LITMIR.BIZ

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a disgruntled student? Her hands shook slightly as she fastened her robe firmly about her waist and drew back the curtains.

      He was standing in shadow, well beyond the trapezoid of light that spilled from her window. Yet she recognized him immediately. His power and maturity drew her like a magnet. Thank God I gave Brian the money to go to Ryersville, she thought. I wouldn’t want him to watch me go through this.

      Below, Danny motioned for her to open the window. She obliged with mixed emotions, Pandora lifting the lid on a box of troubles, a banished angel hungry for a glimpse of paradise.

      “I’m back, Cate,” he announced in the rough-edged, faintly mocking voice she still heard sometimes in her dreams. “Come down and say hello.”

      She couldn’t deny how much she longed to see him again. Needed to, if only to get him out of her system. Both her heart and her mind were begging for it. Instead of inhabiting a featureless plain, a gouache rendered in shades of gray, she might learn to live again, with the enthusiasm of authentic emotions.

      Ill-considered words flew from her mouth. “I will…if you promise to keep your hands to yourself.” Seconds later, her cheeks were burning at the assumption that he planned to do otherwise.

      Agreeing to her terms, he waited for her to follow through. It seemed she’d committed herself. If she didn’t go down to meet with him, he might create a ruckus, bang on her front door. Or insist in a loud voice that she keep her word. Her neighbors would get an earful.

      Meanwhile, what would he think of her? Would he decide their years apart had been kind to her? Or taken their toll? She didn’t have time to speculate. Or put on fresh makeup. Turning away from the window, she raced downstairs in her robe and slippers, frantically finger-combing her hair as she went.

      A moment later she emerged from the side door of her house, which led, via half flights of stairs, up to the kitchen and down to the basement. Danny hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d been standing. Advancing toward him, she paused a few feet beyond his reach. Fortunately, they were partly hidden from the street by some overgrown lilac bushes that were in the process of losing their leaves, now that the autumn nights had brought cooler temperatures.

      At close range, he was as good-looking as she remembered—lean, powerful, unimpressed by his own allure. His beautiful eyes blazed into hers, overflowing with questions. To her surprise, he didn’t pose any of them immediately. Instead, he seemed to be waiting for her to speak.

      “Brenda told me you were back,” she murmured, desperate to break the silence that unnerved her so. “That you were staying at your grandmother’s house…”

      He nodded. “Somehow it felt like the right thing to do. Brenda probably told you…I work for Mercator now. I’m here to decide the future of the tool-and-die plant.”

      He was giving her the space she’d asked for—keeping his promise to the letter. And perversely, she didn’t want him to. If he didn’t touch her, she believed, her heart would break. Can we actually stand here and talk this way, like strangers after everything we once meant to each other? she asked herself. If so, I don’t think I can bear it. It would be as if we never loved each other desperately and ran away to get married, that all our hopes and dreams weren’t invested in each other.

      “Is that your only reason for coming?” she blurted, only to realize the seemingly innocent question bore a heavy freight of meaning, as well. For some reason her tongue seemed bent on exposing all the vulnerabilities she hoped to keep from him.

      If he considered the question a leading one, he didn’t say so. Instead, he took a tentative step in her direction. “It’s hard to see you in this light,” he explained. “You’re standing almost completely in shadow. As for your question, no, it isn’t. For quite some time I’ve wanted to return to Beckwith…get reacquainted with the place where I grew up.”

      So it was the town, not the thought of seeing her again, that had drawn him there. Well, she’d wanted the truth, hadn’t she? When another silence lengthened between them she felt compelled to shatter it, if only to ease her heartbreak.

      “How long do you plan to stay?” she asked, realizing too late that even such a simple query could unmask feelings better kept to herself.

      Danny lifted one brow. “The answer depends on a number of things. What would you say to releasing me from my promise?”

      In an instant he’d turned the tables. Her eyes huge, Cate shook her head.

      “No hands, then,” he whispered.

      When she didn’t protest, he took several steps in her direction. Her thoughts in turmoil, she retreated, until her back rested against the side of the house. Goose bumps of anticipation raced over her skin when he stopped just short of enfolding her and leaned forward with widespread arms to brace his palms against the wooden siding. The hard, sweet warmth of his body matched hers lightly from chest to thighs.

      “Danny…please…we shouldn’t,” she protested, arguing against what the jilted seventeen-year-old in her was begging for.

      His eyes gleamed at her in the chiaroscuro of shadow and moonlight. “Why not?” he asked. “Are you afraid your son will catch us?”

      So he knows about Brian, Cate thought. But not the whole story. With Larry gone, only three people—my parents and myself—know who Brian’s natural father is. She shook her head. “He’s gone…to Ryersville with some friends for the evening. But the neighbors might see us. You know what Beckwith’s like. People talk.”

      “Since when did you give a damn about gossip?” The deceptive calm in his low-pitched voice pierced her to the quick. “From what I’ve heard, you’re not involved in a long-term commitment,” he added. “Neither am I. Except for us, nobody stands to get hurt. We’re free to do whatever we wish.”

      Danny wasn’t married! Or seriously involved with anyone! Cate’s heart soared even as she shrank from the perils of letting herself care for him again. It wasn’t true what he’d said, of course. Getting involved meant risking injury to Brian and the Andersons, not just to herself. If he walked out on her again, after stealing her heart a second time, the resulting pain might be unbearable. Even so, she ceased all struggle as—keeping the letter of his promise while thoroughly violating its spirit—he positioned himself more intimately against her body, effectively pinning her in place.

      After so many years of struggling to feel something more than gratitude and friendship for Larry and later, sleepwalking through the suspended animation of widowhood, Cate came fully alive in an instant, so keenly that the sensation pierced her to the quick. She gloried in his touch, drank in the remembered aroma of his skin scent. She was profoundly amazed that he was actually there with her, in the little Ohio town where they’d met and fell in love. And she wanted to drown in the wonder of him, to open herself to the hard shaft of his desire that had made its seeking known against her body.

      Tell me I’m not dreaming this, she begged the Fates that held sway in such moments. That I won’t wake up with empty arms and tears streaming down my face.

      Her capitulation was like a goad to him. Incredibly, a door had opened, where for years there’d been a wall. The only woman he’d ever loved was pressed tightly against him and gave every indication that the arrangement suited her. With a little groan, he claimed her mouth. Imagined so many times—as he’d changed planes or flopped on his living-room couch to stare at the lights on Lake Shore Drive—the incredible sweetness of kissing her again blew him away. It was as if an integral part of himself, long missing, was suddenly back in place.

      Don’t overwhelm her with too much, too soon, he warned himself, even as the urge to share the ultimate mysteries with her arose like an ache in his gut. Some questions have to be answered first.

      From Cate’s perspective, his kiss was as deep as the earth. And so hungry! Its insatiability poured comfort into her empty places, even as it drove her to a peak of wanting him. Her recklessness soared as her nipples tightened. Mother, daughter-in-law, teacher, neighbor, she’d forced herself

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