LITMIR.BIZ

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relief.

      “Oh, me, too,” Kathleen said. “She’s like a class-three rapids when you want a bubbling stream.” She shot him a rueful smile that he returned. “We’re just lucky she has a cat waiting at home, or we’d be playing pinochle here with her tonight. Good luck with that media training she’s going to give you, Dan.”

      “Lord.”

      Her expression warmed with honest pleasure and kind commiseration. He liked this smile much better than the theatrical one she’d worn at the signing. This smile was direct, energetic, mischievous and a little shy, too.

      This was the smile that had drawn him the day they met. Along with the fact she was about to be smashed to the ground by the gigantic mattress she was jamming through her apartment door. He’d just moved into the same complex and had rushed to help her get the thing into her bedroom.

      I can’t afford this bed, she’d said in her whiskey voice, looking down at the mattress, which filled the small bedroom wall-to-wall. But once I lay down on it, oh, my good glory, I was done for. It said, ‘Sleep on me, enjoy me, use me ’til I sag.’ What could I do? I’d been had.

      Before long, he’d been had, too. By Kathleen and how she swept away his defenses, his restraint, his carefully structured days and comfortable routines. She awakened an impulsive intensity in him he preferred dormant. Or dead. He’d lived a quiet, studious life until he’d stumbled upon Kathleen and her bed.

      “You okay?” Kathleen said now, as they headed across the lobby for the elevator.

      “Me? Fine. Just thinking.”

      “How can you? I’m completely wiped. The mattress last night was…bumpy.” The excuse sounded hasty, as if to cover the real reason for her exhaustion.

      “You were pretty perky at the signing.”

      “All an act, Dan.” Her heavy tone told him there was more acting going on than she intended to reveal.

      He understood. He was acting, too—just not very convincingly. She’d surely picked up on his tension, though she was classy enough not to mention it.

      They rode the elevator to their floor and headed down the hall, managing small talk about the signing and the tour and laughing companionably. Anyone seeing them would assume they were long-time lovers headed for bed. But it was all an act, as Kathleen had observed.

      A moment later, they stood before the doors to their adjoining rooms. “So this is good night then,” he said.

      “Yep. I’ve got new bedside reading.” She raised his book, back cover facing him, but upside down, so that he appeared to be standing on his head. How appropriate.

      “Thanks for buying that. I should have bought one of yours, but I was…I already had one, so I didn’t—”

      “Really? You have one of my books?”

      “Of course. I have it with me. In fact, will you sign it?”

      “That’s not necessary.”

      “No. I insist. I’ll bring it right over.”

      She started to object, but he cut her off. “Kathleen, I want to.”

      “Okay, then. Suit yourself.” She slid her key card into the slot and breezed inside, but not before he caught the wisp of a smile that told him she was delighted.

      Which made him far too happy.

      He would breeze into her room, sign the book, say good night and be back in his room in an easy ten minutes.

      SHE COULD have signed the book tomorrow, for heaven’s sake, but the delight that Dan had read it had overridden Kathleen’s good sense. Now she was stuck. One more minute of acting witty and cool when she felt shaky and confused and her over-wound nerves would snap through her skin.

      She needed a long, hot bath to soothe herself. Her reaction to Dan alarmed her. The animal in her had nosed out the positive changes in his physique. He was stronger, broader, more physically confident than he’d been in college. He used to envelop her so tightly that she felt wrapped up in a big Dan blanket. How would he feel now? Even more secure, no doubt. More masterful and carnal.

      Cut it out. She didn’t want the man anymore. How tiresome his life must be, with all the rules and repression he swore by. Her reaction was pure biology. An example of the female’s genetic drive to connect with a virile male to propagate the species with sturdy offspring. That was how she would explain the importance of male physical prowess to female arousal in the sexuality chapter in Roots and Rhetoric. When she wrote it, that is.

      But she was uneasily sure that genetic drives didn’t completely account for her reaction to Dan. Physical stuff had gotten weird on her lately. Take what had happened with Troy just three weeks ago.

      She’d met him at a wine tasting and he was exactly her type: classy, sensual, funny, smart, sexually confident and not the least intimidated by her reputation.

      They’d returned to her place after an exquisite dinner. Soon they were in her bedroom, where the air was aromatic with cinnamon candles and a hint of the lusty Bordeaux she’d opened, the light golden and dim. There was Troy in her bed, covered to the waist in her black satin sheets, his bare chest promising, his look predatory…everything just the way she liked it.

      She’d stepped toward him, but was swept by a wave of exhaustion so overwhelming she’d stopped moving. Her whole being felt the way skin feels when it’s been stroked too long on the same spot—chafed, burned and aching.

      She’d forced herself to sit on the bed beside Troy and put her hands on his chest, hoping the contact would banish the peculiar sensation.

      But it hadn’t. Troy moved to kiss her, but she stopped him. Her lips had gone numb and rubbery—the way they’d felt after the accident. She’d pulled away, apologizing like mad.

      Troy had been disappointed, of course. And puzzled.

      She was, too. Especially by how happy she was to have sent him away. The minute he left, she’d cheerfully wrapped herself in a microfiber throw and gotten absorbed in a black-and-white historical movie, where the brush of a man’s lips on the back of a woman’s hand practically produced a climax. She’d felt like a guilty child allowed to stay up past her bedtime.

      Now she slid off her shoes, undid her garters and peeled off her stockings, digging her toes into the lush sponge of the dense carpet.

      She didn’t feel numb now. She felt fully alive, zings and pings firing joyously all up and down her body—a stalled engine finally coming to life.

      Not good. Not good at all. She was done with Dan. Except while she waited for him, she tugged at her ear and breathed in hungry little pants—signs of sexual anticipation. She hadn’t felt like this in a long time.

      Dan knocked at her door with crisp, evenly spaced raps as rational and matter-of-fact as the man. He was so different from her that she wondered what she’d seen in him.

      She opened the door and remembered. His kind eyes, sensuous mouth, the intelligence in his face and that smile—knowing and mysterious—that promised more. Much more.

      He held her book in his hand and tilted it at her.

      “Come in.” She led him to the couch and he sat beside her, placing her book on her lap.

      It was her first. Many times she’d wondered if he’d read her magazine column or any of her books. It was childish vanity, but she wanted him to see what she’d gone on to accomplish…and what he’d given up.

      She looked into his blue eyes. They held an emotion that she, as usual, couldn’t read. Curiosity? Sadness? Regret? Desire?

      Did you miss me? Did you suffer without me? Those were the mucky, wounded-ego questions she wanted to ask. If their time together had been important to him, if the breakup had been difficult for him, too, then she wouldn’t feel like such a weak fool. Maybe

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