“Okay, seriously. No, I haven’t.” She glared at him. “More? Hmm. I’ve been close once. Twice. No, just once, that one didn’t count. And the other I guess she just wasn’t my kind of woman.”

One slender eyebrow arched with exaggerated curiosity. “And what, pray tell, is your kind of woman?”

He grinned mischievously. She couldn’t tell whether it was a fleeting memory or he saw through her paper-thin questioning. “That’s a hard one,” he sighed. “I suppose the usual stuff; you know, bright, beautiful, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound . . .”

“You don’t want much.”

He reached out, took her face in his hand, and turned it toward him, and she could see from the look in his eyes that he wasn’t kidding anymore. The sincerity shone through. “I’d settle for someone I could talk to,” he told her. She started to laugh and make some flippant remark about his tight-lipped manner, and how she must not be the one because you can’t listen when there aren’t any words, no matter how willing you are. But looking into those dark, piercing eyes, she realized it wasn’t what he’d told her already. It was what he was going to tell her. About his family, his brother. About Vietnam. About himself.

He pulled her closer then and kissed her, and she was surprised. Not by the kiss—she’d been hoping for that and planning on it, and at that moment would have initiated it herself had he not moved when he did. But it was the kind of kiss that caught her off guard. In the years since Gordon’s death she had dated and become used to passionate, kneading, probing embraces with little behind them beyond the physical need of the moment. That was how Stiles had struck her at first; rugged and appealing, good for a few nights, and then he’d be on his way again and out of her life. But this was entirely different. His kiss barely brushed her lips, but the sensations from it, the tenderness, sent out shock waves she hadn’t felt since . . . she’d never felt, period.

He drew back slowly, still touching her cheek. His smile was hesitant as he searched her face for a response. It wasn’t long in coming. This time she went to him, straddling his lap in the shallow swing and wrapping her arms about his neck. “I’m listening,” she whispered.

A door banged inside. Bare feet sounded on the stairs, louder than an entire squad of combat boots as they slapped against the hardwood and then the kitchen tile. “Mom! Where’s the cereal?”