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“You don’t?”

“No. Because you have your own sterling reputation to protect. Everyone knows that Dudley Doright would never ravish a woman in a public restaurant.”

“Maybe Sweet Nell never tempted him the way you are me.” He tossed back his wine. “How hungry are you?”

“Not very. Not now.”

“How does ordering something up from room service later sound? Much, much later.”

“It sounds glorious.” She took the snowy damask napkin from her lap, placed it on the table, and stood up.

On his feet in a flash, Jack tossed some bills onto the table, placed his hand on her back in a proprietary way, and led her out of the restaurant.

“Have I thanked you for buying that dress?” he asked as the elevator doors closed behind them.

It was the flowered one she’d been trying on at The Dancing Deer when he’d brought his daughter to the store in order to exchange underwear. The one she’d sworn she was not going to buy. But had, with him in mind.

“Yes. But not in the last twenty minutes.” Dizzy with an appetite that had nothing to do with any need for French food, Raine twined her arms around his neck and leaned against his hard body.

“Then I’ve definitely been remiss.” When he lowered his mouth to within a breath from hers, Raine held on tighter, bracing herself for his kiss. But instead he began nibbling at her neck. “But don’t worry, sweetheart. I have every intention of making it up to you.”

The woman in her was turning weak and woozy. The lawyer couldn’t resist a challenge. “I suppose I’ll just have to take a wait-and-see attitude on that.” Her voice, which had started out courtroom cool, skimmed up the scale when he nipped her ear.

“Lord, I never would have guessed that I’d find contrariness in a female such a turn-on.” He switched targets and gave her chin a teasing nip. “As for waiting, now that you bring it up, it sounds like a pretty good idea. After all, I’ve already proven I can make you scream.” His hand slipped between them and cupped her breast. “Perhaps this time I’ll see if I can make you beg.”

“I could have you on your knees.” Her voice was half moan, half laugh.

“In a heartbeat.” When his thumb brushed against a nipple, Raine heard the rasp of roughened skin against scarlet silk. “Especially since that was already in the game plan.”

He released her breast to capture her chin between his fingers, holding her gaze to his. His eyes burned in his rugged face like two hot coals; a nerve jumped in his cheek. Raine had never seen him looking so dangerous. So uncivilized.

A need rose up inside her—so huge, so powerful, that it took her breath away. She drew in a deep gulp of air, and then his mouth was on hers, his kiss hot and greedy and wonderful. The thought that they were in a public elevator briefly flashed through her mind, but then he lifted her off her feet and pulled her even tighter against him and caution spun away. He was a hot, fully aroused male and dear heavens, how she wanted him.

“I need you.” Teeth scraped as she gasped the admission out. “I’ve never needed any one like I need you.”

His rough laugh vibrated against her lips as the elevator dinged. “Believe me, darlin’, I know the feeling.”

Behaving as if carrying women through hotels was a common occurrence, Jack nodded to the elderly couple dressed in formal wear who’d been waiting for the elevator. “Good evening,” he said.

“Oh, God,” Raine giggled as he strode down the hallway toward their room. That was another thing that had changed. She
never
giggled. “I think we shocked them.”

“If that’s all it takes, then it’s a good thing they’re not going to witness the rest of the night.” He deftly managed to unlock the door with the key card while still holding her in his arms.

After carrying her over the threshold, he lowered her to the floor. Her high heels sank into the plush carpeting. He shrugged off his suit jacket and tossed it onto a nearby chair, then backed a few feet away.

“Don’t move,” he murmured huskily. “I just want to look at you.” When he silently twirled a finger, Raine turned. After she’d gone full circle and faced him again, the heat in Jack’s dark eyes made her a little wobbly in the impossibly impractical and outrageously sexy and dangerously spindly hibiscus red high heels Savannah had pressed on her before she’d left the house.

“That really is one dynamite dress,” he said finally. “Too bad you’re not going to get to wear it all that long.” He drew her back into his arms. The zipper slid down, exposing her back to the air.

“Are you cold?” he asked when she shivered.

“No.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Actually, I think I’m burning up.”

His answering laugh skimmed beneath her heated flesh, stimulating nerve endings in erogenous zones she’d never known she possessed until she’d made love with Jack. “The trick,” he said, as he pushed the silk off her shoulders, allowing it to skim down her body, “is not to put the fires out too soon.”

The dress fell to the floor in a pool of crimson silk. Still in the unaccustomed heels, Raine managed to step out of it, relieved when she didn’t destroy the sensual mood by toppling over. The heat in his gaze rose even higher when he viewed the strapless ivory lace teddy and thigh-high stockings, making Raine vastly grateful that she’d surrendered when her mother and sister had insisted on raiding their lingerie drawers.

She watched his Adam’s apple bob viciously as he swallowed. “I see you pulled out the heavy artillery.”

“It’s not often I have an opportunity to have you at a disadvantage.” Feminine instincts kicked in. “I decided I may as well make the most of it.”

Removing his tie didn’t go quite as smoothly as it had in all her fantasies, but Jack didn’t seem to notice her slight clumsiness. She slipped her fingers under the buttons of his shirt and reveled in the warmth of his skin.

“Are you seducing me?”

“Absolutely.” His shirt proved easier than the tie, and Raine loved the way he sucked in his stomach as her fingers skimmed over his flesh. “Is it working?”

When she reached his belt, Jack caught hold of her wrist and pressed her hand against the front of his dress slacks. “What do you think?”

He stirred against her palm, huge and full and ready. The knowledge that she was responsible for such a powerful male response caused another thrill of female power to rush through her.

“I think you’re magnificent,” she murmured as she unfastened his belt buckle. She pulled the belt through the loops, then tossed it aside. It landed on top of his discarded jacket, then slid to the carpeting. Neither Jack nor Raine noticed.

“You’re going to have to take your shoes off,” she instructed as she moved to the button at the top of his dress slacks. “To make this work.”

“Had a lot of practice undressing men, have you?” he asked blandly as he nevertheless toed off the cordovan loafers she was extremely grateful he’d chosen to wear in place of the usual boots.

“Actually, there’s not all that much to it,” Raine responded blithely. “Unlike women’s clothing, there aren’t any hidden fasteners to get caught or delicate lace to tear. Just durable white cotton—”

“You haven’t finished yet. You’d think all those years in the courtroom would have taught you not to leap to judgement.”

“Ah, but a good attorney factors in previous evidence.” Although it was a little tricky, she managed to lower the zipper without causing any dire damage, then began sliding the charcoal gray slacks down his legs. “See? Just as I said. White briefs.”

“You mean
boring
white briefs.”

“You could never be boring.” Her sultry voice was part honey, part smoke.

Expectation pounded hot and heavy in Jack’s blood, and when she pressed her open mouth against the placket of those ordinary Jockey briefs, he bit the inside of his cheek, afraid he’d explode before things even got started.

“Sweet Jesus.” His fingers tangled in her hair, but when he would have pulled her away, she murmured a refusal and tightened her hands around his thighs. She was on her knees, looking up at him, her amber eyes as earnest as he’d ever seen them.

“Every time we’ve made love, you’ve been the one doing all the work.”

“You haven’t exactly been passive, sweetheart.” Jack knew, when he was an old man, looking back on the golden moments of his life, the memory of this woman writhing on the backseat of the Suburban, short, utilitarian nails raking down his back, would remain as crystal clear as it was today.

“I know.” The color he loved to watch bloomed on her cheeks. Then spread across her chest like a fever rash. “But you’ve always been the one to initiate things. Not that I’m complaining,” she said quickly. “I just want you to feel as wonderful and as crazy as I do, when I surrender all my control to you.”

Jack had known, from the beginning, how important control was to Raine. But for the first time, he truly understood the value of the gift she’d given him. How could he give her any less?

He held both hands out to his sides. “I’m all yours.”

That proved to be an understatement as Raine quickly proved herself to be fully in command. Of his body, his senses, and his heart. As they lay on the bed, her hands were never still, fluttering over him with the light teasing touch of butterfly wings. Then, just when he least expected it, they turned stronger, searching out and exploiting hidden centers of passion so intense it skimmed the edge of pain.

His flesh turned hot and damp beneath her roving touch; his muscles tensed as her lips followed the flaming path her hands were burning into him. As his stomach muscles clenched, then quivered, he reached for her, but it felt as if he were caught in a dream; his arms were heavy, his movements, slow. Too slow to catch her as she moved over the mattress, over him.

Their room was situated high above Seattle, allowing privacy even though they hadn’t taken time to close the drapes. Far below, city lights, sparkling like fallen stars, stretched out to the mysterious indigo darkness of Elliot Bay.

Through his dazed senses, Jack realized Raine was quickening the pace, her hands streaking faster, her mouth hotter, and more greedy. His breath clogged in his lungs, smoke clouded his mind. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. There was nothing to do but to feel.

Bathed in silvery moondust that made her flesh gleam like pearls, she was straddling him, rocking against him, causing the last bit of blood to rush from his head to his groin. Desperate for the feel of flesh against flesh, to be deep inside her, he tore the frothy bit of ivory silk and lace away. His hands dug into her waist.

“Now.” His voice was rough with a pent up need bordering on the violent.

Her eyes flashed, her moist lips were parted; her hair was damp, her body, hot. “Now,” she agreed breathlessly.

Raine cried out as he pulled her down onto him at the same time he arched off the mattress, impaling her, claiming her.

She froze, her expression stunned. Jack’s last thought, before she rode them both into the flames, was that the sight of Raine astride him, cast in molten silver by the streaming moonlight, was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

R
aine woke slowly, reluctant to leave the cozy little hut that her dream lover had built from palm fronds at the edge of the sugar white sand. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Jack, sprawled in a wing chair beside the window. He was wearing jeans and a chambray shirt he hadn’t bothered to button. All it took was the sight of that broad chest to assure her that last night’s passion had been neither hallucination nor dream. The warmth in his eyes only reconfirmed that fact.

“How long have you been awake?”

“A while. I ordered breakfast, but you were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Oh.” She glanced over at the clock radio, amazed at the time. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember ever sleeping in so late.”

“You were probably worn out by all the exercise.”

She felt the heat flood into her cheeks again. “Perhaps.”

The friendly sensuality gleaming in his eyes had her wanting to drag him back to bed. Every nerve in her body felt wonderfully alive. She felt wonderfully alive. It was all she could do not to stretch like a lazy cat. Raine couldn’t recall ever feeling so exquisite after a night of hot, unbridled sex. Actually, she couldn’t recall ever experiencing a night of such hot, unbridled sex, but that wasn’t the point.

“I’m not exactly at my best in the morning.”

“If I remember correctly, and I do, the last time we made love was just before dawn. And you were terrific.”

His grin was a wicked slash that had her imagining him as a pirate, standing, legs braced, on the deck of his ship, the Jolly Roger flying overhead in a stiff ocean breeze, cutlass in hand. Dear heavens, she really was crazy. Crazy about him, she admitted.

“I think I’ll take a shower.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He stood up, crossed over to the bed, lifted her from the love-tangled sheets, and carried her into the bathroom, where they spent a very long time driving each other crazy.

Somehow, when he realized that they could be in danger of drowning, Jack managed to get the water turned off and Raine wrapped in a thick terry cloth robe with the gold hotel crown insignia. Since he’d always felt a little silly wearing a bathrobe—the last time had been when he’d been recovering from being shot and the nurse, who’d he’d decided had been Atilla the Hun in a previous life, insisted—he put his jeans and shirt back on.

They were drinking coffee, engaged in the type of morning-after small talk that lovers who have begun to grow comfortable with each other do, when Jack decided that the time had come just to lay his cards on the table.

He stood up, took hold of her hands, brought her to her feet as well, touched his lips to her temple, and felt her heartbeat, a stepped up rhythm that echoed his own. That’s what he wanted—that unity of heart and body. Of mind and soul.

“I love you.”

Jack was not surprised when she stiffened in his arms. Disappointed, but not surprised. “You can’t.”

“Sure I can.” Despite her discomfort, he was determined to forge on. “You may have been a bit of a pain in the butt in the beginning,” he said in a teasing tone designed to calm her nerves, “but you’re certainly not unlovable.”

“It’s too soon.”

“Just because it happened fast doesn’t mean that it isn’t right.”

“Falling in love wasn’t part of the deal.”

“I don’t remember making any deal.”

“Well, perhaps we didn’t state the terms out loud,” Raine allowed. “But it was certainly implied that we were going to have an affair. A brief affair,” she stressed. “Just while I was in Coldwater Cove. I don’t want you to love me.”

“Too bad. And too late.”

Raine pulled away and went over to the window, where she pressed her forehead against the glass and stared out at Elliot Bay. Wishing he possessed the power to read minds, Jack folded his arms and waited. Since a cop had to learn patience or turn in his badge, Jack forced himself to let the silence spin out.

Finally, she turned back toward him. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“Yes. I do. But I’ve got so many thoughts going through my head right now, I can’t sort them all out.”

Jack was about to let her off the hook when the phone rang. Frustrated at the interruption, he scooped up the receiver.

“O’Halloran,” he ground out. “Oh, hi Ida.” He exchanged a look with Raine. “Sure. She’s right here.”

Raine took the receiver he was holding out toward her. “What’s wrong?…Oh, no. Are you certain she’s all right? Of course we’ll take the first ferry back. And give her my love.”

After exchanging goodbyes, she hung up.

“Lilith will be impossible to live with now,” she said with a faint smile. “I know she’ll insist she predicted this with those damn tarot cards.”

“Maybe she did. How is the kid?”

“Fine. She’s only a couple centimeters dilated, so Ida says we have plenty of time to get there.”

He pulled the schedule out of the front pocket of his jeans. “Looks as if we’ve got a couple hours to kill before the ferry to Coldwater Cove leaves. You know what you said that first time? About fast being okay?”

“I wasn’t thinking very clearly at the time, but the words do ring a bell.”

“So, how serious were you?”

Momentarily putting aside all concerns about the future, Raine smiled, with her lips and with her eyes. “Fast sounds terrific.”

As they packed to leave Seattle after making love one last time, neither Jack nor Raine spoke of his earlier declaration. Finally, standing on the deck of the ferry on their way home, Raine broke the silence.

“What would happen,” she asked cautiously, “if, just hypothetically speaking, I were to say I loved you?”

“Why don’t you try it?” he suggested mildly. “And see what happens.”

When she didn’t answer, he sighed. “You, of all people should know that life doesn’t come with gold-plated guarantees, Harvard. Every time you go into a courtroom, you don’t really have any idea how things are going to turn out. You might win. Or you might lose. Life’s a gamble, darlin’. Even getting out of bed in the morning is taking a risk.”

“That’s a very neat analogy. But there’s one thing wrong with it. When I go into a courtroom, I have
some
power over my own destiny. My client’s destiny. I’m a good lawyer—”

“I never doubted that for a minute.”

“Thank you. But my point is that I know how to play the legal game. I know the rules.”

When her obvious vulnerability brought out his protective side, Jack was forced to wonder if a modern man of the ’90s should even want the woman he loved, a woman more than capable of slaying her own dragons, to need him.
Hell yes
, he decided.

“After Peg died, I drove my family nuts because I kept turning down their efforts to set me up,” he said quietly. “Because I didn’t believe I’d ever be lucky enough to find another woman I could love with all my heart. Like I do you. A woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Like I do you.”

She drew in a deep, hitching breath. “I don’t have any experience with love, Jack. I’m afraid of doing something wrong. Something that will ruin it.”

Knowing how much that admission cost her only made Jack love her more. “It isn’t that easy to screw up if it’s meant to be. And this is.”

A gust of wind coming off the water blew her hair across her cheek. Her hand trembled as she brushed it away. “Let’s also say, hypothetically speaking again, that we got married. Where would we live?”

“Is that a prerequisite to you falling in love with me?”

“No. Of course not. I just like to know where I’m going.”

“Sometimes it’s not the destination, but the journey.”

“You sound just like Lilith.” she complained, the frown now carving canyons into her forehead. “You have to understand…. I’m not that way. I don’t
think
that way.” Her eyes glistened with suspicious moisture. “I’ve never been a person to trust fate or believe in destiny, or to just go with the flow. I need to know where I’m going to be next week. Next year. Five years from now.”

“I can understand that.” Given her unstable childhood, Jack could, indeed, understand her need for guideposts. But that didn’t mean he was willing to stand by and let her fear of the unknown keep them apart.

“If there’s one thing that Peg’s death taught me it’s that we never really know what’s around the corner. We thought we had our life all figured out, too. I was going to make detective, which would get me off the streets, because she worried about me being killed. And, to tell the truth, so did I. Just a little.

“We never talked about it, but I think that in the back of both our minds, we figured I’d be the one to go first. Meanwhile, since she couldn’t have children, we were planning to adopt more kids—at least one, maybe two. But then we discovered the hard way that the old cliché about God laughing when you make plans is all too true.”

She bit her lip and turned away again, staring out over the water that the setting sun was turning a brilliant copper and gold. Jack waited.

“Everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I am, is tied up with being a lawyer,” she said in a quiet voice that was barely audible over the hum of the ferry’s engines.

“If that were true, it’d be the most pitiful thing I’ve ever heard. But as good an attorney as you are, you’re more than that, Raine. A great deal more.”

“Would you move to New York?”

“Would you ask me to?”

“No.” She turned back toward him and shook her head. “I can’t imagine you being happy in New York. Though Harriet would probably be thrilled,” she added on an afterthought.

“Who’s Harriet?”

“A woman in our office. She’s got a thing for alpha males.”

“And you consider me an alpha male?”

“Absolutely.” A faint smile shone through the moisture brimming in her eyes. Her lovely, distressed eyes.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Jack qualified, wanting to see her smile again.

“No. That’s the absolute truth.”

In the distance, Jack could begin to make out Coldwater Cove’s green hills and decided they’d spent enough precious time on hypothetical conversations.

“I sure don’t have all the answers, Raine. Hell, I don’t even know all the questions. But I do know we shouldn’t be wasting whatever time we have left together. So, why don’t you come over here?”

She hesitated only a moment. Then went into his arms.

By the time Raine arrived at the hospital, Gwen had been settled into bed in the birthing room, a fetal monitor strapped about her belly, an IV of saline solution placed in the back of her hand, and was well into labor.

Having always felt the need for control, Raine hated feeling so helpless as she took her turn comforting Gwen. What if something went wrong? Granted, contrary to what could have happened if Ida hadn’t taken her home from the ferry so many months ago, the teenager was strong and healthy. And, between Ida and the doctor, she’d had excellent prenatal care.

Still, even in modern times things could go wrong. Terrible, frightening things that hovered in Raine’s mind like monsters in a night closet. In an odd twist of roles, she was a nervous wreck, while Lilith remained absolutely calm, soothing the mother-to-be with encouraging words and gentle hands. Yet more proof, Raine thought, that her formerly orderly world had turned upside down.

Since they didn’t want to overwhelm Gwen, the family took turns sitting with her throughout the labor. Savannah had gone to call the Stevensons again, to update them on the situation, when Gwen went into transition. As she moistened the teenagers chapped lips with pieces of ice, and allowed fingernails to dig into the back of her hand, instead of feeling queasy, as she feared she might, Raine found herself thinking of Jack, who’d been patiently waiting, taking her downstairs to the cafeteria for coffee breaks and offering the reassurance she’d come to expect from him.

She thought about how her life had changed in such a short time, thought about how much more little things—like the sunshine glistening on a field of wildflowers, a mother’s touch, a little girl’s carefree laughter, and a man’s warm smile—had come to mean to her. And most of all, she imagined herself in Gwen’s place, carrying Jack’s child. Giving birth to a brother or sister for Amy. Remarkably, rather than terrifying her, the fantasy was eminently appealing.

“The baby’s crowning, Gwen.” Ida’s voice broke into Raine’s thoughts. Although Ida wasn’t officially Gwen’s obstetrician, nothing could have kept her from being with the at-risk teenager she’d rescued from the streets.

“Just a little bit more, Gwen,” the doctor said encouragingly. “A couple more really strong pushes should do it.”

Panting harshly in a way that had Raine worrying she was on the verge of hyperventilating, Gwen pushed again. As the infant girl slid from Gwen’s womb into the world, Raine suddenly knew what it was to witness a miracle. When the expected cry didn’t come, she understood true terror.

The nurse quickly, deftly, suctioned the baby’s nose and mouth, and an instant later the screech that escaped the rosebud lips shattered the hushed, expectant stillness. The baby was placed on Gwen’s stomach while the doctor clamped the umbilical cord.