It occurred to him that he wished she’d be as honest with him.

Suddenly frustrated beyond bearing, he stuck a cigarette between his lips and muttered furiously around it, “Sometimes I can’t figure you out, you know that?”

She gave a small, surprised laugh and leaned to snag the ashtray and move it closer to him, an automatic gesture of consideration and courtesy, and so completely typical of her. “I know women who’d take that as a compliment,” she said lightly, then frowned. “I don’t know why. I’ve always wanted more than anything to be understood.”

He snatched the ashtray from her and stubbed out his barely touched cigarette, then pushed it away, took her by the shoulders and pulled her closer, but not yet into his arms. Caught by surprise, she put her hands on his chest, the fingers of one still curled around the handle of the soup spoon. He could see her mouth pop open as she stared at it, and he felt her body vibrate with deep-down-inside tremors.

He removed the spoon from her fingers and tossed it into the sink, wincing at the clatter. Then, cupping her jaw and chin with one hand, he tilted her face upward. “Look at me,” he commanded. She did, trustingly, lifting those sea-gray eyes to his. And he felt as if the ocean were rising up to meet him.

“I always know what you’re feeling,” he said, wondering why his tongue felt thick. He felt woozy…dizzy, as if riding a heavy swell-and he’d never been one to get seasick. “Your eyes tell me. They show everything. Did you know that?”

He watched a little pleat of lines appear between her eyebrows, and felt her pulse hammer against his palm. His pulse was in his throat.

“I don’t know-sometimes you seem so damn frank and open it scares me. Hell, I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth. And then sometimes, I look in your eyes and what I’m seeing doesn’t match what I’m hearing.” He paused, staring down at her as if he might see inside her soul if he only looked hard enough. It was like trying to see the bottom of the ocean. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking, dammit!”

Dear God, thought Jane as a new and heretofore unknown kind of fear shivered and sparkled like crystal dust just beneath her skin. This man has known me for a matter of days, and already he knows what David never could figure out in more than twenty-one years.

Was this what it would be like? Intimacy? To be one of a couple, wholly and completely with someone…did that mean she’d have to learn to share her innermost thoughts? Oh, surely not all her thoughts. But at least, not to lie about her feelings? Her true feelings…

Oh, what a terrifying thing! Imagine having the courage to let someone know when you felt angry, or hurt, or disappointed, or just plain out-of-sorts. Imagine trusting someone enough to let yourself be cranky and disagreeable and moody in his presence, trusting that he would still love you in spite of it. Imagine not having to be nice all the time. Imagine being allowed to have flaws. Imagine not having to be perfect in order to be loved. Imagine…

A tear appalled her by slipping from the corner of one eye and rolling down to puddle in the crack between her cheek and Tom’s fingers.

“Don’t!” he cried sharply, and smeared the moisture across her hot cheek with his fingers as if trying to make it disappear.

“Sorry,” she murmured, dropping her lashes across the other tears that wanted to follow the first. “It’s just, you know, emotions…”

The growl he gave had more frustration in it than lust, but his lips, when they touched hers, were unexpectedly gentle. Incredibly sweet. Unbelievably wonderful. A sigh shivered through her as for a moment-just a moment-she seemed to hang suspended in a fragile, crystalline bubble of happiness, happiness so pure and rare it felt like shimmers inside her, and ran along her skin like the cold-hot prickle of a sparkler’s shower on the Fourth of July.

If this is all there is to be, she thought-and for that moment believed-then I will settle for this. And be happy.

Her hands crept around his neck and her head relaxed into the cradle of his hand, and she sighed as though she’d found something for which she’d been searching a very long time. As she had.

“You must know what I’m thinking now,” she whispered when his lips left hers to travel upward across her cheek, tasting the dampness her tear had left there.

“I know what you’re feeling,” he corrected, murmuring the words across her eyelid like the tiniest of caresses. “That’s all.”

Drunkenly she mumbled. “Right now it’s the same thing anyway… I can’t think.” And she wished-oh, how she wished-that it were true.

She never knew how they got from the kitchen to her bedroom; certainly Tom didn’t sweep her into his arms. Rhett Butler-like, and carry her-she’d have been mortified if he had-but she had no recollection of walking down a darkened hallway, no awareness of sidestepping the living-room furniture or squeezing entwined through doorways. It was only when Tom turned on the light in her bedroom that the deep, enveloping fog of desire lifted long enough for her to make an inarticulate sound of protest. He instantly turned it off again.

On wobbly legs she moved through the semidarkness to the bed, tossed pillows onto the floor and folded back the comforter. Separated from him, she felt cold, isolated, off balance, as if she’d stepped onto the deck of a ship in a storm. When she felt his hands on her waist and the warm and solid bulkhead of his body there behind her, her relief was so profound she almost whimpered.

“Easy,” Hawk murmured as he turned her, wondering why she was shivering when it wasn’t cold in the room.

He was glad of that; he wanted very much to see her while he made love to her, and was glad not to have to resort to huddling under the covers like Puritans. To that end, he kissed her until he felt her relax and her shivers subside and her knees begin to buckle, then leaned over to turn on the lamp beside the bed.

And as before when he did that, she uttered a little yelp of protest. Only this time, he ignored it, left the light on and went back to doing what he’d been doing so pleasurably before.

“Have a heart,” she whispered, clutching his shoulders and laughing weakly as he reached under her tunic to stroke the sides of her waist.

“Come on,” he teased, pulling her torso against his and at the same time bending her backward a little, nibbling the side of her neck, delighting at the way her body moved in his hands, the way her muscles flexed and tightened, supple as a green willow. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re embarrassed…” Her shaky little half laugh confirmed it. Still not believing she was serious, he pulled back and looked at her, smiling himself, expecting to see a teasing light in her eyes. “Carlysle?”

But she wouldn’t let him see her eyes, and he wondered if it was because of what he’d told her, that he could read her feelings in them.

“Well, of course I am,” she murmured, sounding a little testy, licking her lips as if she could taste him still. “I told you, it’s been more than five years…and before that there was only…” She paused, drew a breath and blurted out, “You’re only the second man who’s ever seen this body, not counting obstetricians, and, well…”

That tenderness that surprised him every now and then, and that unnerved him so whenever it appeared, was lurking about again, playing a little goblin-game with his emotions. He fought it, keeping his frown in place as he said solemnly, in the best John Wayne imitation he could muster, “Well, ma’am, from what I’ve been able to see of it, it looks like a damn fine body to me.”

She made a disparaging sound, half snort, half whimper. “It’s forty-five years old, and looks every year of it.”

God help me, he thought, suddenly remembering what she’d said to him about people collecting baggage, and about nothing being as simple now as it was when they were young. Nothing about this woman was simple, that was for sure, and neither was the way he felt about her. Where in the hell was good ol’ lust when he needed it?

You’ve been with other women, she’d said-what’s one more? But he’d never felt like this, not under these circumstances, anyway. He felt protective, strong, but a little bit awed and humble, too, as if he was taking part in something…special. Out-of-the-ordinary. And there was that word again: Important.

Even the first time with Jenny hadn’t felt like this-but he’d been a virgin then, himself, and Jen, well, Jen had always been so sure of herself, so sure of him. In some strange way, he thought, Jane seemed younger now than Jenny had then.

He felt her shudder when he began, slowly, to lift her tunic, but she didn’t stop him, and he pulled it over her head and let it drop to the floor. Her hands fluttered nervously to the center clasp of her bra, but he gently pushed them aside and put his there instead. And then, instead of unhooking it immediately, he leaned down and kissed her a long, slow time, until her breathing grew uneven and she had to reach for him to keep from falling.

And still he didn’t free her breasts from that last bastion of modesty and protection, but began to rub the nipples through the lacy fabric that covered them, until he could feel them grow hard and tender, and chafe against that restriction. Until her breaths became tiny pants and whimpers that he took from her lips like sips of warm brandy.

He knew she would have torn off the rest of her clothes then herself, if he’d let her. But now, perversely, he denied her, holding her captive with his mouth and hands, and when she finally tore her mouth free and clung to him, incoherently gasping, instead of undressing, he began to talk to her. Blowing the words past the sensitive channels of her ear so that every nerve ending shivered to attention, he began to tell her about how he’d spent most of his adult life in Europe, where people have different attitudes toward women and age.