Absolutely, Positively

enough to know that she was quite capable of occupying herself with her own thoughts. But the remote expression on her face now made him uneasy. There was an important issue he wanted settled before they reached Seattle.

    “Molly?”

    “Hmm?”

    Harry flexed his hands on the wheel. He had to handle this carefully. “This incident today settles one matter. You're definitely going to stay with me until we get this thing sorted out.”

    She looked slightly startled. “How did you know that I was thinking about moving back into my own house?”

    “Because I can read your mind,” he shot back, irritated by her stubbornness.

    “Read my mind?” She flashed him one of her brilliant, laughing smiles. “Ah, yes, the infamous Trevelyan Second Sight.”

    “It was a joke, Molly.”

    “I know.” Her smile vanished. She touched his arm briefly. “I was just teasing you.”

    He opted for the logical, well-reasoned approach. It was what he did best. “You would feel safer, and I would worry a whole lot less, if you stayed with me until I've located Kendall.”

    “That could take a while. And what happens if you can't find him? What if he's just vanished?”

    The implications of the question took Harry's breath away. It ignited a fantasy that had been smoldering deep inside him. What if Molly came to live with him for good?

    He would eventually find Kendall, of course. The man was too sloppy and too disorganized to disappear without a trace. Harry would locate him and take steps to make certain that he never bothered Molly again.

    But what if Molly did not move out?

    “Would that be a problem?” he asked softly.

    She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and focused intently on the road. “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted by the blue Ford, I can't stay with you indefinitely.”

    “Why not?”

    “You have to ask me that? Harry, at the beginning of our relationship, you're the one who took great pains to point out to me just how many things we donot have in common.”

    “You added a couple of things to the list,” he reminded her. “Something about tomatoes. Look, maybe we both overestimated the number of areas of disagreement. We seem to be able to deal with the ones that do arise.”

    She turned her head quickly to look at him. Harry could feel the intense curiosity and the sensual awareness emanating from her. He struggled to find the logical, reasoned words that would convince her that moving in with him for good was the right decision. But his excellent brain failed him in his hour of need. He could not pressure her. He could only ask.

    Ask. Plead. Hope. That was not his way. He knew better than to risk asking others for what he needed. What the hell was happening to him?

    A shock of recognition went through him. What he was experiencing now as he waited for Molly's answer was all too familiar. It was akin to what he had felt the other night when he had been caught up in the vortex of intense concentration and she had come to him dressed in bridal white. He was vulnerable in a way he did not understand. It was a terrifying sensation.

    “Staying with you for a few days is one thing,” Molly said gently. “Staying indefinitely means we're living together.”

    Yes, it does, he thought.You'd be in my bed every night. You'd be sitting across from me at the breakfast table every morning .

    “Well…”

    “Just until we find Wharton Kendall and deal with him,” he said.

    She tensed. Then she gave him another brief, searching glance. “All right. If you're sure this is what you want.”

    It's what I need, he thought, still numbed by the shock of realization. “It's the only logical way to go,” he said aloud.

    “Right. Logical.”

    The following morning Harry got off the elevator on the thirty-first floor of the downtown high-rise office tower. The massive, gleaming brass letters on the wall across from the bank of elevators spelled out the name of the company that had made the Strattons a family of movers and shakers in Seattle.

    STRATTON PROPERTIES, INC.

    COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

    AND PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT

    Harry turned to the right and went down the plushly carpeted corridor to the reception desk. An attractive, neatly suited woman in her twenties looked up with a smile of immediate recognition. Harry did not appear in the offices of Stratton Properties very often, but the staff knew him on sight. His visits tended to be memorable.

    “Good morning, Mr.