“There’s your rainbow, Rowan.” He continued to look at her, but he knew the colored arch had spread in the sky outside. He hadn’t conjured it—but sensed his father had.

“Oh!” She leaped up and, after one quick peek out the window, dashed to the door. “Come out and see. It’s wonderful!”

She raced out, clattered down the steps and looked up.

She’d never seen one so clear, so perfectly defined. Against the watery blue sky, each luminous layer stood out, shimmering at the edges with gold, melting into the next color, from rose to lavender to delicate yellow to candy pink. It spread high, each tip grazing the tops of the trees.

“I’ve never seen one so beautiful.”

When he joined her, he was both disconcerted and touched when she took his hand. But even as he looked up at the arch, he promised himself he wouldn’t fall in love with her unless it was what he wanted.

He wouldn’t be maneuvered, cajoled, seduced. He would make his decision with a clear mind.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take some of what he wanted in the meantime.

“This means nothing more, and nothing less, than the other,” he said.

“What?”

“This.” He cupped her face, bent down and laid his lips on hers.

Soft as silk, gentle as the rain that was still falling through the pearly sunlight. He would keep it that way, for both of them, and lock down on the needs that were fiercer, more keen than was wise or safe.

Just a taste of that innocence, a glimpse of that tender heart she had no idea how to defend, he told himself. He would do what he could to keep that heart from falling too deeply, or he might be forced to break it.

But when her hand came up to rest on his shoulder, when her mouth yielded so utterly under his, he felt those darker needs clawing for freedom.

She couldn’t stop herself from giving, could hold nothing back against such tenderness. Even when the fingers on her face tightened, his mouth remained soft, easy, as if teaching hers what there was, what there could be.

Instinctively she soothed her hands over the tension of his shoulders and let herself sink into him.

He eased away before desire could outrace reason. When she only stared up at him with those exotic eyes blurred, those soft lips parted, he let her go.

“I guess it’s just, ah, chemistry.” Her heart was pounding in great hammering leaps.

“Chemistry,” he said, “can be dangerous.”

“You can’t make discoveries without some risks.” It should have shocked her, a comment like that coming out of her mouth, such an obvious invitation to continue, to finish. But it seemed natural, and right.