He’d said, “I didn’t know there was anything to do in Atlanta.” And she’d replied, with a sexy and wicked smile, “Have you ever been to Underground Atlanta?”

So they’d joined the Saturday-night crowds strolling the underground mall, and they’d eaten dinner and danced to live music, and Sam was careful not to drink anything except diet soda because she didn’t want Cory to think she was doing this just because she was drunk.

By the time they headed back to Cory’s apartment-the apartment CNN let him use whenever he was in town-her feet were killing her, and she’d taken off her high heels and was carrying them in her hand. Her heart was thumping and butterflies were fluttering around in her stomach as she rode up in the elevator beside Cory, his arm just brushing hers and her whole body vibrating nervously inside that little black dress.

The elevator doors opened, and she could hear laughter and music, with a thumping bass that crawled through the floors and walls and went in through the soles of her bare feet and joined up with the rhythms of her own pulse beat. Evidently, someone a couple of doors down the hall was having one hell of a party.

Cory had apologized for the noise while he unlocked the door and showed her inside the apartment. Then he’d closed the door, shutting out most of the racket-all but that bass. He turned back to her, and she could see it in his eyes-she just knew what he was thinking. And before he could even suggest making up that couch for himself to sleep on, she dropped her sexy shoes and her soccer bag on the floor and stepped up to him and laced her fingers behind his neck.

“Actually, the noise is good,” she’d murmured, her lips so close to his they tingled. “It makes a good cover.”

“Mmm…cover…for what?” His voice had sounded faint and shaken-and she knew that he knew. And she’d felt something inside herself grow strong and sure.

From that well of confidence a laugh bubbled up, one she’d never heard from herself before-husky and deep-throated…a woman’s laugh. “What do you think?” she’d said, and then she’d kissed him.

She’d kissed him until she’d felt his muscles begin to quiver and his breathing quicken, and his hands slip around her waist as though they didn’t have the will to do otherwise. Then, still kissing him, she took her hands from around his neck and reached behind her and pulled the zipper on the little black dress all the way down. The dress slithered to the floor, and she was wearing only a very tiny pair of black lace panties.

“My God…Sam…” His voice had sounded strangled. “Are you sure-”

She’d silenced him with a finger across his lips. “Shut up, Pearse,” she’d said fiercely. “Don’t make me have to kill you.”

He’d chuckled then, the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard. “Not a chance,” he’d growled. And after that there was no more talking.

He kisses me and I know it’s going to be all right, I can leave it to him, now, and a good thing, too, because this is about as far as my vast knowledge and experience can take me. I’m shaking, appalled and amazed at this thing I’ve done, the tremendous risk I’ve taken. But proud, too, and glad, and so very, very relieved…

He kisses me and his hands are on my body, so passionate and sure, touching me in ways he never has before, but so gently, too, and his tenderness tells me as nothing else could that this is important to him, as important and momentous and miraculous and terrifying as it is to me. And I understand, finally, that the reason he hasn’t made love to me before is only because he loves me. I understand that by waiting for me to come to him, without pressure or hesitation, he has given me the most amazing gift, and my heart fills with so much love it overwhelms me and tears rush into my eyes before I can stop them. This is a very special man, I tell myself, awed. An incredible, wonderful, amazing man…and he is mine.

He kisses me, and I him, and my body shudders with joy and awe and wonder and fear, all of those, but at the same time I feel safe and cared for, and suddenly this-everything-every part of him seems so precious to me, I feel a terrible stab of panic at the thought of ever losing it. I rub my face against him and breathe him in, and I love the way he smells…run my hands over his body and tangle my legs with his, and I love the silky slide of his skin on mine…I wrap my arms around him and feel his body’s weight and warmth embrace me, and I love the thump of his heart against my breasts, and the quiver of his muscles, and the strong, solid feel of his bones. And I know that I can trust this man absolutely and without reservation, and that I always will.

I hear the belly-deep growl of his voice against my ear: “Sam…” Just that, and it’s a poem, a sonnet, a hymn, a prayer and a question.

I answer with only one word: “Yes…”

Cory woke to the crash of thunder. He lay for a moment, jangled and clammy, haunted by dreams already slipping beyond recall, the menacing shouts and thumps and bangs of the dreams so rapidly overtaken and usurped by the cracks and crashes outside his open window he forgot they’d ever been at all. Then, because they were sometimes in his dreams as well, he thought, Explosions! Mortar rounds! Incoming! But in the next instant the room lit with flickering blue-white light, and the crack and rolling rumble that followed a moment later sent a new fear racing through him like a cold wind. Monsoon.

It had been his greatest fear-hard to remember that, now-that the rains would come before he was able to complete the interview with Fahad al-Rami and get the hostages safely away and off the island. Discovering that Sam-his Samantha-was the person whose responsibility it would be to get them off the island safely had only deepened his sense of dread. Not that he’d ever doubted her ability to do so; it just made the stakes, in case anything did go wrong, that much higher. Now, though, as a wild rushing sound filled the night, he felt a strange, almost fatalistic sense of calm. That was the thing about weather, he thought-there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it. Whatever disasters it brought simply had to be dealt with.

He lay with his eyes closed, listening to it, one forearm across his brow, the thump of his own pulse and the roar of the rain filling his ears, drowning all other sounds, even Tony’s snores from the other side of the room. So it was that he never heard the creak of the opening door…the soft brush of bare feet crossing the wood plank floor.

Chapter 9

In the darkness and heat and humidity of the night he hadn’t felt her warmth or sensed her presence. The only warning he had came with the rasp of coarse cotton fabric against his side. Something brushed across his face, and instinctively he shot out a hand and his fingers closed around a wrist, one with strong and sturdy bones, but slender nonetheless. A woman’s wrist.

He heard the sharp hiss of indrawn breath, then a husky gurgle of laughter and a whispered, “Nothing wrong with your reflexes, Pearse.”

“Sam.” His heart was knocking so hard against his ribs he wondered it didn’t do itself damage, but he sought to keep his voice calm. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little storm.”

Her snort blew a puff of warmth across his cheek. “You know me better’n that-I’m a Georgia girl.” He felt her settle herself along his side, and her murmured drawl was smug. “Just thought…be a shame to waste all this noise. Makes a good cover…”

His mind lurched, spilling a memory from his distant past. He groped for it, his heart racing, his skin rippling where she touched him. “Cover?” he said weakly. “For what?”

Her hand skimmed lightly across his chest. “What do you think?” she replied, and her voice was not quite steady.

“My God, Sam…” The powerful sense of déjà vu made him wonder if this was real, or if he could possibly still be asleep…dreaming. “Are you sure?”

He heard a husky sound that might have been laughter. “Shut up, Pearse, don’t make me have to kill you,” she said fiercely, and the memory tumbled into his mind and unfurled in full light and living color.

No longer in doubt, he growled, “Not a chance,” and raised himself to meet her.

The kiss was fierce and wild, the clash of two hungry and frustrated souls-not like his memory of that first sweet, wondering time, when they’d touched each other with such awe, lost in a daze of happiness, like children discovering the gift of their dreams on Christmas morning.

And yet…there was something of the same feeling inside him…a remembered sense of amazement and disbelief, almost, that such a miracle should have been granted to him. Back then, the miracle was that this incredible woman had chosen to give herself to him, when he’d never dared to imagine such a possibility for himself-had certainly never looked for it, and had in fact spent his adult life to that point insulating himself against the likelihood that it might happen to him.

But now… Now, it seemed lightning had struck him again, because the woman he thought he’d lost forever was back in his life, and inexplicably had once again chosen to give herself to him. For reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, he was being granted a second chance. If only this time he could figure out how to get it right.

“You’re naked,” she whispered, pulling back a little as she combed her fingers down his chest, grazing his skin with her nails so that he rippled inside where she’d touched him, like water when the wind passes over it.

“And you’re not,” he whispered back, voice choppy with his fractured breath.

“No problem.” He felt a rasp of heavy fabric and a flurry of humid air, and then her warmth and softness covering him from chest to thighs, and his body was remembering her contours, their two bodies melding with the ease and gladness of two old friends meeting again after far too many years.