"Come here."

She hesitated, then gave in to the urge to curl up beside him. With her head pillowed against his shoulder and the dog stretched across their legs, she sighed.

"I'm glad you're here."

"I'm sorry I wasn't quicker."

"No, Tucker."

He brushed his lips over her head. "I gotta get this out, Caroline. It gave me some hard hours through the night. He wouldn't have come after you if it weren't for me. It was me he wanted, and me who put you in the middle."

She laid a hand over his heart, wondering if she'd ever felt more comforted, more safe. "I used to think that way about things. That I was at the center, and whenever anything went wrong, I was to blame for it. It's an indulgent kind of arrogance, I think. The kind that carves holes in you that you have to fill up with pills and therapy. Don't change on me, Tucker. I'm starting to find your day-to-day way of looking at things appealing."

"It scared me." When his arms tightened around her, she curved into him to give comfort as well as take it. "Nothing's ever scared me more than hearing those shots and knowing I was too far away."

"I've been scared before, so many times. As horrible as this is, it's really the first time I've done anything about my fear." Her hand fisted, and she slowly, deliberately, relaxed it again. "I'm not glad it happened, Tucker, and I guess I'll always remember what it was like to pull that trigger. But I can deal with it."

He stared at dust motes dancing in a sunbeam. There were things he'd never forget either. Like the numb terror of racing over a fallow field with shots echoing in his head. Like the glassy-eyed shock on her face when she'd walked by him to carry the limp dog into the house.

"I'm no hero, Caroline. Christ knows, I don't want to be one, but I'm going to see to it that nothing bad happens to you again."

She smiled. "That's a broad and daring ambition," she began, and tilted her head back to look at him. There was no answering smile in his eyes, and when he took her chin, his fingers were tense.

"You're important to me." He said the words slowly, as if explaining them to himself. "Nobody's ever been as important, and that's hard."

The air was clogging in her lungs, the way it often did when she stood on a darkened stage, the moment before the spotlight found her. "I know. I guess it's hard for both of us."

He saw the shadow of fear in her eyes, though she kept them steady and level on his. And because she was important, because everything about her had suddenly become vitally important, he struggled to lighten his tone.

"It sure is a new one for me." His tensed fingers relaxed to stroke her jaw. "Here I am all wrapped up in a woman and I haven't even managed to get her clothes off yet. This gets around, my reputation's going to suffer."

"Why don't you try it now?"

His finger froze on her cheek. "What's that?"

"I said, why don't you try it now." With her eyes still full of fears and needs and doubts, she lifted her lips to his.

He felt himself sink into her, and that, too, was a change. That slow, lovely drift into sweetness. There was no hot punch of lust that he had always accepted so easily. Instead, there was a gentle shift of sensation, as subtle as a sky lightening toward dawn.

As her body yielded against his, as her breathy sigh slipped intimately from her mouth to his, he understood that she was offering him more than passion. She was giving him her trust. It humbled him. It disturbed him. She was not the kind of woman to offer anything to a man casually. And he-he had always taken whatever a woman chose to give with an easy grin and no backward looks.

"Caroline." He brushed his fingers over her cheeks, combed them through her hair. "I want you."

His heart drummed fast and hard against hers. The quiet seriousness of his statement made her smile even as his lips cruised over her face. "I know."

"No, I mean I really want you." The robe had slipped off her shoulder, and he let his lips wander to that warm, sweet curve. "I guess I've been waiting for you to give me the go-ahead since about thirty seconds after I met you."

Her body trembled and arched under his. Why were they talking? Why were there words when she wanted only to feel? "I know that, too."

"It's just that…" Her throat was so white, so smooth. It wasn't in him to resist it. "I haven't been exactly discreet when it comes to women."

She skimmed her hands over his bare back, exploring that intriguing ripple of muscle. "Tell me something I don't know."

"I don't want you to regret this." He rubbed his cheek against hers before he drew away. His eyes were dark with emotions she was afraid to consider. "I don't think I could stand it if you did."

"You're the last person I expected to complicate this."

"It surprises the hell out of me, too." His fingers curled tight in her hair. "It's not simple with you, Caroline. I figured I ought to try to explain that."

He didn't have to explain what she could see so clearly in his eyes. And seeing it had the little licks of fear leaping higher. "I don't want any explanations." Desperate, she dragged his mouth back to hers. "I'm alive. I just need to feel alive."

Her needs swallowed him, pulled him under, sucked him in. She wanted from him what he had always looked for in other women-simple, mutual pleasure. If there was a twinge of regret, he ignored it. Responding to her urgency, he tugged open her robe and feasted on flesh. She was slim and pale and soft as velvet. And if she was not just any woman, not just another woman, he blocked off those troubling thoughts and let himself take.

She streaked mindlessly into heat, gobbling up his desire like a starving woman might devour a crust of bread. Hers was only a body seeking pleasure from another body. No thoughts, she swore. No emotions. She needed the sensations, the liberation of good, cleansing sex. Her cry of release when he drove her to a hard, knife-edged orgasm left her trembling.

She could hear his harsh, strained breathing even as his hands began to slow, to gentle. He murmured something to her, and though she didn't understand the words, the sweetness of the tone had her battling back an urge to wrap herself around him and weep.

The emotions sneaking through terrified her. She wanted none of them and moved quickly, even ruthlessly, to block them off. Even as his lips whispered over hers, she was dragging his jeans down over his hips. His body went rigid as she touched him, fisted him in a hot, greedy hand. The room tilted, and while he struggled to right it again, she locked herself around him.

"Caroline. Wait."

But she was already surrounding him, already drawing him deep into that glorious velvet sheath, already urging him to match her frantic rhythm.

He was trapped in her, in his own body's demands. So he raced with her toward a release he already realized would be empty.

She lay very still, her robe rucked up under her hips. She did feel alive. Sore and swollen and trembly and alive. If only she didn't feel so hollow with it.

If only he would say something. If only he would lift his head and grin and make some silly joke to put this awkwardness behind them.

But the silence dragged on. His heartbeat slowed to normal against hers, and the silence dragged on.

He knew he was heavy, but he put off shifting his body from hers, put off the moment when he would have to face her. And himself.

Good sex, he thought. Yes, it had been good, basic sex, minus all those insidious and baffling emotions. Smart sex, he thought with some disgust. There was no reason for him to feel… used was the word, he realized, and wished he could laugh it off.

Was this why Edda Lou had been so bitter at the end? he wondered. With a sigh he opened his eyes and stared out at the empty room. No, Edda Lou hadn't cared about him. About his money, his name, his position, but not about him. Sex had been a means to an end for her.