Saturday morning, Maggie decided she could lie there, half dozing, until it was Saturday afternoon. She could feel the weight of Cliff’s arm across her waist, his warm breath fluttering over her cheek. Without opening her eyes, she snuggled closer, wallowing in lazy contentment.

If she’d been certain he could be so gentle, she’d have fallen in love with him willingly. But how satisfying it was to have discovered it after her heart had already been lost. He had such emotion in him. Perhaps he was cautious with it, but she could love him much more comfortably knowing it was there and that now and again, unexpectedly, it would reach out to her.

No, it wasn’t flowery phrases she wanted, but his stability. She didn’t need smooth charm. When a woman found a man who was capable of such passion and such tenderness, she’d be a fool to want to change him in any way. Maggie Fitzgerald, she thought with a little satisfied smile, was no fool.

“What’re you smiling at?”

Opening her eyes, Maggie looked directly into Cliff’s. Because his were alert and direct, she knew he’d been awake for some time. She tried to blink away the mists and smiled again. “It feels good,” she murmured, snuggling even closer. “You feel good.”

He ran a hand down her back, over her hip and thigh. Yes, it felt very good. “Soft,” Cliff said quietly. “So soft and smooth.” He wondered how he’d gone so many years without being able to touch her like this, when she was lazy and warm and naked. He felt no tension in her, none of the subtle little signs he’d grown so adept at spotting. The need was very strong in him to keep that tension away for as long as he could. She’d walked unwittingly into a whirlpool, and somehow he was connected with it. If it was only for a day, he’d keep the problems at bay.

He rolled, pressed her down into the mattress so that she laughingly murmured a complaint. “Are you going to cook breakfast?” he demanded.

Maggie pillowed her head on her hands, giving him arrogant look for arrogant look. “You don’t like my cooking.”

“I’ve decided to be tolerant this morning.”

“Have you?” She arched a brow. “How lucky for me.”

“Floppy bacon and sloppy eggs,” he told her before he nuzzled at her neck.

She shifted, enjoying the rough feel of the night’s growth of beard against her skin. “What?”

“I don’t like my bacon too crisp—” he nipped at the pulse in her throat “—or my eggs too set.”

With a sigh, she closed her eyes again. She wanted to bottle this moment, so that she could take it out again whenever she needed to feel content. “I like my bacon so crisp it crumbles, and I don’t like eggs at all.”