“You are,” he said quietly, “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She stared, speechless, at the door he closed behind him.

***

He didn’t sleep. As he lay in the dark he could only think of her. He switched on the television and watched the figures move like ghosts over the screen. They were, he realized, more real than he.

She hadn’t believed him. There was little surprise in that. But she had tried to comfort him. He wondered if she knew how unique she was, in this age or any other. A woman who was strong enough to live on her own yet fragile enough to tremble in a man’s arms. His arms.

He wanted her. In the pearly-gray light of early dawn he wanted her almost more than he could stand. Just to hold her would be enough. To lie beside her with her head settled on his shoulder. In silence. He could think of no other woman he would be content to spend hours of silence with. If he had a choice . . .

But he had no choice.

He was lying across the bed fully dressed. Now he rose. He had nothing to take with him, and nothing to leave behind. Moving quietly downstairs, he slipped out of the house.

The Land Rover was parked near the porch steps, where she had left it the night she’d brought him home. He crossed to it, casting a final glance at Libby’s window. He hated to leave her stranded. Later he’d break into a radio frequency and broadcast her location. Someone would come for her.

She’d be mad. The idea made him smile a little as he climbed into the driver’s seat. She would curse him, hate him. And she wouldn’t forget him.

Cal took a moment to be charmed by the old-fashioned instruments and controls. The birds were singing as he tested the steering wheel and pumped the gas pedal curiously.

There was a lever between the seats marked with numbers running from one to four in an H pattern. Gears clanked when he shoved the lever forward. Confident he had the skill to operate such a simple vehicle, he turned knobs. When he got no response he jiggled the gearshift while depressing the floor pedals. Through trial and error, he found the clutch and shifted smoothly into first gear.

A beginning, he decided, and wondered where the hell the designer had put the ignition.

“You’re going to have a hard time starting it without this.” Libby stood on the porch, one hand in a fist on her hip, the other aloft, with the ignition key dangling from her fingers.

She was mad, all right, Cal thought. But he didn’t feel like smiling. “I was just . . . thinking about taking a ride.”

“Were you?” She tugged her hastily donned sweater farther over her hips before she walked down the steps. “It’s your bad luck I didn’t leave the keys in the car.”

So it took a key. He should have known. “Did I wake you?”