for the virgins, chastity belts and all that.”

“Chastity belts? You I trust, pint-size. It’s the rest of the world that kept me up last night. Now go on about the redhead,” he ordered.

“Hmm. Well, he was just getting to the point of being a nuisance when his wife showed up, and the three of us had dinner together. She had a face…” Erica shook her head descriptively. “It was kind of goatish, that’s all I can say. Long in chin and nose with little eyes sort of set back. Tufty hair.”

Kyle shot a grin at her, and fingered an imaginary whisker in acknowledgment of her catty remark.

“Well, she was. And the conversation was…well, there was never a dull moment. They had four kids, none of whom were with them. Evidently, they always go to these conventions together, spending their free time harassing unsuspecting travelers like me-by showing them pictures. They had approximately nine thousand photographs of everything from children trying to kill each other wrestling to how much wall the baby could splatter when it was fed prunes. It didn’t like prunes, and the poor thing had a goat face just like its mother…” She paused, relishing Kyle’s uninhibited laughter. “Where on earth are we going?”

“Just out,” he said lazily. “Away. Where I can hear about your trip for at least ten minutes in total privacy.” He glanced away from her, but she knew he meant Morgan. For all the help Morgan had been, and even with the trailer he had rented to sleep in so they wouldn’t be crowded in their small A-frame, he was still there for meals and evenings. The men always seemed to find enough to talk about, but by the time Morgan left each night, they were both so exhausted… Still, Erica had Morgan to thank for some of the changes in Kyle. He had come a very long way to help, and she had tried to go just as long a distance to make him feel welcome and to show her appreciation. Three weeks was not forever…but perhaps long enough to give Morgan a taste for being part of a family, steer him away from loose living and the free-floating women he’d always had a penchant for.

Kyle stopped within ten minutes at a gas station, pulling around to the side.

“This is where you wanted to talk?” she asked incredulously.

“Honey. We’ve been on the road for ten minutes. I have never taken you anywhere when you didn’t have to stop within the first ten minutes…” She could feel the color chasing up her cheeks; he chuckled. “If you don’t want to stop…”

“Dammit.”

Her weak kidneys were legend. His concern for her stay in the city had fallen on deaf ears; she was more than capable of handling any problem that might have come up, men or otherwise. Kyle really knew that, too, in spite of his teasing. Still, it momentarily irked her that Kyle had the ability to reduce her responsible twenty-eight-year-old self to a mortified child.

“Do you think you can last for another few minutes now?” he asked blandly when she came back out and slid into the car beside him.

“And would you like peanut-butter sandwiches for the next four years?” she wondered aloud, just as blandly.

He snatched her closer as he drove, until the wind swirled her topknot loose and long strands of hair whispered against the bare skin of his shoulders. She didn’t care where they were going. Her smile just wouldn’t fade. It was as if they had stepped back in time, to before the troublesome months, when their laughter was easy and just being together was a delicious pleasure. She laid a hand on his thigh and the car weaved promptly to the other side of the road. She found herself laughing again, as hickories, elms, maples shot past on the country lanes. “I’ll bet no girl was safe with you when you were a teenager,” she accused mockingly.

You certainly weren’t.”

“You never listened.” She remembered the long speech she had made about morals and commitments and let’s get to know each other first… She’d kept on talking right through the morning she awakened next to him in bed. Horrified. Except for Morgan, Kyle had had no equal as a man of many conquests. But where Morgan was concerned, even a much younger Erica had guessed intuitively that there was an ego involved, that he thought of women as notches on a belt. With Kyle, she had instinctively given trust and yet wondered if she was being foolish. Her suspicions were misplaced; he made it more than clear that she was the only woman who mattered to him. His aim was not to conquer or to add notches to his belt but to fill a physical and emotional need. From the beginning, and every time they were together.

He stopped the car in a wooded glen that bordered an immense field of wheat, waist-high for as far as the eye could see. The sun and the clouds were still waging their little war in the sky. The clouds were bunched-up charcoal masses clotted with rain, and a whisper of a breeze stirred their promise, but the sun was still hot, still stronger in the battle for the moment.

Kyle stood outside the car looking up as she made her way to his side. The birds and squirrels, so noisy in the morning, were silent, as if all the animals were napping at this time in the afternoon. A soft rush of whispering leaves encouraged a sense of privacy. Kyle looked down at her and took her hand as they walked out of sight from the car and road, down an old farmer’s path that was overgrown. She hadn’t the least notion where they were.

He bent to whisper in her ear. “I think you have the same thing on your mind as I have, Mrs. McCrery. There isn’t a soul for miles around.”

“What exactly is it that you have on your mind?” she asked suspiciously, laughter golden in her eyes as she glanced at him.

He sank onto a grassy spot in the shadow of a gnarled old hickory, lying flat on his back with his knees up, and rooted out a long blade of grass to stick in his teeth, making a whistle of it. She shook her head ruefully at him, settling down beside him on her knees. “First, as I said, I want to hear about this trip of yours. You’re all but bubbling over!”

She was. For a woman who had barely been able to balance a checkbook a short time ago, she was one sky- high bubble of happiness at discovering the satisfaction of real accomplishment. She talked for twenty minutes, churning out a dozen ideas on how she wanted to set up displays, on what she needed from Kyle in the way of carpentry work to accomplish it. The marketing was her arena; for the first time since they moved here, she felt like an equal partner, with a chance to help build the McCrery enterprise into something they could both be proud of. Advertising was an automatic spin-off of the display work. “We haven’t even begun to touch the rich folks who vacation on Lake Michigan, and Madison’s an affluent little city. We were talking about taking on do-it-yourselfers, Kyle…and I thought we could expand into crafts as well-quilts and crewelwork and needlepoint; they blend with wood and add depth and color to a display. If we could find a few local women who already…”

“You know,” he interrupted finally, “I like that blouse.” He fingered the gauzy material between two fingers, studying the fabric intently. “It gives the illusion that you can see it all, and then it doesn’t keep the promise. Even when you were standing full in sunlight, the flesh underneath was just shadowy-you don’t mind if I check it out in a little more detail? Keep talking,” he urged her politely. “I knew damn well you’d have a gift for setting up a classy showroom, lady. You get full applause for every idea so far.”

She tried, but she seemed to be having an increasing difficulty following the thread of her own conversation. He propelled her flat on her back. Her strawberry-blond hair fanned out on the mossy grass behind her, and her golden eyes began to laugh up at his. He was very professorlike, gravely verifying that there were shoulders and breasts and ribs within the gossamer fabric, not just shadowy promises. “I can’t believe how far you’ve progressed on the building in just two days, Kyle. You’re going to be done in another week, aren’t you? Here I’ve been selfishly rambling on, and I never even asked you about things here-”

“I changed my mind,” he said severely. “I don’t like this blouse at all.” He raised her up, ordered her to lift her arms above her head, slipped the creamy summer material over her head, and promptly allowed it to decorate a bush. “Now is there some reason we need this?” He pointed to the lacy bit of bra. “I can’t think of a reason in hell…”

“What if someone comes by?” The demurral was halfhearted, and he knew it.

“I have every intention of keeping you covered, lady…”

His lips were so warm, so soft from the sun, the scent of grass, the ripple of the light breeze, the perfume of the wheat so intoxicating. It seemed to Erica that their loving had never had so much sweetness, so much urgency, so much sheer uninhibited joy.

They were both laughing as they stood up to take off the rest of their clothes, but their exuberant laughter had faded to something soft and secret, like a sound only the two of them could hear. When the clothes were gone, there was a moment when neither made a move to touch the other. Kyle stood, allowing Erica’s eyes to sweep over

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