Shiver

costumes are.” Marco paused in the process of lifting a heaping forkful of pancakesto his mouth to shoot another twinkling look at her. “All that spandex. You could really rock one if you wanted to be Wrecker-Woman.”
    “You don’t think she’s too skinny?” Tyler asked Marco with a touch of anxiety.
    Marco shook his head. “I don’t think she’s too skinny at all.”
    Sam couldn’t help it; she felt a spreading rush of warmth. Despite Tyler’s presence, she shot Marco a dark look. He grinned at her. It was such a purely masculine grin, so damned engaging, that it blasted through a few of the barriers she was trying to erect between them and reminded her of just exactly why she had kissed him the way she had. In pure self-defense, she frowned fiercely back at him.
    “So what kind of trouble were you in?” Tyler asked him. Sam could have told Marco: Tyler never forgot anything you said. Once you mentioned it, if it interested him, sooner or later you would be called upon to explain it.
    “Those bad guys the other night?” Sam cringed a little as Marco so matter-of-factly brought up what she felt it would be better not to remind her son of. “They were after me first.”
    “And Mom saved you from them?” Tyler looked at her with dawning pride. “She saved me, too.”
    “Then I’d say we both owe her, wouldn’t you?”
    “Yeah.” Glancing at her, Tyler nodded, and then his attention was once again all on Marco. “Did you see her gun? She shot out the window in my bedroom with it so we could escape.”
    Tyler’s tone when he mentioned the gun was way too enthusiastic for Sam’s liking.
    “I did indeed see her gun.”
    The look Sam shot Marco forbade him to so much as think about mentioning what he had seen her do with it.
    “Guns are dangerous,” she told Tyler firmly, reinforcing a theme she had repeated to him so often that she was starting to feel like a recording. But as a woman living alone with her young son in a bad part of town, she’d felt that it was necessary to have a gun where she could get to it in case of emergency. At home, she kept the weapon locked up, and warned Tyler repeatedly against ever touching it. When she worked nights in the truck, she took it with her. “I used ours because I had to. But you know better than to ever pick one up.”
    It wasn’t a question.
    “I know, I know. You’ve told me like a zillion times.” He made an impatient face at her. Then he looked at Marco again. “But she saved me and her with it.”
    “She saved me with it, too.” Marco’s eyes met hers. He wasn’t smiling now. They were serious and dark with something she couldn’t quite identify. Whatever it was, it made her heart start to beat a little faster. Hastily she looked away.
    Tyler said, “And then you came and saved us both.”
    “I did.”
    “You won’t let them get us again, will you?” Tyler asked, so earnestly that Sam felt a knot start to form in her chest.
    He is afraid. Then she thought, Of course he is. He’s four, not stupid.
    “No. I won’t let them get you again.” Marco was promising something that Sam was pretty sure he had no power to deliveron, but she was glad he was promising it anyway. Tyler clearly took the promise as gospel, looked relieved, and started scarfing down pancakes and milk.
    “You fell asleep fast last night,” Marco said to Sam under the cover of Tyler’s renewed attack on his breakfast. It was such an innocent-sounding observation on the surface, and so loaded with subtext given what had happened between them, that it was all Sam could do not to choke on the coffee she was in the act of swallowing.
    “I always fall asleep fast,” she replied, just as soon as she succeeded in getting the hot liquid all the way down. And was proud of how cool and unbothered she sounded.
    “I was worried that”—here the tiniest of pauses caused her to read all kinds of meaning into the inscrutable expression in those coffee-brown eyes—“you might have trouble sleeping. Considering everything.”
    Yeah, like how hot he’d made her. “I didn’t,” she assured him.
    His eyes slid over her face, lingering just a second too long on her lips. To her chagrin, Sam felt the urge to wet them. Her pulse started to pick up the pace.
    I love the way he kisses. The thought sprang full blown into her mind. Horrified at herself, she dismissed it instantly. But even instantly wasn’t quick enough to stop her from feeling a quick rush of