“If that was your only sin, then I feel as if perhaps I should begin making confessions of my own, for my life has not been so lily-white.”

“Oh?”

“I just hope you do not wish me to confess all my sins of a passionate nature. I fear my voice would give out before I could cover half of them.”

She fingered the top button of his waistcoat. “Have there been many?”

Before now, Devon would have answered without a twinge of guilt. After all, he had never transgressed the bounds of society. He never philandered with innocents, never compromised a lady’s reputation unless she initiated the event herself, and never ever mentioned names, even when deep in his cups.

But somehow, looking down into Kat’s green eyes, he felt the faintest hint of a blush on his own cheeks. In all his years, Devon didn’t think he’d felt a blush more than two or three times, and all before he was fourteen. “Yes,” he finally said. “There have been that many sins in my life.”

“Hm. And according to what you said about never staying interested more than a few months, there are going to be hundreds, perhaps thousands more.”

Devon didn’t answer. He couldn’t. A deep loneliness gripped him. Was she right? Was he doomed to spend his life wandering from bed to bed, searching for the perfect woman, a woman he was beginning to think didn’t exist?

Of course, Kat was close to his vision of perfection, and coming closer all the time. She was smart, attractive, capable, strong, and passionate…He frowned. Was she getting closer to his image of perfect or was he merely beginning to mold his image of perfection until it looked like Kat?

Whatever the truth, it didn’t solve the problem of his own fickleness. His own lack of strength in committing. His own tendency to hurt those who came to care for him.

Whatever he did, Devon did not want to harm Kat. She’d suffered enough. So it was with the greatest effort that he stood and pulled her to her feet. “The rain is lessening. It will be over soon.”

A shadow crossed her face. “Does this mean…” Her gaze lifted to his face. “You don’t wish to be with me now that you know—”

“No! It just means that I don’t want either of us doing anything we might regret. I enjoy your company too much to allow it to turn counterfeit.”

“I see,” she said, disappointment deep in her voice.

He almost laughed. That must be what he looked like every time she pulled away from him. She was simply adorable. So natural and free. And he was beginning to like spending time with her a bit too much. Thank God he was leaving soon.