Wild in the Moment

Seven

Three days later, Teague hiked toward the café, feeling edgier than a porcupine with an itch.

He’d finished up the Cochran job, had two more projects he was putting in motion this week. Daisy was going with him to see both sites. First, though, they had to settle the wheels thing.

Teague jingled the change in his pocket, thinking that a guy had to draw a line somewhere. Maybe he was crazy to fall in love with her. She was so determined to leave White Hills. So used to the excitement of a more exotic life. So not like him.

Still, he could accept a certain level of lunacy in himself. She was so damned special that he could work with the love problem-maybe-at least a little longer. But letting Daisy drive his car-in snow-was a different problem entirely.

A guy’s car could be like letting someone else use your toothbrush. It was hard. Really, really hard, to let someone else do it. Really hard.

He pushed open the door to the café, the knot of dread in his throat feeling glummer by the second. She needed wheels. He had the spare vehicle. It’s just…this was not good. To have to test a relationship as fragile as theirs this soon, with something as hairy-for him-as this.

She was free as of one o’clock, she’d told him. It was ten minutes after one right now, yet when he hiked inside, he could see right off that the café was blasting busy…when no place was blasting busy in White Hills in the middle of a snow-crusty winter. Over heads and sounds and smells, he spotted her instantly…talking to some regulars at the bar stools up front, right at the bakery counter. Three guys had her attention corralled.

Her hair was wooshed up today. Clipped somehow. Strands had escaped their prison and were cavorting in wild wisps around her neck. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d just pulled dishes from the oven. She didn’t look to have an ounce of makeup on, yet her ears were showing off a jewel that matched the same blue-hued stone around her neck. She had some kind of blouse that wrapped around her instead of buttoned, leaving a deep vee for the stone to lie, almost to her cleavage, almost showing her cleavage-only not quite. Even when she was leaning over and the guys were trying their damnedest to get a peek.

“Yeah, you’ve got that right,” she was saying to her trio of drooling fans. “Jean-Luc made it big. He should. He’s a really special, talented artist.”

“I thought you had to die to make money if you was an artist,” one of the guys said.

“Well, he was hauling it in for the last few years. And I can swear on a Bible, he was definitely alive.”

The three men laughed. “So why’d you get divorced, then, Daisy? We all thought you had the perfect life. Traveling around the world. Living high and nice and all. Your guy making lots of money. Able to do all the things you dreamed of.”

Good question, Teague thought, as he shifted out of his jacket and sidled forward-slowly-because she hadn’t spotted him yet. He wanted to hear the answer to that question in the worst way.

It just didn’t make sense. If her Jean-Luc was so wealthy, how come Daisy couldn’t afford even a used set of wheels? She’d told him a lot the other night…but not a clue what her divorce had been about. He needed to understand how she could have all this expensive stuff, and yet still be the worst kind of broke. Bad broke. No health-insurance broke. Seriously broke.

Smells wafted toward him. The bakery counter had little formal signs now. Lavender Cookies. Brownies with Lavender Whipped Cream. Lemon Loaf Lavandula.

Roast pork with rosemary and lavender had been added to the chalkboard up front-where Harry’s lunch specials were usually limited to brats and hot dogs.

And the café had started to look completely different. The grease smell seemed to have disappeared. The cash register shone so hard it looked new. The old red-and-white-checked curtains had been pulled back with ties and the windows washed.

If Harry hadn’t been shamed into doing those things in the past thirty years, it was a cinch he wasn’t responsible for the improvements-and neither were the two part-time waitresses who’d worked there forever. So Daisy was transforming the place. The mystery was how a woman who presented herself as willful and spoiled and used to the good life could be such a worker.

Too many customers talking for him to hear everything Daisy said, but as he walked a few feet closer, he picked up some of her comments.

“You’re so right, Ted. I do love money, and Jean-Luc had a ton of it. But it’s like the whole town said when I was a kid, you know? I guess I just wasn’t meant to settle down.”

“I’ll bet you lived in some really fancy places.”

“Oh, yes. Aix-en-Provence was one of my favorites. It’s a town for artists, with cobblestone streets and fountains all over the place and enchanting little squares. And then there was Bonnieux. There’s a hotel there that has the best food I’ve ever eaten, not just gourmet or gourmand but beyond anything you could dream of…gâteau au chocolat fondant…meals served in the garden, with pale-pink tablecloths and flowers. And then of course there was Vence, a mountain town…”

She spotted him, took in a breath and then lifted five fingers in the air. Five minutes? He nodded a no-sweat. He could see that, as lazy as she was talking, she was dishing out confections and swooping away empty plates.

“And then there’s the fabulous area around Fragonard and Molinard-that’s flower country, and in the spring and summer, they grow lavender, roses, carnations, violets, jasmine… You wanted another slice of cheesecake, didn’t you, Moore?”

A foolish question, Teague thought. Moore wanted anything she dished out in any form.

“Boats, too?”

“Ah, yes. We spent months on different yachts around the Riviera. Jean-Luc was always getting an invitation from…” She sashayed over to him and whispered, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to be late. But Harry had to pick up something, said he’d be back five minutes ago. I can leave the instant he returns, okay?”

“Totally okay.”

He never asked, but she brought him a cookie and mug of fresh almond coffee without ever breaking stride, still keeping up with the guys and their questions and orders at the same time. Teague wondered if any of them remotely realized that she was working. Her slow, lazy voice created pictures of nude beaches and the Riviera and women decked-out in jewels, long yachts and buttery mornings and sun-soaked skin and nothing to do but be rich and indulge oneself.

Ten minutes later she’d hooked a jacket and they escaped. “That was a terrific cookie,” he said.

“Nah. Not terrific, but a pretty good recipe. It was the lavender idea that Harry bought into. He was suspicious, but he said he’d try anything to see if he could bring in some customers this time of year. And my sister ran the herb haven for years, so I had an inside to the best lavender source anywhere on the planet.”

He stopped her mid street, pulled on her sleeve. Immediately she turned her face up to him-her normal face, her normal voice. Fresh skin, honest eyes, the soft, soft mouth. Striking, yes, even disconcertingly beautiful, but that whole exotic spoiled-woman look had completely disappeared.

He kissed her, just to get a taste. To make sure he was with Daisy and not that confusing woman who’d been weaving those stories in the café.

“Hey,” she murmured, when he lifted his head and frowned at her. “What was that about?”

“I didn’t want to kiss you,” he assured her. “I was just trying to practice being a pickpocket.”

“Huh?” She plunged her hands into her jacket pockets. Her right one emerged with a small square box. Inside was a perfect four-leaf clover immersed in clear resin. Her lips parted and then she looked up at him again, this time with more vulnerability in her eyes than he’d seen even when they’d been naked.

“This is for me? You bought this for me?”

“Nope. I didn’t buy it.” The look on her face was damn near close to his downfall. He knew-from all the evidence-that she was used to all kinds of expensive stuff, so there’d been no point in trying to outbuy what she already had or was used to. In fact, it’d been damn scary trying to think up something to give her at all…but he’d wanted to.

“But then how-hey, you’re rushing me along!”

“I know, but we’re really getting late now, because first we have to go to my house. Get you familiar with the car. Then you can drive to the Shillings’ behind me-”

“Teague. It’s beautiful. More than beautiful. It’s fresh and different and personal and…perfect.”

“Yeah, I liked it, too.” He tried to keep up a galloping pace, so she had a hard time keeping up with him, but somehow she still managed to cavort ahead for a second to get a good look at his face.

“You really didn’t buy it?”

“Nope.”

“Then you made it?”

“Are you kidding? No one can make four-leaf clovers.”

“I meant the resin. You sealed it in the perfect resin.”

“I might have.” That was the most he was willing to admit to-at least until he saw how she drove.

The Shillings were expecting him around two, and their house was only a hop-skip from his. But as his white pickup took the curves, she held the four-leaf clover, kept looking at it. And then at him. And then at the road. Hell, had no one ever given her anything that didn’t have a price tag attached to it?

“I haven’t been on these roads in years,” she said quietly. Down Cooper Street, across the creek, came a section everyone called Firefly Hollow. “Does every teenager in the country make out here in the summer like they used to?”

“That was the in spot for kids, huh?”

Obviously, there were no fireflies now, but in the summer the leaves formed a cool, fragrant canopy overhead. In fall the colors were brilliant; in summer fireflies danced in the shady arch. Now it was just a dip in shade and memories. Past the hollow, his white pickup climbed the hill and curved around Swisher’s land-Old Man Swisher had a pond.

“Most of the farmers around here have ponds, but his was our swimming spot, because there’s a big old cottonwood tree with a limb that was just perfect for swinging into the water.”

“So…every single one of your memories of White Hills was bad?”

She lifted her brows. “Good grief, no. It was a great place to grow up. It’s just…”

She never got around to finishing that thought. They passed red barns and white fences, hillsides that would be taken over by clover and buttercups in the summer. Patches of elms and big old sugar maples dotted the landscape, but they were naked now, revealing the underside of their character. Past the red covered bridge, he turned in the first drive.

“Car’s in the garage. I’ve already got the key.”

She balked. “What? You mean we’re not going to go in?”

“In? Now? We have to be at the Shillings’ in a few minutes.”

“But you haven’t shown me your house.” She looked with interest at the white-shuttered stone bungalow.

“We can do that another time.” If he didn’t get this car thing over with soon, he was too likely to have a heart attack. “You know how to drive a stick shift, don’t you?”

“Teague, I grew up on a farm. Of course I can drive a stick. Oooh.” When he popped the button on the garage door, she saw his baby. Actually, he figured all she saw was an old car. Someone who didn’t know about old Volkswagen Golf GTi’s was hardly going to be impressed. But she was a nice shiny black. Waxed to within an inch of her life.

“Isn’t she pretty,” Daisy raved. “No wonder you’re in love with her. What a darling.”

He relaxed. A little. “You like her.”

“What’s not to love. And not a scratch on her.”

“Not one,” he agreed. Carefully. “You do have an active driver’s license, right?”

Daisy laughed-right in his face, even if it was a kindly kind of chuckle. And then she motioned to the keys by waggling her fingers in the universal gimme gesture. “We’d better get a test drive over with, Larson, before you have a stroke. Try and stop worrying, okay? If you can’t handle it, you can take back the offer to use your car, no problem.”

“I want you to use the car. There are just a couple things you need to know before you take her out.” He mentioned a couple of them. Maybe he mentioned a few more than a couple. Hell, who knew how many he brought up? At some point, he realized she was biting her lip, obviously trying to keep from laughing.

“It’s not funny,” he said testily. “She’s got a silky smooth engine, but the Golfs, the original ones, they put the standard drum brakes in the rear. Which means she loves to go, but she’s not so excited about stopping. And then her carburetor is a little on the sensitive side-”

“I believe you mentioned that. Twice now. And I’m beginning to get a sneaky feeling how important this car thing really is. If we can survive this-or should I say, if I can survive this driving test-we just might make love again, right? Or else it’s all over? Have I got the stakes about right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far…”

But he was thinking about it. Maybe she’d avoided him, but spending time with her was proving even more tantalizing than before, so now it was impossible not to think about sleeping with her. Making love with her. How much he wanted to, in any form and way she was willing. But before he built any more risky fantasies that they had a shot together, he had to know that she could swallow some of his rough edges.

Teague knew he was good to people-but not necessarily good with people. He never planned on being a loner. By this time in his life, he’d always thought he’d be married, have a kid or three. Instead he’d lost more than one woman-and screwed up a great business partnership-because he had the slight tendency to like things his own way.

He’d told Daisy about some of that. But she hadn’t really seen it until the car question came up. The car wasn’t the issue. It was just a symbol. And, man, she just didn’t know what he had to overcome to let her climb in the driver’s seat of his most loyal lover, turn the key, make the engine vroom-vroom way, way, way differently than he did.

“Put your seat belt on, tiger,” she said gently.

He clipped his. She clipped hers. Then faster than lightning, she shifted into reverse and they rocketed backward out of the driveway.

Sweat broke out on his forehead.

She took the first curve on all four wheels, but it was close. Then, just past the next curve, he spotted a snowplow, doddering along around twenty miles an hour. Vermont drivers-it was an unspoken rule in the state-didn’t bother using their rearview mirror because they were going to do what they wanted to anyway. Daisy passed the snowplow. On the curve. On the curve with the double-yellow line. Somewhere around fifty.

More jewels of sweat laced the back of his neck. There seemed to be a shortage of oxygen in the car. He couldn’t talk. His right foot was mashed on the brake. Except that there wasn’t a brake on his side of the car.

“My, she does like speed, doesn’t she?”

He spotted a little blue Buick ahead, an older model, the driver in it short with fuzzy white hair, and ahead of her was a Honda Civic. Daisy passed both of them on the next straightaway. The speedometer hit eighty-seven. Not for long. Not even for minutes. But it definitely hit it.

On the next good curvy hill, she practiced downshifting.

Eventually-long enough that he’d gotten three ulcers-she pulled back in his driveway and gave the brake a good test. “Okay now, tiger,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s see if we can peel your knuckles off the armrest.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

“I know you are.” She unclipped her seat belt and handed him the key. “Well?”

“Well what?” His lungs were so grateful to be safe that they wanted to do nothing but suck in oxygen.

“Well, did I pass? I know. You undoubtedly thought I’d drive like a prisoner on parole, but I figured I’d better be honest with you. If the car was a test, then it’d better be a true test. Only…”

“Only what?”

“Only what’s the verdict? Did I destroy any attraction you ever felt for me? Did you decide there’s no chance we’ll ever sleep together again, much less that we have any prayer of lasting another day as friends?”

That woke him up. He looked at her. “If you were trying to scare me off wanting to sleep with you, babe, you failed big-time.”

“You’re okay with my driving?” She lifted her brows.

He was okay with her driving. Just not in his car. Ever again. Yet he heard himself saying, “Sure.” As if he were cool. As if the favorite car of his life hadn’t just suffered a nerve-shattering risk. As if he wasn’t a Type A personality who had to control the important things around him full-time.

“Onto the Shillings’,” he said, not wanting to talk anymore. There just seemed no point. Temporarily he was incapable of communicating anything that made sense. His head, and heart, needed time to calm down and cool down. Some good, solid work always did that.

Or it usually did.

They both drove in his truck to the Shillings’, because there was no point in using two vehicles to go such a short distance. The plan was for Daisy to pick up the car after seeing the Shillings job. The couple lived on the outskirts of White Hills, in a charming two-story brick house that dated back a good hundred years. Mrs. Shilling, Susan, loved history and tradition, and had loved every minute of fixing the place, until she’d been in a car accident. She’d lost part of one leg. Insurance had enabled them to install an elevator chair so she could get up to the second floor, and for the most part she was functioning, doing the things she loved to do before.

But her kitchen just wasn’t working. “The rehab people came over and gave me some suggestions. Also they have a model kitchen at the hospital for people like me, but…”

“But they were generic concepts. Not individual to you,” Teague guessed.

“You said it. I want to do the things I want to do in a kitchen. For one thing, it’s easier for me to work a wheelchair in here than to hop around, so everything’s too high. And their ideas were on relocating supplies, like cans-but I don’t use that many cans. I like fresh food. And I like to bake, but I can’t get any of my baking supplies from this chair. I can’t…sift. Or knead. I can reach the bowls, but then I can’t get them at an angle where I can actually work.”

“Cleanup’s a problem, too?” Daisy asked. Who was wandering around the kitchen, frowning, analyzing, touching.

“Very much so. I can get to the trash. But I need a workspace where flour doesn’t get all over counters and the floor where I have no way to clean it up myself.” Susan turned her soft eyes to Teague. “I don’t know if there’s anything you can do-”

“Oh, he can fix you up perfectly,” Daisy assured her.

Teague blinked.

That was the last chance he got a word in. The two women went into a frenzy of “all the things he could do.” Pull-out shelves. A pull-out pantry door. Moving the oven down a foot. Create a lower-level, long narrow workspace with rims so nothing could spill from the back and set it on wheels. In fact, Daisy wanted about everything set on wheels.

“Hold your horses, ladies,” he interrupted the first chance he could steal a word in. “Susan, we need to talk about what kind of budget you’re willing to spend for these changes.”

“Oh, money’s not a serious problem. I mean, I don’t want fourteen-karat-gold faucets or anything ridiculous. But Donald’s insisted I get anything I want. He knows how much I love to cook and bake.” She was already turning back to Daisy. “You think I could have an extra sink set on wheels?”

“Oh, sure, Teague could do that. No sweat at all.”

“Teague can’t put a sink on wheels,” Teague mentioned. “To begin with, Teague isn’t a plumber. Besides which, plumbing takes stationary pipes. You can’t just move a sink around-”

They weren’t listening to him. A half hour later, though, when they left the house, Susan was as excited as Daisy was. A light snow was drifting down, the sticky kind, that kissed the cheeks and eyelashes and stayed.

“She needs different lighting, too, Teague. Ceiling lights are fine for general light, but-”

She climbed in the truck with him like a born country girl. As soon as she strapped in, he reached over and kissed her. The impulse came from nowhere, yet the result made his pulse teeter and skid. Apparently it ruffled hers, too, because it was the first time she quit talking in well over an hour.

The silence didn’t last long, though. “What was that for?” she questioned.

“I don’t know. I think it’s because you were so gungho pushy. Got right in there and took charge. Trouble all the way. I’ve always liked those qualities in a woman.” But he never thought he’d be able to work with someone who was as bullheaded as he was. That he’d had fun over the past hour was still messing with his mind. He added quickly, “But we do need to have a little discussion about what a carpenter can and can’t do. I’ve got a general contractor’s license. But I really don’t tend to touch plumbing or much electricity. The city and township both have codes.”

“Oh. Codes.” She said the word as if it were very interesting, she was listening, she cared, and then promptly moved on. “We could make her life totally better. And-if you need the help-I could do more than just the decorating and style side of things. I can hammer a nail straight. And stain. And varnish. And use a drill and saw…well, some saws. I can’t use a band saw. But a jig saw or…”

She was still wired up when they reached his house. By then they’d worked up a potential work program-some projects he had to work solo, and his schedule was always wildly different. But he knew he could give her an extra twenty hours a week, if she wanted it. She did. And that set her off on another spill of enthusiasm. In fact, she was still talking when she climbed out of his truck and aimed straight for his back door.

“Whoa,” he said. “I thought you had to close up the café? That we were just coming back here so you could collect my car?”

“That was the plan, I know. And I do have to make sure the café’s closed up tight by seven. But there’s plenty of time before that, and I have to use the bathroom, okay?”

“So you want to see the inside of the house.”

She grinned. “You got it.”

She shot in the back door and started snooping faster than a bat out of hell. He dropped his mail and keys on the counter, peeled off his jacket, started a kettle.

He suddenly badly wanted a cigarette, but since he’d quit smoking ten years ago, he couldn’t do that. A shot of liquor had equal appeal, but no question about Daisy, she was a woman where he needed every wit he had around him.

The same woman who’d waxed poetic at the café about living on yachts and wintering in the Riviera was beside-herself excited at the idea of designing a kitchen for a wheelchair-bound stranger. The same woman who regularly wore cashmere shamelessly boasted about her skill with a jig saw. The same woman who could likely convince a priest she was a spoiled prima donna was up at five, baking for a second-class café in a town she professed to hate.

“You used to have a dog, didn’t you?” Her face showed up in the kitchen doorway, disappeared again.

“Yes. Let’s not go there.” He followed her. The house-he’d liked it when he bought it. At the time he’d wanted solitude, a place in the country not too close to neighbors, where there was ample space for his dog to roam. At the time he’d accepted being too ornery to ever live with anyone else, so he had no one to please but himself.

The kitchen always seemed okay to him. He used the table for everything but eating-mail, projects, a place to store things he hadn’t had time to put away, like Christmas presents from his mother. The sink and counter were both clean. The refrigerator held the important staples-juice, ice cream, ice cream bars, eggs, mustard. He’d sort of forgotten that the kitchen wallpaper was pea green and orange. He was going to replace the wallpaper right after he moved in, but it slipped his mind. Now, though, he could see it through Daisy’s eyes.

Not good.

His living room said more for him. At least he thought it did. He searched Daisy’s face as she wandered around. The fireplace had a barn-plank mantel, a deep serious hearth. A two-foot brass lion sat at the hearth. No furniture there, just giant pillows, because if you wanted a good fire going, it was because you needed to stretch out and let the fire work on your soul. One step up was the more regular part of the living room, with bookcases and a couch and a theater TV. He had a massive chair-one of those that looked like an upscale lounge chair but actually had a dozen controls.

Daisy took one look at that chair and lunged for it. She sank in, closed her eyes and let out a heartless erotic groan. What controls she didn’t immediately find, he pressed for her. The chair was actually a rip-off. It worked; it was just a lot of money for something that he forgot to use most of the time. But watching her bliss out made him think it was worth every dime.

That thought pestered his mind, unsettled him. He was coming to realize that he could look at her-her face, her hands, her knees, or any other part of her-and never seem to get bored. Just looking seemed like chocolate. No matter how good it was, you wanted more. Even if you’d just had a look. Even if you’d just had a taste.

“What’s the woodwork in here?” she asked.

“Wild cherry.”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“Yeah.” He loved good woods. She already knew that. She was also suddenly bounding out of the chair and streaking for the hall. “Hey,” he said.

“So your dog was black and white, right?”

“How’d you know that?”

“Fur in the carpet, on the chairs, on the couch.” She turned right, with him trailing her. She poked her head in the bathroom, switched on the light, took a look at the dark-green and white tiles and sink and the puddle of thick, beefy towels on the floor and moved on. “So,” Daisy said, “I figured she was spoiled rotten.”

“My dog?”

“She was allowed everywhere. Good spare bedroom,” she announced after she’d inspected it.

Hell, she was starting to make him so nervous that he started chattering like she did. He used the spare room for an office, but had a couch that made into a double bed for when his parents or younger sister came to visit. He’d built the screen to hide the desk and file cabinet and computer then, to make it more a decent retreat for company. And that room had its own small bath. No towels on the floor. No toothpaste in the sink.

“Where’s the wild cherry wood come from?”

“Georgia. Maybe you don’t want to look down there.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve seen unmade beds before.” She smiled before opening the door to his bedroom. He’d built the frame to put the king-size mattress on, because his back could get tricky, and he needed a hard mattress. The double-down comforter was the opposite, all soft and fluffy and embarrassingly sissy-but hell, Vermont winters were damned cold. Especially when a guy was sleeping alone.

Because he was suddenly nervous-hell, he was never nervous-he seemed to be bumbling on again. “Look, I know the dresser looks messy, but I swear, things climb up on that dresser in the middle of the night. I can’t explain it. Like that hammer-I never put it there. And the fork. I don’t eat in this room, so I have no clue how that fork showed up. And all those socks. I never left a sock lying there in my entire life-”

She chuckled. “I believe you. Completely,” she assured him.

“Good.”

“She was a girl, wasn’t she?”

“Who?” He hadn’t had a woman around in so long that he couldn’t fathom what Daisy could be leaping to conclusions about.

“Your dog,” she said gently, and motioned to the pink dog collar on the dresser along with all the rest of the debris. “Aw, Teague. You lost her recently, didn’t you? And you loved her a ton.”

“She was just a mutt.”

“Big deal. You still loved her beyond life. She owned the whole house, for Pete’s sake. It’s obvious.” Her voice was softer than sunlight, gentler than compassion.

Did he need this? Like a hole in the head he needed this. She could have commented on his messes and his ugly kitchen wallpaper. She could have teased him about the towels on the floor. Instead…damn, but he’d loved that dog.

“What was her name?”

He’d called her Hussy. Which she wasn’t. She never left him, went with him to work anyplace they could tolerate dogs, never got in his way. “I wasn’t looking to have a dog. I just came across her in a ditch one day. Some car had hit her.” She’d been just a puppy, bleeding, bewildered, too close to dying to even whine. She never did have much of a voice. Worthless as a watch dog. The only one she ever watched over was him.

“Aw, damn, Teague,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. That’s rough.”

How the hell had she found out his weak spot, just like that, just walked in and in one look, found the one thing he didn’t want her to find.

“You know,” he said, hearing the frustration in his tone, “it’s about time you owned up to a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Like what it’s all about. Making people think your ex-husband was some kind of jewel. Rich. Famous. Fascinating. But you’re here, Daisy, and you’re struggling to get even some basic security together. I understand about pride. But I don’t get why you’re keeping what happened such a secret. Not from people who care about you.”

He didn’t mean to pry. He figured he’d find out in time. What good did prying ever do? People shared when they were ready. If you pushed them, it never came out the same way. You never found out when they were ready, for one thing. But Daisy…she’d made him think about Hussy. She’d poked. She’d looked at him with those loving, caring, beautiful dark eyes.

She still was. And suddenly she was walking toward him, as well. He thought she intended to leave the bedroom, and he turned sideways to give her room to pass.

Only, when she reached his side, in the shadow of the door, she faced him. “I’ll tell you about Jean-Luc if you want to know,” she said. “But not now. There’s only one thing on my mind right now.”

“And that is…?”

“You, tiger. Just you. Only you.” And she reached up, and lassoed her arms around his neck.