She smiled at him. "You're a cheeky brat and I forbid you to steal any more flowers."

"Didn't you like the larkspur? I did a small pastel sketch of them before I brought them over. You may have that if you won't take the Brighton painting."

"Harry, darling. Sell the pastel too. You can use the money for new paints, and Beecher will buy anything you have."

Pushing his hair behind his ears in a quick, brushing gesture, he smiled. "Now that I'm painting again."

"I'm going to have to find you a nice young lady your own age, so you'll settle down and work," Alex declared.

"I don't want one. I want you."

"But I can't always be there to inspire your painting mood. Now, be a darling and go home. I have company."

"Ranelagh came back, didn't he? You know, he's not your type, Alex. He's notorious."

"Thank you for the advice, you wet-behind-the-ears pup."

"At least he won't stay long. He never does, they say. And then you'll have more time for me," he observed cheerfully.

"You're full of pleasantries today," she remarked, although she was pleased at his altered mood.

"You'll see. While I'll be faithful forever because I love you with all my heart."

"I don't want you to love me with all your heart. I've told you before, I want you to find other amusements, Harry. I'm too old for you."

"Of course you're not." But he had no intention of arguing now that she'd agreed to see him again. "Do you want me to cook dinner on Friday?"

"You work. I'll bring something."

"Just you is enough." He quickly kissed her again and then turned with a wave and, whistling, walked away.


"No more flowers?" Sam asked as Alex reentered the bedroom.

"Harry says you're notorious and won't stay long and he was quite cheerful when he left."

"You must have promised him something."

The man was prescient and she hesitated, debating how truthful to be.

He recognized the moment of evasion and obligingly changed the subject. "He's young. Where did you find him?"

"He found me. You don't approve?"

He shrugged. "It depends how young, I suppose, although it's none of my business."

"That's true."

"As long as we won't be interrupted again, it's not a problem." He'd had time in her absence to come to his senses.

"I doubt we will, although, as you say, Harry's young-and rash." She smiled at him. "Not altogether a youthful trait."

"My reckless behavior doesn't include voyeurism."

"Really… never?" She'd heard of the tableaux vivants in the brothels.

"I recognize a leading remark when I hear it-but I'm too involved"-his smile was lush with suggestion-"in my own affairs to worry about others."

"Like now."

"If you're still in the mood after your adoring swain."

"Adoration has its disadvantages."

"So I've discovered."

"We've become blase, it seems," she said with a small smile. "Do you ever wish for the naivete of adolescence? Or perhaps a man like you was never naive."

"Like me?" He grinned. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I can't picture you in an adoring mood."

"Just because I don't have long blond hair and calf's eyes?"

"No, because you're too jaded and cynical."

"But not worth dismissing for all that," he said, one dark brow raised in conjecture.

"No," she replied softly. "Even for all that."

His smile was distinctly uncynical. In fact, it was gloriously inviting. "I'm glad."

"These feelings we have-I have-"

"We have," he countered. "Have brought us here against our best judgment."

"And kept us here when we both know if we were thinking clearly, we'd walk away."

"While we could."

She looked at him for a salient moment. "Surely, it's not that dramatic."

He shrugged. "I can't leave, and I told myself I should when you were outside with that damned child."

"I told him I'd see him on Friday."

"I know. He wouldn't have left otherwise."

"You've done this before."

"Probably," he said.

"And does it work?" He was importuned ceaselessly, she suspected.

"Sometimes."

"And when it doesn't?"

"You switch to another plan."

"Do you continue switching, or are you rude eventually?"

"I'm not going to tell you. You have to do what you have to do."

"But none of that applies to us, because we're going to be adults about this."

"Fucking, you mean."

"Yes. And you didn't feel the need to dress, for which I'm grateful."

"I wasn't going anywhere."

"How cool you are. Does it take enormous practice?"

The amount of practice he'd had wouldn't be something she'd appreciate, so he answered with diplomacy. "My nannies beat good manners into me. Now, come here and we'll see about you having some more orgasms."

She moved toward him, wanting what he wanted, feeling famished when she never did, feeling as though he'd been away a month.

And when she came to rest before him, he slowly unwrapped the sheet covering her, let it slide to the floor, untangled the knot in her chemise ribbon, eased off the filmy garment, and drew her close with such aching slowness, she moaned softly as he bent low and touched her mouth with his. "Now then," he said a moment later, raising his head. "Are you going to insist on the bed again?"

Wondering how he could bring her to fever pitch with a mere kiss, she drew in a calming breath. "At the moment, I'm not sure I'm capable of insisting on anything save speed."

He lifted her chin with a crooked finger. "We can do that. Is he gone?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not particularly."

A frisson of excitement flared through her senses at the casualness of his reply.

"Let's go outside and see."

"Like this?"

"What's left of the sun will feel good." He picked up the sheet from the carpet. "So your delicate skin isn't damaged."

"Or yours, and I'm not sure I can do this in daylight."

"I'll show you how." Taking her hand, he drew her out into the studio and through the terrace doors.

He moved with an uninhibited grace, at ease with his nakedness, and she regarded him from under her lashes as they moved outside. As an artist, she viewed the perfection of his form with both an objectivity and a keen eye for detail, and she wondered the degree of activity necessary to maintain the steel-hard muscle tone and the lithe grace of his limbs. He had the body of an athlete, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, long-legged, and his hand holding hers was callused from riding.

"So you don't normally make love al fresco," he remarked casually, skirting a beautifully clipped boxwood.

"I don't even normally make love-only on occasion."

He shot a glance at her. "I would have thought your dance card full."

"I have other interests."

"I see," he said politely, moving down a grassy path alongside a trellis of flowering jasmine. "But not right now."

"You're much too smug, Ranelagh."

"Call me Sam." He smiled. "I feel I know you."

She stopped abruptly and tried to pull her hand away.

And when he turned to look at her, her temper showed.

"I've changed my mind."

He was instantly apologetic. "Forgive me. It was tactless and rude of me"-he suddenly smiled-"but I couldn't resist when you said 'I have other interests' in that decorous, prim tone. And at the risk of offending you further-why the hell did you marry two old men?"

She was every man's dream standing before him, gloriously naked, her voluptuous body as perfect in person as in the paintings she'd posed for, the auburn hair on her mons still wet from their lovemaking.

"You wouldn't understand."

She hadn't moved, but she'd not withdrawn her hand either. An encouraging sign, he thought. "Tell me anyway."

He seemed taller, standing on her grassy path-larger than life-more perhaps than she could comfortably deal with considering the scope of his wildness. But she wished to find out now that she had him… here, and while her feelings were chaotic and unsure, whether he wanted what she wanted. "Do you want to make love or not?"

"You don't wish to tell me."

"No." How could someone like Ranelagh ever understand?

"I'm sorry I asked… and I do want to make love." He dropped the sheet he was carrying and pulled her close. "I won't ask another question. I'm here only to serve you, ma'am…"

His cheeky smile matched the impertinence of his remark, but she wanted him, cheeky or not, inquisitive or not, disreputable or not, for the sheer beauty of his lovemaking. She nodded, a moment of truth for herself perhaps, or perhaps only affirmation of his statement. "Good… because I enjoy the quality of your"-she glanced down at his beautifully formed erection-" service."

He took a small breath, the provocation in her words highly arousing. "Would the grass suit you, my lady?" His voice was soft, low, touched with a tantalizing deference, artless in its single-minded purpose.

"Perfectly."

"Is the sun warm enough?"

"Very."

"The scent of the flowers-is it adequate?"

"Completely."

"Then I should see if you're ready for me," he whispered.

She felt his words in the heated core of her body, in the fevered rhythm of her heart, and when she said "I've been ready for you since yesterday," her voice trembled at the last.

He smiled. "And I've been wanting to take out these hairpins since the first time I saw you at Leighton's," he told her, reaching up to lift one of the ruby pins from her tousled hair.

"You were much too arrogant at Leighton's and last night. I told myself I wouldn't do this," she said on a small caught breath as a tress of her hair tumbled onto her bare shoulder.

He reached for a second pin. "And here we are."