Her arguments might have been valid, but they didn’t amount to a damn when he claimed her mouth. Her aspirations, responsibilities, carefully thought through plans for the future, and her fears skittered off as passion poured through her. She responded to his kiss with a kiss of her own that told him everything he needed to know. She wanted to be loved. She was hungry for it. In fact, she was more than hungry; she was starved.

His hands were under her shirt and she followed his lead. Thank goodness one of us knows how to do this, she thought. Not that she was a virgin, but it had been a long time. His hand moved to her leg. His fingers crept up the leg and under her shorts. Daisy did a mental yikes. His fingers found the elastic edge of her panties and skimmed across the silky material.

“W-w-wow,” she whispered

“Yeah,” Steve said softly. “Wow.” And then he did the skimming thing again.

“Go for the zipper,” Daisy said. “Lose the shorts!”

Lord, she thought. I’m such a slut, but man this feels good. And then it got a lot better.

They lay together for a while afterward, sweat-slicked and replete.

He trailed his fingertips across her temple, stroking the hair back from her face. He didn’t speak because he wasn’t sure he could trust his voice. Passion had been temporarily quenched, and had been replaced by tender possession so strong it took his breath away.

She was the first to stir, pulling her head back so she could see his eyes. She was embarrassed in the aftermath of the storm. “I think I got carried away,” she said.

His voice was softly reverent. “Lady, carried away doesn’t begin to say it.” He rolled to his side and kissed her. “I hope your intentions are honorable.”

“Honorable?”

“I’m not easy, you know. I have standards. I expect you to make an honest man of me. Especially after we did all this in front of Bob.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about Bob. I’m not sure he’s breathing. Maybe you should hold a mirror under his nose.”

“My reputation is at stake.”

“Just exactly what is it you expect me to do?”

“Marry me, of course.”

Daisy giggled. “Of course.”

“You’re not taking me seriously.” And God help him, he was serious.

He was lying sprawled on his back, and he seemed perfectly comfortable, while Daisy felt more self-conscious with each passing second. She felt physically and mentally naked, and she wasn’t used to either. She’d practically attacked him. Granted there’d been sexual tension crackling between them since day one, but until this evening she’d managed to be civil about it. Until this evening she’d managed to hide her randiness, or at least to conceal it a little. Now he knew she was deprived and desperate. Or maybe he thought she was like this with everyone! She didn’t know which would be worse.

She sat up and grimaced at the tangle of clothes on the floor. “I have to go home.”

He kissed her at the base of her spine. “You could spend the night.”

“No!”

They both were surprised at how vehemently she’d said it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wriggling into her underwear. “I didn’t mean to shout.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No. You were wonderful. You did everything right… better than right. It’s me.”

Besides being mortally embarrassed, she realized she was scared. She was feeling emotions she had no business feeling. She loved him. Good Lord, don’t even think it, she warned herself. Don’t say it out loud, don’t formulate it in your mind, and wipe that expression of adulation off your face.

She was within inches of her doctorate; she was maxed out on education loans, and she was starting to get tired. If she slowed down now, she’d never make it. And Steve Crow could slow her down big-time. He’d have her going around in hormone heaven, dreaming fairy tales about how poor psychologists grow up to marry handsome oil tycoons.

She dropped her shirt over her head and tugged her shorts over her hips. “I’m sorry to have to run off like this. You probably think I’m rude, but the truth is, I’m a little discombobulated.”

“I understand.”

“Really?”

He pulled his shorts on. “No, but it seemed like the right thing to say.”

She caught a look at herself in the hall mirror and groaned. “I look like heck.”

“I think you look great. I think you should look like this more often. Every morning, in fact.And maybe once in a while in the afternoon.”

“Every morning?”

“For the rest of your life.”

“My Lord, I’d be dead in a year.”

Steve smashed his hand down on the alarm clock and stared glassy-eyed at the digital numbers. Five o’clock. So this was what it felt like to wake up at five o’clock, he thought. Not something he’d want to do on a regular basis. It was still dark outside. He didn’t give a fig about A.M. and P.M.; if it was dark it was night. He’d always thought people who rose before the sun were a little loony. He rolled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where he stared into the mirror for a while, waiting for his brain to catch up with his feet. He brushed his teeth, splashed cold water on his face, put on some jogging clothes, and tried to wake Bob.

“Get up,” he said. “I have a real treat for you today. We’re going jogging.”

Bob opened one eye and snuggled deeper into the quilt.

Steve turned on all the lights. “Look at this, fella. It’s morning!” he said, giving Bob a shake.

Bob growled low in his throat and kept his eyes firmly closed.

“That’s it,” Steve said. “No more Mr. Nice Guy. Get your lazy butt out of this bed!”

Fifteen minutes later they were in front of Daisy’s house. Steve held Bob’s leash in one hand and a box of Pop-Tarts in the other.

“This is the last one,” he said to Bob. “And you can consider this to be an official bribe. I expect a good performance out of you. I expect you to look like we do this all the time. We don’t want Daisy to think we’re a couple of slugs. Let her find that out after she marries us.”

Light shone from Daisy’s living room windows. The front door opened and a bar of yellow light appeared, slashing across the small front porch. Bob ripped the leash from Steve’s hand and streaked across the lawn. He barreled through the door, pushed past Daisy, and bolted up the stairs. Steve ran after him.

“Sorry,” he said to Daisy, “we were out jogging and he got away from me.”

It took Daisy a couple of beats to figure it out. “He ran upstairs. He was going so fast I didn’t even recognize him.”

They both went upstairs and found Bob deep under the covers on Daisy’s bed.

“Smart dog,” Steve said. “Why didn’t I think to do that?”

Daisy looked at the empty Pop-Tarts box. “Breakfast?”

“Bob needs motivation in the morning.”

She looked at the lump in her bed. “I’d say he’s found all the motivation he needs.”

Steve wrapped his arms around her. “Me too. I’m suddenly feeling very motivated.”

She knew all about his motivation. It was poking her in the stomach, and she thought it must be difficult to jog with that sort of physical condition.

“How about you?” he asked, sneaking his hand under her shirt. “Are you feeling motivated?”

A thrill zinged through her at his touch. Be strong, she told herself. There were people out there, waiting for their papers. They didn’t give a hoot about her need for morning moti-vation-they needed the funnies to start off their day. The responsibility hung heavy on her. “I’m feeling motivated to deliver my papers,” she said with obvious reluctance.

He pulled her closer and kissed her just below her ear. “Bet I could change that.”

Of course he could change it. All he had to do was look at her, and she felt the earth shift on its axis.

“Kevin is asleep in the other room,” she said, pushing him away. “And besides, I have this responsibility…”

Steve was beginning to hate the word responsibility. “Okay,” he said, “looks like I’ve lost my jogging partner, so suppose I help you with the papers?”

“That’d be terrific. If I get done in time, I might be able to squeeze in breakfast.”

Big whoopee. She was going to try to squeeze in time for breakfast before going to her job as a crossing guard. Things were going to change in Daisy Adams’s life, he decided. She deserved better than this. She deserved not only breakfast but a leisurely second cup of coffee in the morning. Why was she a crossing guard anyway? Where were all the mothers and fathers? They were sitting in their comfortable kitchens reading the paper Daisy had just delivered, Steve thought as he followed her downstairs.

She gave him a heavy bag filled with papers. “Since you’re going to help me, we can take the car. It goes faster that way. You drive, and I’ll run the papers.”

“No way,” Steve said. “You drive and tell me where to deliver.”

It took several tries before her car kicked over. She gunned the motor, the car backfired twice, and settled down to its normal death-rattle idle. She drove half a mile to a subdivision of single-family homes. There was a sprinkling of lights shining from bedroom and kitchen windows. Northern Virginia was awakening. Steve took an armload of papers and ran from house to house. After a half hour he’d worked up a sweat and was breathing heavily. “How many papers do you deliver?” he asked.

“Hundreds,” she told him. “You don’t want to know.”

The route ended in her own subdivision of town houses. They had one paper left. It was Daisy’s. Steve wasn’t sure he had the strength to carry it into her house. He was in pretty good shape, but he wasn’t accustomed to this sort of activity at six in the morning. At six brushing his teeth seemed strenuous.

“Yipes,” Daisy said, looking at the kitchen clock. “I’ve got five minutes to get dressed and get over to the school.”

“What about breakfast?”

“Maybe when I get back,” she said, dashing up the stairs. “Help yourself to orange juice and whatever.”

Steve looked in the refrigerator. There was an empty orange juice carton and an empty container of milk. There was a plastic bag containing one slice of bread, a box that used to hold English muffins, and there was an empty jelly jar. Kevin, he said to himself.

Daisy thundered down the stairs and flew into the kitchen, strapping herself into a glow-in-the-dark orange vest. She snatched her keys off the counter and left. “See you in a little bit,” she called to Steve as she whisked out the door.

He heard the car backfire and pull away, and he concluded he was in love with a crazy person. How did all those old people stand her? He could see her rushing into a retirement home, knocking old people over like bowling pins.

He jogged home, got his car, went food shopping at a nearby convenience store, and arrived at Daisy’s house just as she was getting out of her wreck.

“Now can you have breakfast?” he asked her.

“I have to take a shower and get dressed. I have to leave for the station at eight-thirty at the latest.”

Kevin met them in the kitchen. He took the grocery bag from Steve, looked inside, and his face lit up. “Doughnuts!”

Daisy took one upstairs with her. “I can eat one while I shower,” she said.

Steve poured himself a glass of juice. “Is she always like this?” he asked Kevin.

“Pretty much. She’s the family overachiever.” He finished off a doughnut and selected a second. “And she’s a real sucker. If you’ve got a cause, you go to Daisy. She never refuses anybody anything.”

Steve knew differently. She’d refused to go to bed with him this morning.

Chapter 6

After work Steve stepped out of the elevator into the parking garage and took a fast survey of the crowd. Most were people en route to their cars, stopping to gawk for a moment at the police cruisers and the blonde. There didn’t seem to be any unsavory characters around, except for Elsie. She had her big black purse pressed to her chest, obviously ready to pull out her gun at the least provocation.

Daisy was with two policemen. They were a study in stoic concentration in their crisp blue uniforms, perfectly creased, not yet marred by underarm sweat stains. They clearly hadn’t been talking to Daisy for very long, Steve thought. She was waving her hands and rolling her eyes, her blond curls bobbing about in agitation.

He made his way over to the knot of policemen and security guards. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“You won’t believe what happened!” Daisy said. “Someone’s stolen my car.”

“You’re right. That’s hard to believe,” Steve said. “Why would anyone want to steal your car? You sure it didn’t just roll away? Have you looked at the rest of the parking garage?”