LITMIR.BIZ

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My folks live in Powell.”

      She stood and crossed to the fireplace. Orange light danced across half her face, throwing the other half into soft shadow. “I hear it’s beautiful country up there.”

      Almost as beautiful as the view from where he sat.

      He quelled the emotion behind the thought. Margo Haynes was a stranger. Twenty minutes ago he hadn’t even known her name. Ten hours ago he hadn’t known she existed. He had to concentrate on why he’d come. For Ariel. This had nothing to do with Margo’s beauty, her loneliness, her vulnerability, or her damn radiance. But hell, she was exquisite.

      “Ariel and I go up as often as we can. You’d like it in early summer, when the wildflowers are at their peak.”

      “Probably.”

      Another tremor warped the rhythm, again without an outward sign that what either of them said affected her in any way. Riley backtracked through the conversation, but he couldn’t find a pattern.

      Margo finished her juice. Serenely. Wasn’t the pulse vibrating through her as strong and baffling as it throbbed through him?

      “Are your parents both still alive?” she asked.

      “Yeah. They own a store, and are going as strong as ever. Yours?”

      “I lost them both a long time ago. I’ll bet yours dote on Ariel.”

      “Every chance they get.”

      “She’s a lucky girl.”

      “She has a knack for winning hearts. She’s got everyone in my department wrapped around her little finger. My parents think she walks on water.”

      “I can see why. She’s delightful.”

      Drawn before he realized it, Riley joined her at the fireplace. “She’d like to visit you again.”

      Excitement played across Margo’s face as if she were a kid at a carnival, and her eyes grew brighter. “I’d like that. If it’s all right with you.”

      The rhythm pulsed faster, denser, sweeter. It pulled through his nerve endings until his hands trembled with it. With the need to touch her.

      Suddenly he knew he couldn’t stay. Not another minute. Not another second. Or he’d take her in his arms, press his lips to hers, consume her if necessary to ease the heat and tension that stretched between them—whether it existed for her or not.

      “I’d better go. I have Ariel’s shoe, and that’s what I came for.”

      “Yes.”

      Resisting the pull that drew him to her, Riley backed to the middle of the room.

      As calm as a doe in a spring meadow, she followed him with her eyes. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Corbett.”

      “Riley,” he insisted, though he didn’t know why. Whatever resonated between them might beat like the drum of an ancient mating dance, but he recognized it as the rhythm of danger.

      

      Margo stood at the window and watched Riley Corbett leave her yard for the second time that day. God, what an ordeal.

      Since first realizing how runaway emotions had propelled her into every bad decision she’d ever made, she’d concentrated on controlling her feelings. And she’d learned how. She could hold her temper in the face of provocation. She no longer wept during sentimental movies. She’d learned to listen to the troubles of others without jumping in to help. She let insults skim across her like water off a waxed surface. She’d become a stranger to rampant feelings, and she liked it that way.

      At least that had been true until today. Until Ariel Corbett and her father had exploded into her life.

      How long had he been in her living room? Less than forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes of torture, with emotions clawing inside her like rats for release. Concern. Envy. Excitement. Compassion. Anticipation. Desire.

      Lord, not to mention desire.

      It had zipped between them like electricity on an ungrounded wire. Hot and deadly. Ignoring it had been impossible. Leaving it unacknowledged had taken all the strength she possessed.

      She should have shown him the door the second she sensed the attraction. But loneliness and longing—deadly emotions both—had driven her to prolong his visit.

      She hadn’t had a friend in more than a dozen years, not since taking up with Nick. Almost from their first date, Nick had separated her from her small circle of girlfriends. She’d been so in love with him, she hadn’t noticed. Back then she’d believed love could heal every wound and fill every empty space, and she’d loved too fiercely to see it wasn’t so.

      Love was a vain promise. Desire made one crazy. Emotions tromped good common sense into the ground. She knew those things to be true as surely as she breathed. So how had the demons broken free? How difficult was it going to be to lock them away again?

      Did she need friends now as desperately as she’d once needed Nick’s love?

      The possibility terrified her.

      Yet she’d made Riley Corbett welcome in her home. She hoped he’d let her befriend his daughter. For the first time in years, she dared hope the awful ache left from when she’d lost Holly could be eased.

      With her hand gripping the window frame, she forced deep, steadying breaths into her lungs and focused on Ariel. Margo wanted nothing from Riley beyond an agreement that his daughter could visit once in a while. And maybe she wanted that too much for her own well-being. Maybe she should shut herself off from any contact at all with that little girl.

      But how could she? With Ariel, she’d experienced joy for the first time since giving Holly away. The desert of her soul had started to bloom again. Just the merest opening of the first blossom, but she couldn’t turn away from it.

      No matter how terrifying the current that rippled between herself and Riley Corbett, she would open herself to his child.

      

      Unable to sleep, Riley pulled on a sweat suit and running shoes. At 3:00 a.m. the streets would be empty and the silence might calm his thoughts. When he checked in on Ariel, his heart swelled against his ribs. He loved her beyond thought, and he would fight the world to keep her safe.

      And yesterday he’d met someone eager to join him in the battle. He knew it without a doubt, although he’d never be able to explain to anyone else how he knew.

      Leaving the hall light burning, he slipped silently out of the house. By confining his run to laps around the block, he could check on Ariel every few minutes.

      When he passed Margo’s house, he slowed his pace a bit. No doubt she slept as peacefully as Ariel, since that strange vibration hadn’t seemed to touch her at all.

      For him it echoed as strongly as the conversation. And the conversation had been playing like a subliminal tape nonstop.

      Since leaving her house, the entire visit kept running through his head. Every word, every action, every glance that passed between them. And the more he rehearsed his visit, the more one fact became startlingly clear. He’d learned damn little about her.

      She was a writer, she came from Texas, and neither of her parents was still alive. That was it. He’d asked questions. He’d offered facts about his own life. The conversation had not suffered from awkward pauses. As smooth as silk, she’d slid away from telling him anything about herself.

      Why?

      In little more than an hour, spread across two separate encounters, both he and Ariel had connected with Margo Haynes in deep, emotional, compelling ways. She’d given Ariel more welcome and solace than Ariel had known since Kendra’s death. To him, she’d offered concern for his daughter, opened the doors to friendship and infused him with desire.

      He wanted more of

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