Since his new housekeeper, Mrs. Carraway, had left for the day, Mitch answered the door himself. He knew the visitor would be Shay, and yet he felt surprised at the sight of her, not only surprised, but jarred.

She was wearing gray slacks and a V-necked sweater to match. Her makeup was carefully understated and her hair was done up, instead of falling gracefully around her shoulders as it usually did, and Mitch suppressed a smile. Obviously she had made every effort to look prim, but the effect was exactly the opposite: she had achieved a sexy vulnerability that made him want her all the more.

For several moments, Mitch just stood there, staring at her like a fool. The cymballike clap of thunder roused him, however, and he remembered his manners and moved back from the doorway. “Come in.”

Shay stepped into the house with a timid sort of bravado that touched Mitch deeply. Were her memories of the place sad ones, or were they happy? He wanted to know that and so much more, but getting close to this woman was a process that required a delicate touch; she was like some wild, beautiful, rarely seen creature of the forests, ready to flee at the slightest threat.

“Your things haven’t arrived,” she said, her eyes sweeping the massive empty foyer swiftly, as though in an effort not to see too much.

Gently, Mitch took her elbow in his hand, still fearing that she would bolt like a unicorn sensing a trap. “Actually,” he answered in a tone he hoped sounded casual, “some of them have. All the most impractical things, anyway: pots and pans but no plates, sheets and pillows but no bed…”

He instantly regretted mentioning the bed.

Shay only smiled. She was relaxing, if only slightly.

They ate in the library, picnic-style, before a snapping, summer-storm fire, their paper plates balanced on their laps, their wine contained in supermarket glasses. For all that, there was an ambiance of elegance to the scenario, and Mitch knew that it emanated from the woman who sat facing him. What a mystery she was, what a tangle of vulnerability and strength, softness and fire, humor and tragedy.

Mitch felt his own veneer of sophistication, something he had long considered immutable, dissolving away. His reactions to that were ambivalent, of course; he was a man who controlled situations—at times his life had depended on that control—but now, in the presence of this woman, he was strangely powerless. The surprising thing was that he was comfortable with that.

When the meal was over he disposed of the plates and the plastic wineglasses and returned to the library to find Shay standing in the center of the room, studying every bookcase, every stone in the fireplace.

“Were you happy here?” he asked, without intending to speak at all.

She started and then turned slowly to face him. “Yes,” she said.

The ache in Shay’s wide hazel eyes came to settle somewhere in the middle of Mitch’s chest. “Feel free to explore,” he said after a rather long silence.