“I Think It’s A Rule—No Birthday Should Pass Without A Birthday Kiss.” Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Teaser chapter Copyright

“I Think It’s A Rule—No Birthday Should Pass Without A Birthday Kiss.”

He was teasing, she thought. Only, in the next second, he buried his long, strong fingers in her curis, holding her head tilted up to his.

His lips touched hers, softer than honey. He was just teasing, she mentally repeated to herself. A neighborly kiss. A gesture of affection. If she just stood still for a second, it’d be over.

But for some strange reason, he seemed in no hurry.

No one had ever kissed her like this. He hadn’t even touched her body, yet every nerve ending in her body seemed electrified. Yearning swept through her like a storm, so heady and wild that her knees wanted to buckle. She felt young and reckless. She felt brand-new, back in that time when she really believed in fairy tales and in the unconquerable power of love....

Dear Reader,

Welcome to a wonderful new year at Silhouette Desire! Let’s start with a delightfully humorous MAN OF THE MONTH by Lass Small—The Coffeepot Inn. Here, a sinfully sexy hero is tempted by a virtuous woman. He’s determined to protect her from becoming the prey of the local men—and he’s determined to win her for himself!

The HOLIDAY HONEYMOONS miniseries continues this month with Resolved To (Re)Marry by Carole Buck. Don’t miss this latest installment of this delightful continuity series!

And the always wonderful Jennifer Greene continues her STANFORD SISTERS series with Bachelor Mom. As many of you know, Jennifer is an award winner, and this book shows why she is so popular with readers and critics alike!

Completing the month are a new love story from the sizzling pen of Beverly Barton, The Tender Trap; a delightful Western from Pamela Macaluso, The Loneliest Cowboy; and something a little bit different from Ashley Summers, On Wings of love.

Enjoy!

Senior Editor

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Bachelor Mom

Jennifer Greene

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JENNIFER GREENE lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.

Ms. Greene has written more that forty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including the RITA for Best Short Contemporary Book, and both a Best Series Author and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times.

One

Gwen Stanford didn’t drink. Sobriety was no cause with her. She had nothing against alcohol; she just never had time to take up the vice—or any other vices, for that matter.

Tonight it was going to be a real different story.

standing on her kitchen counter, she groped blindly at the back of her tallest cupboard for the shape of the rum bottle. It had to be there. Every Christmas she made the traditional family recipe for rum cake. Personally, she hated the taste of that rum cake with a passion, but her sisters loved it, and tradition was tradition. More to the immediate point, though, that bottle represented her entire liquor supply. It was rum or nothing.

There. Her fingers connected with the shape of the dusty bottle. She hooked her hand around it, risked her life leaping down from the counter, then filched a Lion King water glass from the shelf.

Clean dishes were waiting to be emptied from the dishwasher. Bills needed to be opened and paid. Her sons had scattered schoolbooks and toys, and the kitchen table still had some uncleaned-up crumbs. The wash was calling to her from the laundry room, and with two half-pint-size boys, letting wash pile up was begging for disaster.

Still, when a woman was determined to be wicked, no chore was too huge to be ignored.

Filled with resolve, she carried her drinking supplies and a small wrapped package, tied with a red bow, through the Florida room and out the glass doors. The package was a birthday present from her youngest sister, Paige, but so far she hadn’t had a second free all day to open it. She could barely catch a free moment to breathe—but that was about to change.

Outside, the sun had just dropped below the horizon, and the sky was painted with dusky blues and scarlets. Typical of St. Augustine in September, the night was warm, redolent with the mixed smells of tangy ocean air and late-blooming flowers. House lights were popping on all over the neighborhood, but her backyard was as quiet as peace.

Exactly what she wanted. Barefoot, she flopped in the chaise longue on the patio, poured a wallop of a drink and slugged down a sip. It burned like liquid smoke all the way down her throat and tasted worse than cough syrup. Stubbornly she gulped down another couple of slugs. Maybe it was extremely doubtful that rum was ever going to be her vice of choice, but she was determined to give it a lion’s try.

She reached for Paige’s present and pulled at the red bow, trying to fathom the strange, unsettling dissatisfaction that had hounded her like a shadow all day. She’d been as restless as a wet cat, and had the stupidest inclination to cry. She’d never been restless, and the whole world knew that Gwen Stanford was no whiner or crier.

Nothing had even gone wrong. Josh and Jacob, thank heavens, were tucked in bed and sleeping harder than tired puppies. Jacob’s first day in school had been a landmark, but the rest of the day had been pretty status quo. She’d carpooled, done accounting all morning, somehow got talked into mothering a den of Cub Scouts, made cookies for the church bake sale, shopped, took the kids out to dinner for her birthday and survived their sugar high after overdosing on cake and ice cream. The day started and ended at a hundred miles an hour, but that was like saying the Pope was Catholic. Hardly headline news.

As she opened the package from Paige, though, her heart stopped racing like an overheated engine. Strangely, her pulse started chugging in slow time. Real slow time. One look at the gift put a thick, heavy lump in her throat.

Days before, her oldest sister Abby had sent a dress for her birthday—ivory Chinese silk, as simple and elegant in style as it was sexy. Maybe the arrival of that dress had been the pinpoint moment in time when this pervasive, stupid moodiness had begun. She loved her sisters. The three women had always been impossibly different in nature and temperament, but they were unbeatably close. And Abby had unerringly chosen a dress that fit Gwen perfectly, a dress she loved and yearned to wear—yet doubted she ever would. A working bachelor mom with two young, rambunctious sons just had no time or occasion to dress up in silk.

The gift from Paige was equally personal and equally unsettling, but in an entirely different way.

Slowly Owen lifted the cameo from the velvet box, tilting it this way and that in the fading sunset light. Paige was a cameo maker, so the choice of gift from her younger sister wasn’t in itself a surprise, and Paige was an incredibly fine artist.

But this was beyond fine.

The cameo had been carved in two shades of coral. The woman in profile had short, cropped curly hair-actually, almost identical to Gwen’s own hairstyle-and her arms were raised as if to joyfully embrace life. Turn the cameo just so in the light, though, and there appeared to be a sober-faced woman trapped in the darker shade of coral. The effect was subtle, but there appeared to be two women in the profile—one a shadow of the other.

Gwen reached blindly for the glass again and rapidly gulped another hefty slug of the warm rum. It burned her throat as hot as the last one did... as hot and stinging as this whole day had burned on her heart.

Her younger sister knew her. Too well. Damned well. Painfully well. The cameo was exquisite and could not have been a more personal present. At this particular moment, though, it hit her like a swift, sharp bullet.

Her entire life, she’d felt like a shadow.

This dissatisfied malaise wasn’t really birthday caused, Gwen recognized. For some time, the nagging, lost feeling had been there. Sometimes she wondered exactly whose life she was living. Her life-style was more straight-laced than a saint’s, with certainly no goof-off time built in. There never had been. But heaven knew, she’d never planned to be this good. Growing up, she’d never once aspired to be a saint. Where her two sisters had always had huge, identifiable life goals, though, Gwen had really only wanted one thing. Ron. From the day she met him in first grade, she’d fallen for him like a princess in a fairy tale.

Gwen lifted the rum glass, discovered it was empty and generously poured herself another splash. She squeezed her eyes closed, as if it would make swallowing the medicine a little easier.

Her divorce from Ron was two years old now. Ancient history. Yet his influence on her life certainly wasn’t. With a flash of rum insight, she recognized morosely that she had always lived in Ron’s shadow. She had become a bookkeeper, because that was a career she could pursue at home with the kids—and because it paid Ron’s medical school bills. They lived in St. Augustine, because that was where Ron originally wanted to set up his medical practice. She’d never pursued dreams of her own, because Ron’s career was so much more important than anything she wanted.

No one had ever twisted her arm to make those choices. All through those years, she’d never thought of herself as being a doormat. She’d thought she was being loving and supportive.

Somehow that looked different on her thirtieth birthday. Somehow—with the help of another gulp of rum—it occurred to her that she’d turned into a dependent, boring mouse. She didn’t have a clue who Gwen Stanford even was anymore.

She’d been a wife, but she couldn’t really remember being a woman. Of all the female roles she’d assumed—mom, wife, now ex-wife, bookkeeper, sister, daughter—she had no memory of setting a single goal that hadn’t been to please or appease other people.

With two young sons—and God knew, Jacob and Josh were her life—she certainly couldn’t take up a life-style dancing naked on tabletops. But it ached, like the stab of a knife, that not once in her entire life had she ever done anything reckless....

“Gwen? Are you alive and awake over there?”

Gwen startled at the sudden deep voice, but then realized it was just Spence.

Her vision seemed oddly blurred, and real dusk had fallen now. The sky was no longer ruby and purple, but washed in a hushed royal blue. Even if it were pitch black, though, she would never mistake anyone else for Spence McKenna. His backyard bordered hers. They shared a fence—and two six-year-olds. His April had just endured the same landmark day in first grade, in the same class as her Jacob.

If she’d thought about it, she might have guessed he’d stop by for a few minutes to share parenting notes. She hadn’t thought about it, and at the moment, seemed incapable of thinking about anything clearly. For some reason her tongue seemed thicker than molasses. It was a mighty struggle to sound normal. “I’m awake. Just buried in a few dark thoughts for a minute there. Come on over. Did April survive her first day with Mrs. Cox?”

“She did, but I don’t know about me,” Spence admitted. “I don’t know what I was expecting with Mrs. Cox, but I thought she’d be older, wiser, warmer. Instead she looked younger than a teenager and seemed meaner than a drill sergeant. I figured I’d ask for your perspective, since your Josh survived her last year.”

“Well, Josh survived her, but I have to admit not being thrilled with her, either. We’ve had some runins. I just think she’s too tough for the little ones. Jacob came home announcing that school was stupid.”

“So it wasn’t just my April. Hell. Deserting her in the door of that classroom was tougher than chewing nails. There are parts of this single parenting business that I sure wish came with a manual.”

Gwen chuckled. “I take it your angel’s now safely in bed and you’re headed straight for the fortitude?” Even with her blurred vision, she could see he was carrying a glass as he unlatched the fence gate and ambled toward her.

“Yeah. Full-strength iced tea.” She caught a flash of white teeth when he noticed the bottle at her side. “That looks more like what the doctor ordered. Somehow I’d never have guessed you were a dark rum fan.”

“I wasn’t—until about an hour ago. Help yourself if you want some.” Any second now, Gwen expected him to look a little less fuzzy. Not that it particularly made any difference. Even fuzzy and blurred at the edges, her neighbor was downright dazzling.

Spence sank into the webbed lawn chair across from her and stretched out his long legs. Suit and tie were typical workday attire for him, but at some point he’d jettisoned the suit jacket and tie. He was still wearing formal, navy suit pants, though, and his white shirt was opened at his sun-bronzed throat.

The first time Gwen had met him, her hormones had a heart attack. Still did. Spence was a six-foot-one-inch depth charge of virility, built lean and elegant, with dark hair as thick as a mink’s and chocolate brown eyes. Energy and drive seemed to seep from his pores. Lots of character and intelligence were written in the character lines on his face, but to heck with that, he had the slowest, sexiest smile on a man that she’d ever seen. He owned a marketing firm. Gwen had no trouble picturing him as an unstoppable dynamo in business—or with women.

If he’d been any less intimidating, Owen doubted they’d ever have made friends. And they weren’t precisely friends, more good neighbors and cosufferers in the single parent life. She knew little about his ex-wife, beyond that her name was May and she’d literally dropped the baby in Spence’s lap and taken off on him. He’d moved here a couple years ago, motivated to find a house in a good school system and a neighborhood with kids. Chicken pox had initiated their first conversation—his April came down with it at the same time as her Josh. Spence had been beside himself and had come knocking on her door for advice.

Gwen curled up her legs, well aware that her hair was an unbrushed mop and her feet were bare. Her ex had been an overwhelming hunk—Ron had dominated every room he walked into—but Spence made her ex look like an untried boy. These days Gwen usually had the good sense to plaster herself against the nearest wallpaper anywhere near that type of intimidating man.

With Spence, that maestro intimidating factor iconically made him comfortable to be with. He’d seen her patchwork skirt and pink T-shirt before. He’d seen her looking like she’d been through a daylong train wreck before. Talking to him had always been easy, simply because she’d never suffered an ounce of nerves that he could conceivably be personally interested in her. A dazzling panther was hardly likely to notice a cookie maker and a born den mother. He could be a feast for her housewife eyes without a kernel of risk. He already knew she was a mouse. There was nothing to hide, nothing to worry about.

It wasn’t the first evening he’d sprawled in her lawn chair to waste a few minutes relaxing. “So... you looked lost in serious thoughts when I walked up. Were those dark thoughts all for Mrs. Cox?”

“Nope. To be honest, I was thinking about being rsckless.”

“Reckless, huh?” Spence’s smile was lazy, easy, but there seemed a sudden flash of something in his eyes. When he saw her reaching for an empty glass, he leaned over and swiftly poured her another splash of rum. “Did I hear right from the kids that it’s your birthday today?”

“Yup. Three-oh.”

“Uh-oh. I just passed thirty-four a few months ago. That was bad enough, but those birthdays that end in zeros are always killers. Big soul-searching time, hmm?”

“’Fraid so. In fact, it was just occurring to me that I’ve made a total mess of my life.” She frowned, unsure how that had just slipped out. Sharing chicken pox and carpooling dilemmas came a lot more naturally with Spence than anything seriously personal. She lifted her rum glass and then uneasily clunked it back down. Temporarily there seemed to be three full moons in the sky, two sets of swing sets in the backyard, and the expression in Spence’s eyes seemed deep and caring and... intimate. Almost sexily intimate.

There seemed to be a teensy bundle of evidence mounting up that she’d passed her tolerance limit for rum—about two glasses ago.

Spence settled back in the shadows, but she could still feel his gaze on her face. “Now what’s this about making a total mess of your life? The last I noticed, you had two damned terrific kids—”

“Yeah, I do. And I couldn’t adore my monsters more. But they’re about the only thing in my life that I’ve done right.” For some unknown reason, her skirt had hiked up to her thighs. She leaned forward to push the material down. A terrible mistake. Even that slight movement made her head swim. The way Spence was looking at her made her blood sluice through her veins faster than a sled in the luge. She was, of course, imagining that look. For dead sure, she had fully intended to level part of that rum bottle, felt no guilt at all about it. But who’d have guessed a little liquor could addle her brain this fast and this foolishly?

“What is it you think you’ve done so wrong?” he asked gently.

“Everything.”

“Like what?”

It was like a genie had opened the trapdoor on her tongue. A demon genie. Gwen was positive she never meant to answer, yet all this stupid nonsense bubbled out. “I make a living as a bookkeeper. It’s a good living. Only I hate working with numbers and have always hated working with numbers. I come from Vermont, but I’m living in St. Augustine in a house my ex-husband built. It’s a great house, and I love the whole area as far as raising kids. But I never chose that, either. He did. I can’t think of one thing I ever chose to do—or be—on my own. Even in my family. I have two fantastic sisters. The older one’s a powerhouse in business, the younger one is an incredible artist. And then there’s me. The mouse.”

“Gwen,” Spence said quietly, “you are not a mouse.”

“Yeah, I am,” she said stubbornly. The words were slurring; so were the thousand thoughts catapulting through her mind. But none of that dizziness seemed to soften the truth. “I’ve spent thirty years letting things happen to me. Instead of standing up for myself, I just followed in the back of someone else’s line. I can’t even remember if or when I had any dreams or goals of my own. There just never seemed the time to figure them out. The best I can say is that I’ve aced the course in responsibility.”

“You’ve had a mountain to handle alone, Gwen. And the last I noticed, being responsible was a hell of a fine quality.”

“Maybe. But it’s tedious and boring. I feel boring.” She pushed a hand through her spring-loaded curls. “Even trying to talk about this is pretty ridiculous. I don’t have any choices right now. My kids are everything to me, so it’s not like I could suddenly run off and join the circus. I don’t want to join some silly circus, but darn it, Spence, I’ve never done one reckless thing in my entire life.”

Undoubtedly it was more of her runaway imagination, but Spence suddenly seemed immobile, sitting there utterly still. “What kind of...reckless...are you thinking about?”

“I don’t know. Just foolish stuff. I’ve never tasted caviar. Never danced in the moonlight. Never done anything so wantonly indulgent as having a manicure or a massage. Never taken off on a motorcycle and just ridden with the wind on my face, not giving a damn where I was going. And men. I’ve never once...”

“Never what?” Spence prompted the instant her voice trailed off.

But no amount of that demon, sweet rum could have dulled her brain into completing that thought aloud. It was in her heart, though, an itchy, unsettling awareness that she’d never known any other man but Ron, and they’d been childhood sweethearts. She’d never flirted, never been hunted and chased and romanced, never played with a grown man—and for damn sure, never felt a yearning that brought her to her knees. She doubted that feeling existed outside her dreams—and her dreams had been dominated by less-than-reputable fantasies lately. Embarrassing fantasies. Nothing like real life, nothing she would ever really do, and positively nothing she could ever voice aloud to a man—and especially never to Spence.

Clearly, rum or no rum, she needed to get her act together. She shook her head with a little nervous laugh. “Good grief, it’s almost pitch-black. I didn’t realize how late it was getting. It’s way past time to head in. I owe you a big one, Spence. You came over for a little neighborly conversation, and instead I’ve been ranting on like a real fruitcake. I’m real sorry—”

“I was glad to listen. And there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Just forget everything I said, okay? A little case of the birthday doldrums seemed to get the best of me. I didn’t really mean anything...” Something was wrong with the chaise longue. It didn’t want to let her out of it. Then she remembered she needed to put her feet on the ground before she tried to stand up.

Spence lurched to his feet with a chuckle.

“Okay, I might as well admit it. I’m probably one of the hardest core drinkers you’ve ever met,” she told him.

“I had the feeling you don’t indulge too often.”

“If you don’t promise to forget I’m making such an idiot of myself, I’m gonna die. It was just one of those power-stress days. And I was feeling crabby. And it seemed like a drink would be a good way to relax.” Once she managed to stand up, she added wryly, “My knees feet like noodles. Somehow I never expected to end up quite this relaxed.”

“I think you’re going to sleep well tonight. But before you go in...”

“Yes?” Just as she turned toward the door, she remembered the exquisite cameo gift from her sister. Carefully she scooped up the velvet box and slipped it safely in her skirt pocket.

“It is your birthday...”

She tilted her head, unsure what Spence was trying to say, unsure why he was suddenly so close. The patio cement was freezing on her bare feet, undoubtedly the reason a sudden shiver whispered up her spine. She was thinking that she needed to check on the boys, lock up, lay out clothes for tomorrow, just put this whole awful day behind her. She wasn’t thinking about kissing. In a thousand million years, she would never have guessed Spence ever planned to kiss her.

“I think it’s a rule—no birthday should pass without a birthday kiss,” he murmured.

He was teasing, she thought. Any second now she’d think of an appropriate comeback. Only in the next second, his arms had reached over. Long, strong fingers buried in her curls, holding her head tilted up to his.

His lips touched hers, softer than honey. She could smell the warmth of his skin, taste the mint iced tea on his breath. His dark eyes caught the shimmering silver of the full moon. He was just teasing, she mentally repeated to herself. He just meant a neighbor’s kiss. A gesture of affection. A kindness. If she just stood still for a second, it’d be over.

But for some strange reason, he seemed in no hurry.

Another shiver hummed up her spine, this one not caused by the icy patio cement on her bare feet. This particular shiver was as warm as a heat wave. Spence lifted his head after that first, brief taste of a kiss. His eyes were open for that moment, studying her, considering her. She saw the faintest smile on his lips, but it disappeared faster than the wink of an eye. And then he closed his eyes and came back for a real kiss.

Nothing burned like hot sugar. His mouth rubbed against hers slowly, evocatively, alluringly taking his time. She’d been married. She’d loved her husband. But no one had ever kissed her like this. All day, she’d been trying to figure out who Gwen Stanford really was. The question reared its painful head again, because God knew, she didn’t know who she was at that moment.

He hadn’t even touched her body, yet every nerve ending in her body seemed suddenly electrified. Her pulse was frantic, her nerves thrumming to intimate, wicked blues. He took her mouth like she was fiercely desired, like he couldn’t wait another instant before touching her, like there were no swing sets and sandboxes and neighbors a few yards away, like there was nothing but her in his universe.

She’d never had such a foolish response to a man in her entire life. Family tradition or no family tradition, she abruptly resolved never to make rum cake again, to pour every ounce of that demon drink straight down the drain.

Still...

She knew, really knew, that her response to him was unforgivably silly. The hormones singing in her head had a reason. Too much rum. And the allure of a man who positively knew how to kiss a woman, who’d probably known millions and millions of women. She knew. Yet yearning still swept through her like a storm, so heady and wild that her knees wanted to buckle. She felt young and reckless. She felt brand-new, on the brink of all the excitement in life, back in that time when she really believed in fairy tales and the unconquerable power of love....

Slowly Spence stepped back from her. Slowly he traced the line of her jaw with the edge of his thumb. “Happy birthday, Gwen,” he murmured.

Two

An hour later, Gwen had locked up, picked up and switched off all the lights. She dialed the telephone in her bedroom to call Vermont. Her sister should still be up, and she wanted to thank Paige for the cameo.

As the telephone rang at the other end, her gaze pounced from the lemon yellow print comforter to the wicker love seat in the corner. She’d redecorated the bedroom right after the divorce. Ron favored dark, rich expensive woods. Actually, his taste pretty predictably ran to anything that cost the moon. She’d sold the oppressive stuff, painted and redid everything in sunny yellows and white wicker. It was her private haven now. Walking into her bedroom was like walking into her own sanctuary.

Not tonight. Listening to the phone ring, she squeezed her eyes closed. If her sister wasn’t home, heaven knew what she was going to do—maybe take a marathon jog around St. Augustine. She was not only feeling climb-the-walls wide awake, but sober as a judge.

That kiss from Spence could sober anyone up... although she was trying her her damnedest to work up a good case of denial. Surely it never really happened. Surely it was her imagination that he’d knocked her knickers off with that kiss. Surely it was her rum-clouded memory that made her think she’d responded to him like a wild cat.

She couldn’t conceivably have responded to Spence with abandon. He was her neighbor. A good neighbor. He was also an experienced, sophisticated hunk. She was tuna noodle casserole and he was lobster. There was nothing wrong with being tuna noodle casserole, but man, to have him think she was sexually attracted to him was beyond mortifying. She’d never doubted that Spence ran across his share of female movers and shakers in his business life. He was probably dying of embarrassment that she’d responded to him like...well, like some sad stereotype of a sex-starved divorcee.

She hoped he’d forget it.

If he couldn’t forget it, she hoped she’d explained enough times about her inexperience with rum.

Actually, she desperately hoped that if she just kept mentally denying it, maybe she could convince herself it never happened.

“Gwen! I tried to call you earlier, but you were out—I hope partying big-time. How’d the big three-oh birthday go?”

There. Her sister finally answered, and Paige’s familiar alto soothed her nerves like balm for a sore. “The day’s been fine, and oh, Paige, the cameo is just breathtaking. I couldn’t love it more. Thank you so much!”

Paige let out a breathy sigh. “Whew. So glad you liked it. I wanted it right ... not just some pretty piece of artwork, but something personal between you and me.”

Sitting Indian-style on the bed, the phone cupped to her ear, Gwen touched the cameo pendant with soft fingers. “It was personal. More than personal. The look of the woman in the profile almost gave me the shivers... she almost seemed to look like me”

“I thought so, too. But I’ve told you before how sculpting works—any similarity like that is accidental. There’s a kind of truth in any piece of raw material. The artist’s job is to carve away what isn’t the truth, but she can’t build in a picture that isn’t there. I had no way to know ahead of time that the woman was going to end up looking like you.” Paige hesitated, then added deliberately, “But I wanted her to be beautiful. You’re beautiful, sis. And you seem to be the only one in the entire world who isn’t aware of it.”

“Talk about bias.” Gwen’s voice was purposefully light. Maybe her sister never saw what she did. It was the shadow woman in the cameo that put a lump in her throat, not the beautiful lady who was so exuberantly embracing life. Carefully she snapped the lid closed on the velvet box. “I’ll be beautiful the same day cats fly. You’ve just got blinders on because you’re my sister.”

“Hey, you’re talking to the brat who put shaving cream in your bra. Short-sheeted your bed. Froze all your underpants next to Mom’s jam in the freezer. Sisters don’t have to do or say nice things.”

Gwen chuckled. “Come to think of it, I’d forgotten what a brat you were. Abby was the nice sister.”

“And what’d Abby send you for your birthday?”

“A silk dress. Ivory. Kind of swirly and soft and sexy.” Maybe it was studying that cameo that made her suddenly feel restless and uneasy again, but she bounced off the bed and started pacing the room with the phone cradled against her ear. “Maybe in the year 2010, I’ll find a place to wear it.”

“Abby keeps trying to reform my taste in clothes, too. She should know by now it’s hopeless. And how come she got all the good taste in the family?”

“I dunno. You want to short-sheet her bed the next time we see her?”

They both chuckled and wasted a few minutes creating diabolical plans for Abby and recalling all the sick practical jokes they’d pulled on each other as kids. Then Paige filled in her own family news—she’d never felt healthier in her whole life, but her new husband Stefan was miserable, suffering morning sickness big-time. As Paige embellished the details, both sisters’ chuckles spilled into laughter...until Paige suddenly paused and turned serious. “Boy, I haven’t heard a good belly laugh from you in forever, kiddo. I’ve really worried how you were doing these past few months. And you haven’t said one word about the bastard.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that. He’s really not, Paige. Ron’s a good dad to the boys. And he didn’t suddenly turn into a creep just because the marriage failed.”

“I think we’ve had this exact same conversation before—you know I have a different opinion on that—but okay, okay. I’ll try to remember not to call him a manipulative, arrogant son of a seadog in your presence, sweets. But I wish you’d try to believe it. He’s well out of your life. You seeing anyone?”

“You have to be kidding. I’m not sure I’ve even caught sight of an adult man in six months, between being chained to the computer most of the day and den-mothering a passel of boys in my free time,” Owen said wryly. From nowhere, though, a mental picture of Spence suddenly embedded itself in her mind as if glued there.

“You’ve got to quit hiding in that house.”

“This is my youngest sister talking? The one who hid in the art studio for years and was never going to get married as long as she lived?”

“That was before I met Stefan. Now I know what I was missing. And you, too. Just listen to me-now that I know everything,” Paige teased, but again, her voice turned serious. “I know it’s got to be scary to get your feet wet in the dating pool again, but everyone isn’t like Ron, sis. You just have to steer clear of those high-powered, steamroller types.”

“I know, I know. Believe me.” Again, Spence’s face flashed in her brain. He was ten times more dynamite than Ron had ever been, a clear study of a man motivated by drive and ambition and overloaded with dynamic, virile male energy. Lord, how could she have kissed him like that? Being a concentrated dynamo was no crime, but for her, Spence might as well have a Danger sign tattooed on his forehead. Abruptly, though, that whole thought train disappeared from her mind. “Oops...Paige, I have to go. A pint-size interruption just showed up in the doorway.”

Paige chuckled just before hanging up. “Give my favorite hellion nephews a giant hug from Aunt Paige, okay?”

As it happened, only one of her hellions was standing in the door. Jacob. Tousled and barefoot and wearing his favorite cartoon pj’s. He was the spitting image of his dad with his white-blond hair and woman-killer blue eyes and beyond-adorable grin. “He’s back, Mom,” Jacob said.

Gwen heard the quaver in his voice, and there was sure no grin on his face now. Jacob could manage to get dirty in a bathtub; he had more energy than an entire football team, and there were times he could test her patience like nobody’s business. But not when he was scared. Never when he was scared.

Swiftly she reached out her arms. “Shoot. Don’t tell me that blasted monster showed up again?”

“Yup. The green one. With the big bulging eyes and the claws like scissors.”

“Darn. I thought we got rid of him permanently the last time.”

“Nope.” Another quaver, as he shot across the room and burrowed his face into her stomach. “I just came in to protect you. I wasn’t scared or anything, but you’re a girl and all. I figured I better sleep with you.”

“Well, when one of us is afraid, I think it’s a good idea to protect each other,” Gwen said gravely. “But let’s take care of this monster together first, okay?”

She took his hand and together they walked down the hall to his room. “Where’d he come from this time?”

“The bathroom. And then he slinked in. And then he hid by the desk.”

“Ah.” She switched on the big overhead light and then slowly took her time, studiously searching around the desk, bending down to look under the bed, then poking in the corners of the closet. “You see anything?” she asked her son.

“Nope.”

“Any other place you think he could be hiding?”

“Aw, Mom. You don’t have to keep doing this. I know it’s just a dream. It’s just such a real dream that I can’t always make it go away.”

“Honest, I understand. When I was six, I had pink and orange alligators under my bed. Just for the record, though...they all went away by the time I was seven. Never came back.”

“Boy, were you silly. Everybody knows that alligators don’t come in orange.”

She made him giggle, but he still wasn’t sure about leaving her alone—“unprotected”—so she curled up on the twin bed with him. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, never did. But he didn’t let her cuddle him too often, now that he was a big grown-up six-year-old, and it felt good, the warm body, the scent of her son, the cowlick tufts of his blond hair tickling her chin.

This was her life, she thought. Loving her kids. Being there for them when the monsters came.

She simply had to shake this strange, lost, dissatisfied feeling that had haunted her lately. And she simply had to put that wild, dangerous kiss from Spence out of her mind.

Before she fell asleep, she hoped fiercely that he’d just done her a kindness and forgotten all about it.

“Maybe I should sleep with you tonight.”

“You think so?” Spence bent down to kiss the blue-eyed blond beauty. The love of his life had the long eyelashes of a seductress and the cajoling ways of a Lorelei. He knew—and she knew even better—that he could be had. He’d been suckered by a single milk-breath kiss before.

“There aren’t any monsters in your bed, Dad. And just in case one comes, then I won’t have to walk all the way down the hall to your room. It’s dark and scary in the hall.”

He gave April another kiss and then tucked the stuffed two-foot-high yellow rabbit under the covers with her. “There’s a night light in the hall now, remember? It’s not dark anymore. And I’m pretty sure we killed off all the monsters a couple nights ago. Haven’t seen one since.”

“But what if one comes?”

“Then you yell at the top of your lungs for Dad.” He illustrated, mimicking her child’s soprano in such a campy fashion that she started giggling. “I’ll come running lickety-split and we’ll save each other. But right now I want you to close your eyes and think about marshmallows.”

“Marshmallows?”

“Yup. Close your eyes, lovebug, and concentrate real, real hard on marshmallows.” It was the newest theory he was trying. So far he hadn’t found a sure cure for night terrors, no matter how many child-rearing books he’d read. Instead of picturing monsters just before she went to sleep, he was trying to get her to think about something safe and soft and fun.

So far, it worked some of the time. The chances were about “even-steven” he’d wake up in the morning with a six-year-old hogging the covers. Early in the night, though, April’s sleep patterns were as predictable as the sunrise. If he could just get her to close her eyes, she’d be snoozing deep and heavy twenty minutes from now.

For the next twenty minutes he stood in the kitchen, sipping an iced tea, staring out the west window at the sweep of lawn that bordered his place and Gwen’s.

Mary Margaret, his housekeeper, made fine iced tea. She was addicted to Pine Sol, though. Seemed there was no limit to the gallons she could go through, and the smell pervaded the kitchen. So did the chicken cacciatore she’d made for dinner. Mary Margaret was chunky, built like a barrel, with long, wiry gray hair always pulled back in the same merciless bun. She broke something once a week, covered up any experimental cooking with an overdose of cayenne, and she looked tougher than old nails ... but she’d about die for his daughter. Spence never cared about the rest.

He’d been a little uneasy about dads and daughters and whether it was okay for April to climb in bed with him in the middle of the night. Mary Margaret, in typical tactful fashion, told him he was being stupid. When a child was scared, you did whatever you had to do to help them get unscared. She also told him to burn all the silly child-rearing books and listen to her. She’d raised five children. She knew everything.

Should he ever fail to obey her sage advice, the threat of habanero-and-cayenne-laced chicken cacciatore was always there.

The only terrorizing females he’d allowed in his life in several years now were April and Mary Margaret.

But he was considering adding another.

Across the yard, past the shadow-dipped fence and moonlit swing set, a light went out in one of the back rooms. Gwen was putting her sons to bed. Like him, she probably couldn’t really rest and relax for a few minutes yet, not until she knew for sure the kids were asleep.

Light glowed from the jalousie window in her bathroom, then flicked off again. After that she headed for the kitchen. Living across the way from her for the past two years, he knew her patterns fairly well by now. She flew around the kitchen doing little cleanups right after the boys went to bed. A few minutes later she’d check on them. She didn’t let down her hair—so to speak—until she was sure her sons were asleep. Then, often enough, she’d slip off her shoes and wander outside barefoot for a few minutes, closing her eyes, breathing in the night.

It was her way of letting out the day’s stresses, Spence guessed. But he’d seen her lift her face, seen the moonlight wash over her delicate profile and soft skin. Sometimes a night breeze would pucker off the ocean, cupping the blouse fabric intimately to her high, full breasts, fingering light and shine into her cap of nutmeg brown curls. Sometimes she’d sway in the breeze as if she were hearing music, not dancing, but as if there were a song or dream in her head that she couldn’t stop thinking about.

During the day, it was almost impossible to catch Gwen when she wasn’t herding kids—hers and half the neighborhood’s. She always had a smile. Was always dressed in practical cotton or denim. Always had time to give a neighbor a helping hand or a listening ear—including him—but he’d never seen any guy around the place except for her good-looking, cold-eyed ex.

If Spence hadn’t seen her, all those moonlit nights, he would never have guessed there was more to the package than the practical single mom and commonsense neighbor. But he’d seen the sensual beauty in Gwen, the dreamer side to her... and the loneliness.

From the beginning she’d never given him more than the friendly time of day. Spence sensed she needed healing time to get over her divorce. He understood that. He had scars left over from the breakup of his marriage to May, and there was no fast recovery from certain kinds of emotional wounds.

Two years had passed, though. Two years of watching her and thinking about her and using their mutual single-parent problems to naturally create excuses to talk with her. Spence had never tried a serious move. It pushed his black humor buttons, though, that an embarrassing number of women in his business life seemed willing to chase him, given no encouragement at all, yet Gwen had never given him the first sign that she noticed he was a male human being. Maybe she didn’t like brown hair and brown eyes. Maybe tall men didn’t turn her on. Maybe she liked big brawny guys instead of lean. Spence had a sister who’d never treated him as sisterly as Gwen did.

She hadn’t kissed him last night like a sister, though.

With his gaze still on the window view, Spence set his iced tea glass in the sink. He considered whether he was up for a knife-in-the-gut rejection. He considered how many clear no-touch signals she’d given him over the past two years. He considered that he hadn’t taken a serious risk with a woman since May, and having his heart torn out had been as much fun to recover from as a ballet wound.

Spence rubbed the back of his neck, then abruptly pivoted around. He checked first on April, to make sure she was dead-to-the-world asleep, then inhaled a lungful of courage and strode determinedly for the back door.

The problem—the really nasty, unsolvable problem—was that the only way to figure out what Gwen Stanford. felt—or could feel for him—was to go over there and find out.

But taking the risk sure felt like diving into the ocean with no life buoy or rescue raft in sight.

Three

“You give me fever... when you kiss me ...” It was tough to belt out rock and roll when you couldn’t carry a tune to save your life and had to whisper because the boys were sleeping—but brownie making wouldn’t be the same without a song. Gwen cracked two eggs and plopped them in the bowl.

“I know you’re gonna treat me ri-i-i-ight...” She checked the recipe for the amount of sugar. One cup. That struck her as a little stingy, so she heaped in some extra. “Louie, Louie...” Oops, she was pretty sure those were lyrics to some other oldie, but no matter. There was still a hip-swinging beat to that one, too. Only drat, she’d forgotten to preheat the oven.

Holding a wooden spoon dripping sugar and chocolate, she swiftly pivoted around ... and almost had a heart attack when she saw Spence in her screen doorway. “Eek,” she said weakly.

Even in the muzzy darkness beyond the screen, she could see his effort to control a smile. “Sorry, I really didn’t mean to scare you. I was just about to knock—but then I decided you looked too busy for company and maybe I’d better head back home.”

It took a second to gather her scattered wits...but then she grinned. “Now tell the truth. My singing just terrfied you speechless, didn’t it? Come in, come in. I promise I’ll quit. I’ll even pour you a glass of lemonade...” She glanced at her hands, spattered with chocolate and flour. “Well, maybe you’d better pour your own lemonade.”

“You do look busy—”

“I am. The brownies are for Ms. Peter’s class tomorrow—she’s Josh’s second-grade teacher, and I caught wind it was her birthday. Figured it was a good idea to start the school year by buttering her up. There’s nothing more boring than making brownies by yourself, though, so I couldn’t be happier to have some company. What’s up? April isn’t sick, is she?”

“No, she’s fine, sleeping like a log.” Spence stepped inside. Even in casual khakis and old sandals, he made her pulse rate accelerate to zoom speed. “She came home from school—it’s only the second day, mind you—and tells me she now knows how to read. Nothing to it.”

Owen chuckled, then motioned where he could find the glasses. “There’s fresh-squeezed lemonade on the first shelf in the fridge...and April’s so bright, I wouldn’t doubt she moved past Dick and Jane in the first fifteen minutes. What a darling she is.”

“I think so, too, but actually, I heard she poured several handfuls of sand down Jacob’s shirt this afternoon. I figured I’d better find out if the McKennas were in hot water at your house.”

So that’s why he’d stopped over? Head down, she started ladling brownie batter into the baking pan. “No problem. I found the sand when I threw Jacob in the bathtub tonight, but believe me, dirt and Jacob isn’t any news to our septic system. And what’s a little sand between friends? Apparently Jacob paid her the ultimate compliment by telling her she played as well as a boy. No offense meant to your gender, but I bopped him with a towel. I swear my two came out of the womb thinking sexist... do you want to lick the bowl?”

“Lick the bowl?”

Gwen had long suspected that the whole world treated Spence like a hotshot—because he was. She always meant to kowtow the same way and treat him like the intimidating business tycoon he was, only she’d never mastered how to do it. “Hey, it’s fine with me if you’re too grown-up to get your hands sticky. Personally I don’t think anything beats brownie batter, but—”

“I’ll take the bowl off your hands.”

She chuckled. “You’re gonna do me a favor, huh? But maybe this is a bad idea. You’ve got a white shirt on, and Mary Margaret’ll skin you alive if she has to get chocolate stains out of it—”

“I’ll handle Mary Margaret. I haven’t had brownie batter in a dozen years.”

“Well, you poor baby...” He hovered like a four-year-old until she had the batter poured in the pan-then promptly and greedily absconded with the bowl—and the wooden spoon. Sheesh, who’d have dreamed this would go so easily, she mused. Last night she’d been mortified at the thought of having to face him again, when obviously she only had one choice. To be herself and to act like normal.

She grabbed a soapy sponge. Something about making brownies always took out her whole kitchen. There were drips of chocolate on the pecan cupboards and a dusting of flour everywhere on the coral Formica counters. Working around Spence at the island bar, she swiped and scrubbed with the sponge. She was conscious that her feet were bare, her face as scrubbed as a kid’s, and he’d probably been around women all day dressed in elegant business suits. Her oversize brown T-shirt and red shorts were ancient and looked it—but he’d seen her look worse.

Come to think of it, he’d never seen her looking anything but worse. At the moment she doubted he’d notice if she were wearing red satin or gold lamé. His head was buried pretty deeply in the chocolate bowl. “Good grief. Doesn’t Mary Margaret ever make you brownies?”

“She bakes. We had a mystery pie last night. I didn’t have the courage to ask what it was. Definitely not brownies, though. And definitely nothing like this. How’s your head?”

“My head?”

“No headache? I only had one experience with dark sweet rum, way back in college, but I remembered it being pretty lethal the next morning.”

She’d hoped—she’d so earnestly prayed—that he’d forgotten all about last night. “Well, I woke up this morning with a fairly good head pounder. Bad enough to convince me that if I were going to take up a vice, it’d be something besides alcohol.” She added swiftly, lightly, “I can hardly remember anything that happened last night after the first sip.”

“No?”

“Nope. Not a thing. I slept like the dead, though, that’s for sure....” She finished her cleanup and perched on the kitchen stool next to him, still drying her hands on a watermelon-print towel. Not that she was in a hustle to change the subject, but the winning horse at the Derby couldn’t have hustled any faster. “Did you have a good day? Market some good business deals?”

“Had a great day. Marketed up a storm. So...did you have any time today to shop for some Victoria’s Secret underwear?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Last night...” He frowned, as if trying to recall her exact words. For a man who’d been salivating for chocolate seconds before, suddenly he seemed to have forgotten all about the brownie bowl. “You were talking about turning over a new leaf and becoming ‘reckless.’ I’m pretty sure you mentioned that a shopping trip to Victoria’s Secret was part of that agenda... whoops. Has Gwen disappeared on me?”

He reached over to peek under the kitchen towel she’d flopped over her head.

“Nope. She’s still here,” he announced gravely.

“She’s hiding under the towel because she’s dying of embarrassment,” Gwen said dryly. “I was counting on you to be a gentleman and forget everything I said last night. I never meant any of it—”

“I thought you made all kinds of good sense.”

“Good sense?” She pulled the towel off then, if only to see his face. She assumed he was pulling her leg, yet his expression—bewilderingly enough— seemed sincere and serious. “I dipped into half my supply of cooking rum for the annual rum cakes I make around the holidays. Far as I recall, I barely swallowed the first sip before I quit making any sense.”

“Well, I guess I came over for nothing, then, because that was exactly what I wanted to talk with you about. I thought maybe we could help each other.”

“Help each other?” Gwen didn’t mean to keep parroting him, but so far—beyond feeling eternally grateful that he hadn’t brought up that blasted kiss—she seemed to be having a major problem following the conversation.

Spence pushed aside the bowl and lazily propped his long legs on the opposite kitchen stool. “You sounded... trapped. I understand how that feels, Gwen. My life is my daughter right now—and I don’t want it any other way. But besides her and work, there doesn’t seem to be any free time in a day. Single parenting is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.”

“You’re not kidding,” she agreed.

“But even loving it, you can feel trapped. At least I do, sometimes. I imagine you feel just as buried under the same mountain of single-parent responsibilities.”

“I do,” she agreed again, still unsure where he was leading.

“Well, I don’t think it’s selfish—or weird—that you feel like you need to break out sometimes. Maybe you were teasing about doing something ‘reckless.’ But I think it’s a pretty human, healthy need to crave some time to yourself. And it occurred to me...”

“What?”

He lifted a hand in a boyish gesture. “It just occurred to me that we’re both in the same boat. It’s really hard for a single parent to pull off any free time-without a fellow conspirator. I’m guessing you don’t hire many baby-sitters?”

“No.”

He nodded. “Me, either. I’ve got Mary Margaret during the day for April, but I really hate leaving her with strangers in the evening just because I selfishly need some time off. I mean... I want to give my daughter that personal time, or at least know she’s with someone who really cares about her. Strangers don’t cut that mustard.”

“I feel exactly the same way,” Gwen said honestly. “I hate leaving the boys with baby-sitters. Even though I’m home, I’m either working—or running hard—during the day. It’s not the same as real time with them, and especially because of the divorce I feel they need that time in the evenings. I just feel really selfish and guilty if I leave them.”

“Yeah. I understand. But I kept thinking about how our kids play together all the time, have a good time with each other, so it’s not like any of us are strangers. If we combined resources, it seems to me it could help us both. Which is to say—if you want an ally, I’m volunteering to be one.”

“Well, Spence, you’ve got an ally right back. But I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking about doing....”

“I never had any set plan. I was just thinking... why don’t we try something?” He shrugged his shoulders, and then as if the idea had just popped in his head, suggested, “I’ve got an early workday tomorrow, should be home by four. How about if you just plan to take off, do whatever you feel like doing. I’ll take the kids, do dinner, keep ’em busy until bedtime.”

The thought of four hours free—actually free—danced in her head like a vision of sugarplums and gaily wrapped packages at Christmas. But a lot of years had passed since she believed in Santa. “I can’t possibly ask you to do that,” she informed him—and herself—firmly.

“You’re not asking me to do anything. I’m offering. And you can offer back the same way. Hey, if it doesn’t work out for the kids in a good way, we just won’t do it again. But I can’t see how we’ll know unless we try out an experimental run, do you?”

“No,” she said hesitantly.

“So we’re on for tomorrow? I’ll pick up your boys around four?”

“Well...okay, I guess. As far as I know, there’s no reason why that timing wouldn’t work out....”

She’d barely, hesitantly, agreed before Spence up and left. It was late, of course. Time for any parent of young children to be packing it in, and Spence never visited for more than a few minutes. Still, Gwen found herself at the kitchen window, hands on her hips, until he disappeared into the night’s shadows.

She felt... odd. Her pulse was charging, her nerves kindling awareness—but that was just hormone nonsense, she suspected. Even a woman in a coma would probably notice those liquid brown eyes and that slow, wicked grin of his, and the kiss last night had naturally upped her sexual awareness quotient around Spence. No man had ever made her feel wicked before.

If she hadn’t been a card-carrying Good Girl for thirty years, maybe he might have affected her less potently. But she’d liked that kiss. Liked that wicked, reckless feeling. Liked him—suddenly, personally, and way too much.

Still, her deplorable lack of control over her hormonal response to him didn’t seem to completely explain the chugging, charging, uneasy beat in her pulse. Spence was turning into a serious friend. No one else, not even her sisters, understood how much or how long she’d felt trapped. Spence’s perception had come as a surprise, like finding a kindred spirit, and he’d been so nonjudgmental and undersranding....

Abruptly the oven timer buzzed. Swiftly Owen whisked out the brownies and set them on the rack to cool, then glanced at the clock and mentally shook her head. The boys would be raring wide awake by six-thirty. It wasn’t time to think. It was time to crash. She’d be crabbier than a porcupine if she didn’t catch some shut-eye.

She turned out lights, checked on her monsters, then climbed into a Miami Dolphins T-shirt and burrowed between her lemon-yellow sheets. That quickly, the whole house was dark, quiet and peaceful.

Yet she tossed. Then turned. Sleep refused to come. Those uneasy warning bells kept clanging in the back of her mind.

Spence’s whole plan about helping each other sounded wonderful. She craved some free time right now. She needed the space to figure out who she was and where she was going with her life. Josh and Jacob thought Spence was “majorly cool,” and likewise, she was crazy about his daughter. For fellow single parents to help each other was the best of all worlds, because they both shared the same concerns.

It was just that she felt ... steamrollered ... into the plan. Spence couldn’t help being a dynamic, take-charge type of man. But Gwen was just coming to understand that hiding in a steamroller’s shadow was exactly what she had done with Ron. It was all too easy to let a lion lead—if you were a mouse. And by making a man her whole life, she’d not only bored one husband straight into divorce court ... she’d become boring to herself, somehow lost any concept of her own life in the process.

She needed to be careful. Infinitely careful not to fall seriously for Spence. Eventually she’d look for love again—after she mastered this independence business and learned to stand up for herself. But she already knew that she was a disastrous failure with steamrollers. Spence could never possibly work for her.

Falling for him would be her worst nightmare.

Spence decided he was going to put up his feet and read the newspaper—as soon as he quit pacing the floors. The kitchen clock read 8:20. He always had a full quota of energy, but he’d never been a nervous man. There was no earthly reason for him to be wearing a path between the kitchen, hall and living room.

The house was quiet. Dead quiet. Mary Margaret had long gone home, and all three kids had hit the sack around eight. They were already asleep. He’d checked. Josh and Jacob were camping in the spare bedroom, and April was sawing zz’s on her pink pillow. The plan, in the morning, was for him to wake up the boys in time for them to flash over to their own house to get dressed for school. The boys had loved the idea of sleeping over, and that way Gwen didn’t have to fret about getting home at some exact time.

She could dance until dawn if she wanted to, Spence had told her.

He’d even meant it.

Sort of.

There was no reason to expect her home, he told himself irritably. No reason to be prowling around the house when he was whipped after a long day. He could dive into the paper or a book. Pour himself a drink. Call his younger sister. Turn on his computer and work on a new advertising program that had been biting on his mind all day.

All those ideas struck him as stupendous, but he was still pacing a road between the kitchen and living room when he finally heard a sound just before nine.

She whisper-knocked on the front door and poked her head in. “Spence, are you there?” she said softly. And then she saw him in the far doorway, grinned and sprinted inside. “Were the boys good? Everything okay? How were the kids for you?”

“It went fine. They had a great time together. And you don’t have to whisper—the bedrooms are in the far wing, and I looked just a couple minutes ago. All three of them are sound asleep.” Once Spence got that informational chitchat out of the way, he said what was on his mind. “Holy kamoly.”

“Uh-oh. I look weird, huh?” Owen dropped an armful of packages in a noisy crinkle and crunch of paper, then straightened back up.

“You don’t look weird.”

“Too much putting on the dog? Too much makeup? Too wild ... ?”

The only thing “wild” Spence noticed was the wild, vulnerable uncertainty in her face. Deliberately he circled around her with narrowed eyes. As he circled, her cheeks flushed. Nervously she pulled on an earring, then the other earring... and started talking faster than he could draw breath. “I just thought it’d be fun. To have a make-over. And once I had all that new makeup on, it seemed like I might as well try a haircut and a little different hairstyle. And I haven’t actually bought clothes—except for the boys—in a month of Sundays. The stores were showing a bunch of new stuff for fall....”

She finally trailed off. Spence understood he was expected to say something. And he would. As soon as he found his voice again.

He’d known she was beautiful. She just didn’t have a flashy type of beauty—or any awareness of her allure. Still didn’t.

But Spence did. And the changes in her tonight only put an exclamation on a declarative truth he already knew. Her hair had been short before, but now it was feathery, framing her face in soft spikes, giving her a tousled, sexy, French look. Something about her eyes looked darker, more dramatic. The new silk blouse wasn’t fancy, just a blouse, but the cream color set off her golden skin and the coral cameo she had pinned at the throat. The skirt was swishy and long and cruelly hid those damn fine legs of hers, but the style was pure female. Pure her.

“You look stunning,” he informed her seriously.

“Hardly that.” But she laughed, both nervously and with a little relief in there, too. “It was kind of fun. Just...goofing off. And you’ll never believe what happened.”

“What?”

“These two guys whistled at me on the escalator. You know what else?”

“What?”

“Another guy tried to pick me up in the parking lot. I was just walking toward my car when he was walking toward his. When he started talking to me, I thought he was just being nice, you know, the way friendly types wander into conversations when you’re stuck in lines or in elevators or wherever? But good grief, he asked me out. I almost had a heart attack.”

So did Spence. “Got a taste for the reckless life, did you?”

She chuckled. “Maybe not reckless on a parachute jumper’s terms, but I haven’t wasted an entire afternoon since ... well, since I can remember.”

“Getting out was good for you.”

“Yeah, it really seemed to be.” She seemed surprised when he wrapped her hands around a glass of fresh-squeezed limeade. In between breakneck pacing around the house, Spence had more than enough time to make it. And since she was still hovering by the door, close to her packages, he figured she was planning on leaving lickety-split unless he did something to stall her. “I should check on the boys and go, really—”

“You’re welcome to look in on the boys, but I bet it’d feel real good to kick your shoes off for a minute and relax?”

“Well...”

She was thirsty, he could see. And he didn’t have to coax her that hard into crashing for a few minutes on his saddle leather couch. She even slipped off her shoes and curled her legs under her. Either the shopping or turning herself into a sexy femme fatale had clearly temporarily zapped her quota of nervous energy.

His quota of nervous energy, by contrast, had soared somewhere near the stratosphere.

He switched on the lamp behind her, creating a soft pool of cream light, and kept a steady conversation going about his activities with the kids—dinner at Ponderosa, the three-against-one soccer game in the backyard, the finger-painting marathon the monsters had put him through at the kitchen table.

He had Gwen chuckling, but he also saw her gaze absently stray around the room. She’d been in his house dozens of times, but never in the formal living room before. Both of them had always been more inclined to pop in and out of each other’s kitchens for the type of casual, neighborly conversations they usually had. Now, though, she glanced around, noticing his Pakistani burgundy-and-cream rug, the Indian-carved teak coffee table, the Oriental prints on the walls and the man-size leather furniture.