From the Heart

address.”
    “I know your address.” He watched her eyes fly back to his, wary and suspicious. Thorpe smiled. “I’m a reporter, Liv; I deal in information.” He slid from the booth. “I’ll walk you out.”
    Taking her arm, he led her to the door. Liv kept silent. She wasn’t certain if she had won a point or taken two steps backward. In any case, she thought it better than standing still.
    “You don’t have to come out,” she began, as he steered her toward the parking lot. “You haven’t got your coat.”
    “Worried about me?”
    “Not in the least.” Annoyed, she reached for her keys.
    “Have we finished conducting business for the evening?” he asked her as she stuck the key in the door lock.
    “Yes.”
    “Completely?”
    “Completely.”
    “Good.”
    He turned her to face him, kept his hands firmly on her shoulders, and took her mouth with his. Liv was too stunned to protest. She hadn’t been prepared for that kind of move from Thorpe. She hadn’t expected that hard, uncompromising mouth to be soft and gentle. He drew her closer, and she was pressed against him.
    His body was hard, firm and arousing. Her blood began to heat. Liv lifted her hands, not certain whether she would draw him closer or push him away. She ended by curling her fingers into the material of his shirt.
    Thorpe made no attempt to deepen the kiss or seek quick intimacy. He could sense her struggle against responding, and knew he would simply wait her out. He blocked out his own needs and concentrated on hers.
    Slowly, her lips softened, yielded. She could feel the world slip out of focus, as if a new lens had been placed on a camera and hadn’t yet been adjusted. “No,” she murmured against his mouth, and uncurled her hands to push him away. “No.”
    When he released her, Liv leaned back against the car. Feelings she had thought completely dead had begun to flicker into life. She didn’t want them, didn’t want Thorpe to be the man to revitalize them. She stared at him while he watched the emotion, the vulnerability, run over her face. He felt something more complex than desire move through him.
    “That—” Liv swallowed and tried to speak again. “That was—”
    “Very enjoyable, Olivia, for both of us.” He kept his voice light for himself as well as for her. “Though it would appear that you’re a bit out of practice.”
    Her eyes flared and the cloudiness vanished. “You’re insufferable.”
    “Be ready at eight on Saturday, Liv,” he told her, and walked back into O’Riley’s.

3
    S he chose a plain black dress. It fit her closely from neck to hem, with no glitter, no flounces to spoil the line. Against the unrelieved black, her skin glowed like marble. Liv hesitated over jewelry, then decided on the pearl studs she had received on her twenty-first birthday.
    For a moment, she only held the earrings in her hand. They brought memories, bittersweet. Twenty-one. She had thought nothing could mar her life, her happiness. Hardly more than a year later, her world had started to crumble. At twenty-three, she hadn’t been able to remember what it had been like to feel happy.
    She tried to recall what Doug had said when he had given her the pearls. Liv shut her eyes a moment. It had been something about their being like her skin, pale and smooth. Doug, she mused. My husband. She looked down at her ringless hands. Ex-husband. We loved each other then, I think. For the four years we were together; for at least part of them. Before . . .
    Feeling the pain well up, she shut her eyes again. She couldn’t think of what she had lost. It was too enormous, too irreplaceable.
    Seven years had passed since he had given her the earrings. She had been a different woman then, in a different life. It was time for this woman to wear them again, in the life she had now.
    Liv put the earrings on and went to find her shoes. It was nearly eight o’clock.
    She was nervous, and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t. She hadn’t been on a date in years. It’s not a date, she reminded herself. It’s business. A professional courtesy. And why was Thorpe suddenly showing her courtesy of any kind?
    Liv sat with one shoe on and the other in her hand. He wasn’t a man she should trust, personally or professionally. On the job, he was ruthless and proprietary. She’d known that from the outset. And now . . .
    The way he had kissed her. Just like that. Just as if he had the right to. She chewed on her bottom