minutes, I want you to believe there’s someone waiting to catch you if you fall. For five minutes, I want you to let go…”
His fingers threaded through her hair, and his thumb brushed the line of her jaw. She intended to move. All of this was nonsense, just a silly game. The man had no real dominion over her, no real control. She could move if she wanted to. Any time she darn well pleased.
But when his lips touched hers a second time, his mouth was warm and mobile. The smell and shape and power of him surrounded her, and that kiss just kept coming. He tasted of wine, and his mouth moved with such alluring tenderness over hers, inviting her to share a cold winter night, teasing her with temptation…Her breasts tightened under her nightgown, and a shock of heat warmed the private parts of her body. Still, she didn’t move.
He murmured, “Your arms are just dangling there, Zoe. Put them around my neck.”
“Rafe-”
“I still have four minutes left. What on earth are you afraid might happen in four short minutes?”
Well, damn the man. A kiss, she supposed, was hardly worth the effort of fighting it. And four short minutes wouldn’t mean the end of the world.
She lifted her arms, and immediately felt the lance of a very different kind of kiss. His mouth took hers with devastating thoroughness. His hands possessively swept down her spine, and he molded her hard against him. Her heart was suddenly galloping inside her chest. Hunger, loneliness, the intimacy of his dark, dark eyes…he’d have her believe she was the first woman he’d touched in years. The only woman that he wanted to touch.
It was a trick, Zoe knew. A trick of time and place that she so quickly felt like that kitten on a high, shaky limb. Her fingers clutched for a hold on his neck, but not because she didn’t know better. Rafe understood too much for her sanity…but not enough. From the moment she’d met him, she
For this moment, though, she couldn’t seem to move away. His soft tongue found a willing mate. She was lonely, too, and frightened-and all the emotional upheaval of the past week poured into a response she couldn’t control. He had the total dominion he wanted. She was afraid…of so much. And she had to hold on to someone.
His hand traced the shape of her breast, and her emotions became a shambles. There was something dangerous about a man who kissed so thoroughly that the earth moved. He wouldn’t make a safe, easy lover. He wanted too much. He took too much.
He gave too much. His hands protected as they claimed. His lips gave warmth as they sapped the will from her. His body shielded her even as it tempted her toward danger. He made it far too easy to believe that she could fill his world, banish the loneliness, and when he finally lifted his head, she still wanted to believe. His eyes were a searing blue, luminous with need. The way he looked at her was more intimate, more knowing, more possessive than even his touch had been. “You’re beautiful,” he said softly.
She shook her head.
“Yes.” He stroked her hair. “I knew you’d be fire. And sweetness. I didn’t know how much. Lord, you’re so giving.”
“I’m not,” she breathed. When he said nothing, she stepped back from him. “Rafe, this can’t happen again.”
She wanted an answer, but got none. He made no move to stop her from leaving the room, but she could feel his eyes on her back until she was out of his sight. A shiver chased up her spine as she climbed the stairs.
Long after the household was totally still, she lay wide awake in the darkness.
Chapter Four
At 5:45 the next morning, coffee was perking and so was Zoe. Wearing a favorite striped shirt tucked neatly into jeans, she’d already set the table for four and was dipping bread into egg batter for French toast. Although she suspected that no sane human being would choose to be awake at this ungodly hour, she felt ready for anything.
Her whole problem the night before, she’d told herself, was exhaustion. When she was overtired, a woman would be prone to exaggerate things…like magic, for example. Like the impact of an embrace. Like the empathy and caring that had miraculously seemed to spring up between two relative strangers.
At two o’clock in the morning, she’d still been reading herself the riot act. Rafe already had a woman, and Zoe was smart enough to understand the dangerous relationship of chemistry, convenience and forced proximity. More important than that, she seemed to have totally forgotten the only reason she was here, which was to ease the kids into Rafe’s life. She wasn’t about to forget that again. No more kisses. No more total-dominion games. No more hums.
“Good morning!” She greeted the pair of mop-haired redheads in the door.
Parker was trailing his blanket; Aaron was just behind him. Both had managed to put on overalls and shirts, but they had shared socks. Each wore a blue and a red one.
“What’s for breakfast, Snookums?” Parker asked.
“French toast. Sound good?”
Aaron squinched his nose. “I hate French toast.”
“Ah…” Without the least hesitation, Zoe scooped the French toast off the sizzling griddle and plopped it into the disposal. “Scrambled eggs, then.” She added several more eggs to what had been the beginnings of French-toast batter and congratulated herself on being flexible. Nothing could throw her if she didn’t let it, another principle she seemed to have forgotten yesterday.
“Where’s Uncle Rafe?”
“Still sleeping. We’ll be real quiet until he wakes up, okay?” She shot a quick look at Aaron. His cheeks were a healthy pink and his eyes bright. There was no sign of his tears from the night before.
“What’re we going to do today?”
“Well…” A good question. “Uncle Rafe is going to work. And we’re going to-” she hesitated “-build a snowman and maybe bake cookies?” She poured two small glasses of orange juice and set them carefully on opposite ends of the table. She was learning: Large glasses made large spills, and only a masochist would allow the two boys to sit next to each other.
The twins were halfway through their eggs and Zoe was gulping coffee when she heard a knock on the back door.
“Anybody home?”
Before Zoe could answer, a woman was stomping the snow off her boots in the laundry room and wandering through to the kitchen. “Hi there. You must be Zoe. And these are the twins?”
Zoe swallowed a mouthful of coffee fast. The blonde was tall and perhaps in her early thirties. Beneath a down jacket, a mauve cashmere sweater and navy slacks accented a lush figure. Her hair was a long swath of pure honey, and her eyes were a clear dark brown with lashes a normal woman would have killed for.
Offhand, the only thing Zoe wasn’t prepared for this early in the morning was a meeting with the owner of the black silk panties. In the meantime, the woman was smiling at her, friendly fashion. And in another meantime, the twins seemed to have completely disappeared-or at least slid instantly off their chairs and hidden under the kitchen table at the first sign of a stranger. “Come on out of there,” Zoe hissed at the twins, and smiled at the blonde. “Yes, I’m Zoe Anderson. And you’re…?”
“Sarah Robertson. A friend of Rafe’s. I brought over a sled for the kids.”
Both kids’ heads popped up from under the table, but neither ventured any farther. “That was nice of you,” Zoe said cheerfully, and motioned them up with frantic hand movements behind her back. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“Sure. Rafe up yet?” Sarah settled easily in a chair at the table as if she belonged there.
“Not quite.”
“I figured you’d all be here by yesterday, but I never had a chance to call. I work with Rafe,” she explained. “And I don’t live all that far from here, so I kept an eye on the place while he was gone. He didn’t tell me all the
