Xtina can't even run into Rainier in the kitchen without feeling the sweaty heat of arousal. "Where is your boyfriend, now?" he asks her, his voice husky & oh so sexy, "Surfing?" Actually, Coby is surfing, but Xtina has a life outside of him, anyway. But it makes Xtina want to scream the way people judge Coby without really knowing him, the way she judged him when she first met him. 'He's really a deep person once you get to know him,' she wants to shout, but she never does.

Rainier gets bold and kisses her right here in the kitchen. It's so wrong and so dangerous, but it feels so good!

He absolutely takes her breath away. She wants him ever so badly....

Coby comes in then, just back from the beach, looking for dinner. Xtina's lucky he just missed seeing Rainier kiss her like that. She's cutting it way too close and it's not just that kiss. She's going to have to decide if she's going to stay with Coby or call it a mistake and go with Rainier, before she gets caught and this turns into a fight. She wants Rainier, but she doesn't want to give up Coby, either. "Hey, Ti," Coby says, glancing suspiciously at Rainier as he sits to eat, "My brother-in-law says he'll work on your car for you. He's real good with old cars like yours. I'll drive with you out to Topanga," he offers.

Xtina has been getting sick of taking the bus everywhere because her car is so unreliable. She's grateful to have Heather's husband work on it for her. Even if it means she has to listen to Coby and Heather talk about mountain trips and snowboarding all afternoon. Xtina feels there is a lot to Coby beneath his boarding persona, but a great deal of his life is devoted to something she doesn't understand, and he has no interest in her life's passion, art. Maybe they really weren't meant to be, she thinks.

While Coby talks to Ulises about her car, Xtina checks out Heather's new kitchen. They're still in the process of rebuilding, with unfinished walls and scaffolding everywhere as they add a second story to the house. "All day, the construction noise drives me crazy," Heather says, laughing nervously as though it really were making her a little crazy. "I can't wait for this to be over." Xtina assures her it's already looking real good & will be worth it when it's done.

Outside, they join the men by Heather's new winepress. Xtina looks in Coby's eyes. She's shared some very personal moments with him, has an intimacy with him she doesn't want to abandon just because a handsome stranger has moved to town. "Your car's all set," he says, his tone making them sound like words of love. He has a haunted, pained expression in his eyes, she thinks. She doesn't have forever to make up her mind. She learned that from Gavin, she could lose both Coby & Rainier while trying to choose between them. She needs to know which one is the right guy & then never look back. But which one? She's never had a better friend than Coby: he sat with her while she cried over Gavin, he let her say all kinds of abusive things to him & understood that she didn't mean it. She's told him things she wouldn't even tell Eleanor. She can't imagine not having him to talk to anymore, she talks to him about everything: the only thing she hasn't discussed with him is her confusing new feelings for Rainier.

He kisses her, and suggests they get a drink on the way home.

NEXT