ago. Then Matt had intimated that most everybody, himself included, had an OWGA..

The next thing she knew, she was inventing one for herself.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” Zoe continued, oblivious to her distress. “Jack and I wouldn’t be together if you and Matt hadn’t pushed me to look him up. I’m going to return the favor.”

Before Amy could mount a protest, not that she’d yet figured out exactly what to say, Jack was speaking.

“Wait a second, darlin’,” he told Zoe, “I don’t think you should be stirring up trouble in paradise.”

“You call this paradise?” Zoe indicated the overturned crates that served as end tables, walls festooned with print fabric and enormous throw pillows Amy had used to infuse personality into the place she was house sitting. “I’ve heard the term ‘garage-sale chic’ used to describe Amy’s style of decorating but never paradise.”

Jack gave his fiancée a smile so slow and wide it was easy for Amy to see how her friend had fallen in love with him. “I wasn’t talking about her place,” he said. “I was talking about her man.”.

“What man?” Amy and Zoe asked in unison.

“The man who insisted on clearing away the dinner plates. I’m thinking he’s probably stacking them in the sink right about now.”

“Matt?” Amy squawked. “You’re talking about Matt?”

“Matt isn’t Amy’s boyfriend,” Zoe said and laughed.

“Why did you think that?”.

“When the two of them asked us over to dinner to celebrate our engagement, I just assumed,” Jack said as a puzzled indentation appeared between his brows. “Especially when I noticed the way she was ---.”

Amy didn’t let him finish. “You caught me checking out his butt, didn’t you?”

This time, Jack aimed his grin at her. “I was gonna say I noticed you finishing some of his sentences, not that I’d seen you eyeballin’ his attributes.”

“Who was eyeballin’ whose attributes?” Matt asked as he re-entered the room, located the nearest chair and sat down. The rest of them were still on the floor but Matt wasn’t a floor sitting kind of guy. Not when casual dress for him consisted of a suit sans jacket and a loosened tie.

Why, he was even wearing tails in the Ugly Cube photo she’d shot of him last year at a mutual friend’s wedding. The only reason the photo had made the cube was that the lens had distorted the shape of his face, making him look loopy.

“Amy told us she was ogling your butt when you walked out of the room,” Zoe answered.

One of Matt’s dark-blonde eyebrows rose as he looked at Amy. “Really?”