He spit out the toothpaste, splashed water on his face and combed his hair. Emerging from the bathroom, he came over to her and gave her hand a gentle tug until she stood before him. Wrapping his arms around her, he kissed her again. “I’m a much better version of my old self thanks to you, too.”

“Love you,” she whispered as she took a moment to wallow in the overwhelming love she felt for him.

“Love you more.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“We’ll fight about that later. Go to work.”

“See you there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Good, because I never have stage fright when you’re there.”

Grace hid her surprise at hearing something he’d never told her before. Watching him pick up all the guitars and somehow get them through the door, she felt a crushing sense of fear that everything they’d managed to achieve together could be threatened by this unexpected change of plans.

***

Jenny’s day had been dreadfully unproductive thanks to the nagging guilt and shame over her behavior with Alex. Everything she’d attempted to accomplish had been derailed by her lack of attention as much as the blistering heat that was literally sucking the life out of her.

At three o’clock she’d surrendered to the heat-induced exhaustion and gone upstairs to her bedroom to lie down for a while. She’d dozed off and slept fitfully, plagued by odd dreams that had her tossing and turning only to wake up throbbing with unfulfilled desire.

That was when she realized she’d been dreaming about Alex. “Oh God,” she whispered through dry lips. Every cell in her body was on full alert, the way it had been last night when he’d driven her out of her mind with desire so potent she’d been unable to shake off the sex-induced stupor all day.

Glancing at the clock, she gasped at the late hour, then dashed out of bed and ran for the shower with only twenty minutes until Linc Mercier was due to arrive. After a quick and very cold shower intended to cool her body temperature as well as her suddenly ravenous libido, she kept one eye on the driveway watching for Linc and another on the bathroom mirror as she attempted to do something with her hair.

But the heat and humidity had other ideas, and she gave up on trying to tame the curls that had formed around her face in the heat since she was a little girl. Toby had called them her banana curls for some strange reason, she recalled with a pang of nostalgia. She hadn’t thought of that in years.