She chuckled and went back to the diary, reading aloud under her breath now and then, slowly turning pages, smiling at first. But gradually her face changed, losing all traces of laughter and finally acquiring that tight, fragile look that be knew the wrong word, the slightest touch could shatter.

“Here.” Her voice sounded breathless and unsteady. “July 4-this is where it starts. No, wait-” she flipped pages “-a little before that. Here we are-July 1. ‘Dear Diary, Guess what! I think Richie Wilcox likes me.’” Her head came up and her eyes sought his, bright with fear and hope, like a kid about to take her first jump off a diving board and wondering if there was gonna be anyone there to catch her when she did.

“Go ahead,” he said, but something had tightened around his chest so that his voice was as airless as hers. He scooted his hand across the bedspread toward hers.

She took it and clasped it tightly, twining her fingers with his as trustingly as a child. And he felt something burst inside him, spreading liquid warmth all through him…warmth, and strength and certainty. When once again she bowed her head over the diary in her lap and began to read aloud the words, thoughts and feelings she’d transferred there from her heart so long ago, any doubts he’d had about his right to share them with her had gone. Right then and there he knew his place was here, right here beside her, holding her, comforting her, protecting her, in any way he could, as far as he was able, for as long as he had breath left in his body.

So he held her hand while she retraced the rocky and painful pathway of her seventeenth year. When her voice trembled and broke, he moved unhesitatingly closer, sat beside her and wrapped her in his arms and held her. And when her tears finally came, he soaked them up in the front of his shirt.

The last entry he read for her: “‘Today I am leaving this God Forsaken place forever…’”

Troy finished in a cracking voice, then closed the diary and put it aside on the nightstand while he and Charly held on to each other, laughing and trembling. Part of that, he hoped, he wanted to believe, was a kind of giddy joy in each other, in comradeship discovered, in the newness of having someone to cling to in a time of trouble. And part, he knew, was sheer relief-on her part, that the past had been faced at last, and on his, that she’d finally allowed him to share it all with her.

All, at least, except for one small part. There was still the promise she’d never broken, the one secret she hadn’t dared to share with another soul, nor even commit to the pages of her diary. Troy was pretty sure he knew what the secret was, and he had an idea Dobrina must have guessed it, too. He wondered if Charly even realized how clear the answers were, to anyone who knew the whole story-to anyone who’d read her diary.

And whether, even now, she’d be willing to risk letting her son in on the secret she’d promised his father she would keep for him forever.

A silence had fallen over them, filled with the trip-hammering of heartbeats and little slowing-down sighs. To Charly it seemed almost like the aftermath of lovemaking, except that she felt in no way satiated, or even drowsily content. The sultry intimacy of Troy’s body heat energized her like a cold shower, frosting her body with goose bumps; the fresh-soap smell of his sweat filled her head with a low-level buzz, like the first drink of champagne.

She stirred and turned toward him, her hand finding a nest in the hard-muscled hollow of his belly, just below the V of his ribs. She let it ride there for a moment, rising and falling like a leaf on a wake. wondering if she dared let it drift toward more-interesting places, wondering whether he’d deny her again, and how she would cope if he did.

She was a long way from understanding what it was that made Troy Starr tick-though to be honest, until now she’d been too preoccupied with her own pain to even try. Certainly she’d never met anyone in her life quite like him, had never even imagined they still made guys like him-and they probably didn’t, at least not in L.A. He was…definitely one of a kind. Well, okay, maybe one of a pair, the other being his brother Jimmy Joe, and she could definitely understand a little better now what it was that had made a bright, sophisticated lady like Mirabella fall in love with the redneck truck driver from Georgia.

Mirabella, Charly remembered, had once told her she’d thought of Jimmy Joe as a knight. Her very own knight, come thundering to her rescue that Christmas Eve in his big blue Kenworth charger. Crazy, Charly had thought at the time. Romantic lunacy. Her best friend had simply lost her mind.

And even if it were true, and even if Charly did happen to need rescuing-which she most certainly did not-there were no more knights. Surely Jimmy Joe had to be the last one left in the world. They just didn’t make them anymore. Or did they?

Boy Scouts, now…that was another story. And as far as she was concerned, there was one too many of them in this room.

“Ma‘am, you mind tellin’ me what you’re up to?” Troy’s voice was groggy, the words slurred.

Charly’s hand had left the soft-firm flesh of his belly to skim across the front of his boxers like a kingfisher over the surface of a pond, sending shivers rippling through his body. Her laugh was soft and dangerous. “I warned you about that ‘ma’am’ stuff.”

“Let me rephrase the question, Your Honor.” His breath caught; her hand settled…became an excruciating warmth. “Woman, what in the hell are you doing?”

“That’s better,” she purred with the deceptive laziness of a lioness watching a herd of gazelles. “I’m trying to seduce you, of course.”

He laughed weakly. “Now, there’s a challenge.”

Her hand moved on, riding downward along the hard ridge of his thigh, then slowly up again on the softer inside. He felt his bones melt. Heaven…no, torture. Her thigh came between his; her body weight shifted and slid lower, caressing his side. Her warm breath poured over his stomach…her tongue made darting forays into his navel.

A groan, composed of equal parts pleasure and agony, rose from deep in his belly. “Didn’t you ever hear of overkill?”

She chuckled, modestly pleased. “I wasn’t sure what it would take. I’ve never seduced a Boy Scout before.”

She was unprepared when his body suddenly hardened to iron beneath her and his legs came around her like steel coils. The next thing she knew, she was on her back with her arms imprisoned above her head, pressed deep into the pillows, with her heart pounding, heat thundering through her body and Troy’s body hard and hot on top of her.

“Where do you get this ‘Boy Scout’ stuff?” he growled as his mouth came swooping down, taking quick, possessive nips from her throat, from her lips, startled and open. Her lips grew swollen and tingled like fire; her breaths came sharp and hurting. “You have a damn short memory.” His grip on her arms became a caress, sliding upward toward her wrists; his fingers wove themselves through hers. His mouth sank into hers, and his tongue trapped her whimper of need deep in her own throat,

His kisses took possession of her, sensation became a deluge, a monsoon, wiping out thought. Her body arched mindlessly, seeking him, while her legs shifted, making a place for him between. Her breath came in soft, tiny cries.

“After last night,” she gasped, when his mouth finally released hers to explore the pulsing cords along the side of her neck, her lips moist and throbbing, slurring the words, “I thought-”

“I know what you thought.” He pulled back suddenly, bringing her with him, and kneeling between her legs, with one swift motion tore her T-shirt up and over her head and threw it impatiently aside.

His fingers dipped beneath the elastic waistband of her Tweety Bird boxers, yanked them down over her hips. She drew her legs up one at a time, watching him, wide-eyed and trembling, as he pulled them off and hurled them away and then lifted and settled her, naked, astride his thighs.

“Lady, for somebody as smart as you are-” his voice was thick and guttural, his hands gentle on her arms, a feather’s touch with the power of a lightning strike “-you don’t know very much about what makes a man tick. Not a damn thing, as a matter of fact…”

His hands left her arms to travel down her sides, over her hips and back up again, where they found her breasts aching for his touch. And gently nested them. And then, not at all gently, squeezed and rolled and tugged the hardened, nerve-rich nipples, an exquisite agony she felt in the deepest parts of her, felt in the soles of her feet, in the nape of her neck…so sweet an agony she cried out and arched her back, pushing her breasts deeper into his hands, pressing her soft, vulnerable body against the unyielding hardness of his.

Bewilderment filled her, mixed with a need so sharp and bright it felt like despair. Together they made a pressure inside her that was not unlike tears.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, her head thrown back, eyes tightly shut, frightened without knowing why. “What…is it you want from me?”

His chuckle was a liquid, tickling warmth at the base of her throat. “More than you can give me right now, darlin’…I know that.”

“I want you,” she cried, dizzy, cold with wanting. Trembling… trembling. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Not even close.” His hands were a moving, liquid warmth, flowing over her body, her sides, her belly, her thighs. She felt his fingers come between her thighs…an intimate intrusion that made her gasp…and yearn.

“Okay…” Her throat, her whole body tightened. She lifted her hands to his shoulders, then curled them around his neck and hung on with a kind of desperation as, trembling, she choked out the words she’d never said to a living soul before. “I.…need you.”