“At least all my love for the rest of your life.”

“I know that. I meant in money.”

Stix aimed a slap at her backside but missed. Chuckling, Kay fetched a fresh bowl of dip from the refrigerator and perched back up on her stool. Stix instantly scooped up a tablespoon of the stuff on a quarter-sized chip and popped it into his voracious mouth, mumbling, “Raise two.”

Mitch smiled, as if the raise had pleased him. “See your two and raise another.” His eyes flicked first to Stix and then to Kay before his attention returned to the cards.

Sucking on a salted cashew nut, Kay watched with fascination as Mitch raked in yet another stack of chips.

Having lost her stake of five dollars-her max-to him earlier in the game, she was delighted to sit back and let the others suffer. Glancing at the clock, she saw it was nearing midnight. She still hadn’t figured out how Mitch had ended up at the poker game with her. He’d seen the four men waiting for her at the door when he brought her home, and the next thing she knew he’d blended into the group as if born there.

The table was set up in the living room. Soda and beer cans littered the side tables; chips and dip and napkins and bowls of cashews were clustered among the cards. John was the only smoker in the group, and his thin haze of smoke wandered around the room.

John chain-smoked when he had a good hand. Stix munched when he had a good hand. Barker fidgeted, and their resident CPA, Hailey, from three blocks down, pulled his mustache. Kay had always found him remarkably easy to beat.

Mitch did nothing to give himself away. He just won. No big deal, but he definitely kept drawing in the lion’s share of the chips.

And he listened. The man might have a zipper for a mouth as far as his own secrets, but he was remarkably adept at prying information from others. What they did for a living, how long they’d been married, how long they hadn’t been married…and how Mitch got them going, she had no idea, but the guys had been relating a disgusting selection of escapades from their-and her-younger days. One senior prom night that ended with skinny-dipping in Coeur D’Alene Lake. One perfectly innocent afternoon of fishing in the Sawtooth Mountains that turned into four days, thanks to a flash flood that washed out the roads…

“Kay always had the best ideas,” Barker told Mitch, still laughing. “Whenever the guys wanted any excitement…”

He left the sentence hanging. Thanks so much, Barker, Kay thought darkly. She stuck another cashew nut in her mouth. You’d think she’d spent her entire life in high-spirited antics, but that just wasn’t true. Working herself through college hadn’t been a lark, nor was making a life for herself alone. And earlier, there’d been some very dark years, when the family had been afraid Jana wasn’t going to make it, when her mother had come close to falling apart and it had been up to Kay to keep up the family’s morale.

Given a choice between a funny story and a tragic one she’d choose the funny one any day, but the picture of Capering Kay was hardly accurate. Her poker cohorts knew that; she was used to their ceaseless teasing, and she wouldn’t have cared at all if it hadn’t been for Mitch.

On the one hand, he kept feeding the guys their cue lines, obviously encouraging their most risqué tales. On the other hand, Mitch gave away nothing about himself. He played his emotions as close to the chest as he played his cards.

Finally, Stix stretched and yawned. “I give up,” he said lazily.

Simultaneously, the other players tossed their cards on the table. “I didn’t realize how late it was,” Hailey said with a frown. “Mitch, you’ve got to join us on another Friday. Really enjoyed it.”

There was a rush for coats. Hailey left first, once he’d found his glasses. John, after a kiss on Kay’s cheek, was the next to go. Barker went so far as to take his beer cans to the kitchen, then delivered his good-night kiss. Stix lingered a little longer, giving Mitch a sidelong glance as he tugged on his ancient cord jacket. “You want help cleaning up?” he asked Kay.

To her credit, she didn’t faint from shock. “You’ve discovered dishes don’t miraculously wash themselves?”

“Samantha’s taught me a thing or two. Don’t get sassy. I could help take down the table.”

“We can take care of it,” Mitch drawled from the hall doorway.

Still, Stix lingered a bit longer, taking endless care with every one of his coat buttons, eyeing Kay with a protective gleam that made no sense.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He glanced at Mitch. “Coming?”

Mitch moved forward with a half smile, his hand firmly extended for Stix to shake, exactly as he had done with the other men. “Appreciated the chance to get in a night of poker. I hadn’t done it in a long time.”

“Anytime…” The two talked for a minute before Mitch dropped back, and Kay stepped forward with a perplexed expression.

Stix’s genial grin was gone. Suddenly, all six feet six inches of him exuded irritability. Stix was normally so laid back that Kay was baffled by the change in him. She stretched up on tiptoe for her good-night kiss. Her lips met a very stiff cheek; Stix glared at her and then departed, as the others had, into a very dark, very late night outside.

Kay turned back to find that Mitch had disappeared…and the card table was half cleared of debris. She snatched up the bowl of potato chips and two soda cans, carting both into the kitchen. There she spotted Mitch, who flashed her one quick, enigmatic smile on his way back to the living room.

It was like playing tag. When she headed back to the living room, Mitch was striding toward the kitchen again. The entire house was restored to equilibrium in minutes.

When she finally caught up with him, he was in the hall, pulling on his coat at the door. Kay stared at him from the kitchen doorway, astonished that he’d bothered to stay all this time…and was now leaving.

“They’re good men,” he said flatly.

“Old friends,” she agreed, bewildered.

He crooked his finger in a beckoning gesture.

Now there was the man she thought she’d spent the afternoon with. Chuckling, she went toward him. The wicked gleam was back in his eyes. It seemed he could turn it on and off at will, like a light. When there were no other people around, that light definitely glowed warmly. “Do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked him.

“All I want is to tell you something.”

“So tell me.”

“You’re too far away.”

Leaning back against the open doorway, he drew her arms around his waist until they were snuggled length to length. The web instantly woven around her was invisible, private and utterly male. The intimacy increased deliciously when his lips pressed into her hair. “You’re an affectionate lady,” he whispered.

“That’s what you wanted to tell me?” She tried to convince herself that she didn’t want him to stay. How could she possibly want him to stay? It was far too soon.

His lips nuzzled farther, his chin brushing back her hair so his mouth could center on the soft skin just below her ear. “No,” he murmured. “I just wanted to tell you that I wish I’d known you a long time ago. From the beginning. From before you were a woman, from the very moment you became a woman…”

She tilted her head back, touched by the earnest note in his voice. Mitch dipped down, placing a light kiss on her forehead, then on her nose, then on her chin. Her lips felt forsaken. “You don’t really wish that,” she told him with a sleepy half smile. “The young Kay was chubby, Mitch. And she had miles to go before she learned what she really valued in life.”

“Her…experiences had to be that extensive, did they?” His smile was lazy.

Kay slid her arms out from under his jacket and wrapped them around his neck. “You bet they did,” she whispered wryly. “I had more to learn than most.”

He chuckled, yet his dark eyes settled intently on hers before he leaned down to rub his cheek against hers, his arms suddenly restless over her sweatered back. “How long has Stix had a thing for you?”

“Hmm?” She’d been a teenager the last time she’d necked in a hallway. The sense of doing something that was forbidden had enhanced the moment then. One mustn’t, one shouldn’t, one would get caught. There was no danger of getting caught now, but there was still a lush sense of danger. Or was it anticipation? “Stix? You’re crazy, Mitch.” She pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat and felt his pulse jump. “Stix is just a self-adopted big brother,” she said absently.

“He mentioned your ill-fated engagement.”

What were they talking about? She pressed her cheek against his jacket and closed her eyes, loving the sensation of being held. “I won’t tell you my war stories unless you confess yours,” she warned him.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, ever. Do you mind that I’m curious about you?” His fingertips brushed back her hair so soothingly that she leaned her cheek into his palm.

She shook her head. “Of course not. Secrets are sad things. My war stories aren’t anything extraordinary, Mitch-I was engaged, twice. The first time I was seventeen, and the engagement lasted all of three days.”

“What happened?”

“We both used the ring as an excuse to do what we wanted to do. We soon decided sex wasn’t all it was cracked up to be-at least not for us-and we had the sense to call it off before anyone could be disastrously hurt,” she said wryly.

“Except,” Mitch said softly, “that you were disastrously hurt.”

Her eyes flickered up, brilliant and luminous. “No one,” she admitted, “could possibly hurt as much or as hard as a seventeen-year-old. Surely you’ve been there?” She had a sudden image of Mitch at seventeen, boyish and brazen and sexual…and then a second image, of the girl in his arms who must have been there. A little green glob settled in the pit of her stomach. “You’re not sharing war stories,” she reminded him, but her heart told her promptly that she didn’t want to know.