“Mitch,” Kay whispered.

“What?”

“Get that tone out of your voice,” she said softly.

“What tone?”

“The anger. Who exactly are you angry at, anyway?”

Mitch hesitated, and then half smiled, his fingers reaching up to sift through her hair. “Myself. For all those years I couldn’t do the things I expected of myself as a man.”

“Mitch, that’s so damned stupid.” She sat up, her hair shimmering behind her to catch the firelight. Her voice was a fierce, low cry, muffled as she pressed her lips to his chest, her arms wrapping tightly around him. She felt the kiss on the crown of her head, and then another. “Why three?”

“Three?”

“You said there were three operations…”

“Because a body,” he growled, “sometimes rejects the new valve. They put you on an operating table and they open you up, and then they decide what kind of valve they’re going to put in. A goat valve? A pig valve? Maybe a plastic one. There’s a choice of better than two dozen. They tried two and my body didn’t like either one. Now what do you want to know?”

He was so defensive suddenly, yet his lips scored kisses down her throat, into the hollow, tracing the line of her collarbone. When his tongue flicked out to taste that same warm skin, she caught her breath and struggled for control. It mattered that he finish it. For his sake, not for hers. “And the third time?” she whispered.

He sighed, raising his eyes directly to hers. “The surgeons didn’t want to perform the third operation,” he said flatly. “Six or seven hours under the knife is stress enough, they told me, but when the body rejects a new valve, suddenly the heart is under a lot more stress, and it becomes a matter of life or death. So I had two choices-no more operations and living the rest of my life as a sedentary recluse, or gambling on surgery one more time. Honey, don’t. I knew damn well you wouldn’t be satisfied until you’d heard the whole story, or I wouldn’t have told you…Kay.”

Her whole body was trembling. He’d almost died? He’d made a choice in which his life was at risk. She wound her arms around him, bit her lip and forced back tears.

“It’s over,” he said roughly. “Forget it, Kay. You wanted to know. Now you know. We’ll never talk of it again.” His face was grave, hovering over hers, worldly and old and fiercely possessive as he stroked her hair and took her lips again and again, willing a different kind of trembling to overtake her body.

The soft blanket crushed against her bare skin. Fire licked and spit in the hearth, and shadows climbed up the walls. Their breathing became increasingly labored. Once, Kay felt a cool, smooth gem beneath her and Mitch’s hand swept it away as if it were a bothersome pebble, almost making her smile. His precious stones were suddenly not so precious. There was clearly only one thing on his mind.

And he was different.

He wasn’t a new lover anymore. He knew exactly what he wanted and he claimed it. His touch was tender and in no way rough, but there was a dominance, a sureness as he claimed his right to touch, to stroke, to kiss, to tease.

Mitch was primal male, strong, overpowering. When he stripped off the rest of his clothes and she saw his naked body by firelight, she felt a searing awareness of her own vulnerability. What hurt him, hurt her. What gave him pleasure gave her infinite quantities of the same.

With exquisite tenderness, he entered her. She surged toward him in a frantic attempt to be part of him. For his years of loneliness-and for her own, for she suddenly realized that until Mitch she had been lonely-there was no possible way she could get close enough. Her heart suddenly ached with fear, and Mitch whispered to her, over and over; he whispered silken love words and he whispered promises of a golden world inhabited by just the two of them, and on a satin thread of ecstasy, he claimed her soul.


***

Except for the crackle of Sunday newspapers, there was total silence in Mitch’s bedroom. With a pillow behind her head, Kay lay flat on the carpet, with her legs crossed and her feet propped up on Mitch’s lap. A coffee mug was perched precariously on her chest as she turned a page.

Mitch was sprawled more conventionally on the couch, one hand holding the paper and the other resting on Kay’s ankle. When he tossed down one section to pick up another, he inevitably glanced down at Kay with an amused smile.

“You’ve been reading the classifieds for better than twenty minutes.”

“Want ads are fascinating. Especially the personals. Listen.” She crackled the paper. “‘DWM.’ I assume that means divorced white male? ‘Looking for nice lady around fifty. Don’t smoke or drink, financially secure, not fat-but no heavy night action.’” Kay laid down the page. “I thought it was funny when I first read it. Now I think it’s sad.”

“Resist the urge to call him up and take him home,” Mitch advised dryly.

“I wasn’t going to,” Kay said indignantly.

“I know you better.”

“Well, the poor guy. Having to advertise in the paper. He sounds so lonely…”

Mitch reached down and replaced her want ads with the safer sports section. “It’s no wonder you fill that house of yours up with orphans. And don’t read page six. The guy who tore a few ligaments made three million dollars last year.”

“Which would hardly make up for-”

She heard Mitch sigh heavily, and mutter something under his breath that sounded distinctly like “softie.” Grinning, she flipped through the sports section until she found the crossword page. She raised a hand and found Mitch dropping a pencil in it before she even needed to ask.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You’re getting pretty good at that.”

“At what?”

“Anticipating what I want to do before I want to do it.” Kay sighed. “Could you have anticipated that I just spilled the last of my cold coffee on my sweat shirt?”

Mitch chuckled. “If you’re determined to read lying on the floor-”

“I am.”

“Well, then.”

Kay set down the empty cup and newspaper and stood up with a disgusted look at the stain on her stomach. “I’m becoming slovenly,” she announced. She took two steps toward the bathroom before flipping her head back. “And if you loved me even a thimbleful, you would have instantly denied that.”

“I’d rather help you take a shower.”

“A spot no bigger than a quarter hardly rates a shower.”

“See? You’re becoming slovenly.” Hooded eyes studied her. “I could wash all the difficult places for you,” he coaxed. “The backs of your knees. Between your shoulders-”

“And then you’d want me to wash all those difficult places on you, too.”

“You have a dirty mind,” he said admiringly. “You’re also smart.”

“What I am is still wandering around in yesterday’s clothes. And instead of going home and making the necessary repairs, I discover you’re as bad a Sunday paper addict as I am.” Flipping on the light switch, she disappeared into the bathroom, rubbing briskly at the stain on her stomach with a washcloth.

“We could move your things over here, and then we wouldn’t have that problem,” Mitch called out. “We could even get married and make it legal.”

Kay’s hand stilled, and her head abruptly lifted. The teasing note had suddenly left his voice. And a disgraceful image confronted her in the mirror; a woman whose hair hadn’t seen a curling iron in twenty-four hours, a face without makeup, lips that were redder than usual-and with good reason.

The lady looked definitely well loved.

The lady felt definitely well loved.

“Kay?”

She loved him. She’d loved before, but no one like Mitch, never like Mitch. And she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to wake up next to him, day after day, for the rest of her life. So why did she feel so anxious, suddenly?

“Have you drowned in there?” Mitch called out mildly.

“Nope.” Tossing down the washcloth, she hurriedly whipped Mitch’s brush through her hair and bounced out of the bathroom, her smile ready and her heart quaking.

Mitch only needed one look. “I shook you up?” he asked quietly.

“Of course not.”

“And badly? Come here, you.” He raised an arm at the same time that he shifted to a sitting position and set down the paper.

Dressed in old cords and a sweatshirt far older than hers and still barefoot on this lazy morning, he still had a special alertness in his eyes that unsettled her as he grabbed her hand and pulled her down beside him. Before she could dissemble, he’d gently brushed back the hair from her forehead and tilted up her chin so there was no hiding from him. Leaning over, he first kissed her forehead, then the very tip of her nose. “I happen to like the idea of your things hanging next to mine in the closet. Don’t tell me that idea terrifies you?”

His voice was deliberately gentle, teasing. “Hardly,” Kay said with equal lightness, but she couldn’t stop the little catch in her voice.

“Toothpaste would be cheaper if we could buy two tubes at a time.” His lips touched down on her chin.

“Think of that.”

“We could fight about all kinds of things. Drawer space. How many rooms we’re going to do in red. Whether we’re ever going to let you eat blueberry muffins in bed again. Who’s going to clean up after I cook. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

Unfortunately, it did. She nuzzled her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder so he would stop tantalizing her with those itty-bitty kisses and tried to frame a coherent reply. He didn’t give her the chance.

“I’m not going to let you go, you know,” he murmured. “You didn’t think I just wanted an affair, Kay?”

She shook her head, closing her eyes as she felt the gentle stroke of his hand down her shoulder and arm. The touch wasn’t sexual but soothing, protective. The nagging anxiety in her head made no sense; she couldn’t even name it. Mitch sounded as sure as she felt. She wanted desperately to believe that his feelings were just that strong, but his proposal had followed too close on the heels of their first lovemaking. For Mitch, that lovemaking had been the first time ever, even if he didn’t know she had figured that out. Sexual feelings often carried that sweet label of love with them…and just as often one set of feelings could be confused with the other. “We haven’t known each other very long,” she ventured quietly.