“I just keep thinking it’ll happen for me,” she murmured. “But it hasn’t. Although I do like my life.”

“No boyfriend?” he heard himself say.

“No.” She shrugged. “And I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl.”

That didn’t surprise him. She was much too classy.

As a curiously gentle silence bloomed between them, he didn’t have a clue how long he stood there, staring across the island at her.

“Thank you,” he said eventually.

“For what? I haven’t really helped you.”

The hell she hadn’t. She’d given him something warm to think about when he was alone in the cold night: He was going to remember this moment with her now for the rest of his days.

However few of those he might have left.

Moving around so that he was closer to her, he reached out and touched her cheek. As she inhaled sharply and went still, he said, “I’m sorry about . . . earlier.”

Yeah, not sure which “earlier” that would be: the twenty-five grand he’d cost her, the running from the law, the attempt to scare some sense into her . . . or The Shower.

He was surprised when she didn’t pull away. “I still don’t want you to go.”

Isaac gave that one a pass. “I like your hair down,” he said instead, running his fingers through it to her shoulder. As she flushed, he stepped back. “I’m going to bed. If you need me, knock first, okay? Knock first and wait for me to answer the door.”

She blinked quick, like a fog was lifting from her inner riverbank. “Why?”

“Just promise me.”

“Isaac . . .” When he shook his head, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay. I promise.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

He turned and left her in the kitchen by herself, taking the hall and the stairs fast, because his self-control was threadbare, and in spite of the two omelets, he was starved.

Not for food, though.

Like a total nancy, he ducked into the guest room and waited behind the closed door just so he could listen to the sound of her going up the softly creaking old stairs. When he heard her shut herself in, he pivoted around . . . and wondered what in the hell he was going to do for the next eight hours.

His cock twitched like it was raising a hand to be called on by the teacher, the erection all oh-oh-oh-oh-I-got-an-answer-for-that.

“So not going to happen, big guy,” Isaac snapped at himself.

Rubbing his eyes, he couldn’t believe he’d fallen so low as to be talking to his dumb handle. Or trying to reason with it.