Then Simon collapsed onto his back, arms spread, mouth gaping.

"Defeat," he groaned. "I have tasted defeat."

"Yeah, get used to it." Brad reached over, drummed a hand on Simon's belly. "You've met the master and now know his greatness."

"Next time you die."

"You'll never take me in Smackdown."

"Yeah? Here's a sample of what's to come."

He flipped over, and with a whoop leaped onto Brad's back.

There was more grappling, Zoe noted, more grunts, and the kind of shrieks that warmed her heart. She didn't even flinch when Brad flipped Simon over his head and pinned him on the rug.

"Yield, small, pathetic challenger."

"Never!" Simon hooted it out, and laughed from the gut, being ruthlessly tickled while he tried to twist his face away from Moe's slurping tongue. "My ferocious dog will chew you to pieces."

"Oh, yeah, I'm trembling with fear. Give up?"

Breathless, tears of laughter streaming, Simon wiggled and squirmed another ten seconds. "Okay, okay. No more tickling, or I'll puke!"

"Not on my rug," Zoe said.

At her voice, Brad turned his head, Simon squirmed. And his elbow connected, point first, with Brad's mouth.

"Oops." Simon sucked in a snicker.

Brad dabbed at the little cut with the back of his hand. "You're going to pay for that," he said in a dangerous tone that had Zoe's fingers jerking on the tray.

In a blur, Brad was on his feet, and horrors flashed into her mind. She was already opening her mouth to shout, already moving forward to protect her son, when Brad hauled him up, hung him upside down, and had him howling with laughter again.

As her knees went weak and the muscles in her arms began to tremble, she set down the coffee tray with a clatter of dishes.

"Look, Mom! I'm upside down!"

"So I see. You're going to have to get right side up again and go brush your teeth."

"But can't I—" He broke off, as Moe licked his face.

"School night, Simon. Go on, get ready for bed. Then you can come out and say good night to Bradley."

Though he was watching Zoe now, Brad rotated Simon until the boy's feet hit the ground. "Get going. I'll give you a rematch soon."

"Sweet. When?"

"How about Friday night? You can come over, bring your mom along. We'll have dinner at my place, then suit up in the game room."

"All right! Can we, Mom?" Anticipating her answer, he flung his arms around her waist. "Don't say we'll see. Just say yes. Please!"

Her knees were still knocking. "Yes. Okay." "Thanks." He gave her a fierce hug. Whistling for the dog, he danced out of the room.

"You thought I was going to hit him." It was said with such complete astonishment that Zoe felt her stomach pitch.

"I just—you sounded so… I'm sorry. I know better."

"I don't make a habit of knocking kids around."

"Of course you don't. It was knee-jerk."

"Did somebody else hurt him? Were you involved with someone who hit him?"

"No. No," she repeated, struggling for calm now. "There's never been anyone who's paid him enough mind for that. And I'd like to see somebody try to raise a hand to him when I'm around."

Apparently satisfied by that, he nodded. "Okay. You can rest assured it won't be me."

"I insulted you. I don't like to insult anyone—well, not by mistake anyway. It was just that it happened so fast, and you sounded mad, and… your lip's bleeding."

"I was just messing with him. And as I recall, my own mother used to say if you start all that horseplay, somebody's going to get hurt." He tapped a finger on his sore lip. "You people are always right, aren't you?"

"And now you're trying to make me feel better." Following her instincts, she picked up a napkin from the tray. Without thinking, she put a tip of it in her mouth to dampen it, then dabbed it on his lip. "When I walked in just now and saw the two of you together, it was nice. You could've let him win, too, but you didn't. And that's nice, because I don't want him growing up thinking he should always win. You've got to know how to lose, too, and…"

She trailed off, looked down in mild horror at the cloth. She'd spat on it, for God's sake. "Lord." She crumpled the napkin in her hand. "That was stupid."

"No." Ridiculously touched, he took her hand. "That was sweet. So are you."

"Not really. Not especially. It stopped bleeding anyway. It might be a little sore for a bit."

"You forgot a step." He put a hand on her waist, slid it around to the base of her spine. "Aren't you supposed to kiss it and make it better?"

"It doesn't look so bad." In fact it looked beautiful. He had a beautiful mouth.

"Hurts," he murmured.

"Well, if you're going to be a baby about it." She leaned in, intending to give that beautiful mouth a light brush. Friendly, casual. She gave it a little peck, and tried to ignore the stirring in her belly.

He didn't draw her closer, didn't try to lengthen the kiss, but only held her where she was, kept his eyes on hers. "Still hurts," he told her. "Can I have another?"

Alarm bells were ringing, but she ignored them. "I guess."

She touched her lips to his again. So warm, so firm.

With a little sound in her throat, she gave in to that stirring and traced those lips with her tongue, combed her fingers through his hair.

Still he waited. She could feel the tension toughen his body, she could hear his breath draw in. But he waited.

So she wrapped her arms around him and let herself sink into that warmth, that firmness, that slow and steady seduction.

It felt so good to ride that long, liquid wave, with all those tastes and textures. The shape of his mouth, the sensation of tongue sliding over tongue, the press of body to body.

So many things inside her that she'd ruthlessly shut down began to churn into hot life again.

"Oh, God." She moaned it, and all but slathered herself against him.

He'd have sworn he felt the ground begin to quake under his feet. He was damn sure the world took a hard tilt that left him reeling. Her mouth had gone from light and sweet to hot and greedy, in one lurching beat of the heart.

Desperate for more, he changed the angle of the kiss, then nipped restlessly at her bottom lip just to hear her low, throaty moan.

When he ran his hands up her body, she stretched under them like a woman waking from a long sleep.

Then jerked back, stared with shocked eyes toward the doorway. "Simon," she managed, and brushed at her hair. She took another quick step back just as Simon and Moe bounced into the room.

The boy was wearing X-Men pajamas, Brad saw. And smelled of toothpaste.

"All set?" Zoe gave her son a bright smile. The blood was still roaring in her head. "Mister, ah, Brad and I were just going to have coffee."

"Yuck." Simon walked to Zoe and tipped his head up for a kiss good night.

"I'll be in, in just a little while."

"Okay. 'Night," he said to Brad. "We're going to have a rematch, right?"

"You bet. Hold on a minute, will you? I want your opinion on something."

Before Zoe realized his intent, Brad pulled her into his arms and kissed her. It was a restrained kiss, comparatively, and she froze like a statue, but it was still a kiss.

Then he eased back, keeping one arm firm around her waist while he raised an eyebrow at Simon. "So?"

The boy's eyes were long like his mother's, tawny like his mother's, and held a world of speculation. After a long five seconds, he crossed those eyes, poked a finger in his mouth, and made gagging noises.

"Uh-huh," Brad said. "Other than the gag reflex, do you have any problem with me kissing your mother?"

"Not if you guys want to do something that gross. Chuck says his brother Nate likes to stick his tongue in girls' mouths. That just can not be true. Can it?"

With what he considered heroic control, Brad kept his face very sober. "It takes all kinds."

"I guess. I'm going to take Moe into my room so he doesn't have to watch if you guys are going to do something gross again."

"See you, kid." As Simon and Moe padded off, Brad turned and grinned at Zoe. "Want to do something gross?"

"I think we'll just have coffee."

Chapter Six

Meetings, projections, and plans for expansion kept Brad tied to HomeMakers for a couple of days. He couldn't complain, as it had been his idea to come back to Pleasant Valley, to make it his home base while overseeing the northeast quadrant of his family's business, revamping the Valley store and expanding it by fifteen thousand square feet.

That meant paperwork, conference calls, adjustments in staff and procedure, consultations with architects and contractors, haggling with or being wooed by suppliers.

He could handle it. He'd been raised to handle it and had spent the last seven years in the New York offices learning the ins and outs of being a top executive of one of the country's biggest retail chains.

He was a Vane, the fourth generation of the HomeMakers Vanes. He had no intention of dropping the ball. In fact, he fully intended to slam-dunk that ball by making the first HomeMakers store the biggest, the most prestigious, and the most profitable in the national system.

His father hadn't been thrilled by his decision. B.C. Vane III considered it based on sentiment. And so it was, Brad thought. And why not? His grandfather had built the humble hardware store, then gambled everything to push it outward, had developed it into a successful, consumerfriendly outlet for home improvement needs, into a staple of the Laurel Highlands.

And through guts, guile, and vision, had built a second store, then a third, then more, until he'd become a symbol of American enterprise with his face on Time magazine before his fiftieth birthday.

So it was sentiment, Brad thought, but that was leavened with a good dose of the Vane guts, guile, and vision.

He studied his hometown as he drove through the downtown area. The Valley was prospering in its quiet, steady way. The real estate market was strong in the county, and when people bought homes here, they tended to dig in and stay. Retail was up, and steadily above the national average. And tourist dollars maintained a nice healthy stream into the local economy.

The Valley prized its small-town ambience, but being an hour from Pittsburgh lent that ambience a sheen of sophistication.

For vacationers it offered hiking, skiing, boating, fishing, and charming inns, good restaurants. The flavor of country, all within an easy commute from the bustle of the city.

It was a good place to live, and a good place to do business.

Brad intended to do both.

Maybe he hadn't intended to be quite so pressed, but he hadn't expected to come back and find himself spun into a search for mystical keys. And he hadn't expected to fall for a cautious single mother and her irresistible son.

Still, it was simply a matter of setting goals, establishing priorities, and taking care of the details.

He parked his car and walked into the Valley Dispatch to handle a few of those details.

He got a kick out of thinking of his friend running the local paper. Flynn might not project the image of a man who could, or would, ride herd on a staff, whip a daily through deadlines, and concern himself with advertising, content, and the price of paper. And that, Brad mused as he headed up to editorial and Flynn's office, was why his old buddy was so good at his job.

He had a way of pushing people to do things, and to do them his way, without letting them feel the nudge.

Brad wound his way around desks and reporters, through the cacophony of phones, keyboards, and voices. He smelled coffee, baked goods, and somebody's pine-scented aftershave.

And there was Flynn, within the glass walls of the editor in chief's office, sitting on the corner of his desk in a striped shirt, jeans, and banged-up Nikes.

Invoking the privilege of a thirty-year friendship, Brad strolled straight in through the open door.

"I'll cover that meeting personally, Mr. Mayor." Flynn jerked his head toward the phone on his desk, and the speaker light.

Grinning now, Brad slid his hands in his pockets and waited while Flynn finished the call.

"Sony. Didn't realize you were on the phone."

"So what's a mature executive such as yourself doing in my humble office this morning?" Flynn asked.