She popped her head up again. “Was he mean to you?”

“Oh no. André is a good man, and he was sincerely interested in me,” he said, pulling her back against him. “But for the first thirteen years of my life, I pretty much did what I wanted without receiving much flack. I’d lock myself in my room for days with my books and computer, and nobody bothered me. But after we moved in with André, the man kept dragging me outdoors, saying I needed to get the stink blown off me.”

Luke laughed. “He tried to teach me to play baseball, but I kept striking out on purpose. So he took me hunting with him, and I made enough noise stomping through the woods to scare off all the game. But God bless the patient man, no matter how much I sabotaged his good intentions, he just kept trying . . . until the day I ran away from home.”

“You ran away from home? How old were you?”

“Fourteen. My mother and André told me I was going to have a baby sister.” He chuckled. “Even though I knew all about the birds and bees, I was horrified to suddenly realize they’d been having sex. I waited until they went to bed that night, then took off.”

“Where’d you go?” she asked with a giggle.

“I decided to go back and live with Gram and Aunt Faith, so I started walking to Vancouver, which was a little over a hundred miles away. But I didn’t care. I just wanted my old self-centered life back, grumpy aunt and all.”

“And? Did they take you back?”

“I didn’t make it ten miles. It was the dead of winter, and André found me half frozen to death, stubbornly trudging along the side of the road. He never said a word the entire ride back home. But when we drove into our dooryard, instead of letting me go inside and warm up, he dragged me out to the woodshed, and—”

“He beat you?” she gasped as she straightened.

Luke grinned at her fierce expression. “No. But it was the first time I’d ever seen him angry. He handed me a crosscut saw and axe, and told me to start working up next year’s firewood. And that while I did, I was to contemplate one simple question, and give him the answer when I was done.”

“And that question was?”

“He asked me the definition of love.”

Camry’s eyes grew huge with anticipation. “And what did you tell him love was?”

Luke snorted. “I was fourteen—what in hell did I know about love?”

She scrambled off the couch and stood glaring at him. “But you had to have told him something! You obviously didn’t freeze to death in the woodshed.”

Luke stood, then walked over and picked up the transmitter before looking at her again. “Oh, I came up with an answer that at least got me back in the house—though it didn’t get me out of working up eight cords of firewood. André told me what I’d come up with was only a start, but that he would know I had figured out the rest when I finally apologized to my mother.”

“And did you?”

He nodded. “When I was twenty.”

“So, what’s the definition of love?” she asked, her expression eager again.

Luke eyed her speculatively, wondering how far he could push her. “If you let me stay, I’ll tell you on the drive to Pine Creek.”

She actually stomped her foot in frustration, then immediately grabbed her leg and hopped back to the couch. “Now look what you made me do,” she muttered, lifting her foot onto the coffee table as she glared up at him. “That’s blackmail.”

“You can thank your mother for teaching me that one.” He sat down on the table, tossed the transmitter on her lap, and set her foot on his thigh so he could take off her sock and rub her ankle. “When I came out of the woodshed, I told André that love meant not hurting someone who loved me.”

She leaned back and started toying with the transmitter. “That was a good answer for a fourteen-year-old kid.”

“But incomplete, according to André.”

“Why didn’t he just tell you the whole answer?”

“Don’t think I didn’t ask him to. But he said it’s not something one person can explain to another; I had to feel love to know it.”

She suddenly smiled. “Then you can’t tell me, either, which means you just gave up your chance to blackmail me into staying.”

He arched a brow. “Or I just made you curious enough to let me stay.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I told you that I apologized to my mother when I was twenty. Aren’t you even a little bit curious as to why then?”

She looked down at the transmitter, shrugging indifferently. “Maybe.”

But Luke knew she was dying to know—likely wondering if some girl had broken his heart. “Can I stay?” he asked softly.

She looked up, the gleam of challenge in her eyes. “Only if you give me a hint as to what happened when you were twenty that led you to have your great epiphany.”

Oh yeah, he had her now—he just had to reel her in. Luke stared off over her head as if considering her offer, then finally locked his gaze on hers. “I died.”

Chapter Eleven

Camry pulled out of the L.L.Bean parking lot in Freeport late Tuesday afternoon, her partner in crime sitting beside her, two dogs and all their paraphernalia in the rear seat, and the back of her SUV crammed full of cold-weather camping equipment and supplies.

Luke immediately became engrossed in the new and supposedly improved GPS tracking device he’d just purchased, and Camry turned north onto Interstate 95 with a smile of anticipation. As much as she loved her doggie friends and tending bar at Dave’s, she realized there was nothing like a winter camping trip to blow off the cobwebs—and a dream guy who just happened to be in lust with her to add a bit of interest.

Cam thought back to all the boyfriends she’d had over the years, and tried to decide if she had spent time with any of them that even came close to the weekend she’d just spent with Luke. The last three days had been amazingly intimate—which Cam found rather interesting, since she had always equated intimacy with lovemaking. But she’d shared her bed with Luke for three wonderfully celibate nights, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so soundly.

Cam merged into traffic with a silent giggle, remembering what had happened Sunday morning. Since Fiona had blown his cover, Lucian Renoir the physicist had suddenly emerged, and Luke had risen long before sunrise, dug out his laptop, and started crunching numbers. When she’d run into the living room in her pajamas, frantic that he had suddenly decided to ditch her, she’d found him writing on one of her walls.

Apparently so engrossed in his work that he wasn’t even aware he was using her wall as a whiteboard, Luke had appeared confused when she’d shouted. He’d apologized profusely as he went to the kitchen to get a wet rag, but then he had shouted when he’d returned to find her overwriting one of his equations. They’d spent the rest of the day covering two more walls with equations as they retraced Podly’s solstice descent—a trajectory that defied every law of physics. And not only had Camry not bothered to change out of her pajamas, she had completely forgotten to be grumpy and miserable.

She was still a bit shaken by how quickly Luke had figured out her little game of letting her boyfriends think they were having mind-blowing sex. Hell, she’d gotten so good at it, she had practically convinced herself that she was utterly, totally fulfilled.

The men certainly had never complained.

Except Luke: after only two days, he’d wanted to wring her neck. She still couldn’t believe he’d actually pulled out a condom, opened the damn thing, and then asked if she knew what it was. She should have been outraged, but instead she had found herself wondering what he planned to do about her . . . virginity. Would he continue their lusty little affair on her terms, or did he see her as a challenge now? Did he have hopes of taking things to the next level?