Yours, Mine & Ours

and women warmed to her right away. Not that he was surprised. She gave off a quiet friendliness, an honesty and warmth.

His prowling around eventually led him to his front window, where he just stood there, staring at the windows in her place. Her household looked shut down. Molly had undoubtedly been put to bed by now. He saw no movement in any of the rooms, nothing but some distant light.

She definitely wasn’t finishing her evening on the deck tonight. The firefly-night rolled through his mind on slow replay. The fireflies, the dancing in the grass, the moonlight, her soft silver laugher… He remembered every minute of that crazy evening.

Abruptly realizing how long he’d been standing there, staring at empty windows next door like a complete fool, he pivoted around. Kicked off his shoes. Headed for the shower.

When Molly was finally asleep, Amanda left her daughter’s bedroom with a major sigh. They’d had quite a discussion before bedtime-brought on by the shiner in her daughter’s left eye. It wasn’t a bad bruise, considering the other little girl in the altercation had been a hefty second grader. But it invoked a torrent of talk about when “wrong is wrong” and when “wrong is right.”

It was always wrong to fight, Molly knew.

But it was always right to stand up for a friend against a bully.

So which was the rightest answer? If you had to act really quick and your friend was hurt right then and there was no time to go in and ask your mom?

Amanda wasn’t about to agree that hitting was an effective answer for anything, but by the time she wandered into the kitchen, her head was spinning. In the next life, she wanted to be her daughter. So passionate about life. So full of spirit and love and absolutely certain of what she felt about everything.

Without turning on a light, Amanda opened the fridge, then a cupboard. There didn’t seem to be anything she wanted to eat or drink. Nothing she wanted to do. She was definitely too antsy to watch a show or read…and positively too wide-awake to sleep.

But then she froze.

Mike was awake. She could see him across the way, a tall dark silhouette. The distant sink light provided the only illumination, or she’d never have caught his shadowed frame. He couldn’t see her. He was facing her windows, but she had no lights on. So it was unlikely he could see her, yet he stood there, as if he were searching, and then suddenly turned away and disappeared back into the darkness.

Her pulse started thrumming…and wouldn’t stop. A lump filled her throat…that refused to be swallowed.

It was his loneliness that struck her. An invisible loneliness, nothing he’d say or admit to, nothing anyone was supposed to see.

But he’d been looking at her house, her windows. For her. Even if he never said it. Even if he never intended to do anything about it.

And something abruptly snapped in Amanda. She couldn’t explain what exactly. She just felt suddenly, oddly… angry. Vibrantly angry. Impatiently, infuriatingly, zestily angry.

She tore around the house faster than a wet cat, brushing her hair, brushing her teeth, unearthing the monitor she used when Molly was a baby. Then she charged outside, barefoot, prancing fast because the grass was wet and the night damp-cool and ghostly.

Before she lost her nerve-before she got scared-she zipped up his deck steps, didn’t knock on the back door, just pushed open the glass and charged in. Immediately she stubbed her toe-on heaven knows what, probably a toy-made a groan of a sound, loud enough to wake the dead, but his watchdog didn’t even come out to see her, much less bark. Mike couldn’t possibly be sleeping yet; she’d seen him from the window less than ten minutes ago. But he didn’t show up, either, no matter how much noise she was making, stomping around.

Of course she realized why, when she aimed toward a flicker of light, and finally heard the sound of water coming from the master bath.

She took a step into his bedroom, and in the dark, for just a second, she lifted her foot because the toe was still stinging. She was acting crazily, she knew. She was behaving completely out of character.

She was taking a risk she was terribly afraid of.

On paper, this was just an impossibly wrong thing to do. On paper.

She took a breath, turned the knob on the bathroom door. Steam engulfed her, dancing on the mirror, shining up the tile floor. A giant gray towel waited on the counter. Mike was in there, beyond the smoked-glass shower doors.

She put the monitor on the counter, pulled off her cowl-neck top, pushed down her green cotton slacks. Opened the door and stepped in.

Mike turned around on a spin at the sudden burst of cool air. There was soap in his hair, water in his eyes. Mostly what she saw was somewhere around two hundred pounds of wet, naked man.

His first reaction was shock. That shocked silence lasted somewhere around a short millisecond. Initially his mind was clearly on something unrelated to sex. One look at her, and his body altered faster than a millisecond, too.

Before she’d taken a second step, he’d pulled her in and closed the glass door with the two of them inside. Before she could conceivably explain why she was here, he layered her against his hot, wet body and leveled a kiss on her.

If she’d just known she was going to do this crazy-fool thing, she’d have worn her black lace bra and matching panties, definitely not the pale yellow set from Target, on sale. She’d brushed her teeth. She just hadn’t remembered the right clothes. She always remembered the right clothes for the occasion.

Only…well, it seemed the bra and thong were soaked in two seconds anyway. So was the rest of her. If she was going to drown in there, what possible difference could it make if she wasn’t wearing her best bra?

And then the bra was gone. Tossed over the shower door.

Warm water splashed in her eyes, forcing her to close them…while Mike kept kissing her, swinging her against the warm, damp smooth wall, pinning her there. He held her hands flat against the tile, using his body to touch, to stroke, to incite. He groaned when his mouth left hers, only to trail a wreath of kisses down her throat.

He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, making it natural for her to wind her legs around his waist. When the nest between her legs rubbed against his belly, he swore. Then swore a second time when he nuzzled his cheeks between her breasts.

She recognized the tone in his voice. He was making that anger sound that she’d experienced earlier. That vibrant anger. That infuriating, impatient, zesty anger.

Who knew he’d feel the same? Her heart opened in a shattering crack. She hadn’t let anyone inside in forever. Hadn’t trusted anyone, possibly ever, not this way. He’d been strung tight with denying what he needed, what he wanted. That ferocious hunger and yearning, to touch and be touched, was better denied than answered from the cold distance that came from failing marriages. Sex without trust had made her heart sore and scared.

But with Mike…it was right. The way it hadn’t been right in a long time. He liked her. He valued her. It showed in his touch, his taste, his tenderness…his wildness.

He came up for a hoarse breath, asked, “Molly?”

She motioned outside the shower. “Brought monitor.”

“Birth control?”

“What, you don’t store condoms in the shower, waiting for me?”

He laughed, but it sounded a whole lot more like a groan. She rewarded him with a tiny bite from his ear. “I was giving up birth control, since I never planned to need it. Ever. Again. Until you. But for now I’ve got the long- term patch.”

“Good.”

That seemed to end the conversation. At least, he lost interesting in talking. So did she.

The damn man found the showerhead hose. She saw his sudden grin, saw his hand shoot up, grab the attachment by the showerhead. He eased her onto the tile floor, crossed her legs over his, and then played, pelting her throat, her tummy, her spine, between her legs…with warm, pulsing water. Well, if he was in the mood to torture and tease…she was more than capable of stealing the hose and taking her turn. His laughter provoked another shattering crack in her heart. He was laughing with her. Sharing with her. It wasn’t