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sure thinks he does.”

      Of course he did. He was a man. He thought he knew everything. It just so happened that in this case he was right.

      Lucky guess.

      “He is a little stubborn. I almost ran him to death on the jogging path the other day. Then I served him a half-frozen breakfast sandwich, which he actually ate. I should have known he would be too damned polite to complain.”

      “Sounds as if you’ve been having fun with him,” Kay said.

      “At his expense.”

      “Nothing wrong with that. Is he good in bed?”

      Clare collapsed onto the sofa. “We never made it to the bed, but he’s good on a couch.”

      “I’m just happy to hear that you’re letting your hair down and having fun for a change. You need a man in your life.”

      “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” It had bad idea written all over it. She couldn’t think straight when she was around him. All she could feel was an edgy sort of excitement, and she had been displaying a dangerously blasé attitude. She’d left him alone in her house, for God’s sake. She never did that.

      Although to be fair, removing him would have required dragging him sound asleep out the front door and leaving him on the porch. She’d tried to wake him when she was ready to go, but the man slept like the dead. “I haven’t even decided if I’m going to sleep with him again,” she told her aunt.

      “Well, that just breaks my heart,” Aunt Kay said. “A body that perfect should be put to good use.”

      Though she and Kay looked a little bit alike, and they both shared a deep aversion to farm life, Clare and her aunt couldn’t have been more different. Kay grabbed life by the horns and didn’t let go, while Clare wouldn’t even venture on the other side of the fence.

      “Here’s something you might find interesting,” Kay said. “I told him he could go up to your room to change.”

      Clare’s jaw fell. “Why? You know I hate that.”

      “He apparently knows, too, because he asked to change in the bathroom down here instead. Said he didn’t want to invade your space.”

      She blinked. “Oh.”

      “Sounds like he knows you pretty well already.”

      Yeah, it sort of did.

      “And he respects your space.”

      Finally.

      “And he’s so hot.”

      Yes, he was.

      “Maybe you should cut the guy a break and give him a chance. Not all men are liars and cheats. Something tells me that he’s one of the good guys. Go out on a date or two. Have some fun, see where it goes.”

      “Why would I date someone that I can’t even take home to my family? You said it yourself. They would have a field day with him.”

      “Maybe you should stop worrying about what they think.”

      She wished it were that easy. “How badly did you scare him?”

      She shrugged. “If he scared easily you would have been rid of him months ago.”

      That still didn’t make a relationship a good idea. It just meant that he was stubborn.

      “I wish you could have seen the look on his face when he woke up and saw me standing there,” Kay said with a smile. “If only I’d had my camera.”

      Clare would have paid big money to see that. “I hope you don’t mind but I had to use your car. Mine committed suicide last night. It will cost almost as much as a new one to fix it.”

      “Of course I don’t mind. Do we need to go car shopping?”

      “I’m thinking it’s time.” Her aunt was a ruthless haggler. Be it a car or a refrigerator, when the salesman gave his rock-bottom price, she always managed to talk him down just a little lower. When they were rebuilding the house after the tornado she’d haggled the builder into paying out of pocket for the upgrades the insurance refused to cover. People just had a hard time telling her no.

      “What brought you home so early?” Clare asked her.

      “Claud and I had a fight. He asked me to marry him again.”

      “I take it you said no?”

      She sighed, shaking her head. “Some men never learn.”

      She could have been talking about Parker, but Clare didn’t bother to point that out.

      “Are you hungry?” Kay asked. “Let’s order dinner.”

      “I could go for sushi.”

      “Hmm, sounds good,” she said, pulling out her phone. Neither of them cooked, so her aunt had the number of every restaurant in Royal that delivered on speed dial. “You want the usual?”

      “Yes, please. While I’m waiting I’m going to go upstairs and get out of these scrubs.” She was exhausted, thanks to a certain someone waking her at the crack of dawn that morning. But in all fairness it had been worth it.

      “I’ll let you know when it gets here,” her aunt told her.

      With sore, tired feet Clare climbed the stairs. A soak in the tub sounded good, but with the food on the way she took a hot shower instead. And though they were barely stubbly, she shaved her legs and cleaned up the bikini line, as well.

      Just in case.

      After her shower, as she was drying off, she took note of her new svelte figure. She looked damn good. Not that she’d been overweight, per se, but she hadn’t exactly been healthy before.

      She was still standing at the mirror naked, brushing the knots from her wet hair when her aunt knocked on the bedroom door. “Come on in! Just leave it on the bed.”

      She heard the door open, then close again, and a second later saw movement in the bathroom doorway. She turned and her breath caught in her lungs.

      It was Parker standing there.

      He grinned, his eyes raking over her from the top of her head all the way down to her pink-tipped toes, and every inch of her skin came alive all at once. He looked sexy as hell in faded jeans and a black T-shirt with the hospital logo. She had never seen him dressed so casually. She took in the way those biceps stretched the armholes of his shirt, and the way the jeans hugged his lean hips. But as good as he looked in his clothes, she knew he looked even better out of them.

      He held up the sushi bag and said with a frustratingly sexy smile, “Special delivery.”

      Clare would have grabbed her robe to cover herself, but by the look in his eyes, and the fact that he had put the bag down and begun to peel off his clothes, she had the feeling the damage was already done.

      “Your aunt sent me up,” he said, taking off his shirt and dropping it on the floor. “Remind me to thank her profusely.”

      Aunt Kay would hear about it later, all right. Because she was meddling. Unfortunately she was really good at it.

      The jeans went next, and Clare just stood there like a dummy watching, when she should have been kicking him to the curb for being so presumptuous. But then the boxers dropped and that was all she wrote. She couldn’t tell him no now if her life depended on it.

      “Come here,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the bed, walking backward so he didn’t have to take his eyes off her. “You are so sexy.”

      Before she could censor herself, she said, “Look who’s talking.”

      With a grin, he pulled her in and kissed her. And kissed her. Oh, did she love kissing him. He smelled freshly showered and his chin was smooth. And as he hauled her up against the length of that

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