I hate you for keeping the truth from mefor twenty fucking years, Kat!

How could you /do/ that?

Their mouths went back to work. Kat's hands were all over the buttons of his shirt. She was unbuckling his belt and unzipping his chinos. He had his hands in her hair, then up under the hem of her sweatshirt and little tank top, and his hands were on her breasts. Riley groaned as soon as his palms covered her nipples. He remembered this. His heart and his body remembered this well.

I used to love you so much, Kat whispered.

I loved you, too.

You were my whole life, she said.

You were mine.

I'm not sure I should be doing this.

I /know/ I shouldn't.

Riley picked her up and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. With one hand he grabbed his pants to keep them from puddling to the floor, then staggered through the double doors into the bedroom. He threw her on the bed, ripped off his clothes, and got a leg up on the bed frame so he could dive on top of her.

I am so fucking angry with you, he said, tearing her pajama pants off her body.

I hated you! I hate you still! Kat reached for him, her nails digging into his biceps, her poker face gone. I was so lonely! You were the only thing I had to hold on to! Do you have any idea how lost I was? I've been lost this whole time, right until right this second. Why didn't you run after me? /Why couldn't you find us?/ Riley reached under her soft body and gathered her to him. He kissed her. He tried to take away the pain with that kiss, heal her, make everything OK if only for that instant.

Kat pulled her mouth away from his and whispered in his ear, Please, Riley. Don't break my heart again. I'm afraid you're going to break my heart again.

Never. He kissed her throat, collarbone, licked the swell of her breasts.

We're making a mistake. She gasped from the pleasure of his tongue flicking on her nipple. This will be too hard.

The only thing that's hard is me. Riley raised up on his elbows and let his cock nudge between her legs. She looked into his face, unsure, vulnerable, and filled with desire.

I need you inside me, she whispered. I'm going to die if I can't feel you inside me.

That was all he needed to hear. With a single thrust he was in deep.

Immediately, the heat of the pleasure began to burn away layers of pain and uncertainty, and he knewthis woman and her boy were his life. They'd always been. This woman was his destiny.

Riley insisted that the lights stay on. He didn't want one more precious second lost, one image obscured. They were together againthis time it wasn't some fantasyand through sex and love they would suck the marrow out of their lives once more.

Kat lay curled on her left side, eyes open just enough to observe Riley move through the bedroom, bending and scooping up pieces of his clothing as he wentgrabbing a sock here, snatching his boxers over there, unearthing his slacks from beneath the comforter that had been thrown onto the floor at some point in the night. Kat wished she could smile as she watched him. She wanted to be filled with a sense of warm well-being. She wanted to believe that everything would work itself out, that she hadn't just made the most ginormous mistake of her life.

Since all that was beyond her abilities, she opted to remain very still.

She didn't want Riley to know she was awake, because he'd probably want to talk. He'd want to know how she felt and what their next step should be, questions she had no answers for. So she remained quiet and allowed herself the luxury of worry-free looking. As it turned out, watching Riley move around the room, naked and free, his fine, taut flesh on display, was nearly as pleasurable as touching him.

He'd always been put together elegantly. Tall and slim, long fingers and long legs. He moved with economical grace, never a wasted motion. She remembered watching him on the basketball court all those years ago.

This body right here in this bedroom was the same body. Taller by a few inches. Leaner. But it was the body she remembered. And the oddest thought occurred to KatRiley Bohland would be the only man she would ever see naked at sixteen and then again at thirty-seven.

She didn't want to think of how many women had gotten a look at the goods in the years between.

Where the hell is my other sock?

Kat stifled a giggle. Riley's brow had creased in a frown as he mumbled to himself, dragged his fingers through his short black curls, and scanned the room in vain. She watched the muscles in his butt flex and relax with each movement, and her belly grew hot. She wanted him again.

In any normal circumstance, she would be in a coma by now. But obviously, there was nothing normal about this morning. She'd come back to Persuasion. She'd found him. She'd told him about Aidan. They'd spent the last seven hours devouring each other in this monstrosity of a bed, like they'd been starving for each other.

Oh, fuck it. Riley yanked on his blue pinstripe boxers and then his chinos. He zipped the fly but left the belt buckle dangling. He pulled a white undershirt over his head, whipped a tie around his neck, and shoved his arms into the dress shirt, leaving it unbuttoned at the front. He slipped his bare feet into his loafers and stared at the single sock for a moment in puzzlement, then shoved it in his pants pocket. Next, Kat watched him clip a pager, a cell phone, and a digital organizer onto his belt. Even with all the twenty-first-century nerd accessories, Riley Bohland was too damn sexy for West Virginiaor any other state, for that matter.

Kat couldn't help it. She let out a sigh. Immediately, she shifted in bed in the hopes that he'd think her sigh had come from the depths of sleep.

Riley stopped moving. After a moment, she felt him climb onto the bed and lower his face near hers. He put his lips to her ear and whispered, I'm on call as of three minutes ago. He kissed her cheek gently, lingering to breathe her in. The gesture felt impossibly tender to Kat, and full of affection. She was just about to throw her arms around him when he said, Gotta go. We'll talk later.

In a flash, he'd let himself out of the suite. Kat sat up in bed, staring absently into the sitting room, wondering if all of Riley's morning-afters were so abrupt. She yawned, reaching under her left thigh to find out what was pressed into her flesh, and her hand came up with the missing sock. She studied it dangling from her fingers, suddenly quite lonely.

Kat flopped back onto the pillow and stared at the ceiling. She might only have an associate's degree, but she'd definitely earned her Ph.D. in life in the last twenty years, and her research results were consistentmen would abuse you, use you, suck you dry, or sell your grandmother's jewelry on eBay, but they would never be all you needed them to be. Virgil Cavanaugh and Riley Bohland were her firstand most effectiveteachers. And she'd learned her lessons well.

Yet here she was. Age thirty-seven. Alone in a strange bed and holding one sock.

This is a disgrace. It's after seven in the morning and he's just now leaving? He didn't even bother to get completely dressed! My God, Maddieyou completely screwed up.

Carrie got no response from Madeline but heard the loud clack and bustle of the B and B kitchen in the background.

Madeline? Are you there?

I'm in the middle of making a batch of cranberry-orange muffins. I'll have to get back to you.

Carrie huffed in disbelief. Muffins? You're worried about stupid muffins? I am telling you that my manmy /fiancй,/ Madelinejust spent the entire night in that woman's room, and you're fixated on a pan of muffins?

After a moment of nothing but more kitchen noise, Madeline cleared her throat. Please don't tell me you're still sitting out there. Did you sleep in your car? Because if you did, /that's/ fixation.