“Just make me your wife.”

“And will that be enough for you?”

“I come from a long line of women who know how to make do.”

Rod had made a vow to keep her happy. To put her first. They both knew the ground rules, after all, he reminded himself as he drew Nancy into his arms, covered her mouth—warm and giving—with his. And he remembered, as he had every night since the night this baby had been conceived, every curve of her slender body, her responsiveness, her eagerness to please as well as to be pleased. And he wanted her—more than he should, more than he’d thought he could ever want a woman.

More than he would ever dare let on.

But afterward, he wondered if it had been just sex. Because if this was just sex, why did he feel as if someone had ripped a hole the size of a football field in the center of his chest?

Dear Reader,

Once again Intimate Moments is offering you six exciting and romantic reading choices, starting with Rogue’s Reform by perennial reader favorite Marilyn Pappano. This latest title in her popular HEARTBREAK CANYON miniseries features a hero who’d spent his life courting trouble—until he found himself courting the lovely woman carrying his child after one night of unforgettable passion.

Award-winner Kathleen Creighton goes back INTO THE HEARTLAND with The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda, a compelling tale of secret identity and kidnapping—and an irresistible hero by the name of Johnny Bronco. Carla Cassidy’s In a Heartbeat will have you smiling through tears. In other words, it provides a perfect emotional experience. In Anything for Her Marriage, Karen Templeton proves why readers look forward to her books, telling a tale of a pregnant bride, a marriage of convenience and love that knows no limits. With Every Little Thing Linda Winstead Jones makes a return to the line, offering a romantic and suspenseful pairing of opposites. Finally, welcome Linda Castillo, who debuts with Remember the Night. You’ll certainly remember her and be looking forward to her return.

Enjoy—and come back next month for still more of the best and most exciting romantic reading around, available every month only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Anything for Her Marriage
Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Jack, as always, who encouraged me to write full-time long before I sold my first book; and to our boys, who I have no doubt will continue to provide plenty of fodder for my stories for years to come.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Kathy McCormick, M.D., who helped me sort out the medical what-ifs. Blame me, not her, for any goofs that resulted from blending fact and fiction.

KAREN TEMPLETON’s

extensive background in the theater and the arts, combined with a lifelong affinity for love stories, led naturally and inevitably to her writing romances. Growing up in Baltimore, she studied art, ballet and drama, and wanted nothing more than to someday strut her stuff in a Broadway show. However, although she was accepted into North Carolina School of the Arts as a drama major, halfway through she switched to costume design, in which she received her B.F.A. degree longer ago than she cares to admit.

A twelve-year stint living in New York City provided a wide variety of work experiences, as well as her husband, Jack, and the first two of her five sons.

Between sons two and three, the family moved to New Mexico, where Karen established a thriving in-home mail-order crafts business that she gave up almost the instant the family bought their first computer and she discovered the magic of erasing mistakes without Wite-Out. Now writing romances full-time, she says she’s finally found an outlet for all that theatrical training—she gets to write, produce, design, cast and play all the parts!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

“I’m not asking you to marry the man, Nance.” The blonde popped yet another miniature quiche into her mouth. “Just talk to him.”

Nancy stifled a sigh. Just think—she could be home, curled up with the cats, watching Dick Clark and stuffing her face with Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. Instead, she was hiding out in her best friend’s kitchen, guzzling white wine and aching to ditch her shoes. Two hundred bucks, and the things hurt like hell.

“And say what, exactly?”

“Well, how should I know?” Elizabeth Sanford rearranged the hors d’oeuvres on the dish in front of her with one hand, the other rubbing the bulge underneath her emerald velvet maternity tunic. “But we’ve got to do something. Did you get a good look at him? Lord. He looks as if his dog just died.”

Oh, yeah. She’d looked. There he’d sat in one corner of the burgundy leather sofa, all alone and all in black. Rod Braden. Gorgeous, wealthy, brooding. A man she’d secretly lusted after off and on for nearly four years, ever since the day she and Elizabeth had met him when they were both working for the same Realty agency in Detroit. Stayed out of the way for nearly two years while he and Elizabeth quasi-dated, a relationship that died a quick, painless death once Elizabeth met the man who became her husband. With Elizabeth safely out of the picture, Nancy even sort of made a play for Rod, only to quickly realize that goal had “lost cause” written all over it.

Not being the beating-her-head-against-a-brick-wall type, however, she’d shrugged it off, and life went on. Since then, Rod had been in and out of a second marriage, then suddenly moved to Spruce Lake, Michigan, setting up permanent housekeeping in the old mansion Elizabeth had sold him—with a straight face, no less—as a summer home some time back. And Nancy had even shrugged that off, too, figuring what did Rod Braden’s life have to do with her?

Then she walked in an hour ago, caught him staring all sad and lonely like that into the fire, and the thought came, “It’s the dawn of a new millennium—do you know where your libido is?” Followed closely by, “Oh, hell.”

Two glasses of wine later, she was still waiting for the booze buzz to override the sexual whatever-it-was buzz so she could join this party and act like something resembling a normal person. Or better yet, pass out. Her right little toe already had.

“Well?” Elizabeth said, shoving another tidbit into her mouth.

When the going gets tough, the tough change the subject. “You know, if you don’t stop eating like that, you’re gonna weigh five hundred pounds.”

“Hah! You’re just jealous because I have boobs now and you don’t.”

Nancy smirked. Not that she’d turn down an extra cup size, should anyone offer, but mammary inadequacy was the least of her problems.

“And you’re not wriggling your way out of this.” Squinting, Elizabeth nodded at the low-necked, high-hemmed, velvet scrap of a dress Nancy had picked up cheap because it was the only size three left. “If nothing else, that outfit alone’ll jump-start his heart. Shoot, my eyes bugged out when you walked in tonight. You rent those legs, what?”

Elizabeth’s husband, Guy, burst into the kitchen, a pair of empty platters in his hand, a diamond stud glinting in his ear. He glanced at the plate in front of his wife. Sighed. “Uh, honey—isn’t the idea to fill the plate?”

She looked down, gasped at the four lonely goodies left on it. Guy chuckled, then kissed Elizabeth on top of her upswept hair. “I knew there was a reason we bought twice as much food as we thought we needed,” he said, then replenished the plates, giving Elizabeth a wink and a grin as he backed through the swinging door to the living room, balancing all three plates in his hands.

Nancy tried, really tried, to ignore the needles of envy that pricked her heart, and her conscience. She’d had no idea, when she’d relocated to Spruce Lake a couple months ago to take Elizabeth’s place at Millennium Realty, the small agency Elizabeth ran with her mother and Guy, just how much her friend’s bliss would point out the pathetic emptiness of her own life. Not that she wasn’t thrilled for Elizabeth, but seeing her and Guy together twisted a knife in her lonely, underused heart. Oh, sure, intellectually, she knew a woman didn’t need a husband and children. But the fact was, there were times Nancy envied Elizabeth so much it hurt.

“Hey!” Elizabeth duck-walked from behind the counter, grabbed Nancy by the wrist. “If you’re gonna go gloomy on me, you can go do it somewhere else.” She pushed open the door, shoved Nancy out into the living room. “Now go ye forth and schmooze.”

Nancy turned to find herself face-to-face with a gently swinging kitchen door.

“And don’t even think about coming back in here!”

Nancy sighed. Life was much better when she’d been the pushy one.

She finished off the wine, setting her glass on somebody’s abandoned paper plate on top of the piano, then smoothed sweaty palms down the front of her dress. Where, she wondered through the muzzies, had the twenty-plus years gone since Stanley Cohen’s bar-mitzvah dance, when Debby Liebowitz double-dared her to ask Norman Sklar to dance? To this day, though, she had no idea if she had or not. Funny, the way the mind blots out traumatic memories. She tugged discreetly at her underwire bra, which she could have sworn was growing teeth.

“You still there?” she heard from behind the door.

“Bite me,” she whispered in reply, and was rewarded with an evil giggle. She told herself it was boredom keeping her there. Her social life since moving here was not what one would call rip-roaring. Of course, one reason she’d left Detroit was to get away from a singles scene that, from the perspective of a burned-out thirty-four-year-old, had grown very tired. Like a fool, she’d naively thought the camaraderie of small-town living, of being close to Elizabeth and her new family— Guy had three young children already—would help ease the constant ache of being alone.

Wrong. Think Pleasantville on steroids. Which meant Nancy felt more a fish out of water than ever. And her mother, bless the dear thing, clearly thought aliens had sucked out her daughter’s brain. Who moved someplace where who knew what kind of men lived? As it was, Belle Shapiro had yet to forgive Nancy for letting one husband slip through her fingers, never mind that the creep considered himself exempt from mundane concepts like…oh, fidelity?

“But,” Belle had conceded eventually, “maybe this is for the best. If you never have children, you won’t know the heartache of having a thirty-something unmarried daughter throw her life away. No, it’s true—I wouldn’t wish such pain on anybody, least of all my own daughter.”

And the woman wondered why Nancy only called once a week.

But back to the here and now, where she was bored and pleasantly snockered and, okay, ravenous for male attention. She watched as, seemingly oblivious to the chatter of two dozen other guests in the room, Rod leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His long, graceful fingers absently hugged a wineglass as he communed with the fire, which acutely defined the sharp angle of his brow, the clefted chin, and a mouth worth bronzing. His lips were fuller than usual for a man, yet not the least bit effeminate. His eyes and hair were nearly the same color, neither brown nor gold, but something in-between, the cut-and-styled-one-strand-at-a-time hair liberally threaded with gray at the temples.

She took another swig of the wine.

He started when Cora Jenkins, the agency’s office manager, laid a hand on his shoulder, her teeth strikingly white against her dark skin as she smiled, then apparently introduced her date to Rod. He seemed to shake himself, but immediately offered a hand and a smile to the distinguished gray-haired man, as well as a few words spoken in a low voice that, even at this distance and tangled in the threads of other conversations, threatened to turn Nancy inside out. Still.

She twined one wayward curl around her finger, her brow furrowed. Two things thirty-plus women weren’t supposed to get: zits and crushes.

Uh-huh.

Like she really needed this pair-of-tortured-souls-adrift-in-the-night routine. A pair of tortured souls who had absolutely nothing in common, who probably couldn’t sustain a conversation for more than twenty minutes without tripping over some major issue. The man was the epitome of upper-crust conservatism, while Nancy was…not. He probably didn’t even like cats.

Oh, come on. This had nothing to do with cats or backgrounds or anything else. The fact was, polite or not, he’d blown her off. More than once. So—excuse me?—whence came this urge to wrap her arms around the man and tell him everything was going to be okay?

The wine, the heat, the sensuous mingling of perfumes, food aromas, laughter, all fed a gentle whirring in her head that quickly burned a tingling path along her skin…and somehow propelled her across the room to stand in front of someone far too perfect for the likes of her. Women like Nancy just didn’t hook up with fair-haired, racquet-club-raised Golden Boys. Women like her—

He looked up, and the hurt and loneliness and disappointment in those golden eyes yanked her soul up by its bootstraps.

Women like her had no business fantasizing about a relationship with a man like Rod Braden. Then again, she never saw a man who looked more like he could use a little kindness right now. A little feminine…understanding.

Come to Mama, she thought, and got all warm and fluttery inside.

Rod smelled her perfume before he saw her, briefly wondered how—or why—he’d picked out her scent among the dozen or more in the room. He’d apparently startled her: her mouth was open, as if she’d been about to say something. Instead, she lifted a hand to her lips and dissolved into laughter.

He thought she might be just this side of drunk, but when she cleared her throat and looked directly at him again, her deep brown eyes were clear and sparkling, even if her face was flushed.

“That’s not fair,” she said, obviously tamping down a new round of giggles. “I was trying to come up with some wickedly clever line, and you screwed me up.” She sucked in a deep breath. To quell nerves? “So. How’re you doing?”

Loaded question. He took another sip of wine, considering how to answer, even more seriously considering why things that had been comatose not ten seconds before were stirring now. That voice of hers probably had something to do with it—low, sensuous, and far too rich to come out of a body so slender that she probably didn’t dare venture outside on blustery days. He smiled. He couldn’t help it, any more than he ever could help the braided feelings of terror and attraction Nancy Shapiro’s presence sparked, had always done from the first time they met, right before he’d starting dating Elizabeth. Her natural ebullience, the way her emotions crackled around her like summer lightning, at once exhilarated and appalled him. Wasn’t that he didn’t like her. He did. More than she knew, more than he’d ever before admitted to himself. But she was too lively, too witty, too bright, too…much. This was a woman, he suspected, who threw things during a fight, who slammed doors and burst into copious tears and got in a person’s face, demanding immediate and honest answers.

Living with someone like Nancy would be an invitation to a coronary. He’d always preferred cool, together blondes—soft-spoken, genteel women who never raised their voices. That both his ex-wives and any number of also-rans, including the woman in whose house he now sat, were cool, soft-spoken blondes…well, perhaps he really wasn’t in the mood to ponder such things too hard this evening.

Any more than he was in the mood to ponder why Nancy Shapiro had such an unsettling effect on him. Why he wanted to see if he could span that deceptively fragile waist with his hands, if she kissed as irrepressibly as she laughed. Which made no sense, since Rod didn’t want to touch or kiss Nancy or get close enough to do either anytime before the next millennium. He wanted peace, not passion. To be left alone to nurse the wounds left from this last marital debacle in a nice, cozy cocoon of self-pity, maybe to have a chance to salvage what was left of his tattered relationship with his children, who had spent the holidays skiing in Aspen with their mother and her latest boyfriend.

So why was he here?

And why was Nancy frowning down at him like that?

He realized her hands, tipped with long, glossy nails nearly the same burgundy as that bit of a dress she wore, were planted on her hips. Or where her hips would be, if she had any. Humor sizzled in those molasses eyes as she said, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to stare at people?”

Despite his rotten mood, he grinned again, surprised to realize his cheeks actually ached a bit from the effort. The firelight sent streaks of molten amber through her curls; his fingers itched even as need warmed his belly.

“The way you have your hair fixed tonight,” he heard himself say, “it’s very flattering. Really shows off your eyes. Did you know—” he hurtled into the compliment with the recklessness of a kid on a sled after a foot-high snowfall “—in this light, they’re nearly black?” He shook his head. “Extraordinary.”

Extraordinary was right. What the hell was that all about? Something trembled, deep inside him, as he took a sip of the same glass of wine he’d been nursing for nearly an hour, watched those eyes grow huge with astonishment. Her hand went to her mouth again, and she turned away for a moment. He couldn’t tell in the firelight, but he thought she might be blushing. Then she laughed again, softly this time, before twisting around to plop down beside him.

No! She wasn’t supposed to…

He wasn’t supposed to let her….

So why’d you give her the compliment, lamebrain?

Good question.

Now her perfume tendrilled through his bloodstream, the sweet-spicy scent threatening to dissolve what little common sense he had left. And somehow, they fell into a natural, easy conversation, about nothing, really. Elizabeth and Guy, the weather, the party, if he knew the couple standing next to Maureen Louden, Elizabeth’s mother. Nancy was one of those touchy types, her hand often landing on his sleeve as they talked. Not that he minded. She got him to laugh, several times. And he enjoyed the sound of her laughter, too.

He was enjoying her.

She bent over to adjust the ankle strap on one of her black silk high heels; her back was flawlessly clear underneath a pair of crisscrossed spaghetti straps, her fragile-looking spine smooth as a string of pearls. Her boisterous hair teased her shoulders, teased his libido even more.

How many times in the past had he pretended not to notice her interest? How many times had he told himself he wasn’t interested? Yet, here he was, lonely and horny and in no position even to think what he was thinking about this lovely, lively woman who was all wrong for him, even as her very presence threatened to cause a major testosterone explosion. Hell, even if she had been his type, it was probably a pretty safe bet she was looking for a husband. Whereas he was definitely not in the market for a wife. At this point, he doubted he could even deal with a mistress. Not that he’d ever had one before, but…

Oh, never mind. This train of thought led nowhere he had any desire to visit, thank-you-very-much.

“Aunt Nancy? Where’s Mama?”

From nowhere, a pajama-clad urchin with dusty-blond hair appeared in front of them. Guy’s youngest, he figured. A brief pang of bittersweet longing to have his children back as babies, to see if he could do better this time, mingled with a profound sense of relief at not having to. Hannah was sixteen, Schuyler thirteen going on forty. Rod hadn’t been much better at fathering than husbanding. One day, maybe he’d figure out where he’d gone wrong.

But not tonight. Tonight he had about all he could handle convincing himself he didn’t want to take Nancy Shapiro to bed, to bury his face in all that hair, to seek, in those delicate, graceful arms, a few hours’ surcease from being a major screwup.

“Hey, sweetie,” Nancy crooned to the child, who scrambled up into her lap, pushing up the already short dress to danger level. Unconcerned, she propped her feet on the edge of the coffee table, allowing Rod a ringside view of her legs—thin but surprisingly shapely, and sexy as hell in sheer black stockings that glittered whenever she moved. When he tore his eyes away from her gams, however, he noticed the expression on her face as she cuddled the little boy.

He tore his eyes away from that much more quickly.

“Mama’s in the kitchen, honey,” he heard her say, and the I-want-one-of-these tremor in her voice was unmistakable. “You want me to get her?”

“C’n you take me to pee?” he said. “The bafroom’s all dark.”

There went the laugh. “I think we can handle that.”

He felt them get up, watched as Nancy carried the child out of the room. For a skinny woman, she had the cutest fanny he’d ever seen.

A few minutes later, she returned, sans child, but didn’t sit. Instead, she stood in front of him, twisting a silver ring on her right index finger, as if trying to get up the nerve to say something. Someone turned up the music; people raised their voices accordingly, and she rolled her eyes. Then she grinned, and leaned over, close enough for him to feel her breath on his cheek, see the slight swell of breasts peeking above the low sweep of the dress’s neckline that by rights should be too small to arouse anyone. She smelled…edible.

“I, for one, am not in the mood to watch everybody else get kissed at midnight,” she said. “So whaddya say we get out of here, go get a cup of coffee?”

He looked at her as if she’d suggested they go skinny-dipping in the lake a few blocks away. “I don’t think—”

But she shook her head, sending that riot of hair into a tizzy. “Forget thinking. It’s New Year’s Eve, and who said we have to suffer everyone else’s happiness?”

She had a point. She also had the greatest mouth in the world. Generous. Spellbinding.

And she had a point.

Nodding, he pulled himself off the sofa, retrieved their coats from the den, then ushered Nancy outside without even saying goodbye to their hosts.

Nancy gasped in the glacial blast that mugged them the instant they hit the porch. The light snow needling their cheeks was nothing, but damn it was cold. Underneath her black velvet swing coat, she couldn’t stop shivering.

Not just because she was cold, though.

“At the risk of sounding tacky,” Rod said next to her, his breath nearly opaque in front of his face, “my place or yours?”

She tried to laugh, but the sound froze before she could get it out. “I’m too snockered to d-drive,” she chattered, “b-but I live just on the other s-side of the lake. If we go there—th-that is, if you t-take me there—I can walk b-back over here tomorrow and p-pick up my c-c-car.”

He nodded—she was beginning to see a pattern here—then led her to his car, a gleaming silver luxury model sedan that had been the focus of a huge media blitz last year. His media blitz, she figured, when he was still head of marketing for Star Motors. Before he let her in, however, he shrugged off his topcoat—made, no doubt, from wool plucked from the under-side of some hardy beastie that grazed on grasses found only on the most remote mountain range in the world—and slipped it around her shoulders.

She wanted to crawl inside this coat and live here for the rest of her life. Well, actually, she wanted to crawl inside his car first, because the coat didn’t cover her feet, which had turned instantly into two-hundred-dollar popsicles.

They got in. Then they sat there. His car smelled of fine leather and his cologne and some indefinable rich smell she could easily get used to. Nancy had no idea what Rod was thinking, but she was thinking… Actually, she was shivering too hard to think, but ohmigod was in there somewhere.

She’d just invited Rod Braden for coffee. And he’d accepted. Somehow, she squelched the laugh threatening to blow her cool. She also remembered she had worked up the chutzpah to ask Norman Sklar to dance that night all those years ago. And that he’d accepted. She hadn’t felt like this since that night—apprehensive, excited and damned smug.

If a tad perplexed. Rod hadn’t said anything, or even started the car. Confined in a small space with him, he seemed…

She sighed inwardly. You know you’re in trouble when you can’t remember the last time you had sex. Hell, she only vaguely remembered who she’d last had sex with. Not that her list of partners would impress anyone, but what a pitiful comment on her thirty-four years that—if she was generous, mind—the best she could muster were two forgettables and one adequate. And let’s not go into which one of those had been her husband for five years.

The buzz alone from two feet away was already more exciting than any of her actual experiences. She wasn’t sure whether that was more of a comment on Rod or her, but she decided analyzing it would serve no viable purpose.

She jumped when Rod cleared his throat. “Where’s your place?”

“Oh. Right.” She gave him directions; the three-minute drive passed in silence. But now she noticed a sharpness to the buzzing that put her on guard, made her wonder if she’d edged closer to losing it than she’d realized. Had she misinterpreted politeness as actual interest? Wouldn’t be the first time, God knew. By the time he pulled up in front of her lakefront bungalow, she decided she’d let her imagination run away with her. From her.

“Look,” she said on a sigh, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked you to leave with me. I guess the wine impaired my reason more than I’d thought, but it’s obvious you’d really prefer to be alone, so if you want to back out, it’s okay—”

“Nancy,” he said softly, and she turned, chiding herself for getting off on just the way he said her plain vanilla name. She’d left her porch light on so she wouldn’t kill herself trying to come in later; the feeble light illuminated features that, before tonight, she’d only seen radiate grace and confidence. “If I hadn’t wanted to come with you—with you—I wouldn’t have. God knows, I didn’t want to be at that party, but I don’t really want to be alone, either.” His lips tilted into a sad smile. “Done that enough this past little while to last a lifetime.”

Her heart had become stuck somewhere at the base of her neck and was now pounding uncomfortably. She shifted, looked out at the puny snowflakes twirling in his headlights, which he’d yet to turn off. “Yeah. I know how that goes.” She shuddered in the cold, swung open the door. “Well, come on, then. The inaugural meeting of the Spruce Lake Lonely Hearts Club is about to begin.” She hesitated, leaned back into the car. “Um, I have cats.”

Rod chuckled. “There’s a cure for that, you know.” She rolled her eyes. “How many are we talking about?”

“Seven.”

He just stared at her, then said, “Just don’t ask me to clean out their boxes.”

“Not a problem.”

They got out of the car, icy pellets pricking their faces as they walked up to her door. Her smooth leather soles skidded on the filmy layer of snow underfoot; Rod caught her before she fell, keeping his hand on her elbow the rest of the way. Underneath his coat, she shivered, imagining what it would be like to cuddle against that solid chest.

Naked.

She pushed the thought away, then sighed when it came right back like an eager dog with a stick in its mouth.

All these years, she’d entertained fantasies of what it would be like to have Rod Braden do more than smile politely at her, imagined being alone with him, receiving his undivided attention. Well, she didn’t have to imagine that any longer. So, um, how far did she dare push her luck?

Oh, come on. Since when did she rely on luck to accomplish anything? If you want something, you go after it. Okay, so maybe that philosophy had more than its share of holes, but it sure as hell beat waiting around for life to fall into your lap. Maybe tonight wasn’t her only shot at upping the ante with Rod Braden. But maybe it was. Why heap more regrets on the already towering pile she’d accumulated over the years?

She took a very…deep…breath.

“And another thing—” she fumbled for her key in her Judith Lieberesque purse, managed to get it in the door “—I haven’t quite decided yet whether or not to seduce you.”

Talk about your stunned silences.

“Well,” she said to the doorknob, since someone had to say something and apparently the honor had fallen to her, “I don’t hear retreating footsteps, so I guess that’s a good sign.”

What she heard was a short, startled laugh. “Are you always this forthright?”

Still staring at the doorknob, she nodded. Then his hands were on her shoulders, turning her to him, the look in his eyes…oy.

Something told her she wasn’t the only person standing here who went after what they wanted.

Chapter 2

Considering they were standing outside in the dead of a Michigan winter, his mouth should have been cold. It wasn’t. It was warm and soft and scrumptious. Crème brûlée scrumptious. The thought began to pick at Nancy’s wine-and-lust sodden brain that this was one of those kisses that could easily lead to Other Things. Okay, so she’d been the one to bring up Other Things to begin with, but still. This might turn out to be a pretty memorable New Year’s, after all.

It had been a long time since anyone had paid this much attention to her mouth, other than her dentist, and he definitely did not count. Rod’s kisses—somewhere along the way, she realized they’d shifted into plural—were as tender and magical as moonlight. And had zipped past adequate some time ago.

Nice, she thought, letting one hand stray up to that what-a-waste-on-a-man hair. It was soft. Glorious. Like the kisses, which just kept a-comin’…and then were suddenly over. Her heart knocking against her ribs, she licked her lips, expecting him to pull back. Instead, he tucked her underneath his chin, against his chest. Just…held her. Like she mattered.

She refused to faint.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and she couldn’t help the laugh.

“What? That wasn’t your best effort?”

This was where he was supposed to laugh, too. He didn’t. And that brought her head up to see into his eyes. “You’re right,” he said in a voice as soft as the kiss they’d just shared. “I’m not exactly the world’s happiest human being tonight. I’m also not exactly the most principled.”

Brows went up. Brows went down. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, men like me aren’t supposed to spend all evening wondering how a woman kisses.”

Somehow, she managed to stay cool. “And this is supposed to upset me?”

That got a smile. And a whisper of a caress along her jaw. “Doesn’t a woman expect a man to be interested in her mind, not her lips?”

She backed up. An inch, maybe. “And you’re from what planet? Besides, it’s kinda hard to be interested in my mind when you haven’t yet had a chance to get to know it. My lips, on the other hand…” Nancy cocked her head, frowning. “Just how were they, anyway?”

He ran his thumb across the lower one, the black leather of his glove smooth, erotic. She quivered. “Five-star,” he said, and she grinned.

“So…does this mean—?”

His own mouth tweaked into a smile at that. “It means you have great lips, that I wanted to kiss you and I’m damn glad I did. And I’d like that cup of coffee now, if you don’t mind, before I freeze my butt off.”

She pulled away, not sure what to think. “And we’re just going to go inside my house and have coffee and act all normal after a kiss like that and I basically announced I’d like to jump your bones?”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

Shaking her head, she finally unlocked her front door. “Sounds nuts to me.” But since the alternative was sending Rod back out into the cold, wretched night, she figured she’d play the hand dealt her. At least she’d gotten a little necking out of the deal. And a hug. God, she’d forgotten how good hugs felt.

She flipped the switch by the door, illuminating the pair of hand-painted lamps on either side of the sofa. A chorus of meows greeted her as a motley group of animal-shelter refugees stalked, scampered and minced over to give her what-for for leaving them.

“If I’d realized I was having company, I’d’ve stuck name tags on ’em,” she said, checking the thermostat just as the heat clicked on, anyway. When she turned, Rod was holding Bruiser, a gray-and-black long-furred behemoth with a serious attitude problem, whose motorboat purr she could hear across the room. The cat wore a goony expression not unlike Elizabeth’s for Guy.

“Man, you work fast.” She folded her arms, stared at the animal, who was giving her this Nanny-nanny-boo-boo look. “This is surreal. Bruiser hates everybody. He even flinches whenever I try to touch him, and I saved his tush.”

The cat bumped Rod’s jaw and upped the volume on the purring. “Maybe,” Rod said, his mouth doing something wonderful and sexy and would you believe she was now envying her own cat? “Maybe he lets me hold him because I don’t come on too strong. You know…I gave him a chance to come to me?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Meaning?”

But all he’d do was grin at her. Just like the damn cat.

Reckless. That was the only word for it. It was also a word Rod never, ever applied to himself.

Until tonight.

A single glass of wine and Nancy’s perfume couldn’t possibly account for how being with this woman made him feel. Yet there it was. And here he was, having just shared a purely need-driven series of kisses the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since he and Cindy Lawrence had grappled in the back seat of her father’s Caddy when he was fifteen. Strike that. Hot though they may have been, the kisses of a pair of hormone-crazed teens had nothing on what he and Nancy had just shared. The woman just gave a whole new slant to the concept of “good things in small packages.”

He was, he realized, completely mesmerized. Fascinated. Her exuberance, her cards-on-the-table attitude had infected him, drugged him, invigorated him.

Still, thanks to Elizabeth, Rod knew enough of Nancy’s situation to realize the woman wasn’t quite as carefree as she seemed. She, too, bore the scars of a failed marriage, of a succession of relationships that never panned out. Her gregariousness could very well be a cover for vulnerability—and that meant risk.

A risk he wasn’t at all sure he dared take, was even less sure he wanted to avoid. In any case, where was the harm in sharing coffee and cat fur, perhaps easing each others’ loneliness for a couple of hours?

“Nice place,” he said, letting down the now-bored cat. He scanned the joyfully cluttered room as the pride of felines gave him the cautious once-over from their assorted perches. The air was slightly damp, heavy with steam heat, redolent of old house and coffee and her perfume. But not, he noted with profound relief, of cat box. “You decorate it yourself?”

She shucked off both coats—a startlingly seductive move—laying them carefully over a lushly purple velvet sofa in the middle of the room. The glance she tossed in his direction confirmed his suspicions: that, for all her bravado, her self-confidence had taken one too many hits this past little while. “Very funny.”

“No, really. It’s great.” And it was. Perhaps more secure than the woman herself, the room thumbed its nose at the world. It glittered and glowed and reached out and said, “Come to Mama.” He’d never even been in a place like this, let alone lived in one. His was a world in which designers ruled, paying lip service to clients who wanted to believe the big bucks they shelled out for “their” look counted for something. The result, therefore, of every place he’d ever lived was tasteful perfection, all show and no soul.

Not here. Nothing matched, everything was off-balance, yet somehow, it worked. Jewel-toned pillows and a crocheted throw fought for position on the sofa, which was flanked by a couple of upholstered chairs, sitting at odd angles atop a thick-piled Turkish rug. What looked to be someone’s turn-of-the-century black iron gate stood guard in one corner, in front of a pair of rich velvet draperies. White shelves, crowded with books in all sizes and shapes, many toppled onto their sides, as well as a herd of early-American folk-art animals, fit themselves in wherever they could find space among various little tables and side chairs, some of which were hand-painted in offbeat colors and patterns. Magazines and books lay everywhere there was a surface, many opened to whatever page she’d been on when something else caught her attention. Wedged between the bookcases and draperies was an eclectic collection of high-quality artwork—primitive landscapes next to delicate floral watercolors next to bold, contemporary abstracts. But all by itself, centered on one otherwise bare wall, was a three-foot high, extraordinarily fine, oil of a nude peering over her shoulder at the observer, one hand braced on her hip.

A nude with wild, curly hair just this side of auburn, eyes the color of rich ground coffee peering out from underneath dark, audaciously arched brows. And a smile calculated to make a man regret he was only looking at a painting.

Behind him, Nancy laughed. “Yeah, it’s me. My ex-husband did it, right after we were married.”

He turned to look at her. She stood by the doorway to the kitchen, her arms linked over her middle. She’d lost weight since she’d had the portrait done, he realized with a start, noticing that her skin was stretched tissue-thin across delicate, elegant features. Not that she looked ill, just…fragile.

Fragile was not good. Fragile brought out protective instincts he’d just as soon stayed buried. “Am I allowed to say this is very good?”

Another laugh. “His artistic abilities were never in question. Last I heard, some of his paintings were easily commanding six figures. Marriage, however…” The sentence drifted off. “Okay, coffee,” she said instead, then disappeared into the kitchen. For several seconds, while he surveyed other pieces in her collection, he heard cupboard doors being batted about, the refrigerator door opening, then shutting. One of the cats, a small calico, sidled over so she could ignore him. Nancy returned to the doorway, clutching two metallic-embossed bags in her hands. Backlight from the kitchen haloed her curls. “Regular or decaf?”

Something unfamiliar and frightening surged through him. He wanted to touch her. Kiss her again. Forget everything he’d ever learned about being a gentleman. He also wanted to hold her close, wipe away the hint of worry visible in the faint crease between her brows.

Not his place, he told himself. Not now, not ever.

He should leave. Soon.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, his desire to the back of his brain. “Regular,” he said, which got a lifted brow and an appreciative grin.

She disappeared again. This time, he followed, into a snow-white room with red-checked curtains at the windows, cobalt-blue countertops. Glass-paned cabinets revealed Blue Willow plates, a dozen all-purpose goblets, boxes of heavily sweetened cereals, crackers, cookies. He frowned. Lord—what kind of garbage was she putting in her system? She opened the freezer for a second—shaking her head, as if she’d made a mistake—and he caught a glimpse of neatly stacked microwave dinners.

With an annoyed sigh, he resumed his perusal of the kitchen, old and charming and broken-in. In spite of its flaws, something about the little house said “complete,” that the woman who lived here knew who she was, what pleased her, and anyone who didn’t like it could go jump in a lake. A challenge and a reassurance, Rod decided. And dangerous, because he felt immediately comfortable here. With her.

“Damn.”

His gaze shifted to Nancy, struggling to pry a coffee filter from the stack. He freed his hands from his pockets, held one out to her. “Here. Let me.” He half expected a feminist, “Forget it, I can do this myself” response. Instead, she practically smacked him with the package.

“Be my guest. Brain’s okay, but the coordination sucks…thanks,” she muttered when he handed her back both package and extricated filter. She flipped her hair over her shoulder; it didn’t stay. He watched the interplay of muscles underneath crossed straps as she filled the carafe with water. Thought of that painting. Told himself forty-one-year-old men didn’t get hard that easily.

A large ginger cat jumped up on the counter; she pushed it down again. Ah. Safe topic, guaranteed to keep the hormones in check. Sure, he liked cats as well as the next person, might even consider having one, in the right mood. One. Living in a zoo was something else again. “Aren’t seven cats a bit…much?”

She clicked on the coffemaker, laughed. “You’re more diplomatic than my mother was about it. But since nothing I do is right in her eyes, anyway, I don’t put a whole lotta stock in her opinion.” He heard pain in that statement, possibly unacknowledged, and felt an unexpected twinge of empathy.

Nancy shifted to lean heavily on the edge of the counter, bending over to remove her shoes, which she carried out of the room. Again, he followed, until he realized she was headed toward her bedroom. “I’ll be right back, but I just cannot deal with this torture instrument—” she pointed in the general direction of her bosom “—a second longer.” She disappeared into the room, leaving her door open a crack. “Anyway, about the cats,” she called from the other side. “See, I couldn’t have any in my apartment. So I figured, when I moved here—” a groan of undisguised relief drifted from behind the door “—I’d get me a cat. One cat, maybe a cute little kitten, you know?”

Clad in an oversized red sweatshirt, gray leggings and thick socks, she padded back out into the living room, pulling her hair back into one of those funny long clips. Had she given up on the seduction idea, or was she wearing a black lace teddy underneath her outfit?

Curious woman.

She crossed the room, rubbing at a spot high on her rib cage. “So, anyway,” she said, stopping at the kitchen door, one hand on the frame, “I get to the pound—there’s a small one, right outside town—and they had these six grown cats. No kittens. And I realized, since there didn’t seem to be a run on the place, the ones I didn’t take would be…” She lowered her voice. “You know.”

Rod leaned back against the arm of the sofa. “So you took them all.”

“What else could I do?”

What a gal. “So where’d the seventh come from?”

“Wouldn’t you know—a stray wandered up onto my porch the day after I brought these guys home. It was either take him in, or send him to that place.” She shrugged. “Um, coffee’s ready. You want it in here or out there?”

Impulsive. Kindhearted. Crazy. Oh, yeah…he definitely needed to leave as soon as possible. “Kitchen’s fine,” he said.

Her smile shot straight to his groin.

Did he have any idea how nervous she was? How close she was to making a fool of herself? He had to hear it in her nonstop prattling—she could hear her mother saying, “For God’s sake, Nancy, give it a rest!”—see it in her incessant movement. Distractedly, she pulled a pair of crockery mugs from the cupboard.

Why can’t you do anything right, Nancy? Why can’t you be like Mark?

No. Her brother wouldn’t lower himself to a cheap seduction, that was for sure. But then, having married the Jewel of Scarlet River, New Jersey, the summer after he got his master’s degree in Computer Engineering—a real degree—and then in due course presented his parents with two adorable grandchildren, her brother probably didn’t find himself in the position of being sex-deprived on a regular basis. Not if Shelby Garver was anything like Nancy remembered, at least. Her mouth quirked up into a half smile. Her mother should only know.

“Nancy?”

Rod’s voice brought her back to the land of the somewhat-living. “Sorry. Lost in thought.”

Instead of sitting, he took the mugs from her hands, set them down, poured the coffee. A small, insignificant thing. But since no one had done anything for her since she was about five, she was fascinated to discover how much the gesture pleased her.

“Sugar?” he asked.

“And milk, yes,” she said, reveling in letting him serve her. He fixed the coffee, handed her a mug. He took his black, she noticed. She also noticed the crease in his brow as he regarded her over the first sip.

He set down the mug, linked his arms over his chest. “You look like someone who needs to talk.”

She nearly laughed. Oh, yeah, right…like he was going to relate to being the child who always screwed up, no matter how hard you tried. So she shook her head. “Not about that. Besides…” She moved over to the table, took a seat. “It’s my house. I get to grill you.”

One side of his mouth hitched north. “Oh, really?” He scraped back the other chair, dropped down into it. Somewhere along the way, he’d removed his jacket. Now she was faced with a mind-boggling array of torso muscles encased in soft, luxurious, black-as-sin cashmere. Hoo, boy. “You’re pretty sure of yourself,” he said, his voice rumbling through her senses like a lazy freight train.

She wasn’t sure of anything. But she smiled, took a swallow of coffee. “I’m a salesperson, remember?”

“Damn good one, too, from what Elizabeth tells me.”

The first flicker of pride she’d felt in ages warmed her blood. “I used to be.”

“Used to be?”

“It was easier in Detroit, I guess. I’m starting over out here. And I was doing a lot of commercial stuff. Now it’s mostly residential, which yields less return for time invested.” Then she laughed, slapped the table. “Hey! You shifted the conversation to me when I wasn’t looking—”

His hands shot up, as did both corners of his mouth. “Oh, no. You did that to yourself.”

“Piffle. You knew exactly what you were doing!” Laughing, she leaned forward, pointing at him. “Let’s get one thing straight—I’m the manipulative one here, got that?”

Rod leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest again. He wasn’t frowning, exactly, but he sure wasn’t smiling, either.

“And why is that?” he asked softly. “Why do you feel you have to force things to go the way you want them to?”

Her own laughter died as the old, chronic hurt twisted her heart. “Because,” she said on a deep breath, daring to meet his gaze, “single women have to take care of themselves. And since the world at large ain’t too keen on giving its women what they need, forcing things to go our way is generally our only option.”

He didn’t seem to take offense. “Survival instinct?”

“Maybe.”

He surprised her by reaching across the table, capturing her hand in his. “Platinum butterfly,” he said, lifting her fingers to his lips. Just as soon as she collected a few brain cells, she was going to ask him what he meant. He beat her to it. “Durable, exquisite, delicate, all at once.” He let go of her hand, leaned back again. “Quite a combination.”

The calico cat jumped out of her way when she shot up from the table, not knowing where she was going.

“I really must be out of practice,” Rod said behind her. “What did I say?”

Arms folded across her stomach, she paced the tiny kitchen, the cat mewing in sympathetic confusion at her feet. “I’m not sure. It’s just that…” She blew out a stream of air, then faced him, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. Stupid, the way she felt dizzy like this. “Oh, man…this is going to sound corny, but no one’s ever called me exquisite before.”

Rod frowned. “I’ve seen that painting, Nancy.”

It took a moment. “Oh…yeah, well, to hear Stan tell it, my main allure was being free and available. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.” No. At the time, she was thrilled that someone of Stanley Metzger’s talent thought her interesting enough to paint. There’d been times when she wondered if he’d married her just so he wouldn’t have to pay a model. But since he’d only painted her once, and she had the painting…

She looked up at Rod, unprepared for the mixture of compassion and apprehension in his eyes, even less prepared to deal with either of them. The wine-induced buoyancy had fizzled out some time ago, she realized, rudely dumping her into a vat of self-pity. At the moment, every mistake she’d ever made seemed to be screaming, “Hey! Remember me?” Or maybe that was her mother’s voice.

Nancy faced her fogged kitchen window, absently stroking the ginger tom, and decided she was too tired and too fed up with life in general to worry about making an impression on this man. On any man. “Call me superficial, but until ten seconds ago, I didn’t know how much it mattered to have someone, anyone, consider me…attractive. To care enough about me to at least…lie…”

Out of nowhere, tears bit at her eyes. She took a deep breath, trying to control them, only to fall apart when Rod took her into his arms.

“I don’t lie,” he said quietly, and she let ’er rip.

She had no idea how long they stood there, how long she cried. But when she was done, rather than feeling better, she felt like an idiot. She pulled away, grabbing a paper towel from the rack to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.

“Just what you needed tonight, I bet,” she said between swipes. “Coffee with a maudlin drunk.”

He’d followed her, only to hesitate—she could see the questions in his eyes, wondering how much to do or say, how far to wade in—before lifting a hand to her face. Kindness winning out over caution, she thought. With one thumb, he wiped away a tear. “You’re not drunk,” he said gently. “And hardly maudlin. My guess is, someone’s been trying too hard. Trying to be what she thinks she’s supposed to be, not what she wants to be.”

Realization sliced through her, threatening new tears, even as she wondered how this man she barely knew could hone in on things she hadn’t even admitted to herself. “Maybe so,” was all she said, then sniffed.

“I know so. Better than you might imagine.” Her eyes shot to his, waiting for the explanation, but apparently none was forthcoming. Instead, he traced one escaped strand of hair with his fingertip, frowning. “Were you serious about no one ever telling you you’re pretty?”

A raw, wretched laugh stumbled from her throat. “Oh, yeah.”

“Not even your parents?”

“Now there’s a laugh.” She swiped at her nose with her hand. “You’re looking at someone who lived her childhood in a perpetually awkward stage. I was too skinny, too short, my hair was hopeless, and my teeth were in braces longer than any other kid I knew. There’s a video of me taken at my brother’s sixteenth birthday. I was twelve, and for some reason insisted on wearing this light green dress. I looked like a praying mantis in a fright wig. A male praying mantis, no less.”

His low chuckle made her shiver. “Trust me. I do not think of insects when I look at you. And unless your ex-husband embellished, the woman in that portrait has nothing to feel inferior about.”

That stopped her. “Really?” she said, realizing at that moment just how much she craved approval, real approval. Part of her was ticked as hell that she did want it, but the other part really didn’t give a damn anymore.

Again, she saw a qualm or two skip across his features, the indecision in his eyes. “Really,” he said, stepping closer. “Nancy, you’re lovely.” His fingertips grazed her temple as his eyes traveled slowly, luxuriously, over her features. “No, you’re not typical,” he said with a smile, which got a weak laugh, “but that’s why I can’t take my eyes off you. Not that I’d dream of embarrassing you by cataloguing your attributes…”

“No, no, please. I’ll take the risk.”

He chuckled, the sound warm and lovely and, in a way, loving. “Okay. You’ve got amazing eyes, first of all, the way they’re deep set like that, the way your brows and cheekbones set them off.” He knuckled her chin. “Great jawline, fantastic chin, a nose the gods would envy.”

She had to laugh. “Yeah, well, considering how much it cost, a little deity-envy is the least it should get. Go on.”

“We’ve already covered your mouth…” His eyes dropped to that particular feature, and she thought how much she’d like him to cover it once more. With his. Then his attention shifted again, this time to her hair. “And this—” he fingered one strand “—is magnificent.”

“You sure you don’t mean ‘wild’?”

“Wild is good,” he said, and smiled for her.

And suddenly she saw it. Her reflection in his eyes. Not of her face, but her need, glittering like molten gold. Still, from what little she knew of Rod, this wasn’t someone prone to acting on impulse, of giving in to something, just because. Sure he’d kissed her—and damn well, too—but he’d also made it pretty clear he was only expecting coffee. If she was smart, she’d take the hint.

If she was determined, she’d take advantage.

“You do want me, don’t you?”

He laughed, a little. “I guess…yeah.”

“You…guess?” Teasing.

After a heart-stopping moment, his lips met hers. Softly. Sweetly. But when he lifted them, he was frowning. “The guessing part isn’t about how much I want to take you to bed. It’s about whether or not it’s right.”

That made sense. Too much, unfortunately. Not that a little thing like scruples was going to stop her. She looped her hands around his neck, no easy feat since he was more than a foot taller than she. “And here I didn’t think you liked me.”

His smile was gentle. His hands skimmed her arms, raising a flock of goose bumps. “Let’s see…you were wearing a sweater that came down past your hips. Black, with huge red flowers embroidered all over it. A long black skirt. And these little flat shoes that made you look like a ballet dancer.” He touched her hair. “It was raining that day, and your hair was all fluffed out like chocolate cotton candy.” His gaze touched hers. “And you smelled like my grandmother’s bedroom, of sandalwood and roses.”

Her heart was hammering so hard she thought her ribs would crack. She remembered the day, and the rain, and her annoyance with her impossibly frizzed hair. “You remember what I was wearing the day we met?”

He nodded. “And each time we saw each other after that, believe it or not.” Once again, he touched her cheek, and sparks skittered all the way to her toes. “Believe me…I like you, Nancy. Always have. Always been attracted to you, too. Doesn’t mean I think we’re right for each other.”

Her insides had turned to water. She licked her lips. “You’re probably right. But that doesn’t necessarily preclude our going to bed with each other, either. Not if we both understand….”

His expression stopped her cold. A muscle ticked in his jaw, but neither smile nor frown crossed his features. Uh-oh. He was going to turn her down, then forever brand her as a brazen hussy too stupid to tell the difference between desire and intent. Okay, so he’d admitted wanting to go to bed with her, too. Didn’t mean he intended following through on it.

Then his hands slowly began making small, gentle circles on her back, as if afraid any sudden move might make her do something crazy. But she’d already done that, hadn’t she? Invited a man she’d never even dated into her bed?

She let out a soft yelp as, in a single swift and graceful movement, he framed her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his gaze once again for the millisecond before he captured her mouth. A hard kiss, this time. Demanding. Testing. Guaranteed either to send her shrieking in the opposite direction or reduce her to a greedy, needy puddle at his feet.

Well, there was some definite whimpering going on here, but shrieking? Uh, no. Then she realized her breast had somehow found its way into his hand.

“Oh, mm…you found it,” she whispered between kisses.

“Uh, yeah. Pretty much right where I expected it to be.”

“No, I mean…well, we’re not exactly talking Baywatch quality here.”

He backed away just enough to frown down at her, then slowly, deliciously, scraped his fingernails across the nipple, his face a study in concentration.

She shuddered, gasped, saw a star or two. He laughed, softly. “Give me a perfect half-carat diamond over a ten-carat Cubic Zirconia any day. Besides, you hear anyone complaining?”

She swallowed, shook her head.

“Good. Then no more of this I-hate-my-body business.” One hand still claiming her breast, his other one slipped beneath both leggings and panties to cup her bottom. “Got that?”

She murmured something unintelligible as her nipple strained toward his palm; he tightened his grasp, skimming his thumb over the hard peak. Need shot through her like a behind-schedule express train. Oh, man—she’d forgotten how good that felt. Her mouth fell open, her eyes closed.

“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice roughened. Soft.

She opened her eyes to look deep into his.

Oh.

Oh…mama.

“I don’t have anything with me—”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted. “I can handle that part of things. And I’m…um…” “Yeah.” Was that a hint of desperation in his voice? “Me, too. Just had a complete physical a couple months ago.”

One of the cats meowed behind her, making them both jump. She tried to pull away, though she wasn’t sure why. But Rod held her fast, those strong hands warm, careful, on her…everything. However, in a brief but noteworthy moment, it occurred to her he could be a lousy lover, for all she knew. Or, well, he could think she was. Frankly, this could be one helluva disappointing experience.

And once they crossed the threshold to her bedroom, that would be it. So the question was—was it better to continue dwelling in What-if? Land, where she could continue to shape and prune her fantasies to her own, admittedly impossibly high standards, or forge ahead to reality, where she ran the risk of having her dreams shattered…and common sense restored?

His soft chuckle caught her attention. “For someone I’d pegged as impetuous to a fault, you seem to think enough for a hundred people.”

She smiled, a little, lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He kissed her forehead.

“You can change your mind, honey. I’ll limp to the car, but I’ll survive.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure I would.”

He snagged her chin in his hand, his touch sending shivers of anticipation streaking through her bloodstream. “This is a first for me, Nancy,” he said, his mouth a breath from hers. “I don’t do casual sex. Never have. But—”

“No!” she said, pressing her fingers to his mouth. “No buts.” She drew in a breath, let it out in shaky spurts. “I’m new to this, too,” she whispered, then let her forehead drop to his chest. He drew her close, his breath warm in her hair. “And I meant what I said, about this just being for…now. It’s only that—” she rubbed her face against the soft wool of his sweater, discovering that his own heartbeat was as rapid-fire as hers “—it might be nice to have someone make love to me again while I still remember how.”

She felt his chest expand, collapse, on a huge sigh, before he carried—yes, carried!—her into the bedroom, shutting the door on the cats.

Chapter 3

Something was batting his nose, soft but insistent, accompanied by a low rumbling and the distinctive aroma of cat breath, barely tempered by the smell of freshly brewed coffee sifting in through the open door. Rod peered out of one eye at the little calico, who grinned down, then slung her rump toward him, smacking him in the face.

He carefully, but quickly, removed her to the floor, then yanked the comforter and sheet back up over his bare shoulders, taking in the pristine simplicity of this room as compared with the living room. Ivory walls, nearly bare floors save for a couple of floral-patterned rugs, linen tab curtains over the wooden blinds. A couple of paintings, a hand-painted chest and a cheval mirror pretty much did it. The bed was the only really fancy thing in the room, its black wrought-iron headboard nearly matching the gate in the living room.

Memories of Nancy’s hands, clamped to that headboard, shot through him.

A shiver raced over his skin. Cripes, it was cold. And it did not escape his attention, morning-fogged though his brain might be, that the naked, sweetly scented woman with whom he’d shared this bed last night wasn’t nestled against his chest, all warm and soft. His body groused a little in regret. His brain, which was rapidly clearing, was extremely grateful.

He glanced at the clock by Nancy’s bed: 7:14. The light filtering through the open blinds was weak, pale, like someone recovering from a lengthy illness. He felt much the same way—wiped out, depleted, unsure of his footing.

Petrified. Sated, yes, but petrified.

She was something else. He blew a stiff whuh of air through his lips, remembering how a single well-placed caress had taken her over the edge before they’d even fully undressed. He’d never known a woman to be that responsive, could be that responsive. Had never known a woman’s cries of fulfillment could make his heart burst like that. The way she looked at him afterward….

“Bless you,” her smile had said.

Minutes later, she’d taken—no, welcomed—him inside her, trembling with eagerness, a fierce need to share…comfort…succor. She was an erotic combination of madonna-lover-friend-stranger who resurrected old, forgotten fantasies while forever obliterating them as well. And he’d been just as eager, just as fierce, plunging deeply, then deeper still, until she gasped again with expectant pleasure. Her fingers were soft and smooth against his face as she rose to meet him over and over and over until it was no longer the warmth of her body enveloping him, but her very soul. The explosive power of his own release shattered him, and he cried out, his eyes shut against a haze of crimson as her sweet, exquisite convulsions ferried him back to earth.

When he’d recovered enough to look at her face, she was beaming, inordinately pleased with herself.

And for him.

He hadn’t had the heart—or maybe it was the guts—to leave. Or the willpower to turn down an encore. Or three.

Now he groaned, sat up in the bed. Not that he was surprised, mind, but didn’t it figure that the woman with whom he’d just had the greatest sex in his life was the one woman he didn’t dare have it with again?

He wasn’t a complete fool. Nancy’s generosity came at a price: she fully expected to get as good as she gave. And she damn well deserved it, too. Just as he’d suspected, she withheld nothing. A fount of emotions, in all shapes, sizes and colors, she said whatever popped into her head, did whatever struck her at the moment, made love with an abandon and ingenuousness that took his breath away.

Oh, sure, she said this was just a one-time thing. But he saw that hope in her eyes. That need.

The sooner he stopped this, the better. This—she—would never do. Not even for a fling, contrary to his body’s imploring. The risk was far too great.

Nancy Shapiro represented everything he’d learned was foolhardy from the time he was a little boy. In a way, he almost envied her, but he could never be like her, letting his emotions run riot like that. Passion was an excess, a human weakness he had to strictly control. Love inevitably, inexorably, led to pain. And anger—the flip side of love—only led to acts or words almost invariably regretted, but rarely forgiven.

There was little to be gained by giving passion its head. Hadn’t he been able to hold on to his sanity through the divorce only by remaining calm and rational, by not reacting to Claire’s accusations and histrionic outbursts in his lawyer’s office? Had he opened the Pandora’s box of resentment and betrayal and pain that tried a hundred, a thousand, times to leech past his defenses, to remind him of things best forgotten, the already tense proceedings could have easily degenerated into a dogfight. For his children’s sake, he had refused to let that happen. It simply wouldn’t have been right.

So maybe his life wasn’t perfect. But whose was? Keeping things on an even keel was far preferable to a roller-coaster ride of emotional mayhem…and that’s what a relationship with Nancy Shapiro would be. He’d known it from the beginning, and last night had only reinforced his conviction.

Keeping her in his life would be like letting someone store a ticking bomb in his garage. Even though his last earthly thought would probably be of last night, never were two people less suited for each other.

The little calico had circumnavigated the bed, jumped back up on Nancy’s side, and was making sure strides back in Rod’s direction. Whoever coined the term “pussyfooting” had clearly not met this cat. Before she could stake her claim, however, Rod untangled himself from the creamy sheets and stood, immediately shivering in the still chilly room.

He made a quick trip into the adjoining bathroom, then dressed, furtively, aware of Nancy’s voice drifting in from another part of the house.

In a half hour, he told himself, it would be all over. But right now, he felt as if someone had taken a pumpkin scraper to his insides. He stepped from the room, dislodging Bruiser from the nest he’d made in the lining of his jacket before slipping it on, then followed the sound of Nancy’s voice to the kitchen.

She was on the phone, her back to him, the extra-long cord stretched to the max across the room. A Dr. Seuss nightmare of a cat with a mane and extravagant leggings, but otherwise shorn, sat on the counter, batting at the coiled cord, while two others were exchanging mild words over whose turn it was at the food dish.

Under other circumstances, he would have laughed. The gloriously sexy creature of a few hours ago now looked like a Muppet. Not only was she dressed in a scruffy, furry robe in an amazing shade of lurid pink, her feet encased in a pair of heavy white socks, but she’d done nothing with her hair, which stood out from her head like Medusa’s snakes. The fact that Rod found her disarray arousing only reinforced the treacherousness of the situation. He stood at the door, mildly aware he was eavesdropping.

“Ma… Ma!” One hand came down onto the counter, sending at least two cats fleeing for their lives. “That’s not true, and you know it!”

Uh-oh.

“I was going to call you, but you always beat me to it.” Normally, her New Jersey twang was soft-edged enough not to really notice it. This morning, however, it was out in full force. Frowning, she reached up to her windowsill, plucking off a dead leaf from an ivy plant. “I know it was New Year’s Eve. Which is why I wasn’t home? What? You expect me to call you from my cell phone in the middle of a party. Oh, please don’t start in again about this….”

Her head dropped back; he saw her take a deep breath, then sag against the counter. “How many times we gonna go over the same ground? I moved here totally of my own free will.” She covered her mouth with her hand, then let it drop. “What’s in Jersey for me, Ma?… Well, I’m sorry, but I think I’m a little old to be living with my parents—”

Rod sneezed—there was enough cat fur floating in the air to make coats for a small country—and Nancy spun around. The frown on her face vanished, replaced by that incandescent smile.

Damn.

“Okay, okay…” She raised her hand, her mouth open, trying to get a word in edgewise. “Ma—I gotta go… Okay, okay, I promise, I’ll call you later… No, I don’t know when… No one’s asking you to stay by the phone, Ma. Look, I really have to go…yes, I promise… Yeah, Ma. I love you and Daddy, too.”

She hung up the wall phone, but didn’t let go right away. Her forehead braced on her arm, she seemed to be working on getting her respiration back to normal. Funny. Rod and his father had never had fights. Not like that.

“I take it you and your mother aren’t on the best of terms?”

Her laugh into her sleeve was harsh. “Let’s just say her concept of maternal devotion includes the terms manipulative and suffocating.” She turned to Rod. “My ex may have had little to recommend him, but he at least got me out of Jersey and away from Belle the Wonder Maven.”

She’d started to smile again, but apparently something in his expression—stark terror, perhaps—cut it off at the pass. Her arms tucked themselves against her ribs as she jerked back to look out the window, began the nervous chatter of the night before. “I told you the snow wouldn’t amount to anything. I don’t think we even got an inch of fresh last night—”

“Nancy.”

She bent her head slightly, the wild curls slipping forward as if to offer her comfort. “Last night was really good,” she said, one hand knotting, then unknotting, on the counter. “Actually, last night was indescribable. And to think I’d been afraid—” She cut herself off, faced him again. A shaky smile warmed her lips even as confusion simmered in her eyes. “Let’s not screw it up by talking, okay?” She pushed herself away from the counter, walked over to the refrigerator. “I have eggs, at least,” she said, opening the door. “How do you like them? Or there’s frozen waffles, I think.” A cloud of frost tumbled from the freezer when she opened it and started poking among all those green boxes.

Now Rod knew why one-night stands weren’t his thing. Torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to bolt, he said, “I’m not hungry. I’m also not leaving this house until you hear what I have to say.”

The door slowly swung closed. Her fingers still clamped around the handle, she said, “Isn’t this backward? I mean, isn’t it usually the woman who wants to talk?”

“Isn’t it a little late for us to be thinking in terms of convention?”

She huffed a sigh. “Good point.” Then turned. “So talk already.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, looked out the window for a second, then back at her, avoiding those eyes, already littered with fragments of hope. “Okay, look—originality’s not my strong suit, especially before 8:00 a.m. So—cliché number twenty-seven. Last night was very special.” He stepped close enough to brush a corkscrew curl away from her face; it sproinged right back. “Like you.”

The ginger tabby jumped up on the counter, brr-upping at her. She picked it up, cuddling it against her chest. “But?”

“But…nothing’s changed. This isn’t going to develop into a relationship.”

Her calmness scared him, because it seemed so against her nature. She rubbed the side of her nose, not looking at him, then retucked her arm against her middle.

“It’s not that I didn’t know this, going in,” she said, almost to herself. “Even had a list of reasons why you and I would never work.” Now she tilted her head. “Unfortunately, three-quarters of those reasons no longer seem to make sense this morning. So, just because that’s the kind of gal I am, I have to ask, why?”

He wished he was dead. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But you can’t change the rules after you’ve played the game.” Man. Talk about sounding lame. “You even said as much, that you just wanted the one night.”

“And you said you didn’t do casual sex.”

“I don’t. And it wasn’t.” Her brows rose. “Just because it was an isolated incident doesn’t mean I considered it casual.”

“I see. So, I’ll ask again, since you still haven’t answered the question—why, exactly, is this a one-time thing? I mean, we’re both single, and I assume you found me at least attractive enough to do it with once. No, wait—it was four times, wasn’t it?”

“Nancy, for God’s sake, don’t do this to yourself. This has nothing to do with you.”

“Funny. I could have sworn I was in the bed, too.”

He plowed one hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration he generally never allowed himself. By the time he was six, his grandparents had drummed into his head that people of their station were expected to do the right thing, to take the high road. And, thus far, despite a few personal casualties along the way, he’d succeeded in meeting those standards. Now, however, he found himself in the unenviable position of realizing that no matter what decision he made, it wasn’t going to be right. That someone was going to be hurt. The stunner, though, was that he might be the someone, as well as Nancy.

But he did owe her the truth. “Nancy, listen to me. Please. I just can’t get involved with anyone. I’ve been married twice, and both times I failed miserably.”

“You failed?”

He hadn’t expected the oblique defense. “My ex-wives would say so, yes.”

Nancy snorted, then clutched the cat more tightly, burying her face in its fur. After a moment, she said, “Tell me something. And I’m only asking for a simple yes or no answer, not the gory details—you ever have a night like we just had with either of your wives? Or anyone, for that matter?”

She’d backed him into a corner. He pushed his way out again, convinced this was one time telling the truth would serve no purpose.

“Last night was spectacular, Nancy. But not unique.”

He’d hit home, watched what he knew was a fragile ego shatter. “I see. Well…guess that puts me in my place.”

“Honey—” desperate, now “—I’d think you’d be the last person to consider basing a relationship on sex.”

“And if that’s all that was,” she retorted, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Or I wouldn’t be, at least. I’ve had sex, Rod. Maybe not as much as some women my age, but enough to know that what we had last night went so far beyond the physical that I can’t even remember exactly what happened.”

To hear his thoughts echoed nearly did him in. But to admit he felt the same way would only undermine his resolve to save her from far worse pain down the road. “Then you were the only one.” He crossed his arms, cringing at the hurt in those deep, dark eyes. But he dug himself in deeper, hoping like hell he’d come out on the other side in more or less one piece. “I remember every detail, plain as day. And there were some great details, granted. But what you’re talking about, if I understand you, is not something I’ll ever experience.”

Not again in this lifetime, at least.

“And how do you know that? You think, because you’ve never felt that way—and, by the way, neither had I before last night—you never will? Or can? So we’re not on the same rung of the ladder, yet. That’s not unusual, you know. I mean, given time—”

“Nancy! I can’t love you.” He’d practically bellowed the words, then immediately pulled back, reclaimed control. “Or anyone. I don’t want to get married again, don’t want more children—”

“Whoa, wait a minute—who’s talking about having children?”

“No one has to, honey. I saw the look on your face when you held Guy’s little boy on your lap, the way you baby these damn cats—”

“Leave the cats out of this.”

“Tell me you don’t want babies of your own, Nancy.”

He could see the tremors racking her from where he stood. After a long moment, she looked away.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Honey, I’ve got my hands full with the two kids I’ve got. And I’m past forty. The last thing I want is to start all over again. I simply can’t give you what you want. And deserve.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

By now, a veritable ravine had worked its way between her brows. He tried to take her hand; she snatched it away. “You need to be worshipped,” he said gently. “To be the center of some guy’s universe, and a mommy to an adoring batch of children.” He pressed one hand to his chest. “You’ve glommed on to the wrong guy, sweetheart. I’m incredibly attracted to you, yes. And, yes, it appears we’re sexually compatible. But I can’t love you. Cliché number thirty-two—you’re better off without me.”

Nancy turned her gaze to the window, her fingers continually stroking the cat’s fur. For several seconds, she didn’t speak. “Well,” she let out at last, “if you get to be honest, so do I.” She faced him, a damn-the-torpedoes look in her eyes. “I’ve fantasized about having you in my bed for a long, long time, Rod Braden. Not that I ever thought it would happen. But whaddya know? It did.” Her lips curved in a little smile. “And boy, you really know how to make those fantasies seem pale by comparison.”

She dropped the cat, faced him, her arms folded across her chest. “Okay, so I’m ticked you’re being so…whatever it is you’re being. But you know what? One night was more than I had two nights ago, more than I ever thought I’d have. It was a whole lot of fun, and for sure I wouldn’t mind a repeat performance sometime before I die. But since you just pulled the plug, I guess that’s that. However, I have not ‘glommed’ on to you. Once you walk out that door, that’s it. I won’t call you, or bug you or insinuate myself into your life. I’d’ve been more than happy to give this thing its head, see where it went…” She shrugged again. “But I’m not Lady Liberty. I don’t do torches. You’re right—if you can’t see and appreciate what we had, then I am better off without you.”

Surely there was something else to say, another cliché that would magically salve the wounds he’d just inflicted. Her eyes told him otherwise, however. Just as they told him he needed to get his sorry hide out of there, and fast.

With a nod, he left the kitchen, disentangling his coat from hers from where she’d left them on the sofa, before letting himself out into the bitterly cold morning.

Rod told himself he’d taken three hours out of his life to keep this doctor’s appointment more from his long-standing friendship with Arlen James, who’d been a family friend for as long as Rod could remember, than because of any serious concerns about his health. After all, he ate well, exercised, had never smoked, and hadn’t even consumed any alcohol since that glass of wine at the Sanfords’ party more than a week ago. Discipline and moderation had always been his by-words. Besides, losing control was not his idea of fun.

Neither was having a wretched blood pressure cuff cut off his circulation. At least this time Arlen’s grunt wasn’t accompanied by a pair of dipped, wiry gray brows. Not quite as dipped, anyway. “Good,” the doctor said with a nod, wratching open the cuff. “It’s down. Country air must be doing you some good.”

“Well, that should make you happy.” With a halfhearted smile, Rod rolled down his sleeve. “It’s been a calm week or so.” Notwithstanding his inability to eradicate Nancy’s face from his thoughts, the feel of her against his skin, the scent of her, still in his nostrils. “Of course, there’s no guarantee it’ll stay that way.” He reinserted the cuff link in place, snapped it locked. “I’ve got the kids every weekend this month.”

Arlen hitched his trousers up at the knees and dropped into the chair behind the metal desk in the examining room. The swivel chair creaked as he scooted it closer to the desk, the sound abnormally loud in the artificial silence made possible by triple-glazing and an impressive address. “Been sleeping well?”

Rod hesitated just long enough to make the doctor glance up at him. “Well enough.”

“Work going okay?”

He shrugged. “Keeps me off the streets.”

Arlen stared at him for a moment, adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, then abruptly rose. White coat flapping around his long thighs, he gestured toward the door leading out to his office. “Come out here. I want to talk to you.”

“Actually, I’ve got an appointment in forty-five minutes—”

A smile. “This won’t take long.”

Rod’s stomach clenched unpleasantly as he slipped his jacket back on, tweaked each cuff. “Sounds menacing,” he said, trying for upbeat.

Arlen paused at the door, then chuckled, carving a pair of gullies on either side of his mouth. “Oh, hell, Rod, I’m sorry. No dire news, nothing like that,” he threw over his shoulder as he strode out of the room, clearly expecting Rod to follow. “Sit.” He nodded at the mushroom-colored upholstered armchair that sat in front of an ornate mahogany desk, settling his lanky frame into the black leather chair behind it.

Rod sat, crossing his ankle at his knee, cautiously regarding the tanned, white-haired man in front of him, trying to calculate his age these days. He had to be easily seventy-five, yet looked no more than sixty. Arlen’s ties to Rod’s family went back further than Rod’s memory, that was for sure. And after his grandparents’ deaths, he remembered many times when Arlen and Molly James’s presence in his life had been the only thing that seemed to make sense in a world that by rights should have been downright idyllic. After Rod’s parents moved to Bloomfield Hills when he was ten, however, Rod had begun to sense an uneasiness between Arlen and his father he didn’t understand for some time, about things they hadn’t discussed for nearly twenty years, by mutual consent. Things that were behind him now. And he had no desire to resurrect ghosts.

The uneasiness humming in his veins at the moment, however, made him wonder if Arlen wasn’t about to. “Why do I feel like a kid who’s been called into the principal’s office?”

Arlen’s thin, sharply defined lips pulled up into a placating smile as he leaned forward, lacing together the consummate doctor’s hands. “I don’t know if this makes me old-fashioned or cutting-edge, but I’m not the kind of physician who treats the symptoms without addressing the cause. Yes, your blood pressure’s down, but not where it should be for a man in your condition.” He took a deep breath. “You’re stressed, Rod. And no, I don’t mean by the divorce, or the kids, or the new business, though they haven’t helped. This has been building up for years.”

And there they were. The ghosts. Some of them, at least. Well, two didn’t necessarily have to play this game.

His hands tented in front of him, Rod tapped one index finger on his lips, trying not to feel like a trapped animal. “Meaning?” he asked quietly.

“Meaning…I’ve been keeping track of your life since you were, what? Five or six, something like that. And I’d hoped, for your sake, after you got out of Claire’s clutches—well, I’ve never made it a secret what I think of her, although you got two great kids out of the deal—you’d finally get your head on straight. Work through some things. Apparently, I was wrong.”

Rod lowered his hands to his lap. Remained silent. The last thing he needed was a lecture, but Arlen was one of the few people in the world to whom he’d extend that privilege.

“I’d hoped,” Arlen continued, “that at least, you’d learn your lesson with Claire, make a better choice the second time. Instead, I’m wondering why you married Myrna to begin with.”

Admitting he’d often wondered the same thing would probably serve no useful purpose. Myrna had been perfect, on the surface—beautiful, monied, even-keeled, an ideal way to keep predators at bay without putting himself on the line. “I thought it would work,” was all he said. “But she…couldn’t deal with the kids, which I should have realized.”

The doctor made a move that was half nod, half shrug, then scratched behind one ear. “Be that as it may. But then there’s your work. Here I think you’ve taken some steps to get out of the rat race, but far as I can tell, all you’ve done is switch mazes. Now why is that, Rod?” Heavy brows formed a V behind his glasses. “Wasn’t it just a year ago you sat at my table and admitted how bored you’d grown with Star, how you were actually relieved when they decided to—what’s that term they used? Ah, yes—make your position redundant. Even I know you don’t need the money. If you still wanted to work, you could have done anything at all. Yet here you are, doing virtually the same thing you’ve been doing for fifteen years. Maybe I’m missing something here, but that sure as hell makes no sense to me.”

Rod shifted in his chair, caught himself. “Marketing’s what I do.”

“What you do, huh? Not…what you love?”

A beat, then: “You don’t have to love something to be good at it.”

“Fine. Then come on board with the foundation, put your skills to good use for something you actually believe in. Something close to your heart.”

“They get my money, Arlen,” he said quietly. “That’s enough.”

The ghosts hovered on the edges of the conversation, taunting. After a moment, Arlen let out a sigh. “Dammit, Rod. For years, I watched you bust your butt to please your father—”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Arlen—”

“Then we won’t. But growing up in that house…” He shook his head, his mouth taut with disgust. “That you turned out as well as you did is a testament to the human spirit.” He hooked Rod’s gaze in his own, obviously expecting a reply. When there was none, he rose from his chair, circled around to ease one hip up on the front edge of his desk. “Your parents have been gone for twenty years, Rod. You don’t have to play it safe anymore, you know.”

Rod stood, slipping his hands in his pant pockets. Breezy. Nonchalant. Far more shaken than he dared let on. “I really do need to be going—”

Arlen stood as well. Eye to eye, he thrust one finger in Rod’s face. “You don’t want to talk, I can’t make you. But let me tell you something—keep up this pretense of everything being fine, ignoring the fact that you’re one of the most miserable bastards I’ve ever met, and you’re headed straight to cardiovascular hell. You have no life, Rod.” He backed up a millimeter, crossed his arms. Grinned. “For that matter, when’s the last time you had sex?”

Shards of tension shot up the back of his neck, as Nancy’s laughter and tenderness and sweet, lush scent slammed into his consciousness. “None of your business.”

Arlen grinned more widely, misinterpreting. “That’s what I thought. Well, here’s a news flash, son—unless you want to shrivel up into something putrid and unrecognizable, you need female companionship from time to time.” He pointed that damned finger at him again. “In your case, more than from time to time. And next time, I suggest you try marrying a woman you love.”

That got a hollow laugh. “Oh, no. Not after—”

“Screwing up twice already? So what? Took me four trips to the altar to work the bugs out. But work out they did.” His eyes narrowed. “Might for you, too, if you stopped trying to choose the kind of woman you think you’re supposed to marry and pick one you want to marry.”

“No such woman exists, Arlen,” he said mildly, ignoring the hair bristling on the back of his neck, “because I’m not getting married again. And if you value our friendship, you’ll kindly remove that nose of yours from my business.”

He turned to leave, but Arlen grabbed him before he’d gone three feet. Concern simmered in those blue eyes, concern Rod had seen many times before. “You don’t have to listen to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Not this time. Not like I did before.”

“Your concern is duly noted,” Rod said through the ghosts. Through the ever-present pain. “But I’m fine, Arlen. Really. Everything’s under control, okay?”

Out in the hall, the polished steel elevator doors shushed open as he heard from ten feet away, “And who the hell d’you think you’re kidding?”

Without answering, Rod stepped inside the elevator, let the doors close.

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