“Can you walk?”

She met his familiar black scowl with gently arched eyebrows and murmured. “I think so. Can you?”

He chuckled and reached for her hand, lifting it to his lips in an impulse that seemed both out of character, and at the same time oddly familiar. For some reason, maybe because of that, Jane felt as if her heart had jumped into her throat; she actually felt it would stop her breath.

It’s what I want, she thought, fighting panic. I’ve made my choice. I won’t regret it.

But still…it would have been so much easier if they could have stayed in the car like teenagers and let passion govern, and not have to think about it at all.

The kitchen was warm and light, and smelled of soup and, faintly, of cigarettes. Jane closed the door and made straight for the stove, picking up a spoon from the countertop with one hand and at the same time reaching efficiently for the burner knob with the other.

Hawk stood with his jacket draped over one shoulder, hooked on a finger, and watched her.

“What are you doing?” he asked after a moment.

Breathlessly, not looking at him, she said, “It just needs warming a little…it’ll only take a minute…”

Unnamed emotions, treacherous as rapids, tumbled inside him. “Jane, for God’s sake, turn off the stove.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

“Yeah, I am,” he growled, “but sure as hell not for soup.”

She had her back to him, her hands resting on the edge of the counter. He had a feeling if she lifted them from that support, they would tremble. He took a step closer to her and said softly, “Jane, look at me.” She lifted her head and gave him her profile, but didn’t turn. He raised a hand and almost-not quite-touched her. “Come on…please.”

And then she did finally face him, leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her middle. He noticed that she was still gripping the soup ladle, as if it were a weapon she might brandish in her defense, if necessary.

His voice was gruff when he said, “You can still call this off, you know. Now you’ve had a chance to think about it, if you’ve had second thoughts…”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s what I want.” But her eyes looked scared.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“After what-”

“Tom.” And now something-could it have been anger?- crossed her face like daytime lightning, barely discernible except as a flicker in the corner of an eye. But instead of thunder, her voice was a sultry rumble, humid and tense as a hot summer afternoon.

“Everything I told you was true. Including the part about it having been five years-more than five-since I’ve been with a man. If I’d never met you, if you hadn’t kissed me, if you hadn’t come here tonight, I’d have gone right on doing without one, and-” her voice rose slightly, a little lift of belligerence that touched him “-very nicely, too, believe me.” She paused, then said quietly, “But…I did, and you did, and here we are…and, I’d like you to stay.”

Again something darkened briefly in her eyes, but this time he had no trouble identifying it as uncertainty, and she added belatedly, over a choked little swallow, “If you want to.”

He frowned and muttered, “You know I do.” He felt wired and itchy, as if heat lightning crawled just beneath his skin.

Her eyes met and held his across the well-lit distance between them, and it seemed as though the lightning that was in both of them arced the chasm, as well, met and joined in a charge of electricity that was almost visible.

“Then,” she said, “I’d ask of you no more than that. And as for your…scruples-” her mouth tugged sideways in a smile as wry as his own “-you told me you’d been with other women since your wife died. Women you didn’t love. What’s one more? It’s just sex, Tom.”

He couldn’t account for the spasm of pain that sliced through him, and something he could have sworn was disappointment. But he growled. “Dammit, Jane, this is different.”

“Is it?” she said gently. “How?”

He couldn’t for the life of him think how to answer her. He only knew it was different. It was the reasons why, the possibilities, that terrified him. And the fear kept him silent.

After a moment, she went on in that same gentle tone, “We’re both adults, Tom. And we’ve been adults long enough to have collected quite a bit of emotional baggage. Things are a lot more complicated now than they were when we were kids.” Her smile flickered and went out. “It’s occurred to me that maybe I’m the one who’s asking too much, to think there could even be such a thing as love-I mean, you know, falling in love-for people our age.”

“Dammit, Carlysle-” He stopped midsentence. He wasn’t sure why it had occurred to him to refute what she’d said; a week ago, if you’d asked him, he’d probably have agreed with her. Hell, he supposed he still did. Sure he did. One to a customer, and he’d already had his.

Frustrated and off balance, he tossed his jacket in the general direction of a chair. It slid to the floor, landing with a faint clunk.

Guilt jolted him. But Jane didn’t seem to have noticed, and he had more pressing things to think about just then. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten why he was there in the first place, or the importance of the game he was in, or what was at stake. But it wasn’t his game anymore, it was the FBI’s, and they had all bases covered. In a matter of hours, Jarek Singh’s key and Loizeau’s killer would both be in custody, and all that would be left for Hawk to do was paperwork.

Even what had become his own personal stake-getting Jane cleared of any suspicion of complicity in the whole affair-had lost its sense of urgency. Being as certain of her innocence as he was that the sun would rise tomorrow, and just as certain that the shards in his jacket pocket would prove that beyond any doubt, he didn’t see that there was any particular rush to get the evidence back to the FBI labs. Tomorrow would do fine. Tonight was for…

What? Suddenly he wasn’t sure exactly what he was really doing there, or what was going to happen. He just had a vague, jumpy idea it might be something important.

He knew what he wanted to do more than anything at that moment, which was haul Jane into his arms, touch her the way he’d been touching her out there in the car and kiss her until neither of them could stand. Sensing it wasn’t the best moment to do so, he took out his cigarettes instead.

He frowned as he lit one, thinking about what she’d just said about love, afraid that with the electricity still so intense and dangerous between them, if he touched her the way he wanted to right now he might appear to be saying things he didn’t mean, things he wasn’t ready to say. He told himself he had to be careful with this woman. He couldn’t risk misunderstandings. He told himself he’d been honest with her up to now-about his feelings, anyway-and he didn’t intend to start lying at this stage of the game.

It occurred to him that he wished she’d be as honest with him.

Suddenly frustrated beyond bearing, he stuck a cigarette between his lips and muttered furiously around it, “Sometimes I can’t figure you out, you know that?”

She gave a small, surprised laugh and leaned to snag the ashtray and move it closer to him, an automatic gesture of consideration and courtesy, and so completely typical of her. “I know women who’d take that as a compliment,” she said lightly, then frowned. “I don’t know why. I’ve always wanted more than anything to be understood.”

He snatched the ashtray from her and stubbed out his barely touched cigarette, then pushed it away, took her by the shoulders and pulled her closer, but not yet into his arms. Caught by surprise, she put her hands on his chest, the fingers of one still curled around the handle of the soup spoon. He could see her mouth pop open as she stared at it, and he felt her body vibrate with deep-down-inside tremors.

He removed the spoon from her fingers and tossed it into the sink, wincing at the clatter. Then, cupping her jaw and chin with one hand, he tilted her face upward. “Look at me,” he commanded. She did, trustingly, lifting those sea-gray eyes to his. And he felt as if the ocean were rising up to meet him.

“I always know what you’re feeling,” he said, wondering why his tongue felt thick. He felt woozy…dizzy, as if riding a heavy swell-and he’d never been one to get seasick. “Your eyes tell me. They show everything. Did you know that?”

He watched a little pleat of lines appear between her eyebrows, and felt her pulse hammer against his palm. His pulse was in his throat.

“I don’t know-sometimes you seem so damn frank and open it scares me. Hell, I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth. And then sometimes, I look in your eyes and what I’m seeing doesn’t match what I’m hearing.” He paused, staring down at her as if he might see inside her soul if he only looked hard enough. It was like trying to see the bottom of the ocean. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking, dammit!”

Dear God, thought Jane as a new and heretofore unknown kind of fear shivered and sparkled like crystal dust just beneath her skin. This man has known me for a matter of days, and already he knows what David never could figure out in more than twenty-one years.

Was this what it would be like? Intimacy? To be one of a couple, wholly and completely with someone…did that mean she’d have to learn to share her innermost thoughts? Oh, surely not all her thoughts. But at least, not to lie about her feelings? Her true feelings…

Oh, what a terrifying thing! Imagine having the courage to let someone know when you felt angry, or hurt, or disappointed, or just plain out-of-sorts. Imagine trusting someone enough to let yourself be cranky and disagreeable and moody in his presence, trusting that he would still love you in spite of it. Imagine not having to be nice all the time. Imagine being allowed to have flaws. Imagine not having to be perfect in order to be loved. Imagine…

A tear appalled her by slipping from the corner of one eye and rolling down to puddle in the crack between her cheek and Tom’s fingers.

“Don’t!” he cried sharply, and smeared the moisture across her hot cheek with his fingers as if trying to make it disappear.

“Sorry,” she murmured, dropping her lashes across the other tears that wanted to follow the first. “It’s just, you know, emotions…”

The growl he gave had more frustration in it than lust, but his lips, when they touched hers, were unexpectedly gentle. Incredibly sweet. Unbelievably wonderful. A sigh shivered through her as for a moment-just a moment-she seemed to hang suspended in a fragile, crystalline bubble of happiness, happiness so pure and rare it felt like shimmers inside her, and ran along her skin like the cold-hot prickle of a sparkler’s shower on the Fourth of July.

If this is all there is to be, she thought-and for that moment believed-then I will settle for this. And be happy.

Her hands crept around his neck and her head relaxed into the cradle of his hand, and she sighed as though she’d found something for which she’d been searching a very long time. As she had.

“You must know what I’m thinking now,” she whispered when his lips left hers to travel upward across her cheek, tasting the dampness her tear had left there.

“I know what you’re feeling,” he corrected, murmuring the words across her eyelid like the tiniest of caresses. “That’s all.”

Drunkenly she mumbled. “Right now it’s the same thing anyway… I can’t think.” And she wished-oh, how she wished-that it were true.

She never knew how they got from the kitchen to her bedroom; certainly Tom didn’t sweep her into his arms. Rhett Butler-like, and carry her-she’d have been mortified if he had-but she had no recollection of walking down a darkened hallway, no awareness of sidestepping the living-room furniture or squeezing entwined through doorways. It was only when Tom turned on the light in her bedroom that the deep, enveloping fog of desire lifted long enough for her to make an inarticulate sound of protest. He instantly turned it off again.

On wobbly legs she moved through the semidarkness to the bed, tossed pillows onto the floor and folded back the comforter. Separated from him, she felt cold, isolated, off balance, as if she’d stepped onto the deck of a ship in a storm. When she felt his hands on her waist and the warm and solid bulkhead of his body there behind her, her relief was so profound she almost whimpered.

“Easy,” Hawk murmured as he turned her, wondering why she was shivering when it wasn’t cold in the room.

He was glad of that; he wanted very much to see her while he made love to her, and was glad not to have to resort to huddling under the covers like Puritans. To that end, he kissed her until he felt her relax and her shivers subside and her knees begin to buckle, then leaned over to turn on the lamp beside the bed.