“Okay. No rush.” He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “Tell me about the one that didn’t count.”

Her thoughts had scattered to the edges of her mind. She couldn’t begin to draw them together while he was looking at her with those tawny eyes. “What?”

“The husband.”

“Oh.” She looked away, concentrated on her breathing.

“What are you doing?”

“Relaxation technique.”

Humor danced back and made him grin at her. “Does it work?”

“Eventually.”

“Cool.” He shifted until they were hip to hip and timed his breathing to hers. “So this guy you were technically married to . . .”

“It was in college, at Harvard. He was a chemistry major.” Eyes shut, she ordered her toes to relax, then her arches, her ankles. “We were barely twenty and just lost our heads for a short time.”

“Eloped.”

“Yes. We didn’t even live together, because we were in different dorms. So it wasn’t really a marriage. It was weeks before we told our families, and then, naturally, there were several difficult scenes.”

“Why?”

“Because . . .” She blinked her eyes open, found the sun dazzling. Something plopped in the water behind her, then there was only the lap of it, kissing the hull. “We weren’t suited, we had no feasible plans. We were too young. The divorce was very quiet and quick and civilized.”

“Did you love him?”

“I was twenty.” Her relaxation level was reaching her shoulders. “Of course I thought I did. Love has little complexity at that age.”

“So spoken from the advanced age of what twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

“Twenty-nine and counting.” She let out a last long breath. Satisfied and steady, she turned to look at him again. “I haven’t thought of Rob in years. He was a very nice boy. I hope he’s happy.”

“And that’s it for you?”

“It has to be.”

He nodded, but found her story strangely sad. “Then I have to say, Dr. Griffin, that using your own scale, you don’t take relationships seriously.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then wisely, shut it again. Casually, she picked up the wine bottle and topped off both glasses. “You may be right. I’ll have to give that some thought.”

SEVEN

SETH DIDN’T MIND running herd on Aubrey. She was kind of his niece now that Ethan and Grace were married. Being an uncle made him feel adult and responsible. Besides, all she really wanted to do was race around the yard. Every time he threw a ball or a stick for one of the dogs, she went into gales of laughter. A guy couldn’t help but get a kick out of it.

She was pretty cute, too, with her curly gold hair and her big green eyes that looked amazed at everything he did. Spending an hour or two on a Sunday entertaining her wasn’t a bad deal.

He hadn’t forgotten where he had been a year ago. There’d been no big backyard that fell off into the water, no woods to explore, no dogs to wrestle with, no little girl who looked at him like he was Fox Mulder, all the Power Rangers and Superman rolled into one.