woken from sound slumber and rolled into each other's arms, and instead of sliding back to sleep, had found themselves rolling across the bed again. Where they should have been oil and water, they were fire and kindling. Evie definitely didn't feel cold or lonely anymore.
Or not cold, anyway. With the coming of dawn, the loneliness began to form like ice around her heart. She couldn't remember the first time she had felt its sting. She supposed when she was very little she had just assumed that Nanny was her mother and never questioned her lack of father. It was only later that she questioned why Nanny wasn't called Mama and asked why she didn't have a father like the other girls had. Nanny hadn't told the whole truth, but she'd never lied.
But Evie did. When she was fourteen, she had told her friends that her father was a railroad baron who spent all his time riding the rails, seeing that his trains ran properly. She had her mother dying of some romantic illness that made him incapable of ever loving again.
By the time she was eighteen, she had become a little more subtle. Her wealth was obvious, so she made Nanny into her maiden aunt and invented a story of her wealthy father's enemies wanting to harm him through her, so he had to hide her. The romantic illness served just as well this time around.
But Nanny never lied, so all the neighbors knew Evie and Daniel were "adopted." That was a polite euphemism for saying they had no parents who would claim them, and Nanny was being paid to do so. There weren't many reasons why parents didn't claim their children. Everyone could see why Daniel's parents hadn't wanted him. He was a cripple, lame for life, and when he was born, it was thought he would never walk upright. Evie had only been two years old when they'd brought Daniel to Nanny's house. She didn't remember his parents, but she remembered his infant screams. He had screamed night and day for months.
Although Evie had always kept the hidden dream that her parents would claim her someday, the realization that they were paying Nanny to keep her away had shattered that image. Lying there wrapped in Tyler's arms, Evie tried to imagine how to tell her husband that even her parents didn't want her. It was much easier to say they were dead.
But that wouldn't explain why she was here.
Rain clattered against the roof again. The gray light of dawn was erasing the darkness. Evie wondered if she had the courage to turn over and really look at her husband. She knew what he felt like. His hand on her breast was long-fingered, not callused, and stronger than she had ever imagined. The broad chest pressed against her back had a light mat of hair that tickled and made he want to touch him there. The man part of him made her curious, but she was uncertain as to whether she wished to explore that curiosity any further.
The hand on her breast began to move, the thumb scraping lightly up the side while her traitorous nipple hardened and surged against his palm. Evie could feel Tyler's warm length all down her back and wrapped around her legs. He was very definitely awake. Defiantly, she turned on her back to look at him.
The rain pounded overhead as she studied the man hovering over her. In the shadows of dawn, she could discern the rough stubble of beard on his lean jaw, the tousled curl of golden hair as it fell over his face, and the faint lines drawn by years of pain along the sides of his mouth. He wasn't as shining handsome as he could be when he put on his happy face, but he was more real this way, more man than she was prepared to encounter.
"Did you know you have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life?" Tyler murmured, looking down at her as she stared up at him.
The compliment startled her. She had received enough flattery in her lifetime to start a book of poetry, but none quite like this. Tyler had already had what he wanted of her, and still he took the time to say something nice. That ought to count for something. She was ready to build a life out of any small thing he handed her.
"Did you know you have the most silver tongue of any man