The kiss started out passionate and only got deeper. Their mouths opened to each other; tongues met. Anchoring her hips against the side of the counter with the firm pressure of his, he unbuttoned her blouse far enough to get a hand inside. He cupped her breast lovingly, gently squeezed it, and lightly rolled the nipple between his fingers.

“I want you,” he said roughly. “The greenhouse or the bedroom?”

“ Trent, we can’t,” she said feebly.

“How come?”

“It’s the middle of the day.”

“So?”

“I really need to paint. I’ve got work to do. Four new orders.”

“Okay,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I’ll leave you alone to work if you’ll let me stay in your apartment while I study my playbook.”

She watched his face carefully, looking for signs of trickery. “All right,” she conceded at last. “But you’ve got to promise to behave.”

“I promise.”

They went upstairs to her apartment. They even made a concerted effort to stick to their resolutions. But as it turned out, they made slow, lazy, afternoon love.

It was wonderful, but Trent was faintly disappointed that Ana insisted on closing the heavy drapes and blocking out most of the light. He wanted to see sunlight pouring over her body. Lying beside her on the bed, he watched her drowsing in the contented aftermath of desire. He wondered how he ever could have thought she was plain.

She was beautiful. She wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever met. She filled an emptiness in his life he hadn’t even known was there. And now that he had found her, he wasn’t about to let her go.

Eight

“Oh, here she is now.”

Rana heard Trent ’s voice the moment she stepped through the front door, and, following it, the familiar tread of his feet on the hardwood floors.

“Ana?”

“Hi.”

He rounded the corner connecting the center hall to the parlor and took her in his arms for a swift kiss. “There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

“But-”

“You’ve heard of Tom Tandy, wide receiver for the Mustangs. He’s got the best hands in the NFL. He drove down for a visit. I’ve been telling him all about you.”

She tried to dig her heels in, but Trent was pushing her toward the front parlor. She didn’t want to meet anyone, in her frazzled condition. She had been shopping for supplies and she felt hot and disheveled.

And then there was always the chance that she might be recognized when she was introduced to someone. She and Trent had been together for some time. His affection was genuine, Of that she was certain. More than ever she dreaded his finding out that she wasn’t exactly who she pretended to be. How he would feel if ever he discovered her true identity, she couldn’t guess, but she didn’t want to risk it. Everything had been so idyllic, spoiling it now was unthinkable.

They hadn’t been able to keep their love affair a secret from Ruby. That first evening, when Trent had held true to his promise to take them out to dinner, Ruby had shrewdly assessed the situation.

From behind her menu she had said, “It took the two of you long enough to discover each other.”

“What do you mean, Aunt Ruby?” Trent asked innocently.

Ruby lowered the corner of the menu and gave him a baleful look. “I’m not senile or undersexed, young man, and I resent your implication that I don’t know about these things. Where do you think I was last night?”

“You said you were going to nurse a sick friend,” he answered, his brown eyes twinkling.

“I never said it was a lady friend, though, did I?”

Rana’s lips had parted in speechless surprise. Ruby went back to studying her menu. Trent boomed out a laugh that attracted the attention of several diners, who then recognized him and came over to their table to ask for his autograph.

Since then Rana had ceased to be self-conscious about her affair with Trent in front of his aunt. Ruby acted as though there was nothing peculiar about the handsome, charismatic “hunk” falling head over heels in love with the “frump.” But Rana wasn’t so naive as to think that other people wouldn’t find his attraction to her strange.

The moment she entered the parlor and saw Tom Tandy’s expression, she realized just what an odd pair they made in the eyes of the world. Rana and Trent Gamblin would have been a golden couple, but Miss Ramsey had no place at his side. If she hadn’t known that before, the football player’s reaction spelled it outclearly. To say that he was shocked was putting it mildly.

His lantern jaw dropped open and his mouth went slack with astonishment. Rana actually felt sorry for him. Trent had no doubt painted a word picture of her for the young man, and Miss Ramsey was hardly what he had expected.

“Tom, this is Ana Ramsey. Ana, Tom Tandy.”

“How do you do, Tom,” she said, extending her hand. It was still rough and unmanicured, though she had recently wanted to let her nails grow out again just for the pleasure of scratching Trent ’s back with them. When he kissed her hands or held them tightly in his, which was frequently, she longed for the days when they had been pampered. Tom briefly gripped her hand before releasing it. “Please sit down. I see that Trent has already gotten you something to drink.”

Whether Trent realized it or not, this was an awkward moment. She was playing gracious hostess in an effort to put the flabbergasted young man at ease. Now was the time for him to say to his buddy, “She’s as beautiful as you described,” or “I can see now why you’ve tucked yourself away down here in Galveston, you sly thing, you.”

Instead, Tom just stared at Rana. It wasn’t out of recognition. He was simply dismayed, she guessed, over her dissimilarity to all of Trent ’s former girlfriends.

“Would you like another beer” she asked.

“No. No, thank you,” Tom said, lowering his tall, muscular frame back onto Ruby’s antique sofa. The Victorian furniture hadn’t been designed to seat professional football players comfortably. He sank into the deep cushions, and his knees came up almost level with his chest. If Rana could have joked at that moment, she might have remarked on how ridiculously out of place Tom and Trent looked in the parlor, like giants in a dollhouse.

“Do you want a beer, darling” Trent asked as he pulled Rana down beside him on the love seat.

“You know I can’t stand the stuff, but I’ll take a sip of yours just for something wet. It’s so hot out.”

She took a sip from his can of cold beer and licked her lips. He smiled, kissed her quickly, and then looked at Tom as though for approval. Tom just continued to gape.

“Are you staying for dinner, To amp;” Rana asked to break an uncomfortable silence.

“Uh, no.” He cleared his throat loudly when his voice came out as little more than a croak. “I’ve, uh, got to get back. I have a… uh… date.”

He had driven to Galveston with the hope of taking Trent back to Houston with him. He figured that his friend had been playing monk long enough. They were due to leave for summer training camp in a few days. Tom intended to party between now and then, and he had assumed Trent would be thinking along the same lines. It had been shocking enough to learn that Trent had no intention of carousing.

But when Ana Ramsey had walked into the room, Tom felt as if the rug had been jerked out from under him. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Any moment now, he thought, somebody was going to tell him the punch line.

“I think Trent ’s visit down here has done wonders for him,” Tom said conversationally.

If Trent ’s Ana had been beautiful and sophisticated, he would have had no trouble bantering with her. But this woman in the baggy trousers and vest left him tongue-tied. “He’s in better shape than I’ve seen him in in years,” he said.

“We’ve been worried about his shoulder, but when he went to see the doctor last week, he pronounced it completely healed.” She turned to Trent and smiled.