The Welcoming

from her and clasped it on her wrist. “I need the practice.”
    “No.” She slipped her arms around him and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “I think you’ve got the hang of it.”
    He held her, letting the music, her scent, the moment, wash over him. Things could be different with her. He could be different with her.
    “Do you know when I fell in love with you, Roman?”
    “No.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ve thought more about why than when.”
    With a soft laugh, she snuggled against him. “I’d thought it was when you danced with me and you kissed me until every bone in my body turned to water.”
    “Like this?”
    He turned his head, meeting her lips with his. Gently he set her on fire.
    “Yes.” She swayed against him, eyes closed. “Just like that. But that wasn’t when. That was when I realized it, but it wasn’t when I fell in love with you. Do you remember when you asked me about the spare?”
    “The what?”
    “The spare.” Sighing, she tilted her head to give him easier access to her throat. “You wanted to know where the spare was so you could fix my flat.” She leaned back to smile at his stunned expression. “I guess I can’t call it love at first sight, since I’d already known you two or three minutes.”
    He ran his hands over her cheeks, through her hair, down her neck. “Just like that?”
    “I’d never thought as much about falling in love and getting married as I suppose most people might. Because of Pop’s being sick, and the inn. I always figured if it happened it would happen without me doing a lot of worrying or preparing. And I was right.” She linked hands with him. “All I had to do was have a flat tire. The rest was easy.”
    A flat, Roman remembered, that had been deliberately arranged, just as her sudden need for a handyman had been arranged. As everything had been arranged, he thought, his grip tightening on her fingers. Everything except his falling in love with her.
    “Charity . . .” He would have given anything to be able to tell her the truth, the whole truth. Anything but his knowledge that in ignorance there was safety. “I never meant for any of this to happen,” he said carefully. “I never wanted to feel this way about anyone.”
    “Are you sorry?”
    “About a lot of things, but not about being in love with you.” He released her. “Your dinner’s getting cold.”
    She tucked her tongue in her cheek. “If we found something else to do for an hour or so we could call it a midnight supper.” She ran her hands up his chest to toy with the top button of his shirt. “Want to play Parcheesi?”
    “No.”
    She flicked the button open and worked her way slowly, steadily down. “Scrabble?”
    “Uh-uh.”
    “I know.” She trailed a finger down the center of his body to the snap of his jeans. “How about a rip-roaring game of canasta?”
    “I don’t know how to play.”
    Grinning, she tugged the snap open. “Oh, I have a feeling you’d catch on.” Her laugh was muffled against his mouth.
    Her heated thoughts of seducing him spun away as he dragged her head back and plundered her mouth. Her hands, so confident an instant before, faltered, then fisted hard at the back of his shirt. This wasn’t the gentle, persuasive passion he had shown her since the night they had become lovers. This was a raw, desperate need, and it held a trace of fury, and a hint of despair. Whirling from the feel of it, she strained against him, letting herself go.
    He’d needed her before. Roman had already come to understand that he had needed her long before he’d ever met her. But tonight was different. He’d set the stage carefully—the wine, the candles, the music—wanting to give her the romance she made him capable of. Then he’d felt her cool fingertips on his skin. He’d seen the promising flicker of desire in her eyes. There was only tonight. In a matter of hours she would know everything. No matter how often he told himself he would set things right, he was very much afraid she wouldn’t forgive him.
    He had tonight.
    Breathless, she clung to him as they tumbled onto the bed. Here was the restless, ruthless lover she had known existed alongside the gentle, patient one. And he excited her every bit as much. As frantic as he, she pulled the loosened shirt from his shoulders and gloried in the feel of his flesh under her hands.
    He was as taut as wire, as explosive as gunpowder. She felt his muscles tense and tighten as