He took his waffle from the toaster and ate it like a cookie. “Yup. Some junior congressman from Oklahoma. I get invited to all of Aunt Zena’s fund-raisers. She’s decided I need to get married. Not only do I have to contribute to all of her causes, but I have to show up and run the gauntlet of eligible women she’s drummed up for me.”

He sat across from Daisy, slouching back in his chair with his coffee cup resting on his stomach. “This is the part where you are supposed to show some jealousy as you contemplate all those eligible women.”

Daisy smiled at him. “Won’t Aunt Zena be disappointed if you show up with me in tow? What about the sacrificial lambs she’s recruited for this bash?”

“Hell, she’ll be ecstatic. I’ll tell her I’m madly in love with you, that we’ve already made whoopee on the floor and our bodies fit together like a dream, and that you’ve moved into my house. Aunt Zena will be relieved. I think she’s running out of marriage applicants.”

“You wouldn’t dare tell her that!”

“I might.”

She tipped her nose up a little. “Well, then I’m not going with you.”

“Okay, then how about if we tell her we’re engaged?”

“No.”

“You’re not very cooperative,” he said. “This is my big chance to get Aunt Zena off my back.”

“You can tell her we’re friends.”

“Honey, I’m friends with eighty percent of all the unmarried women in Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia.”

“That’s a lot of women.”

“I’ve been to a lot of fund-raisers.”

“Well, it’s friends or nothing.”

He reached forward, took her face in his hands and kissed her. It started out as a playful type of kiss with his eyes open and smiling, but all that changed when their mouths met. He dragged her onto the table, mindless of the coffee cups crashing to the floor, and in an instant his hands were under her shirt.

She gasped in protest, but his mouth covered hers, and objection quickly turned to obsession as desire bit into her.

He came fast and hard, trembling under the intensity of his own passion, wondering at the pinnacle if he would live through it, wondering if a man could survive loving a woman like this.

Still on the kitchen table, they slowly became aware of their surroundings. Coffee and cereal had been flung from one end of the kitchen to the other, dishes lay broken on the floor, chairs had been overturned.

There was the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, and Daisy and Steve looked into each other’s eyes and saw panic.

“Elsie and Kevin,” Daisy whispered.