Love In The Friend Zone

When Ally Quinn wakes up on a typical Thursday morning workday she's unprepared for the shock of her life - an almost naked man sprawled end to end on the living room sofa. Had her boisterous housemate brought home a stray? From the looks of the cut over his eye and bruises on his arm there's a story and it had better be good. Ally no sooner has the coffee machine going when she turns to find the houseguest standing at the kitchen door asking if she'll share the coffee. He's handsome, he's sexy, he's breathtaking and wearing nothing but bikini briefs. Red satin bikini briefs. He looks like one of those guys who model bedsheets to housewives or strips for them at hen parties only he's standing in her kitchen. The cut over his eye looks worse in the fluorescent kitchen light so she tosses her bathrobe at him with a command to cover up and puts her attention on something she can handle. As an ER nurse she sees all kinds of people in all kinds of predicaments but they all have one thing in common - injuries needing medical attention and she can do that.

While the nurse tends to his injuries Lincoln Starke tries not to think of the embarrassing and humiliating situation he's in because he'd made the bad decision to walk back to his hotel from a nightclub. Add to that he's an FBI agent in his hometown and it's even worse. Now he's sitting in his cousin's kitchen with this nurse's pink bathrobe wrapped around his waist and he can't even imagine what she's thinking while she works on cleaning the cut over his eye. He's not sure if the attack was targeted at him as an agent, or just a random attack of opportunity.

Much to Ally's dismay, Lincoln is spending the weekend with them. Well, with her actually because his cousin Rosalie, her housemate, has plans to go camping. Her first weekend off in a month and she's stuck with a stranger in the house. She has two options - sit in her room for two days and avoid him or suck it up and make the best of it. Before the weekend is over she learns that Lincoln is a real FBI agent, not a stripper and he knows how to make a darned good lasagna and he can beat her at Twister. When he promises her a Twister rematch next time they meet, Ally doubts it will ever happen. Lincoln lives in Los Angeles and rarely comes home to Austin. Rosalie warns her not to get hung up on him, but Ally has sworn off all men engaged in any type of law enforcement careers. Her father is a Houston cop and she's not going down that path. Ever.

A month later Lincoln shows up at her door unannounced so he can ask her to be his plus one at his sister's wedding. He insists that Ally is the only woman he knows who isn't involved in his family's plans to fix him up with a local woman or find him a job closer to home or get him back together with a fiancee who dumped him ten years ago.

Friends only. Six weeks. No strings.