days. I can't very well do it while I'm unloading suitcases and the girls are watching. It wouldn't be the least bit romantic."
"I wouldn't have thought you were the romantic type."
"Dreamers are always romantic, and I've been a dreamer since I was ten."
"I thought you were a schemer."
"How do you think I managed to make my dreams come true?"
"I need to talk to the girls, see how they feel about what happened over the weekend."
"The girls are spending the night with their families. Cynthia is staying over with Leigh. You have nothing to do all evening but have dinner with me and see me off at the airport."
"I didn't know I was seeing you off at the airport."
"That'll give us plenty of time to kiss in the limousine."
He had to be teasing her. "This may be your idea of a joke, but - "
"What do you mean?"
"This abrupt change, talking about kissing me."
"No man in his right mind jokes about kissing a beautiful woman. Either he means what he says, or he's a fool. I happen to find you extremely attractive. It's been damned hard to keep my hands off you all weekend. Hell, I would give my right arm to crawl into bed with you right now, and I haven't said that to any woman since Erin died."
Kathryn was in a state of shock. She knew Ron liked her. She liked him, but she hadn't taken her feelings seriously because she knew the barriers between them were too high, too strong.
At least that's what she'd thought until now. She couldn't believe she was reacting like this, but she couldn't deny it any more than she could stop it. She was excited about kissing Ron Egan - his remark about misbehaving in the moonlight made that particularly easy to visualize - but it was his comment about getting into bed with her that had caused her limbs to tremble.
Or should she say shake with desire.
Surely this couldn't be happening to her. She wasn't a girl anymore. She wasn't so inexperienced with men that the mere thought of physical intimacy caused her to become a quivering mass of nerves. Yet that's exactly how she was feeling. And why should Ron be the one man to cause her to feel this kind of excitement? She had been prepared to dislike him from the moment she saw him. She had disliked him when he forced his way into her house. What had happened to cause her feelings to change so dramatically?
"I didn't mean to offend you," Ron said.
"Why did you think you had?"
"Your silence. That's a weapon a lot of women use when a man has done something wrong."
"I'm not silent because I'm offended. I'm silent because I wasn't prepared for what you said. I had no idea your feelings were so strong."
"You're probably upset because I was so blunt."
"No. I - "
"I know I'm too direct. I never learned how to say things to please a woman. I've spent most of my life studying men - business men - trying to take their minds apart, to know exactly how they think and why. I never did that with women. Erin and I understood each other from the start. After she died, I forgot what little I knew. Since then I haven't been interested enough in any woman to learn how to please her. At least not the way I'm interested in pleasing you."
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what way was that. Fortunately, Ron continued.
"I never can think of romantic things to say. I just come right out and say what I want. And I want you."
She didn't think anything he could have said, no matter how romantically phrased, could have affected her any more strongly than that bald statement. There was no pretense, no attempt to disguise or blunt the power of his words. He had laid it right out there without any hesitation, without any equivocation.
"Have I frightened you?"
"No, but you have surprised me."
"Why? I haven't attempted to hide that I'm strongly attracted to you. I was that first night."
"I haven't been thinking about you like that."
"Why not? Don't you find me attractive?"
"You know I do. I'm sure every woman you've ever met has felt the same way."
"I'm not interested in every woman. I'm interested in you." He turned toward her for so long she had to stop herself from telling him to watch the road.
"I like you and find you attractive, but the purpose of