They each made two fully laden trips, mostly in silence, before the car was empty of all the shopping bags and varioussize boxes and plastic-covered clothes hangers.

After the last trip, Summer stood with her arms full of shoe boxes and garment bags and surveyed the already overflowing countertops. She gave a feeble-sounding laugh. “Do you do this for all your clients?” So many packages…the thought of what he must have spent gave her a horrified, panicky feeling.

“Only those I’m keeping locked up in protective custody,” Riley drawled, but with an edge to his voice.

She had no trouble taking the hint; obviously he didn’t want to talk about it He probably wasn’t any more comfortable with the subject than she was. Okay, so as difficult as it might be, it looked as if she was going to have to accept Riley Grogan’s generosity and swallow her pride-again. One more lump to add to the ones she felt sometimes would choke her. She wished she could feel grateful; instead she felt inadequate and ashamed.

Riley turned from the open refrigerator, frowning as he weighed a bag of peaches in one hand, a plastic package labeled Caesar Salad in the other. He held them both out to her, eyebrows arched in that querying way of his.

She took a breath, swallowed the lump and said, “Lettuce, yes, peaches, no-they should be left out to ripen. Here-just let me put these…” She gave up looking for a place to set down her armload and ducked into the hallway, where she dumped everything in a pile at the foot of the stairs. She returned to find Riley staring at a note she’d fastened with cellophane tape to the refrigerator door.

“What’s this?” He focused on the note and read, “Crayons-”

She felt herself blush scarlet. What must he think of her? And after he’d just spent a small fortune! Her chest constricted with shame. “After you left this morning I thought of a few things to add to the list-but there’s absolutely no hurry. I just thought it might help to keep the children occupied-you know, since they can’t go…” She stepped closer and raised her hand to snatch the note away.

But he eluded her by shifting slightly and bracing his arm against the door. “Lint roller?” He turned his head to give her a look along his shoulder, his expression, except for the elevated brows, impassive.

She coughed, her face on fire. “You know-for the cat hair.”

He went on looking at her, so close to her she could see the pores in his skin, the dark stubble of a day’s growth of beard. He’d looked at her much the same way that day in court, she remembered, with a distance of several yards, a lawyers’ table and a witness box between them. And if he’d made her feel trapped and impaled then, at close range like this he was even more intimidating. She couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. Because all at once she knew that she had gravely misjudged Riley Grogan.

Oh, she’d recognized him as a fighter that day, in spite of his elegance and polish, but now she knew that the image she’d carried away with her that day had been more make-believe than real. She’d seen him as an actor playing the part of action hero in a movie with herself as the director. She’d thought of him as a tool she could control-and dispense with, when her need of him was over, as easily as a director yells “Cut!”

Only now, facing him over salad makings in his brightly lit kitchen, did she realize how foolish she’d been. Riley Grogan was no movie actor or make-believe hero-he was the real thing, a flesh-and-blood man, a strong man made of muscle and bone and sinew. She could feel the heat from his body, smell his sweat and aftershave, hear the rasp of his breathing. And she suddenly knew that, if there was violence and passion in Riley Grogan, hidden away beneath the elegant facade he presented to the world, it would not be hers to command.

Wrenching herself away from such close proximity and unnerving thoughts, she turned to the pile of shopping bags on the island counter and began to paw through them, pulling in a breath that seemed to clot in her lungs like heavy cream. “All I can say,” she said huskily, “is that your secretary must have gone a little nuts. This is…” Her fingers, exploring the contents of one of the bags, came upon the silky coolness of nylon…the raspy luxury of lace. Too much. It’s just too much.

“I’m afraid you can’t blame her,” said Riley absently, still frowning at the contents of the refrigerator. “I didn’t ask her, after all.”

Summer’s fingers froze. Then, like someone peeking through her fingers at a scene in a horror movie, she lifted one edge of the bag. Her worst fears confirmed, she closed her eyes. “So,” she said faintly, after pausing to clear her throat, “you did all this yourself?” Lingerie. He did-he bought me underwear.

Even with his back to her, Riley could hear the dismay in her voice…the precarious quality of blown glass and soap bubbles. It occurred to him to wonder if she even knew how fragile she was.

To give her time, he reached into the refrigerator and got his fingers around the necks of two bottles of his favorite brand of imported beer. He carried them to the counter, opened a drawer, took out a bottle opener and popped the caps, then turned and held one out to her. She looked startled but took it, studied the label for a moment, then lifted it to her lips.

“Would you like a glass?” he asked politely.

She shook her head. “This is fine.” She took a sip and murmured, “Thank you.”

Riley leaned against the counter and indulged himself in a long swallow of his beer, then said in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone, “I didn’t ask my secretary to do the shopping, because it seemed best that the fewer people who know you’re here, the better.” He paused for another swallow and to give that sentence a moment to sink in, then grinned. “And frankly, I couldn’t think of a plausible explanation to give her for why I was needing women’s and children’s clothing all of a sudden. After all-” he frowned in mock seriousness “-I do have a certain image to protect.”

He was mystified by how pleased he felt when she smiled.

She took a hefty swig of beer that left her lips glazed, then frowned and tilted the neck of the bottle toward him to indicate a return to serious discussion. “Listen-I know you have an…active social life.” He heard what was unmistakably a small burp. “You mustn’t let us interfere with it.”

She looked startled when he chuckled. “You know that, do you? How come you know so much about me, Mrs. Robey?”

She shifted slightly, leaning one hip against the counter, and Riley felt his gaze being drawn slowly and inexorably downward by the movement and the subtly relaxing lines of her body. He couldn’t help himself.

She gave her head a toss, and he jerked his eyes back to her face almost guiltily to find that her lips were pursed and shiny with moisture, her eyes the fierce, burning blue of glaciers. “You don’t think I’d come to you without checking on you first, do you? With my children’s lives at stake?”

“Well…” For the first time in his memory his tongue seemed to have stuck to the roof of his mouth. He drank some more beer to loosen it. When, he wondered, had it gotten so warm in his kitchen? So heavy and humid? He hoped the air-conditioning wasn’t going out again. Oxygen-deprived, he suppressed a yawn and mumbled, “Well, the only excitement I have planned for this evening is an early bedtime. Your kids aren’t the only ones needin’ to catch up on sleep.”

He couldn’t keep his breathing even as he watched her walk toward him…until it occurred to him that her only purpose in doing that was to dispose of her beer bottle. Feeling vaguely foolish, he moved to one side to give her access to the sink, then watched her rinse out her bottle and extend a hand to ask silently for his.

He surrendered it, and again availed himself of the unforeseen pleasure of watching her hands as she held the bottles under the faucet’s stream…the seconds seeming to slow and elongate so that the flowing water became oil and each movement of her hands a slow and sensual caress. What was it about her hands, he wondered-her hands, the water, the freshsoap smell of her. He couldn’t for the life of him think why those things suddenly seemed so erotic to him. This simple domesticity, the casual intimacy of it, wasn’t at all his style. He’d always preferred the more stylized courtship rituals-flowers and candlelight, elegant dinners, weekends in the Bahamas…

“Do you recycle?”

He straightened and jerked his head toward the kitchen’s outer door. “I think Mrs. Abemathy has a bin…”

While she was disposing of the bottles, to give himself at least the illusion of useful occupation, he picked up the first thing at hand-a plastic-wrapped package of meat-and scowled at it. Returning, she reached around him to take it from him and in doing so brushed against his arm. He felt a charge go through his chest, a vibrating rhythm like the subsonic boom of bass speakers that he realized with a small sense of shock must be his heartbeat.

“Filet mignon.” She shook her head as she pulled open the freezer door. “I hope you didn’t buy this for us. The children and I are just as happy with mac ’n’ cheese.” She paused then, and he saw her shoulders slump. She looked at him over her shoulder, eyes dark with contrition. “I didn’t even think-of course you must be hungry. Can I make you something?”

Riley was not often at a loss for words-another of his gifts, and one reason he was such a success at his chosen profession. But at that moment his mind was a blank, his speech processing centers totally nonfunctional. And he knew why. Because, yes, he definitely was feeling pangs of hunger, but they weren’t located in his stomach. And because, yes, he’d have liked very much for her to make him something, but it wasn’t filet mignon. And because he knew very well that what he was feeling was absolutely unpardonable-the woman was a client, a recent crime victim, a protected government witness and an unwilling guest in his home. And because in spite of all that he knew, if she came one inch closer to him, he was probably going to kiss her.