Blackie waited for her and tossed his coin in just as she did. Then he smiled wistfully down at her. “Are you going to tell me what your wish was?”

Julie shook her head. “No. If I tell you, my wish won’t come true, and then I won’t get to spend the rest of my life with you.”

His eyes went dark, and Julie found that she couldn’t look away. He leaned closer, and the next instant, his mouth laid claim to hers. It was a tentative kiss at first, but then he deepened it and took control. She felt as if the starch in her spine vanished, and she rested her weight against his, wondering how a simple kiss could make her feel hot, excited, and as if all the bones in her body had melted.

“Wow,” he said as he drew back. And then with a moan, he settled his mouth over hers again.

Julie lost it. It had been so long since a man had held her in his arms, so long since she’d felt like a woman. There was something about Blackie that ignited all her nerve endings and made her want him in a way she’d never wanted another man.

He suddenly jerked away from her and grasped her shoulders in his strong hands. “Not here. We’re in plain sight.”

She realized that she’d jerked his shirttails loose from where they’d been tucked in at his waist, and she’d also unfastened two of his shirt buttons to reveal a mat of glistening black chest hair and bronze skin.

He grasped her hand. “My place or yours?”

“Mine.”

He broke into a speed walk that had Julie almost running. He looped an arm around her waist to keep her from falling as they hurried across Main to reach the south side. By the time they hotfooted it to the Mystic Creek Menagerie, she was out of breath and wondered what she’d been thinking when she’d suggested her place. The Morning Grind was a coffee and pastry shop with only a bathroom and a storage area in back. Blackie had a full-on residence above his business.

As they dashed through the mall area, Julie tried not to think about how they looked to all the diners on the revolving platform. Turned on. Unbuttoned and untucked. Oh, God. They should have gone to Blackie’s. His shop had been much closer, and there would have been a bed, at least.

Julie opened the door of her shop, pulled Blackie inside, and quickly locked up again. “The storage room,” she told him. “Hurry. People can see through the front windows.”

They ran to the back, and the minute she got the storage room door closed behind them, they were in each other’s arms again. Julie had watched plenty of films where a man and woman were so turned on by each other that they ripped away clothing and went after each other in a frenzy. She’d always thought how silly that was. Real people didn’t destroy each other’s garments. Only with Blackie, it was like that. Their clothing went flying, and the next thing she knew, they were lying on the bank of boxes that held all the different coffees she kept on hand.