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of yours. We were good together, Sage. I missed you when I left, and every time I received an email or a text or a call from you, I got a little charge. You must have enjoyed it, too, or you wouldn’t have played the game. Am I wrong about that?”

Begrudgingly she said, “No.”

“So then, why the panic? Why the cold shoulder?”

Rather than respond to his questions, she asked one of her own. “What do you want from me, Rafferty? Did you come here expecting to pick up where we left off? Did you think I’ve been pining away for you and all you’d have to do is say ‘Honey, I’m home’ and I’d throw myself into your arms and then drag you back into my bed?”

Well, a guy can always hope. “No, not at all. We had a fling. It was great, but that’s not what I want with you now.”

“Oh?”

Was that hope he heard in her voice? Wow. This woman was doing a number on his ego. Colt took a moment to debate his options. He could sound the retreat and regroup. That might be the most intelligent way to go about this. But in the past few weeks, he had adopted a more go-for-broke, lay-your-cards-on-the-table attitude, and so far it was working for him. He saw no reason to change that now. “No, I’m not looking for any more flings. I want a relationship. Long term. I’m tired of flings.”

“Define relationship,” she said, a bit of a wild look in her eyes.

“I’m thirty-four years old, Sage. I’m ready for a home of my own complete with all that entails—a wife, children, a yard for the dogs.”

With a horrified gasp, she said, “You are not asking me to marry you!”

Inwardly Colt sighed. “No. We don’t know each other well enough for that yet.”

“Exactly!”

“But I want to know you that well, Sage. You are a fascinating woman and you’ve intrigued me from the very first. I want to know everything about you. I think I might be falling in love with you.”

“Oh, God.” She dropped Snowdrop’s leash, put her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her hands. “This is a catastrophe.”

Colt’s mouth twisted in a grim smile. This was the closest he’d come in years to saying the L-word to a woman and she called it a catastrophe. Pretty humbling moment, he had to admit.

He took a seat beside her on the bench. Snowdrop sat looking at them both, tilting her head from left to right then back to left again, wordlessly asking, What is wrong with you people?

“Careful there, Sage. You’ll give me a big head from all the praise.”

“Stop it. I am not responsible for your feelings. If I was the least little part of your decision to make this move, then you should have been smart enough to talk to me about it before you jumped off and did it. You would think a man with a Ph.D. would be smarter than that.”

“Okay, then. Just for the grins, what would you have said if I told you that I thought you might be the one for me and I wanted time with you to explore the possibility?”

“I’d have told you don’t waste your time. I’m not available, Colt.”

“Why? Are you married to someone else? Involved with someone else? In love with someone else?”

“No, but—”

“So there is nothing tangible standing in my way,” he interrupted.

“There’s me,” she said, her tone just a shade softer. “I can’t have a relationship with you. I won’t have a relationship with you.”

“I’ll change your mind.”

“You are so infuriating.”

“I’m determined. It may turn out that I’m wrong, that you are not the woman I’m meant to love, to live with, to make a home and family with. But I do know that if I don’t give this, give us, the old college try, I’ll regret it the rest of my life. Sorry, Sage, but I’m not taking no for an answer on this one.”

“You have to. You can’t force me to fall in love with you. You can’t even force me to date you. This isn’t Russia, Danny.”

Colt looked down at Snowdrop. “What man can resist a woman who quotes Caddyshack during an argument?”

“Neither is it medieval England,” Sage added.

That distracted Colt for a moment as he once again pictured her as the subject of one of Edmund Blair Leighton’s paintings, only this time he pictured her naked. “Okay, you lost me on that one. How did medieval England

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