Or after any reminder of their mortality, a funeral for instance. Sex is the quintessential affirmation that you're alive."

"Really? Well that's the most fan-fucking-tastic assertion of the survival instinct I've ever experienced." He chuckled.

But Tiel grew quiet, introspective. She blew softly against the chest hairs brushing her lips. "Is that all it was?"

He placed his finger beneath her chin and lifted it until she was looking at him again. "Anything between us would be complicated, Tiel."

"Are you still in love with Shari?"

"I love the good memories of her. I also hate the painful ones. But, if you're suggesting that I'm fixated on her ghost, let me assure you that I'm not. My relationship with her-good, bad, or indifferent-wouldn't prevent me from having another."

"You'd marry again?"

"I'd want to. If I loved the woman, I would want to make a life together, and to me that means marriage." After a moment, he asked, "What about your memories of John Malone?"

"Like yours, bittersweet. We had almost a fairy-tale romance.

Probably married too soon, aglow with passion, before we really knew one another. If he hadn't died, who knows? Career paths might eventually have led us in different and irreconcilable directions."

"As it is, he'll remain in your memory as the martyred Prince Charming."

"No, Doc. My memory isn't clinging to a flawless ghost either."

"What about that Joe?"

"That Joe is married," she reminded him.

"But if he weren't?"

She thought about Joseph Marcus a moment, then shook her head. "We probably would have had a thing going for a while, and then it would have fizzled. He was a diversion, not an affair of the heart. Nothing serious, I assure you. I can barely remember him."

She levered herself up and combed her hands down his chest. "You, on the other hand, I'll remember. You look exactly as I imagined you would."

"You imagined me naked?"

"I confess."

"When?"

"When you first came into the store, I think. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, 'Whoa. He's yummy.' "

"I'm yummy?"

"Very yummy."

"Why, thank you, ma'am," he said, speaking in an exaggerated drawl. Eyes moving to her breasts, he added,

"You're right tasty-looking yourself."

"Oh, I'll bet you say that to all the girls who straddle your lap."

Smiling, he reached for a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. Gradually his smile relaxed, and when he spoke, his tone was more serious.

"We've been through a lot together, Tiel. A birth. A near-death. Tense hours of not knowing how it was going to play out. Trauma like that does something to people. It binds them."

His words echoed her earlier thoughts on the subject.

But it wasn't very flattering that he ascribed their attraction solely to trauma, or that he could mitigate carnal desire with such a pragmatic, scientific explanation.

What if they'd met at a cocktail party last night? There would have been no sparks, no heat, and they wouldn't be in bed together now. Essentially that's what he was saying.

If this meant nothing more to him than illustrating a psychological phenomenon, there was no sense in prolonging the inevitable goodbye.

Congratulations, Doc. You 're my first-and probably last one-night stand. One-morning stand.

She moved to get up, but he used her motion to pull her fully atop him, so that they were belly to belly and her legs were lying between his.

"In spite of the danger to us-to everyone inside the store-I had periodic and incredibly vivid fantasies of this."

She found enough voice to say, "Of this?"

His hands smoothed down her back, over her ass, and as far as they could reach along the backs of her thighs.

"Of you."

He levered up his shoulders in order to kiss her. At first the kiss was slow and methodical, his tongue leisurely stroking her mouth while his hands continued sliding up and down her back from shoulders to thighs.

She felt like purring. In fact she did. When he felt the vibration of it, the kiss intensified. His hands covered her bottom and held her tightly against his erection. Provocatively, she rocked against it. He hissed a swear word, making it sound erotic. He slid his hands down the backs of her thighs and separated them.

Then he was inside her again, a full, heavy, desired pressure.

Filling more than her body. Filling an unacknowledged need she'd had for a very long time. Giving her more than immense pleasure. Giving her a sense of fulfillment and purpose that even her finest work had failed to provide.

They moved in perfect rhythm. She couldn't get as deeply into him as she wanted, and he must have felt the same. Because when he came, he held her possessively in place, his fingers making deep impressions in her flesh.

She burrowed her face in the hollow beneath his shoulder and pinched the flesh there between her teeth.

It was a long, slow, sweet climax. The aftermath was as long, slow, and sweet.

Tiel was so totally relaxed, replete, that it felt as though she had melted and become a part of him. She couldn't distinguish her skin from his. She didn't want to. She didn't even move when he pulled the sheet and blanket up over them. She fell asleep there, with him still sheathed in her softness, her ear resting on his heart.

"Tiel?"

"Hmm?"

"It's your alarm."

She muttered grumpily and pushed her hands deeper into the warmth of his armpits.

"You've got to get up. The chopper's coming back for you, remember?"

She did. But she didn't want to. She wanted to stay exactly where she was for at least the next ten years. It would take her that long to catch up on the sleep she had lost last night. It would take her that long to get enough of Doc.

"Come on. Up." He gave her fanny an affectionate smack. "Make yourself presentable before Sheriff Montez gets here."

Groaning, she rolled off him. Around a huge yawn, she asked, "How'd you know our arrangements?"

"He told me. That's how I knew where to find you." She gave him a misty look and he said, "Yes, he knew I wanted to know. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Yes."

"He and I are buddies. Play poker occasionally. He knows my story, why I moved out here, but he's good at keeping confidences."

"Even from the FBI."

"He asked if he could take my statement, and Galloway agreed. He had his hands full." He threw his legs over the side of the bed. "Mind if I use the bathroom first? I'll be quick."

"Be my guest."

In the process of bending down to pick up his boxers, he caught her with her hands far above her head, back arched, stretching lazily. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on her breasts. He fondled the raised tip. "Maybe I don't want you to get in that chopper."

"Ask me not to and maybe I won't."

"You would."

"I have to," she said ruefully.

Sighing, he withdrew his hands. "Yeah." He got up and went into the bathroom.

"Maybe," Tiel whispered to herself, "I could convince you to come with me."

She removed a bra and panties set from her suitcase, put them on, and was just about to step into a pair of slacks when she sensed Doc watching her.

She turned, ready with a suggestive smile and a saucy remark about peeping Toms. But his expression didn't invite either. In fact, he was practically bristling with rage.

Mystified, her lips parted to ask what the matter was when he held out his hand. Lying in his palm was the audio tape recorder. It had been in the pocket of her slacks, which she'd left along with her other dirty clothes in a pile on the commode lid. He'd moved them, found the recorder.

Her expression must have been a dead giveaway of her guilt because with a vicious punch of his thumb, he depressed the Play button and his voice cut across the silence. "For instance, the hospital buckled beneath the weight of bad publicity. Bad publicity generated and nurtured by people like you."