She picked up a spoon to start on her baked alaska. “Sarah was so happy.” She sighed.

“You’ll be good for her.” He sipped his coffee and watched Meredith closely. “You’ll be good for both of us.”

Meredith felt as if she were riding on a cloud for the rest of the evening. The Sun Room had a dance band as well as a wonderful restaurant. They danced until late, and Meredith was concealing a yawn when they got home.

“Thank you for my honeymoon,” she said with a mischievous smile when they were standing together in the hall. “It was wonderful.”

“Later on I’ll give you a proper one,” he promised. “We’ll go away for several days. To Europe or the Caribbean.”

“Let’s go to Australia and stay on a cattle station,” she suggested. “I wrote about one of those in my last book, and it sounded like a great place to visit.”

“Haven’t you traveled?” he asked.

“Just to the Bahamas and Mexico,” she said. “It was great, but no place is really exciting when you have to see it alone.”

“I know what you mean.” He pulled her against him and bent to kiss her. “You still taste of ice cream,” he murmured, and kissed her again.

“You taste of coffee.” She linked her arms around his neck and smiled at him. “I want to ask you something.”

“Be my guest.”

“Do you have any deeply buried scruples about intimacy after marriage?” she asked somberly. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to cause you any trauma.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “No,” he replied. “I don’t think I have any buried scruples about it. Why? Were you thinking of seducing me?”

“I would if I knew how,” she assured him. She smiled impishly. “Could you give me a few pointers?”

He reached down and picked her up in his arms. “I think I might be able to help you out,” he said. He started for the staircase with his lips brushing hers. “It might take a while,” he added under his breath. “You don’t mind, do you? You don’t have any pressing appointments in the next few hours…?”

“Only one. With you,” she whispered, and pressed her open mouth hungrily to his, shivering with delight as his tongue pushed softly inside it and tasted her. She moaned with the aching pleasure.

His lips drew back a little. “I like that,” he whispered huskily. “Make a lot of noise. Tonight there’s no one to hear you except me.”

Her teeth tugged at his lower lip and she obliged him with a slow, sultry moan that caused his mouth to grow rough with desire. She smiled under the heat of the kiss, and when he lifted his head and saw her expression, for just an instant he wondered if, like Nina, she was pretending pleasure that she didn’t feel. And then he saw her eyes. And all his doubts fell away as his mouth bit hungrily into hers. He thought that in all his life he’d never seen such a fierce passion in a woman’s soft eyes….

This time he left the lights on. He undressed her slowly, drawing it out, making her dizzy with pleasure as he kissed every inch of her as he uncovered her body. When the clothes were off, his mouth smoothed over her adoringly, lingering on her soft, warm breasts. He’d never realized how infallible instinct was until now. Apparently it didn’t matter how skilled he was. She cared for him, and that made her delightfully receptive to anything he wanted. His heart swelled with the knowledge.

By the time he’d undressed, she was trembling, her body waiting, her eyes so full of warm adoration that he felt like a lonely traveler finally coming home. This was nothing like the indifference Nina had shown when he’d touched her. He looked at Meredith’s lovely face and wanted nothing more in life than her arms around him.

She raised her feverish eyes to his, drowning in their green glitter. His lips parted and she trembled, because he wasn’t in any hurry.

His hard mouth brushed at hers while his hands touched her with reverence. His wife. Meredith was his wife, and she wanted him. He groaned softly. “Merry, love me,” he whispered as his mouth bit hungrily into hers. “Love me.”

She felt her body trembling with delight as she heard the soft words and wondered dizzily if he even realized what he was saying. Poor, lonely man….

Her arms went around him hungrily and she kissed him back, willing to give him anything as tenderness and love welled up within her.

“You’re…killing me,” she bit off minutes later, when his slow, exquisitely tender caresses were making her shudder with need for him.

“Liar,” he told her, smiling gently at her even through his own trembling need. He moved suddenly, and watched her eyes dilate, felt her body react. “That’s it. Help me,” he coaxed. “Show me what you want, little one. Let me… love you,” he groaned when she lifted her body up into his.

Blinded with the passion they were sharing, she pulled his head down to her mouth and kissed him with all the lonely years and all her smothered love in her lips. She felt his powerful body tremble until it gave way under his hunger for her and he overwhelmed her with exquisite tenderness.

Her cry was echoed in his as unbearable pleasure bound them, lifted them together in a fierce buffeting embrace, and they clung to each other as the wave of fulfillment hit them together.

Meredith could barely breathe when she felt the full weight of Blake’s body against her. He was shivering, and her arms contracted around him.

“Darling,” she whispered. Her lips touched his cheek, his mouth, his throat, damp with sweat. “Darling, darling…!”

The endearment went through his weary body like an electric current. He returned her tender kisses, smoothing her bare body against his and loving the soft curves caressing him. His hands felt almost too rough to be touching her. He savored the warm silk of her skin, the cologne scent of her, the pleasure of just being close to her.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered whispering to her to love him. He buried his mouth in her throat, kissing it hungrily as his need broke through his reserve and made him just temporarily vulnerable.

He pulled her into the hair-roughened curve of his chest and thighs, holding her with a new kind of possessiveness. His mouth brushed her forehead and her closed eyes with breathless tenderness. He felt the tension of pleasure slowly relax in her soft body, as it had in his own.

“I’ve been alone all my life until now,” he said quietly, his face solemn. “I never realized how cold it was until you warmed me.”

Tears formed in her eyes. “I’ll warm you all my life if you’ll let me,” she assured him huskily.

He searched her soft face and bent to take her mouth under his. “Warm me now,” he breathed against her lips, and his hands slid to her hips. As he pulled her close, he heard her voice, heard the soft endearment that broke from her lips, and his heart almost burst with delight that she cared too much to be capable of hiding it.

Later, curled up together with the lights out, Blake lay awake long after Meredith was enveloped in contented sleep. He couldn’t quite believe what had happened so quickly in his life. He’d been alone, and now he had a daughter and a loving wife, and the way it was affecting him made him nervous.

Something had happened tonight with Meredith. Something incredible. It hadn’t been just the satisfying of a physical desire anymore. It went much deeper than that. There was something reverent about the way they made love, about the tenderness they gave to each other. He was being taken over by Meredith and he had cold feet. Could he really trust her not to walk out on him as Nina had? If he let himself fall in love with her, would she betray him? He looked down at her sleeping face, and even in the darkness he could see its warm glow. The distrust relaxed out of him. He could trust her.

Of course he could, he told himself firmly. After all, he could live with her profession and she’d have Sarah to keep her busy. Her writing wasn’t going to interfere in their lives. He’d make sure of it.