"It's coming along." He lifted a tarp from the fireplace. "The mantel was shot. I couldn't fix it. Found a good piece of yellow pine, though. The woodworker's using the original as a guide."

"That rose-colored trim is going to be wonderful in here." She looked through an adjoining doorway. "And this is the bath."

"Mmm..." He studied the room over her shoulder. It was good-sized, and the plumbers had roughed it in. "Used to be a dressing room."

She reached for his hand, gripped it. "Can you smell it?"

"Roses." Absently he rubbed his cheek over her hair. "It always smells like roses in here. One of the paper hangers accused his partner of wearing perfume."

"This was her room, wasn't it? Abigail's. She died in here."

"Probably. Hey." He tipped up her face, watched uncomfortably as a tear trailed down her cheek. "Don't."

"It's so sad. She must have been terribly unhappy. Knowing the man she'd married, the father of her children, was capable of such cold-blooded cruelty. How did he treat her, Rafe? Did he love her, or did he only own her?"

"There's no way to know. Don't cry." Awkward, he brushed the tear away. "It makes me feel like I have six thumbs. I mean it." For lack of something better to do, he patted her head. "There's no use crying over something that happened more than a hundred years ago."

"But she's still here." Wrapping her arms around him, Regan snuggled into his chest. "I feel so sorry for her, for all of them."

"You're not going to do yourself, or me, any good if you get tangled up every time you come in here."

"I know." She sighed, comforted by the way his heart beat strong and steady against her. "It's odd how you get used to it, a little bit at a time. Rafe, when I was downstairs alone..."

"What?" Uneasy, he tilted her face toward his again.

"If s nothing."

"What?" he repeated, giving her chin a little shake.

"Well, I walked into the library. What was the library," she went on, torn between the need to tell him and embarrassment. "What will be the library. And I— Rafe, I could see it."

His eyes were sharp, narrowed, totally concentrated. "See what?"

"The room. Not the stained floors and the new wiring you've put in. The room. Books on the wall, flowers on the table, drapes at the windows. I could really see it," she repeated, her own brow creasing. "Not the way I do in my head when I'm planning things out. Not exactly like that. I was thinking to myself, sort of projecting, I suppose. I imagined this, well, I thought I was imagining a Bible stand, with an old family Bible opened on it. And I could read the page, almost touch it. Marriage and births and death."

She took time to catch her breath. "You're not saying anything."

"Because I'm listening to you."

"I know it sounds crazy."

"Not in this house, it doesn't."

"It was so real, so sad. The way the scent of roses in this room is real, and sad. Then it was so cold, bitter, like a window had been filing open to the weather."

She moved her shoulders, laid her head on his chest again. "That's all."

"That's a lot for one day." Wanting to soothe, he stroked his hand over her hair. "I can give Devin a call, have him come get you."

"No, I don't want to leave. It shook me for a moment, but it's just as I said before. You get to accept it. I can handle it."

"I shouldn't have left you alone."

"Don't be silly. I don't need to be guarded against grieving ghosts."

But he wanted to guard her. He wished she had called for him. It surprised Mm just how much he wished she had needed him enough to call out for him.

"Next time you want to go in the library, let me know. I'll go with you."

"The house is already changing," she said quietly. "You've done that by caring for it. I like feeling I've had a part in that, too."

"You have." He pressed his lips to her hair.

"When people live in it, make love in it, laugh in it, it'll change again. The house needs people."

She shifted, lifted her mouth to his. "Make love with me."

He cupped her face in his hands, deepened the kiss. When he picked her up, carried her from the room, the scent of roses followed. She looped her arms around him, pressed her lips to his throat. Already her blood was heating, already her pulse was pounding.

"It's like a drug," she murmured.

"I know.'' He stopped at the top of the stairs, found her mouth again.

"I've never been like this before." Swamped with emotions, she turned her face into his shoulder.

Neither had he, he thought.

As he carried her down, neither noticed that the air had remained warm and calm.

He laid her in front of the fire. Levering himself up on his elbow, he traced the shape of her face with a fingertip. Something kindled inside her, simmered with desire and flamed around her heart.

"Rafe."

"Ssh..."

To quiet her, he brushed his lips over her brow. She didn't know what she would have said, was grateful he'd stopped her. The wanting was more than enough. She could be relieved that neither of them needed words.

She should have been relieved.

Her mouth was ready for his, and it warmed beautifully under the pressure of lips and tongue. Though desire remained, poised and trembling, everything in her seemed to soften.

Here was tenderness, so sweet, so unexpected. Her sigh whispered out like a secret.

He felt the change, in her, in himself. Marveled at it. Why had they always been in such a hurry? he wondered. Why had he hesitated to savor, and he savored, when there was so much here?

He loved the flavor of her, that quietly seductive taste that clung to her skin. The feel of her, soft curves, long lines. The smell of her hair, her clothes, her shoulders.

So he savored it now, all of it, with long, slow kisses that clouded his mind and made him forget there was anything beyond this room for either of them.

His hands were careful this time as he drew her sweater off, slipped the trousers down her hips. Rather than touch, rather than take, he kissed her again, drawing out the simple meeting of lips until her body went limp.

"Let me." With a dreamy murmur, she shifted until they were both kneeling. Already clouded, her eyes stayed on his while she unbuttoned his shirt. Trapped in the silky mood, she slipped it away and, with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, swayed to him.

They held each other, moving only for quiet, sipping tastes, soft, gentle caresses. She smiled when his lips brushed her shoulder, sighed when hers tasted his throat.

When they were naked, he drew her down so that she lay over him, so that her hair fell to curtain them both.

She could have floated on this whisper-thin cloud of sensations endlessly, with the winter sun slanting cold light through the windows, the fire crackling, his body strong and hard beneath hers.

The feel of his hands on her, stroking, soothing even as they aroused, was like a gift. She felt the wonder of it in every pore, in every nerve, with every pulse.

There was no clash and fury now, no desperation, no vicious drive to mate. Now she was aware of everything—the dust motes spinning in the sunbeam that rayed over the floor, the sedate hiss of flame on wood, the scent of roses and man.

She could count his heartbeats, quicker, stronger, as her lips trailed over his chest. The bunching and quivering of a muscle beneath her hand, the sound of her own thickening breath.

With a sigh that caught in her throat, she wrapped around him as he rolled her to her back.

Time spun out, stretched, quivered. The clock on the mantel ticked the seconds away, and the minutes. But that was another world. Here there were only needs lazily satisfied, and hearts quietly lost.

For pleasure—his as well as hers—he eased her gently to the edge and over. His name was only a murmur on her lips as she arched, tensed, softened to silk. She opened for him, drawing him close with a velvety moan as he slipped into her.

Overwhelmed by her, by the simplicity of it, he burrowed his face in her hair. The tenderness shattered them both.


They didn't speak of it. When they parted in the morning, both of them were determinedly casual. But they thought of it. And they worried.

Rafe watched her drive off as the sun struggled over the mountains to the east. When she was gone, when there was no one to see, he rubbed the heel of his hand over his heart.

There was an ache there that he couldn't quite will away. He had a very bad feeling that she was the cause of it, and that somehow, in a matter of hours, he'd gotten in over his head.

God, he missed her already.

He swore at himself for that, then swore again for reaching like a trained dog for the cigarettes that weren't there. Both were just habits, he assured himself. If he wanted, he could just go buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke his brains out. Just as he could snatch her back anytime.

Sex was a powerful bond. It wasn't surprising it had caught him, as well.

It didn't have to be any more than that. They'd tidied that up, hadn't they? A man was entitled to be a little shaky after thirty-odd hours of sex and solitude with a gorgeous woman.

He didn't want anything more. Neither did she.

It was a relief and a pleasure to find a lover who wanted no more and no less than he did himself. A woman who didn't expect him to play games, make promises neither expected to be kept, say words that were only words, after all.

Scowling, he grabbed a shovel and began to deal with the snow that piled the walk. The sun was strengthening, and he worked fast, so that even with the bite of the northern wind he sweated satisfactorily under his coat.

She'd probably head straight for the shower, he mused, tossing heavy snow off the path. Wash that pretty doe-colored hair of hers.