“Oh, come on.”

“Eric, I’m serious. It’s all these damn layers. I’m stuck. Give me your hand-oh, no-don’t you dare. Eric, put that thing away. I swear, if you take-ooh, I’m going to kill you!”

He laughed and snapped pictures as fast as he could. He felt younger, lighter, more carefree than he had in more years than he could remember.

Threatening dire reprisals, Devon managed to turn herself over, then push up onto her knees. She had her back to him when she was finally standing upright, and his view was obstructed somewhat by the camera. So he didn’t see that, when she turned, she wasn’t empty-handed. He didn’t see the snowball at all until it splatted him in the chest.

“Hey,” he yelled, hurriedly stuffing his camera back inside his coat, “for somebody with no snow experience, you sure do catch on quick!” Pretending outrage when what he really felt was delighted-and surprised.

“I’ve always been a fast learner,” she purred, dusting her gloved hands and looking smug-for about two seconds. Her dismayed “Ack!” and upraised arms were barely in time to deflect the worst of Eric’s retaliation.

He had to say one thing for her: she wasn’t a whiner. And she gave as good as she got. Eric hadn’t been involved in a decent snowball fight since junior high, which was about when he’d finally gotten big enough and fast enough to get the best of his sister. Funny, though-he couldn’t remember snowball fights with Ellie ever being like this. For one thing, Devon wasn’t his sister. For another, they weren’t either of them kids. And what a spectacle they must have made, he thought, two adults chasing each other around in the snow, firing snowballs as fast as they could make them, screaming and laughing until they were so out of breath neither of them could stand up.

If he’d taken a moment to think, he might have wondered why it didn’t bother him to be acting like such an idiot. But he was caught up in it, his blood pumping, adrenaline flowing, and all he could think about was that he’d never had so much fun with a woman in his life-or desired one so much.

Later, when his blood had cooled and his heart resumed its normal pace, that was what stayed with him-the realization that what he’d wanted more than anything during that wild romp was to get them both to someplace warm and dry and peel her out of those layers of clothing, one by one, and make love to her every way he could think of until he couldn’t anymore.

If things had been different, he knew, the morning might have ended that way, because unless his instincts were way off, he was pretty sure the same thought had occurred to Devon. In a perfect world, one with no abused and thrown away kids living on the streets, no Susans, no Emilys, no innocent baby girls in need of protection, making love might have been the most important thing on their minds, and anything that happened to develop from that, within the realm of possibility…

Of course, he reminded himself, in a perfect world, one with no Susans, he’d never have met her sister, Devon.

He could almost hear Gwen’s lilting voice, the musical grace-note of her laughter: Sometimes Providence works in mysterious ways, Eric.

Maybe so, but Eric was well aware that, in his far-from-perfect world, desiring Devon was out of the question. He remembered that fact as he lay with her lumpy, snow-encrusted parka-padded body pinned beneath him, and her wet, cold-reddened cheeks between his gloved hands, and his mouth about two inches from kissing hers. He remembered it as her laughter died, and her eyes, gazing into his, were turning dark as forest pools.

And he knew that it was already too late. Like Pandora, having let those feelings out of the box, there was no way, now, that he could ever put them back.

It took all the willpower he possessed not to kiss her. Instead, with his mouth still hovering over hers he said, “You’re shivering,” in a voice so gruff and bumpy, it was obvious he was shivering, too.

“I guess I am,” she said, sounding suffocated. “So are you.”

He rolled away from her so she could breathe. “We’d better go in before you catch your death, as Mom would say. Shall we call it a draw?”

“I think you won, fair and square-well, maybe not fair.” She struggled to sit up, glaring at him. “You’ve had more experience than I have.”

He held out his hand; she took it, and he hauled her to her feet. “What’s experience got to do with it? A snowball’s a snowball-you make ’em, you throw ’em. I’m just better than you-admit it.”

“Better-hah! Bigger, maybe. Definitely louder-”

“And faster…plus, you do throw like a girl-”

“What? I do not-”

Bickering, Eric thought, was as good an escape valve as any. They managed to keep it up all the way to the house.

“Mike,” Lucy whispered over the head of the sleeping baby in her arms, “come here. Quick.”

“What?” He came to join her at the window of their bedroom, moving in close so that her body brushed against his as she gently swayed. She tilted her head back to grin at him.

“Look-down there…”

He ducked his head so he could follow her line of sight. “Uh-huh…okay, I see them. What in the world are they doing?”

“Having a snowball fight.” Lucy could hardly contain her glee.

“Funny,” Mike mused, “I don’t remember snowball fights involving that much body contact.”

“Oh, hush.” She jabbed him in the stomach with her elbow. “Don’t you know what this means?”

He wrapped his arms around her and dropped a kiss onto the baby’s downy head. “No, my little Machiavellian…tell me.”

“My plan,” Lucy said smugly. “It means it’s working.”

“Oh, God-I can’t feel my feet. Does that mean they’re frozen?” Devon asked as she clumped up the steps to the back porch. She felt as though she were walking on blocks of wood.

“Only if they’re black,” Eric said blandly, holding the door for her. “In which case, they’ll have to be amputated.”

She threw him a look to make sure he was teasing her, which of course he was. She looked quickly away again, but not before her heart had given that unnerving bump; she was beginning to expect, and in a strange way, look forward to that bump-and to dread it at the same time.

As cold as she was-and that was colder than she’d ever been in her life-there was a strange little core of heat deep inside her, a burning that was equal parts lust and shame. He’d almost kissed her; of that she was certain. What was worse-she’d wanted him to. Even now, cold to the point of pain and shivering uncontrollably, she was disappointed that the game, the time, those magical moments of fun and freedom and romping in the snow like a carefree child, had to end. And a profound sense of loss, because she’d never known such fun and freedom before in her life, and was afraid, was sure, she never would again.

Following Eric’s example, she brushed and stomped away the worst of the snow there on the porch, then clomped after him into the service room where he was already shucking off his ski hat and gloves. She stood unmoving, then, and watched him unzip his jacket, peel it off and hang it on one of a row of hooks on the wall, then pull off his boots one by one, hopping comically on one foot. When he turned to her and with a ghost of a smile on his face, reached up to touch her cheek, brush it with the backs of his cold fingers, she still didn’t move. Wrapped in a strange and unfamiliar lethargy, she stood and quietly watched him as he pulled her cap off, then her gloves, and finally unzipped even her jacket, as if she were a child.

No-not a child. There was nothing remotely childlike about the way her heart banged against her calm exterior shell, or the thirsty feeling at the back of her throat that wouldn’t go away when she swallowed. Next, she thought when he had tugged off her jacket and hung it beside his, he will put his arms around me…hold me.

There was nothing childlike, either, in the disappointment she felt when he didn’t.

“Come on in here-in the kitchen.” His voice bewildered her. There was so much tenderness in it. It felt like arms around her, yet, except for that one small caress on her cheek, and the pulling and tugging as he helped her out of her wet clothes, he didn’t touch her.

In the kitchen, he selected a chair and turned it half around, sideways to the table, then gruffly ordered her to sit. Incredibly, Devon did as she was told. Devon O’Rourke-who never took orders from any man-unless he happened to have the words The Honorable in front of his name.

Silently, she watched Eric pull out another chair and set it facing hers. Then he sat down and, one by one, tugged off her boots. Numbness of another kind held her motionless and barely breathing as he lifted her feet into his lap, peeled away her layers of socks and began gently to massage them.

Pain made her gasp; reflexively, she pulled away. Eric brought her feet back to his lap. “They’re gonna hurt a little.” His voice was a growl. “But I think we’ll let you keep ’em.”

Devon tore her mesmerized gaze from his gaunt, beard-stubbled face and blinked her feet into focus. They looked ugly to her-bluish-white with purple toes-and unbelievably vulnerable, half swallowed by those lean, long-boned hands. The image wavered. Her memory overlaid it with another-those same big hands cradling an infant’s tiny red-gold head.

Her stomach growled, and Eric chuckled-a sound like the one she’d heard his father make. “Should have listened to me,” he said. Her eyes flicked upward almost guiltily to collide with his. Warm as brandy, they seemed much nearer to hers than they ought to have been. “Should have eaten breakfast.”

Her lips parted to answer him, although she didn’t know with what words. His eyes seemed to shimmer and move closer.