Gift of Gold

Renaissance history.”
    “True, but I do need a dishwasher. He’s a hard worker, Laura.”
    “He looked more like a fast worker to me. I couldn’t believe it when I walked into the spa last night and saw you wrapped around him.”
    She heard the back door open and close and knew Jonas was in the cafe kitchen. Her fingers tightened on the phone. “Don’t exaggerate. I was hardly wrapped around him. It was a simple kiss, Laura. Don’t make too much out of it.”
    “Are you kidding? After three years of trying to match you up with a nice stockbroker or lawyer and getting nowhere for all my pains, you turn around and jump into a spa with your newest dishwasher and I’m not supposed to make too much out of it?”
    Verity chuckled. “You should be grateful and infinitely relieved, Laura. For three years you’ve said my biggest problem was that I was too picky.
    “Your biggest problem is that you’re going to spend your whole life looking for a man who has all your father’s strengths and none of his weaknesses.”
    “Laura…”
    “Common sense, which you usually have plenty of, should have told you by now that you’re not going to find that combination in any normal male. You are too picky. Much too picky. But there’s no need to go crazy now that you’ve decided to be more reasonable in what you demand in a man. Let me find you someone interesting from my guest list for next weekend. Now, I’ve got a nice doctor down here, age forty, and he’s coming by himself. Probably divorced.”
    “Or gay.”
    “No. If he were gay, he’d probably be checking in with another man,” Laura said thoughtfully. “I think this doctor might be a viable candidate.”
    “Listen, Laura, I’d love to chat about my problems but right now I’ve got to go. I’ve got a million things to do and…”
    “And your dishwasher just walked through the door, right?”
    On cue, Jonas appeared in the office doorway, dark brows forming a solid, disapproving line across his blade of a nose. Verity glanced up and found her senses awash in memories of foaming water and a wet, warm kiss that had been more intimate than any kiss she had ever known.
    “Goodbye, Laura. I’ll talk to you later.” She dropped the phone back into the cradle. “Good morning, Jonas,” she said very brightly.
    “What the hell are you doing inside on your day off? Let’s go down to the lake. There’s some leftover curried lentil loaf in the refrigerator. Not the same thing as a real meat loaf, but if I put enough mayonnaise on the bread I might be able to disguise the stuff. I walked into town and picked up some beer an hour ago. We’re all set.”
    Verity swung around in her chair so suddenly that she bumped one jeaned leg against the desk. “Ouch, dammit.” She winced, rubbing her knee. “I thought you were going to settle in to the cabin today.”
    Jonas shrugged in his casual, curiously graceful way. “I’ve already done that. I didn’t have all that much to unpack. The main problem was finding room on the bookshelves for a few of my things. Your dad apparently has what is politely called eclectic tastes. He’s got everything from Nancy Drew to Shakespeare stashed in that cabin.”
    Verity laughed. “That’s the library he used to educate me. The only thing Dad never throws away is a book. Everything else in his life is disposable. When I settled here in Sequence Springs, he boxed up all the books he’d been lugging around for years and shipped them to me to store.”
    Jonas grinned. “I saw a copy of Castiglione’s
Courtier
on one shelf. Did you ever read it?”
    “Years ago, when I had a certain interest in the Renaissance,” Verity admitted cautiously. “Why do you ask?”
    Jonas’s grin turned wicked. “I happened to be thinking about a particular passage from it last night, and when I spotted it on the shelf this morning I thought about it a little bit more.”
    “What part?” Verity demanded suspiciously, aware that she was enjoying the teasing quality in his voice.
    “The part where one of the courtiers—Gaspare, I think—remarks that the way to win the fortress of a woman’s mind and soul is to take possession of her body.”
    Verity smiled loftily. “I believe the response to that stupid remark was that if that were true, there would be no unhappy married women. Every woman would be madly in love with the man who had the right to make love to her, namely her husband. But since there are plenty of unhappily