Her hair was tousled, but the dress still looked starched and prim. She was covered from neck to toes, and Dave couldn’t for the life of him understand why that seemed so seductive. Under the white organdy there was the barest outline of her bra: an imprint of beige lace against soft ivory breast. He was sure the memory of that vision would have him thrashing sleeplessly in his bed all night.

He raised his eyes to hers, and knew he’d broadcast his thoughts as surely as if he’d spoken them out loud. There’d been plenty of times in his life when he’d had to hide his emotions, and there were those times when he’d fabricated emotions he didn’t feel. This wasn’t one of them. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have controlled or disguised the feelings he had for Kate. He flashed her a smile that was 10 percent embarrassment and 90 percent warning.

“Good idea. We wouldn’t want Elsie to get insulted,” he said.

Kate swallowed, but the sandwich felt stuck in her throat. She wasn’t sure of his exact thoughts, but his eyes were smoldering. He took her breath away. And the smile was alarmingly obvious. “Now that I think about it further, I might be safer in my own house…”

Dave tipped back in his chair, good-natured amusement replacing deeper emotions. “You could be right, but it’ll be more fun if you stay here. We can make popcorn and stay up all night telling ghost stories.”

Chapter 4

A Street houses seemed impossibly narrow from a pedestrian’s point of view, but thanks to ten-foot ceilings and the limited number of rooms, the interiors were surprisingly spacious. Dave had chosen the front room with the half-turret alcove for his upstairs bedroom, and converted the remaining second floor room into a sitting room.

It was a comfortably masculine room, Kate thought, slouching into the luxurious oxblood-leather couch. She had changed into a pair of borrowed sweats and thick wool socks and, following Dave’s lead, had propped her feet on the coffee table.

They sat side by side with the popcorn bowl between them, their eyes glued to the TV, their minds finely tuned to each other’s breathing patterns. It was a new feeling for Kate. She’d known other men and shared varying degrees of intimacy with them. And none had been so intimate as Anatole. But she’d never experienced this type of pull.