It came unbidden to her mind, in spite of all her intentions to the contrary. Perhaps it was the fact that she was lying awkwardly in a small, strange room, close to the end of her strength, both physically and emotionally, but thoughts of Monk filled her, almost as if she could feel the warmth of his body beside her, smell his skin, and for once in their lives, know that there was no quarrel, no gulf, no barrier between them.

She flushed hot to remember how utterly she had given herself to him in that one consuming kiss. All her heart and mind and will had been in it, all the things she could never ever have said to him. She had not seen him since the end of the Farraline case. They had continued in the heat of that desperate conclusion, so involved in it that there had been no time to feel more than a glancing moment of awkwardness.

Now if they met again it would be different. There would be memories neither of them could ever discard or forget. Whatever he might say, whatever his manner now, she knew that for that moment when they had faced death in the closed room, he had left behind all pretense, all his precious and careful self-protection, and had admitted in touch of aching and desperate tenderness that he too knew what it was to love.

Not that she deluded herself the barriers would not return. Of course they would. Rescue, and a taking up of life again, had brought back all the differences, the shadows which kept them apart. She was not the kind of woman who excited him. She was too quarrelsome, too independent, too direct. She did not even know how to flirt or to charm, to make him feel gallant and protective, let alone romantic.

And he was too often ill-tempered. He was certainly ruthless, highly critical, and his past was full of darkness and fears and ties which even he did not know, perhaps of violence he only half thought in nightmare, of cruelties he imagined but for which he had no proof-except what others told him, not in words but in the way they reacted to him, the flicker of old pain, humiliations from his keener, faster mind and his sharper tongue. She knew all the arguments, just like the prickling straw ends poking into her arms now, scratching her cheek and spearing through the thin stuff of her dress. And yet just like the sweet oblivion closing around her, the memory of his touch obliterated it all until she was so tired she could sleep.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3