A flash of lightning illuminated Dawn’s lovely face. An instant later, they were bathed in darkness. The storm seemed to grow louder as the humming appliances and the air conditioning system fell silent.

“I’ll try to find candles,” Dawn said. “I think there are some in the kitchen.”

Kellen reached out to touch her and found the warm skin of her hand resting on her thigh.

“We don’t need light to hear the music,” he said, “or to feel it. Don’t bother.” Plus, he really didn’t mind sitting with her in the dark while the heavens battled outside. He could get as aroused as he liked, and she wouldn’t be able to see it. Too bad the lights hadn’t gone out before he’d revealed his not-so-little secret. Before he’d been so absorbed in the sight of her and the music she created that he’d lost his mind and drawn attention to his painfully hard dick.

Lightning flashed, giving him a quick glimpse of her contemplative expression.

The rain lashed against the windows and wind howled through the rafters. The entire house swayed slightly on its sturdy stilts. Even so, Kellen was so fixated on the woman beside him that the most pronounced sound for him was her breathing.

Dawn turned her hand, still resting on her thigh, until her palm met his and held his hand in a loose grip.

“You’re right,” she whispered. “We don’t need light. Just sound.”

And touch.

Kellen’s thumb stroked her skin. Why did holding her hand feel so intimate? Why did it feel so right?

“Kellen?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“What was her name?”

His heart twisted, and he tugged his hand free of hers. He focused on the rivulets of rainwater flowing down the windowpanes against a background of distant flickers. “Sara,” he said around the lump in his throat. “Her name was Sara.”

“Sorry,” Dawn said. “I shouldn’t have brought her up. It’s just…” She took a deep breath. “If I had a man who loved me even half as much as you obviously still love her, I’d consider myself blessed.”

“I don’t feel blessed.” Damned. That’s how he felt. Damned.

Dawn leaned against his arm, and her free hand slid along his lower back. Kellen held his breath, not wanting to be comforted by her simple gesture, but he was. It felt wonderful to relax against her and allow himself that small bit of feminine contact.

“So why are you single, Dawn O’Reilly?” he asked. “A beautiful, sexy, talented, intelligent, successful woman such as yourself should be taken.”

Her arm tightened around his back, which pulled her closer to his side. She was so warm. Smelled so sweet. He was glad of the darkness so he could experience her on an entirely new level. He’d been overwhelmed with the sight of her before; now his other senses had the opportunity to be dazzled. He leaned closer and detected a hint of honeysuckle on her skin.

“Just busy I guess,” she said. “I haven’t been able to find the right man. Or maybe I was waiting for him to find me.”

Kellen closed his eyes and swallowed. He wasn’t ready to be the right man for her. How did he convey that without hurting her feelings? There was absolutely nothing standing in his way but himself, but he sure as hell wasn’t prepared to clear the road ahead just because this woman had his hormones in an uproar.

“Dawn, I…”

She drew away, and he immediately missed the feel of her hand in his.

“You don’t have to say it. I understand.”

A random note sounded on the piano as her fingers found the keys.

He squeezed her knee.

“I didn’t realize how alone I’ve felt,” she whispered, “with nothing but my music to fill the days and nights. I thought it was enough.”

He knew what that was like. With the exception of Owen, he hadn’t allowed himself to care about anything but music since Sara had passed and if he hadn’t known Owen before meeting her, Kellen wasn’t sure he’d have ever let anyone close again.

“What about your friends?” he asked. “Your family? Don’t you see them?”

“From time to time,” she said. Her hand moved to cover his on her knee, as if she feared he’d move it away. “They have their own lives. I’ve never been a priority to anyone.” She laughed, a dry empty sound. “When I was little, my mother spent a lot of time trying to wring a bit of talent out of me—ballet, gymnastics, art, if they had a class for it, I was in it. When she discovered I had a natural affinity for the piano, she handed me off to the best teachers my daddy’s money could buy and made sure they pushed me. It was almost as if she was relieved that she didn’t have to bother with me anymore. Daddy…” She inhaled a deep breath and pushed on. “Daddy always made appearances at my recitals to show he was proud of my accomplishments, but there just wasn’t any warmth in him. I never felt close to either of them, not the way I imagined other daughters felt about their parents. I thought that the only way I could make them love me was if I was perfect.”

He heard the pain in her voice and wished he could see her face. He probably should have encouraged her to find those candles. “What about your siblings?” he asked.

“Only child,” she said.

“Me too. Well, until I met Owen, and his family treated me like one of theirs.” He laughed, because even thinking about the Mitchells brought him joy.

“Tell me about Owen,” she said, her hand tightening on his. “I was homeschooled by the best tutors money could buy, so I never got to be around anyone my own age until I became an adult. Piano isn’t a team sport. More than anything, I would have liked to have had a childhood friend.”

“Your family must be very wealthy,” he said quietly.

“I never wanted for anything as a child,” she said. “Except affection.”

Kellen hadn’t had a surplus of either wealth or affection. His grandfather had been an important part of his youth, but he’d been old and age had done terrible things to his memory. He hadn’t lived long after they’d put him in a nursing home for his safety. Grandfather simply hadn’t thrived away from the brushy wilderness he loved to wander. It was as if taking him away from his land made him give up on life. It wasn’t long after his grandfather had passed that Kellen had met Owen. It was as if destiny had known how much Kellen would need him in the coming years.

“Living in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t have any close friends as a child either,” Kellen said. “I met Owen on the first day of seventh grade. We’d gone to different elementary schools, but they bused us to the same junior high. I was hoping for a fresh start. New school. Only half the kids there would know where I came from. Even then, no one would sit next to the poor kid who’d done a really bad job of trying to cut his own hair the night before, and no one would let the pudgy kid in orange and white horizontal stripes sit next to them. So Owen had no choice but to sit next to me. He’d given my bad haircut one long look, but he never said anything. He never made fun of me like the other kids did. Owen sat next to me on the bus every day for a week and we didn’t say a word to each other. We had the same lack of popularity at lunch and sat at the same table, both trying to be invisible, because when you’re thirteen, invisible is better than being noticed for being different.”

Dawn squeezed his hand. “Thirteen is an awful age. So I guess you two finally started talking to each other. Or do you still just sit in silence, trying to be invisible?”

Kellen chuckled. “We started talking after his mother stood up for me in the principal’s office.”

“Principal’s office? Were you a troublemaker?”

“I only made trouble when I couldn’t ignore it any more. And there’s just something in Owen so pure and good that I wanted to preserve it. I hated that those assholes would walk up behind him in the cafeteria and squeal like pigs as they shoved him against the table. I hated how they treated him far more than I hated how they made fun of my clothes, my shoes, my haircut, and the trailer I lived in with my mother and her welfare check. Owen had never done a mean thing to anyone in his life. Where I came from didn’t matter to him, and he wasn’t upset that he was forced to sit next to me on the bus and at lunch. He seemed grateful.