She would think about him and break character, lose her bearing. Another actor would say a line, and she would just stare at them, lost. The entire cast was out of patience with her, as she was with herself.

She needed to get a grip before she sabotaged the show completely. At night, when she was alone in her apartment eating takeout, her obsession was worse.

She would try to imagine living with Zach as an ordinary couple in a house with a garden and a picket fence, try to envision holidays with Gram and Tuck, dinners with friends, shared vacations, dark-haired children that looked just like Zach.

But, always, her vision would pop like a bubble as an inner voice taunted her.

Zach has his life and you have yours. You’re still keeping your secrets. He values his privacy, and you can never have total privacy. So-just enjoy what you have now.

An affair such as theirs couldn’t last long, not with her secret eating at her and the world interfering and them living so far apart, not with each of them working at all-consuming careers. Added to those obstacles, there would be no way for her to leave New York on the weekends once her show started.

She thought of Gram, who was always pressuring Summer to marry and have children, who now called constantly to express her pleasure at Zach’s renewed visitations and to express her concerns about how their story was playing out in the media and around Bonne Terre.

“You are running out of time for children,” she would say. “He isn’t.”

“Gram, please…don’t!”

Gram’s advice added unbearable pressure to Summer’s already fragile situation.

Until Zach, Summer had focused only on her career. Now when she thought of the possibility of little darlings and a more private life, she felt an eager wistfulness.

What if Zach wanted children but saw her career and all that went with it as obstacles too large to surmount? Since he was a man, he could simply enjoy her for as long as it was convenient and then move on. He could choose a woman young enough to bear his children.

An urge to see him again and to make love to him-to claim him in all the imaginative ways he’d taught her-filled her.

By Thursday night, when he hadn’t called her again, she finally weakened and picked up the phone.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered the minute he answered, fighting to keep the tension out of her voice.

Oh, why did I say that of all things?

“I missed you, too,” he admitted, his tone polite.

“I’m sorry about all the press coverage.”

He said nothing.

“I saw where you were besieged in your Houston office.”

“I didn’t realize you were so famous.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

“Hey, you’re the handsome billionaire. I think your money and your looks are as big a draw as I am. It’s a huge part of the fantasy reporters are trying to sell.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault, too,” he mused, but his voice had warmed ever so slightly. “When I couldn’t get into my building downtown for all the reporters, I wondered why the hell I’d ever gotten myself into this mess. It seems so cheap…what they write about us. Maybe we should take a break until all the fuss dies down.”

When he fell silent after dropping that bomb, her breath caught painfully. For a long second, the wound from his words seemed too hurtful to bear.

“Zach, I…I hope you don’t really want that. I know the press is a major hassle right now, and I’m truly sorry. But once my show starts, I’ll be too swamped to travel. You’ll get busy with other projects, too… And then we’ll…drift apart…” Her voice cracked on a forlorn note.

“I’ve lived in the spotlight for years. It won’t always shine this brightly or be this invasive. I swear.”

“That’s reassuring,” he said in a smart-aleck tone that somehow cheered her.

“My PR people spend a lot of time manipulating my brand. It’s all so false. The person you read about in those stories is not me. It’s this pubic person, the actress. The real me often feels lost in all the hubbub.

“But there is a difference. Last weekend, after the ground-breaking, was wonderful and true. I’ve never been happier in my whole life.”

“Me, too,” he admitted slowly.

“So, will you give us another chance?”

“Sweetheart, who am I kidding? Don’t you know by now, that no matter how much I hate the press, I’d go crazy if I didn’t see you again-and very, very soon. I need you, even though I hate needing you. But that doesn’t kill the need. It’s fierce, unquenchable.”

She drew in a long, relieved breath because she felt the same way.

“I’m new to this, too,” she whispered. “I haven’t dated anyone outside the business before. Maybe we should only worry about how we are together…so that those on the outside don’t matter quite so much. What we have shouldn’t be about them or what they think. It should be about us. I want this piece of my life to belong to me and to you and to nobody else.”

He was silent for a long time. “We do live in the real world, you know, an intrusive world.”

A world that would devour them all over again if it learned all their secrets.

“I know. But I want to try to keep our relationship a personal matter. There are things I need to share with you… Personal things I’ve been afraid to share…”

“You sound very mysterious all of a sudden.”

“I can’t talk about it over the phone. So, about tomorrow… Do we still have a date?”

When he hesitated for a heartbeat, he put her in an agony of suspense.

“I can’t wait,” he admitted in that low, husky tone she loved.


* * *

Friday afternoon came at last, and she rushed to LaGuardia in a chauffeured car with a single bag. Hours later, when his jet set her down on a deserted airstrip several miles from the one Bob usually used outside Bonne Terre, she saw him-and no press-waiting beside his Mercedes at the edge of the dark woods. A wild joy pierced her.

Stepping off the plane, she told herself to play it cool. But at the bottom of the stairway, she cried his name and flew into his arms.

“I missed you so much,” she admitted ruefully as she flung her arms around his neck.

He pulled her to him, folded her close.

“You smell so good,” she whispered.

He slanted a look down at her and smiled. “So do you.”

Feeling the fierce need to taste him, she pulled his mouth down to hers. Then he kissed her with a wonderful wild hunger that turned her blood to fire, the ferocity in him matching her own. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that he’d barely contacted her last week or that he’d had so many doubts about their very public relationship. Even the unbearable weight of her secret felt a tiny bit lighter on her heart. There was truth in his kiss, in his touch, a truth he couldn’t hide.

“I brought you something.”

Soft white flashed in the darkness as he handed her a bouquet of daisies.

“They’re gorgeous.” She jammed her nose into the middle of their petals and inhaled their sweetness. “Simply gorgeous. I love them.”

“It’s a cliché gift.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’ve got gold dust all over your nose now.”

“Pollen, they call it,” she whispered as she dabbed at her nose and giggled. “All gone?”

“Not quite.” He dusted the tip of her nose for her.

Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her close in the shadows of the trees. After another kiss, this one brief and undemanding and tender, he said, “Let’s go home, sweetheart.”

The press corps waiting for them at his pillared mansion were held at bay by a team of security guards, so Zach drove around back where they could run inside without having to face questions.

Locking the door of the little sitting room where they’d entered, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard. So urgent were his kisses as they skimmed her lips, her throat, her breasts. She began to tremble violently. Then he lifted her skirt and found that soft place in between her thighs.

“You’re not wearing panties, I see.”

His tongue made contact and she gasped.

“No…”

She was wet and breathless and dying for more as he peeled off the rest of her clothes.

“Am I bad?” she whispered as he undid his belt and began tearing off his jeans and shirt.

“I like bad.”

When they were naked, he shoved her against the wall and held her close. “Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart.”

When she complied, he put on a condom and ground himself into her, scraping her back and shoulders against the wall in his eagerness. She didn’t mind. She cared only for him as he rode her fast and hard. Arching her pelvis to meet his thrusts, she cried out. Again, he took her to that strange, wild world that was theirs alone. Clinging to him fiercely, her heart pounded in mad unison with his.

Afterward, their bodies drenched in perspiration, they sank to the floor with their arms still wound around each other.

“I don’t know if I can ever stand up again,” Summer whispered breathlessly.

“Not to worry, sweetheart. You don’t have to.”

He lifted her and carried her through the house to the bed in the room she’d used that first weekend. Then he lay down beside her and stared at her hot, damp body gleaming in the moonlight.

When she was with him like this, she felt almost sick with pleasure and terror of losing him. She thought about her secret and how he might react when she confided in him. How, when could she tell him?

The long, lonely years without him had taught her what loss felt like, and she dreaded anything coming between them again. But something would. All it might take was her confession about the baby.

She’d been young when she’d loved him before. People like Thurman, who’d been wrong in all the advice they’d given her, had told her she’d been lucky to have lost their baby girl, lucky a lowlife like Zach was out of her life, lucky that she could start over. They’d said she would meet someone else, someone respectable, have another baby, that all would be just fine.