“Kane,” Erin said unsteadily, still sitting, looking both childlike and wise at the same moment. Oh, God, he thought, was she going to confess? Could he bear it? His muscles tensed, and he could feel the pressure as his jaws tightened together in a viselike grip. “Is there anything I can do?” she offered in a whisper.

Erin had noticed Kane stiffen at the sound of her voice, and she was aware that the wall between them was rigidly back in place, but she felt a strangling need to climb the invisible barrier and reach out to him. Why was he suffering so?

“There’s nothing you can do,” he stated flatly. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

She twisted her fingers together. “Is it Krista?” she asked with a shaky breath.

His gray eyes smoldered with indecision. “That’s part of it,” he conceded, and hated himself for his duplicity. Dropping his body down on the couch next to her, he let his head fall backward as if it were too heavy to support. He sat staring ahead, with only inches separating him from her. Her senses were alive to him, her nerve endings stretched taut. Erin could feel the heat of his body, smell the inviting scent of his aftershave, see the darkening shadow of his beard. But he still didn’t touch her. His hands rubbed thoughtfully against his knees, and he looked straight ahead through the window into the late afternoon sky. “I talked with Krista again today,” he said in a voice that seemed remote.

“And?” Erin prodded, not knowing why she should be concerned with Kane’s reclusive daughter.

“She doesn’t want to move to Seattle,” he sighed, and drummed his fingers against his thigh. “Absolutely refuses!”

He turned his head to look in her direction and their eyes met in a chilly embrace. “I’m going to California next week to get her and move her up to Seattle with me.”

“And you’re worried about her and the adjustment,” Erin guessed.

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“That goes without saying. Is…there anything I can do to make it easier on you?”

“Would you come to California with me?”

“To get Krista?” At Kane’s cursory nod, Erin expelled a long breath and shook her head firmly and negatively. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea. She’s going to have to adjust to a whole new city. I think you should be alone with her. She doesn’t need the intrusion of a virtual stranger.”

She could see in his eyes that she had convinced him and she continued, “But if there’s anything else that I can do….”

“There is something,” he suggested, and for a moment the tension seemed to vanish.

“What?”

“Pack your bags for the weekend” was the brief reply, but the passion that had been lurking in his eyes came alive. His silvery eyes embraced hers, and he reached for her hand. His thumb drew slow, lazy circles on the inside of her wrist, and heat began to climb up her body. “Oh, Erin,” he breathed, and his lips found hers in a feverish kiss that seemed to pulsate with need and urgency. When he dragged his mouth away from the supple curve of her lips, he looked savagely into her eyes, asking questions that she couldn’t understand. Then a softness stole over his features as he took a handful of her hair in his palm and pressed her head against the protection of his chest. In a ragged breath he asked, “Do you know how hard it’s been for me, forcing myself to keep my hands off you at the office?” He growled deep in his throat. “There were times when I thought I would actually go insane, having you so close and not being able to touch you….”