“Hey, Blue Eyes,” she murmured sleepily. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Late afternoon,” he told her. “We still have a few hours until we’re due to meet everyone for dinner.”

“Mmm.” She stretched luxuriantly, the covers slipping down her body to partially bare her breasts. “Best news I’ve had in a really long time. Now, tell me honestly, and no pressure here, you understand. But how many times do you think you can get it up before we have to leave for dinner?”

Ben burst out laughing, but even though his eyes darkened with arousal at the sight of her nearly nude breasts, he pulled the covers back up to her chin. “Sweetheart, with you back in my bed, I think I could possibly break some sort of record in that regard. But not yet. Have you already forgotten what you promised me in that gut wrenching email you sent?”

“Hmm.” She tapped her finger against her chin as she pretended to think. “You mean it wasn’t a really awesome blow job? Followed by the ride of your life?”

Ben grinned as he brought that same finger to his mouth and nipped it gently. “Don’t tempt me, you little devil. I mean, no more than you normally do. And you know damned well what you promised me, Lauren. Now it’s time to finally deliver.”

Her stomach chose that particular moment to rumble quite loudly, and she smirked in reaction. “Oops. Guess it’s been awhile since I’ve fed the little beast. And speaking of delivering things, any chance we could order up some room service?”

“Already taken care of, Your Majesty. Come on, I’ll show you what I ordered. But first, you’d better put this on. Because if you walk around here naked like you always used to do, we’ll never get around to having that talk.”

“Fine.” Lauren resisted giving him a knowing look as she slid out of bed and wrapped the white terrycloth hotel robe about her body, folding the overlong cuffs back twice.

Ben had ordered a pot of hot coffee, some sandwiches, and a plate of assorted cookies and brownies, all of which Lauren pounced on like a bear who had just emerged from a months long hibernation.

Ben eyed her dubiously as she poured herself a third cup of coffee and reached for yet another brownie. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll be too full for dinner?”

She shot him a look of disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, this here is like a little afternoon snack to me. And considering how many meals I’ve skipped – vending machine peanuts do not count as a meal, I don’t care what Chris says – I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.”

“So do we.” His voice was somber as he slid a hand over hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “And if you can eat and listen at the same time I’d say that this is as good a time as any for me to start talking.”

Lauren nodded, her mouth too full of an oatmeal raisin cookie to speak.

Ben took a deep breath before he began. “I never told you a whole lot about my family, or what it was like for me growing up. I mean, you know I’m from Ohio and that my parents split up when I was just a kid, but that’s about it. What you don’t know is just how different my childhood must have been from what you and Julia experienced.”

He took a sip of his own coffee before continuing. “My parents got married real young. Barely twenty years old. They had dated since high school, figured they’d get married eventually, but when my mom became pregnant with me they had to hurry things along. And their marriage was probably doomed from the start, even though they toughed it out for seven years.”

Ben propped his chin in his hand. “The town I grew up in was largely blue collar. Very working class. My dad worked as a mechanic while my mom was a clerk at the grocery store. Neither of them had ever once considered going to college, making a better life for themselves, moving away. All of their family and friends were there, and they were all in the same sort of situation so it never occurred to them to want something different. But once my parents split up, those same goals – the ones they didn’t want – were just about the only thing that kept me going – the need to have a different life, a better life, than what they settled for.”

Lauren poured both of them more coffee. “I got the impression from the little you did tell me that things were pretty rough for you after they divorced.”

“Not rough, more like lonely,” corrected Ben. “Within a few months after they split up, both of them had someone new in their lives and they each got remarried within a year of the divorce. My mom was pregnant when she married husband number two – history repeating itself, so it seems. And once she and my father started new families – well, I was never really sure where I belonged or where I fit in after that.”

He paused a moment to stare out the window of the room. “By the time I started high school, they were each on their third marriage and third set of kids. I was more or less forgotten most of the time, shuttled back and forth between them, staying a week with one, a month with the other, always having to bunk in with one of my half-siblings wherever I went. All of my stuff – clothes, books, mementoes – were kept in a couple of suitcases and backpacks that I’d haul back and forth with me. It was little wonder that by the time my senior year of high school rolled around I had started keeping a calendar where I’d check off the days until I was out of school and on my own. And where I could finally have a bed of my own and a permanent place to keep my things.”

Lauren’s heart ached for the lonely, unwanted boy he had been, and she cupped his unshaven cheek in her hand tenderly. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Sorry that it had to be that way for you.”

Ben gave a little shrug. “It wasn’t that bad. Not really. I mean, I was never abused or neglected, nothing like that. I just never seemed to belong anywhere, never felt like I was part of the family. And I never felt wanted. Not until I met you. But I’m getting ahead of myself just a little.”

She laced her fingers up with his. “Go on.”

“Reading – and then writing – became my escape from the time I was eleven or so. And I was a good writer, all of my teachers told me so, and I even won some awards for it. I knew fairly early on that’s what I wanted to do with my life – write. And to travel. And for damned sure to get away from the town I grew up in.”

Lauren nodded. “I don’t blame you in the least. Doesn’t sound like the sort of place – or home life – that you’d want to go back and visit.”

“You’ve got that right. Now, you know some of this next part already. I did a couple of years at the local community college so that I could save up enough money to transfer to Northwestern. After graduation I drifted around a lot, trying to break in with a travel publication since that’s what I’d decided I really wanted to write about. I’d sell an article now and again, pick up odd jobs along the way in order to pay the bills. And then I got the inspiration to write an article about traveling Highway One in California. I was making my way down the coast, staying a night here, a night there. And then I reached Big Sur and my whole life was changed forever in the matter of a minute.”

Ben’s smile made her heart ache with its poignancy, and she shivered a bit in reaction as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Meeting you for the first time,” he recalled with a chuckle, “was like getting hit square in the chest with a thunderbolt. And when I touched you for the first time it felt as though I had a lightning rod beneath my fingertips. You were so full of life, Lauren, so happy and carefree. I’d never met anyone like you before, had never imagined a girl like you really existed. And those days I had with you in Big Sur were far and away the absolute best ones of my life. The happiest I’ve ever been. And,” he added as he ran a finger over her lips, “the only time in my life I ever came close to being in love.”