“Maybe you can, but we’re not putting it to the test right now. I’m staying.”

She gave him a long stare. The truth was, she didn’t want to be alone. The truth was, she wanted him, perhaps too much for her own good. Yet he was the one insisting, she thought as her temper began to cool. Since he was insisting, perhaps he cared more than he was willing to admit. Maybe it was time she took a gamble on that.

“If I let you stay …” she began.

“I am staying.”

“If I let you stay,” she repeated coolly, “you have to cook dinner tonight.”

He lifted a brow, and the grip on her arms relaxed slightly. “After sampling your cooking, you won’t get any argument.”

Refusing to be insulted, she nodded. “Fine. I’ll get my shoes.”

“Later.” Before she knew what he was up to, they were tumbling back onto the sofa. “We’ve got all day.”

Chapter Ten

Maggie considered it ironic that she’d just begun to become accustomed to living alone and she was no longer living alone. Cliff made the transition unobtrusively. No fuss, no bother. A brisk, rather subtle sense of organization seemed to be a part of his makeup. She’d always respected organized people—from a safe distance.

He left early each morning, long before she considered it decent for a person to be out of his bed. He was quiet and efficient and never woke her. Occasionally, when she groped her way downstairs later in the morning, she’d find a scrawled note next to the coffeepot.

“Phone was off the hook again,” it might say. Or “Milk’s low. I’ll pick some up.”

Not exactly love letters, Maggie thought wryly. A man like Cliff wouldn’t put his feelings down on paper the way she was compelled to. It was just one more area of opposition between them.

In any case, Maggie wasn’t certain Cliff had any feelings about her other than impatience and an occasional bout of intolerance. Though there were times she suspected she touched some of his softer edges, he didn’t act much like a lover. He brought her no flowers, but she remembered he’d planted a willow tree. He gave her no smooth, clever phrases, but she remembered the look she’d sometimes catch in his eyes. He wasn’t a poet, he wasn’t a romantic, but that look, that one long, intense look, said more than most women ever heard.

Perhaps, despite both of them, she was beginning to understand him. The more she understood, the more difficult it became to control a steadily growing love. He wasn’t a man whose emotions could be pushed or channeled. She was a woman who, once her feelings were touched, ran with them in whatever direction they went.