“That went well,” Dave said.

Kate rested her head on his shoulder. “My father said if I married you he’d put me up for adoption, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen my mother drunk.”

“She wasn’t real drunk. She was just a little… tipsy.”

“She dropped her roll in the gravy boat and fished it out with her fingers!”

Dave pressed a kiss into her hair. “I liked it when she buttered her thumb.”

They turned and went into the house, sealing the world off with the click of the dead bolt.

He circled his arms around her in the foyer. “Remember when we were in the kitchen, and you told me you loved me?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Would you tell me again?”

She leaned into him, pressing her breasts against the wall of his chest, and she kissed him. “I love you,” she whispered into his mouth. Her tongue touched his, and she repeated the phrase. “I love you.”

Sunday morning Kate awoke, looked at Dave asleep next to her, and silently admitted she loved him beyond reason. She’d admitted it to herself, to Dave, and in a late-night phone call to her parents. Now what? A couple years earlier it would have been simple. Go with the flow. Live with him, marry him, divorce him if it didn’t work out. But that was a couple years earlier. She was older and wiser now.

She didn’t want to live with a man outside of marriage. In her eyes it lacked commitment. It was irresponsible. She bit her lip and acknowledged that she’d been doing just that. She was in Dave’s bed and had been there for four nights.

And what about marriage? There was a time, not long ago, when she’d vowed she’d never again get married. Now she wasn’t sure. But she was dead sure of one thing. She’d gotten her last divorce. If she ever married again, it would be for keeps. The next man would be chosen much more carefully—she knew more about what she needed in a relationship now. And she knew Dave lacked some of the qualities she wanted in a husband. “Damn.”

Dave flopped an arm over her. “Something wrong?”

Kate sighed.

He opened one eye and looked at her. “That was an awfully big sigh. You’re not still worried about your mother, are you? She’ll be fine. She probably doesn’t even remember sliding off her chair.”

“We need to talk.”

“Okay.”

She made a dismayed sound when she felt him stir against her. “This is serious!”

“I know. I think I have terminal lust.”

“Maybe it would be better if we did this at the breakfast table.”

“That’s a little kinky, but I’m game if you are.”

Kate swung her cast over the side of the bed. “I meant talk!”

“We could do that, too.”