“I saw you talking to the D.A. inside. Anything I should know about?”

“He’s just an old school friend.”

“He didn’t look too friendly.”

Caitlin Masters doesn’t miss anything. I wonder what she would do if she knew her story had got me shot at tonight. Probably tear into the story like a bulldog.

“You’re dangerous, aren’t you?”

She laughs softly and pulls a loose thread of linen from the front of her strapless dress. Her shoulders are lean and ghostly white in the shadows, accenting the long, graceful lines of her neck.

“I try to be. You’re sure you won’t reconsider lunch tomorrow? I promise to show a little remorse about the articles.”

Her tone is casual enough, but there is more in it than hunger for a story. Her steady gaze has nothing to do with the words she spoke. Whatever I felt when we touched after the interview yesterday, she felt too. Between us floats a curious longing to feel that shock again, that aliveness. Without preamble she reaches out with her free hand and takes my right, her eyes unwavering. Her hand is cool, but a rush of warmth runs up my arm.

She smiles. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

It’s only her hand, but the intimacy of her touch is undeniable. It’s been so long since I’ve had any physical contact with a woman that it almost paralyzes me. Sarah’s illness made it impossible at the end, and in the months since her death I’ve felt no response at all to the flirtations of the women I’ve met. It’s as though the sexual component of my personality, once dominant, has been wrapped in so many layers of guilt and grief that the prospect of having to work through them with someone new discourages me from even trying. But with one simple gesture Caitlin Masters has cut through all of that.

“I suppose I’m being forward,” she says. “By Southern standards anyway.”

The urge to kiss her is a living thing inside my chest, and with it returns the guilt I felt yesterday, magnified a hundredfold. I close my eyes and squeeze her hand, fighting and savoring the pleasure at the same time. As though bidden by my thoughts, her lips brush mine.