From the Heart

simpler if I’m straight with you.” He was smiling now, amused by her reaction. Her eyes were no longer shocked, but wary. “Now you’ll have time to get used to the idea.”
    “Thorpe,” she said, “I’m not going to marry anyone. I’m certainly not going to marry you. Now, I think you should—”
    She found herself cut off again as he took her mouth. Hersmall sound of protest was muffled, then silenced as his tongue slowly seduced hers. She was pressed against him, her arms still pinned straight down at her sides. But he felt the resistance melt, just as he had wanted. His own desire pounded. Her mouth wasn’t submissive, but active on his. She sought more, even as he did.
    Clouds covered her mind and there was only sensation. She could feel the somehow soft and strong texture of his lips, the slow, sure movement of his tongue. If they had been free, she would have wrapped her arms around him and clung. Only her mouth and the pressure of her body told him that she wanted him. Just as his told her.
    She was suddenly and completely a creature of the flesh. She wanted nothing more than to be touched by him. Her skin burned for it; her body ached. She murmured something neither of them could understand. Thorpe could feel her response. He wanted her desperately. The thought ran through his mind that she had been right to call him mad. He wanted her to the point of madness. If they had been alone . . . If they had been alone . . .
    Gradually, he brought himself back. There would be other times, other places. Banking his desire, he lifted his mouth from hers. “What was it you were going to tell me to do?” he murmured.
    Her breathing was unsteady. She struggled to remember who she was, who it was who held her, what he had just said to her. As he smiled at her, her brain began to clear. “See a doctor.” She couldn’t manage more than a whisper. Her body was tingling. “Quickly, before you really crack.”
    “Too late.” Thorpe drew her back for a last, burning kiss. Stunned by her completely uninhibited response, Liv pulled out of his arms. She ran a hand through her hair.
    “This is crazy.” She kept the hand aloft, gesturing with it as if to make him see reason. “This is really crazy.” Steadying, she took a quick breath. “Now, I’ll admit I’m attracted to you, and that’s bad enough; but that’s the limit. I’m going to forget all of this.” She slipped his jacket from her shoulders and dropped it into his hand. “I want you to do the same. I don’t know how much you had to drink in there, but it must have been too much.”
    He was still smiling at her, a patient smile. “You wipe that grin off your face, Thorpe,” she ordered. “And—and stay away from me.” She stormed to the terrace doors, then turned her head to look at him a last time. “You’re crazy,” she added for good measure before she yanked the doors open and dashed through them.

5
    T here was a white rose on Liv’s desk in the morning. It stood in a slender porcelain vase, a bud only, with petals tightly closed. Of course, she knew who had sent it. Baffled, she dropped into the chair behind her desk and stared at it.
    When she had returned to the card table the evening before, she had promised herself she wouldn’t think of her conversation with Thorpe. A sane person didn’t dwell on the words of a lunatic. Yet there had been a long, quiet stretch in the night when she had lain awake in bed. Every syllable of their conversation on the terrace had played back in her head. And now he was sending her flowers.
    The smart thing to do would be to dump it, vase and all, into the trash and forget it.
    Liv touched a fingertip to a white petal of the rose. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
    It’s just a flower, after all, she reminded herself. Harmless. I just won’t think about where it came from. Briskly, she pulled a sheet of copy toward her. She had a news brief to give in fifteen minutes.
    “Liv, thank God you’re here!”
    She glanced up as the assignment editor barreled down on her desk. “Chester?” He was an excitable, usually desperate man who lived on antacids and coffee. She was accustomed to this sort of greeting from him.
    “Take crew two and get out to the Livingston Apartments in Southeast. A plane just crashed into the sixth floor.”
    She was up, grabbing her purse and jacket. “Any details?”
    “You get them. We’re going live as soon as you’re set up. An engineer’s going