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never had that.”

      “Lucky you,” she said. She searched his lean face. “You’ve had a hard life, J.C. I don’t even have to know about you. It shows. So much pain...”

      “Stop right there,” he interrupted, his jaw taut.

      “Overstepped the boundaries, did I?” she asked, and smiled. “Sorry. I just open my mouth and stuff my foot in, all the time.”

      That amused him and he laughed.

      “It was a nice night out. Thanks,” she said.

      He shrugged. “It was nice,” he agreed. “But we’re not doing it again.”

      “Of course not,” she agreed, hiding the pain.

      “I’m not in the market for a picket fence, no matter how attractive the accessories.”

      It took her a minute, but she got it. She laughed. “Okay.”

      “You’re quick.”

      “Not so much.” She sighed. “It was fun.”

      “It was fun. Good night.”

      “Good night.”

      “Tell Rod I’m still on for the poker game, if he is. He’ll understand,” he added as he turned to leave.

      “I’ll tell him.”

      He forced himself to walk to the SUV, open the door, get in and crank it. He didn’t look at her. If he had, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave.

      * * *

      COLIE WATCHED HIM drive away. He didn’t wave. He didn’t look back. She felt a sense of terrible loss. But he was right. They had no future. Their outlooks were far too different. Still, he needed somebody. He was so alone, so tormented.

      She opened the door and went inside. Her father was just coming out of his study. His quick glance showed him that it had been a conventional date, and that nothing had happened. He tried to hide his sense of relief.

      “Have fun?” he asked.

      “Oh, yes,” she said, grinning. “It was a great movie. We had dinner at the fish place. I love their fries.”

      “They’re good,” he said, nodding. He cocked his head. “Going out again?”

      She shook her head. “He’s very nice, but he hates picket fences,” she said.

      He moved closer. She was putting on a show, and he knew it. She was in pain. “Daughter,” he said gently, “there’s a reason for everything, a plan behind whatever happens to us. You have to let life happen. You can’t force it to be what you’d like it to be.”

      She smiled and hugged him. “And we can’t get involved with people who aren’t like us. I know all that. It’s what he said, too.” She closed her eyes. “It still hurts.”

      “Of course it does. But pain passes. Everything does, in time.”

      “Yes. In time,” she agreed.

      * * *

      BUT IT DIDN’T PASS. Every time Rod mentioned J.C., Colie felt it like a stab in her heart. She knew that J.C. was totally wrong for her. It didn’t help. She wanted him. Loved him. Hungered for him.

      She went to work, came home, cooked and cleaned, read books, went to bed. She got up the next day and did the very same things. But she felt as empty inside as a tennis ball.

      * * *

      SHE DIDN’T KNOW IT, but J.C. was having the same problem. Every day, he went to work and was haunted by the soft twinkle in a pair of loving green eyes. He was used to women who wanted him. But one who loved him...that was new. It was frightening.

      Could he take her and walk away afterward? Could he not take her and live? He agonized over it.

      His boss, Ren Colter, noticed his preoccupation while they were inspecting a downed fence on the edge of the property.

      “That tree needs to come down,” Ren remarked.

      “I’ll tell Willis,” J.C. replied. Willis was the foreman.

      “What’s eating you?” Ren asked suddenly, and from the standpoint of the friend he’d been for years. “You’re not yourself.”

      “Just a few sleepless nights, that’s all,” J.C. lied.

      “Umhmmm. And it wouldn’t have something to do with Colie Thompson...?”

      J.C.’s pale gray eyes flashed. “Listen, just because I took her to a movie...!”

      “Oh, can it,” Ren said shortly. “You’ve been mooning around here for a week, like a ghost trying to find a place to haunt. I hear she’s doing the same thing.”

      “She is?” J.C. asked.

      The other man’s expression was like a statement. Ren chuckled. “You have to take the path to see where it leads. Ask yourself, are you happier now?”

      “No.”

      “Then why don’t you do something about it?”

      J.C. clenched his jaw. “Her father’s a minister and I don’t want to get married.”

      “You don’t have to propose just because you take her out on dates,” was the reasonable reply. “Do you?”

      J.C. sighed. “It will complicate things.”

      “Life is too short to avoid complications.”

      J.C. studied him. After a minute he laughed shortly. “I guess it is, at that.”

      * * *

      COLIE WAS JUST getting into her old beat-up pickup truck in the parking lot of the law firm where she worked when a big black SUV pulled into the spot beside her.

      She turned and J.C. was getting out of it.

      He stopped just in front of her. He looked angry, conflicted, worried. He drew in a breath. “The hell with it,” he said curtly.

      “What?” she began.

      He pulled her into his arms and bent his head. “We’ll take it one day at a time,” he whispered as his mouth burrowed softly, slowly into hers.

      She would have questioned him, but a shock of pleasure ran the length of her body and left her trembling. She reached up and held him, hung on for dear life, while he made a five-course meal of her soft, eager mouth.

       CHAPTER THREE

      IT WAS A long time before J.C. lifted his head. The kiss had filled a hollow place inside himself that he hadn’t even known about. Colie’s face was flushed, her pretty bow mouth swollen, her green eyes soft and drowsy with feeling. It puzzled him that she didn’t kiss him back so much as she allowed herself to be kissed. Perhaps, he thought, her other boyfriends hadn’t cared about foreplay. He was used to experienced women who didn’t care much for it, either. They were usually so hungry, so eager, that they just went at it.

      He gave one last thought to his suspicions about her, but Rod was a rounder and he was a minister’s son. J.C. figured that Colie was probably as sexually active as her brother, but she put on a good show for her father. She certainly wasn’t protesting.

      J.C. had her so close that she could feel how aroused he was. She’d never felt a man like that, but she was a great reader. She knew from her romance novels how men’s bodies changed when they wanted a woman. It thrilled her that J.C. wanted her so much.

      She didn’t want to discourage him, but she wasn’t sure how she was going to live with what he was certainly going to want from her. She’d lived a moral life, she’d never put a foot

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