And from somewhere far away, as she slowly dipped her smile to touch his, came the thought: Why on earth would I want to?

A pleased little chuckle bubbled up from her chest, and he answered it with one so fat with masculine smugness it should have enraged her-but didn’t. Then the pressure of his hand cupping the back of her head closed the last of the distance between her mouth and his, and she gave up thinking entirely. She plunged into the kiss, the moment, the fantasy like a giddy child into a vat of ping-pong balls, fully aware that what she was doing bore about as much resemblance to real life as that.

But, oh, how good it felt! And what marvelous, wonderful fun it was…

And then, suddenly, it wasn’t fun anymore. Oh, the desire still sizzled along her nerves and thumped in her body’s secret places, but now, instead of joy, it was tears stinging behind her eyelids, and pain cramped her belly just beneath the places where the newly healed scars puckered her skin. Somewhere inside her, an anguished child was crying, This is good-but it’s not enough! I want more!

She wanted him to make love to her, yes-so badly her whole body ached with it-and that in itself was astonishing. But at the same time she felt grief-stricken, because she knew if he did, it would never be enough.

I want more! I want…I want…

But she couldn’t say it, not even in her mind. Because what she wanted was a fantasy not even she, who’d lived in a fantasy world all her life, could find a way to describe with words.

Roy knew the moment it went haywire. He felt a shudder go through her, which could have been good, but somehow wasn’t. Instead of a vibrant, passionate woman, what this reminded him of was the way it felt to hold a captured rabbit in his hands.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

She’d torn her mouth from his and tilted her face downward, so his words emerged, rasping and guttural, against the watermark frown in the middle of her forehead. Her skin felt moist on his lips, as if she were coming out of a fever.

Her head rolled from side to side. In a muffled voice, she mumbled, “We can’t do this. How can you, even? You’ve been shot…you almost died…”

“Why don’t you let me worry about that?” Hell, how did he know? Some kind of biological imperative, maybe? Survival of the species? All he knew for certain was, he’d never felt a more powerful hunger for a woman than he did for her at that moment.

“Doc could walk in. Your friend Max-you said he’d be here ‘in a minute.’”

“He’s not my friend, he’s my handler,” he muttered. Then he swore softly and vehemently. After that, for a long time he didn’t say anything, because he wanted in the worst way to deny the sense in what she’d said and was flashing back to a time in his youth when he’d tried hard to delude himself-and others-into believing it really was possible to die from unresolved arousal. But breathing in her scent, that light, sweet flower fragrance he couldn’t place, he felt her body grow still in his arms. Inevitably, a similar acceptance came like cool rain to dampen his own raging fires.

After a while, he said in an aggrieved tone, “Did I mention you’re a very exasperatin’ woman?”

“You did.” She said it without lifting her head, aiming the words at his chest, but he thought he could hear a smile come into her voice. “And if I recall, I took it as a compliment.”

“Exasperating…and weird. When I said you were beautiful, which I thought was a compliment, you took it as an insult.”

“Yeah, well…”

Regret sliced through him like physical pain as she eased herself off of him, careful to avoid his wounded side, and scooted to the edge of the bed. She sat there for several moments, hands braced beside her, rocking herself slightly, face turned away from him, letting the silence lengthen.

Consoling himself with the visual feast of her…the long, supple lines, the graceful curve of neck and shoulder, the rapturous tumble of sun-shot hair, it struck Roy once more how beautiful she really was-easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Holding her in his arms, kissing her, he’d managed to forget that-and pretty much everything else, too, of course, including how much every part of him really did still hurt, and the vital nature of the mission he’d failed to complete-but especially that. Now, though, with the truth of it staring him in the face, the thought smacked him upside the head: Man, what were you thinking?

“What’s up with that?” He pillowed his head on one folded arm and aimed the question at her back, his voice an abrasive intrusion in a silence that had been allowed to linger too long. “I thought women liked to be told they’re pretty.”

She threw him a fierce dark look over one shoulder, a look he couldn’t read. “It’s nothing. Except, just once, I’d like-”

“What?” he demanded when she broke it off with a frustrated exhalation. “Don’t do that. What would you like? Tell me.”

It was nervy of him to say that to her, he supposed, and for a while he was sure she wouldn’t answer him. She sat very still, gazing along her shoulder at nothing, her profile revealing the same sad look she’d worn before when he’d mentioned how beautiful she was. He couldn’t explain it, but he really wanted to know why. He felt a strange certainty the answer was going to provide an important key to what made this woman tick.

With an equally strange certainty, he knew he wanted that key. What he wasn’t sure about was what he might do with it once he had it.

“Just once,” Celia said softly, “I’d like to be admired for something I’m responsible for. Do you understand?”

She shifted around to look at him then, a frown rippling the center of her forehead, and he forgot about the fact that she was an actress and thought about all the expressions he’d seen her wear on that lovely face of hers, and how none of them had tugged at his heart the way this one did.

“Listen. I look the way I do because I got good genes-big deal. My looks…and my acting ability…they were a gift. An inheritance.” Her gaze shifted again, this time to the pictures on the wall. “I’ve been beautiful and famous since the day I was born. And don’t get me wrong-” her smile was wry, now, but it didn’t entirely erase the wistfulness “-I’m very grateful to my parents. But I’m thirty-two years old, and I’d like to think I’ve done something with my life that I could be proud of.”

“Looks to me like you’ve done okay,” Roy said gruffly, nodding toward the row of golden statuettes on the top shelf.

She followed his gaze and made a disparaging sound. “Those? Well, the Oscars are my parents’, of course. As for the Emmys, let me tell you-”

But before she could, the doorbell rang. “That will be your friend, I’m sure,” Celia said lightly, as she rose to answer it. And Roy, who not so long ago would have given just about anything to hear that sound, now found himself silently cursing Max for being so damn prompt.

Halfway across the room, she paused, turned, then nodded toward the row of Emmys. “You want to know how much those are worth?” she said in an amused, conversational tone. “I haven’t appeared on the show I won them for in over a year. You want to know how much they miss me? To accommodate my ‘indefinite’ leave of absence, ‘Nurse Suzanne’ has been presumed to be dead after her plane went down somewhere in the Amazon jungle. Now-my contract comes up for renewal next spring, at which time one of three things will happen: If my contract is renewed and I decide to return to the show, Nurse Suzanne will be miraculously discovered tending the natives in some remote village. If it isn’t, either someone new will be cast in the role, and Nurse Suzanne will be miraculously resurrected following extensive plastic surgery to heal her terrible wounds, or no one will be cast in the role, and poor Nurse Suzanne will remain dead-‘dead’ being, of course, a tentative condition in daytime drama. Either way, with or without me the show goes on.”

The doorbell pealed again, more insistently. Celia threw Roy a dazzling, movie-star smile and went out, leaving him dazed and wondering whether any of the emotions he’d just witnessed were for real, or if he’d just been treated to an Emmy-worthy performance by one of the best actresses he’d ever seen.

In the living room, Celia paused to rake her fingers through her hair and draw several deep, cleansing breaths. It’s like being in a play, she told herself. All this adrenaline churning…butterflies rampaging… Exit, stage left. New Scene-a few minutes later-Celia enters, stage right.

Blowing out the last of the breaths in an explosive whoosh, she affixed a charming hostess’s smile to her lips, marched to the front door and threw it open.

“Hel-lo,” she said warmly to the man who stood there looking edgy, hand upraised to press the doorbell for the third time. “You must be Max. Won’t you come in?”

The man appeared to be around fifty, about her height and wiry in build. Even though his nose was rather large and his grayish brown hair was thinning, he was attractive in a way, possibly because he had a very nice smile. He was wearing jeans and a Hawaiian print shirt and sunglasses, the last of which he peeled off to reveal an astonished stare.

He muttered a profane exclamation, for which he immediately apologized. “Sorry. You really are Celia Cross. I thought-hell, I don’t know what I thought. My wife is never going to believe this…” He shook his head and his voice trailed off as he moved past her into the house, tucking the sunglasses into the pocket of his shirt and looking about him with undisguised interest.

In the living room, he halted, apparently transfixed by the view. When Celia joined him, he turned to her with a gleam of amusement in his keen gray eyes and said dryly, “Nice place.”

“Thank you.” She smiled back and decided she definitely liked him.

“So.” Deliberately turning away from the vast Pacific beyond the glass, Max took in a breath and lifted his eyebrows. “Where’s my boy?”

My boy? Liking the man more by the minute, Celia hid her delight and murmured, “This way,” as she made a graceful gesture for him to follow her. She was rather enjoying the role of gracious hostess as she led him to the room behind the stairs, knocked lightly as she pushed the door open, then stood aside like a well-trained housemaid for him to enter.

As he slipped past her, Max gave an explosive exclamation, the same one with which he’d greeted Celia at the front door. That was followed by, “Man, what the hell happened?”

“He was shot,” Celia offered. “Among other things.”

She thought Roy looked rather comical, actually, standing beside the bed with his head and one arm through the appropriate openings of the sweatshirt she’d given him to wear. The rest of the shirt was rolled up around his neck, leaving his chest and torso, complete with its Technicolor assortment of bandages, bruises and abrasions, mostly bare.

The look on Max’s face as he walked slowly toward him was like someone coming upon a tethered leopard-equal parts dismay and awe, with a healthy amount of caution.

Celia’s, as she gazed at the long, tapering lines of body disappearing into the sweats she’d once worn herself…sweats that now rode perilously low on narrow masculine flanks…must have reflected something very different. Remembering how that body had felt under hers, she had a sudden and terrible need to swallow-except she couldn’t, because her mouth had gone dry.

“I can’t lift my damn arm,” Roy muttered, throwing her a furious glare, as though it was somehow her fault. Transferring the glare to Max, he immediately contradicted his first statement with a growled, “I’m okay-I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Like a patient father helping a child dress for kindergarten, Max calmly lifted Roy’s arm and directed it into the proper sleeve opening.

Celia diverted herself to the easy chair where she perched on the arm and folded her arms across her waist. From there, she watched jealously as Max guided Roy to the edge of the bed and gently sat him down.

“Okay,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and frowning down at Roy’s glowering face, “let’s hear it. What the hell happened?”

Instead of answering, Roy stared meaningfully at Max and jerked his head toward Celia. Then, switching to her and showing his teeth in what he no doubt thought was a winning smile, he said jovially, “Hey…Celia…could I maybe get a glass of water? Or better yet, how about a cuppa coffee? What about you, Max? You want something to drink?”