The hands Laura clenched in her lap slowly loosened as she watched the foal struggle to her feet. After a few comical spills, she gained them.

“Have you . . .” Laura wiped her palms hard on the knees of her slacks to ease the tingling. “Have you chosen a name for her?”

“No.” He tortured himself a little by sniffing her hair. “Why don’t you?”

“She’s yours, Michael.”

“The three of us brought her into the world together. What do you want to call her?”

She leaned back against him and smiled. The foal had already learned how to suckle. “I had a mare when I was a girl. Her name was Lulu.”

“Lulu?” He chuckled and buried his face in her hair.

Her eyes closed as he nuzzled, and her heart tilted. “I rode her over the hills and into dreams.”

“Lulu it is.” He got to his feet, pulled Laura to hers. “You’re pale.” He brushed a thumb over her cheek, almost expecting it to pass through like a mist. “The closer it got toward morning, the more fragile you looked. And the more I wanted to touch you.”

“I’m not going to be able to give you what you want.”

“You haven’t got a clue what I want. If you did, you wouldn’t have let me within a mile of Templeton House. But since both of us are too tired for me to explain it now, you’d better go get some sleep.”

“I’ll help you clean up.”

“No, I can handle it. I’m not that tired, Laura, and you’re too damn tempting. Go away.”

“All right, then.” She stepped out of the stall and looked back. He stretched, a long, lean male wearing black with snug jeans unbuttoned at the waist. Everything that was female in her stirred. And yearned. “Michael?”

“Yeah?”

His eyes were heavy, she noted. Exhausted. But they still focused on her in a way that made her blood tingle. “No one’s ever wanted me the way you seem to. I don’t know how I feel or what to do about that.”

Those exhausted eyes went hot. “That’s not the kind of statement designed to make me want you less.” Quick as a snake, and deadly, he reached out and snagged her by the shirt front. His free hand circled her throat, squeezed lightly as his mouth came down hard on hers. When he let her go, she stumbled back, her eyes clouded with arousal and panic.

“Go away, Laura,” he repeated. “You’re not safe here.”

She walked blindly out of the stables, into the white flash of morning. Her bones felt bruised, her mind battered. Lifting an unsteady hand, she brushed her fingertips over her swollen mouth. Felt him there. Tasted him there.