He studied every drop of water beading her forehead. Followed the grain of her eyebrows, the jut of her cheekbone. Perfect. Radiant. He was dazzled. Lost. His wits gone. Like they’d never been.

She extricated her hand, and touched his face from cheekbone to jaw. The trail of her finger was a path of light, moonlight on water, a beckoning shimmer. Rain dripped into his collar, soaking his shoulders. Rain defined the dimensions of this sensual liquid otherworld. Pearly gray, green, silvery, glittering cool. And beneath it, secret hidden heat. The blush in her cheeks, the warmth of her lips. Wet with rain, sweet with rain. Her scent, escaping him every time he tried to inhale it. Elusive, alluring. Driving him mad. He swayed. Their lips touched.

The kiss pierced through him, broke something open. He started to shake and clutched the edge of the door to steady himself. Moved, by a shy, cautious, trembling kiss. Tears started into his eyes. Luckily, his face was already wet. He closed his eyes, tasted her, felt her. The delicate texture of the inside skin of her lips, the flick of her shy tongue. He drank it up. Like fine liquor. So sweet, for being given, and not taken.

The cell phone could have been ringing for hours by the time he registered it. He never wanted to come back, but the sound was a grappling hook that dragged her away from him. He begged her, in his mind, to turn the goddamn thing off. Stay with him. Let this magic go on.

She pulled away, groped for her purse. Avoiding his gaze. “Hello?”

She listened to a loud burst of talking on the other side, and her eyes flicked up to him. “Just a sec, Eugene. Um, Liam? This is going to take a few minutes. You might as well get back into the truck.”

Yes, it was definitely over. Fuck. He stood there, fists clenched.

She was paying no attention. She was all business now.

He got into the truck, feeling stupid and dismissed. Chump asshole. Winding himself up into thinking he was on the verge of something important.

But not more important than a fucking phone call.

“Thank God you picked up. We’ve got a disaster on our hands!”

Eugene was the fiddler from Mandrake, her Afro-Celt fusion band. She avoided looking at Liam as he got back into the truck. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s Dennis! He’s deserting! The stinking rat bastard!”

“Calm down, and let’s take this step by step.”

“He just got a gig with a touring show of Riverdance! He’s blowing us off, a week before the tour! The gigs in Boston and Albany and Atlanta all specified Uilleann pipes in the contract! We can’t show up without a piper!” Eugene’s voice cracked.

“Calm down,” she said again. “This is bad, but we’ll fix it.”

“How, Nance? Every piper we know is booked solid those weeks! I’ve already made seven phone calls! We’re completely screwed!”

“We’ll fix it!” she insisted. “I’ll be back tonight. When I get home, I’ll call you and we’ll work something out. Don’t panic.”

She listened with half an ear to Eugene’s carrying-on, her body still quivering. After all her resolutions to be tough. Making out madly with a stranger in his truck. Getting swept away, too, toward God alone knew what. His house, his couch, his rug, his bed. She hadn’t been swept away since…well, never. Swept away was not in her repertoire.

She’d never known anyone that good. She’d never known that good existed. She was squirming, hot. Practically desperate for it, and after some gallant moves, a light kiss, one single collar button undone.

He’d barely touched her. How had he done that?

She jerked her attention back to Eugene before she lost the thread. “All this work for nothing,” he moaned. “I can’t take it. I’m going back to school. I’m going to be an accountant, like Mom wanted.”

“You’re not going to be an accountant,” Nancy soothed with practiced ease. “It’s too late for that. You’re not fit for any work but being a fiddler now, so get yourself a cup of tea, and calm down.”

“Where the hell are you, anyway?” Eugene demanded.

Nancy’s eyes flicked up to Liam’s impassive face. “Later,” she said, clicking “stop.” She dropped the phone back into her purse.

The rain was slanting in her open window. She rolled it up.

“I’ll take you back to your car,” he said. The warmth was gone from his voice. She missed it.

They were silent for the twenty minutes it took to get back to Lucia’s house, and every minute that passed, she felt like she shrank further into herself against his quiet reproach.

When they arrived, he parked behind her car. So much had happened since she’d been there last, though it had been less than two hours. The whole gamut of human emotions blazing through her. She was wrung out, hollowed. Practically transparent.

She stared up at the shabby old house, bright yellow crime scene tape festooned across the door, and started rummaging for her car keys.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said. “And for keeping me company when we went to Baruchin’s.” And for the most mind-blowing sexual arousal I ever felt. She wanted to say something else, after having been so altered by that amazing intimacy, but his face looked closed, and the words stopped in her throat before she figured out what they were.

She flung the door open and slid out of the truck. Her legs almost buckled. She steadied herself on the door and hurried over to her own car. She tried to unlock it, but the key fell from her stiff, cold fingers, splashing into a small clear puddle in the cracked old sidewalk.

Suddenly, he was beside her, fishing the keys out of the water, wiping them on his jeans. He opened the door and helped her inside. She sat down heavily in the driver’s seat, glad to be off her feet.

“You need protection,” he said. “Twenty-four seven.”

She made a derisive sound to mask her nervousness. “Isn’t that a shame. In a perfect world, I might agree. But I live alone, and I work.”

“You could stay with me,” he said.

She gaped at him, speechless. “I…what?”

He shrugged, looking vaguely abashed. “It’s a solution.”

“But I…but what about your own work?” she demanded.

“I cleared my schedule for three weeks for Lucia’s house,” he said. “I’m overdue a vacation. I’d take some time for this. Just say the word.”

“But your assistant—”

“I can find Eoin work on someone else’s crew in five minutes,” he said brusquely. “Don’t worry about Eoin. He’s covered.”

That finished all the obvious objections to the outrageous proposal. Now, she had to get down to the truth. “Liam. We don’t have the kind of relationship where I could move in with you. Not even close.”

“You need protection,” he repeated. “Something bad’s happening.”

She shivered. “Well, maybe so, but that’s not the point. I just met you yesterday. All we have is…well, I don’t even know what we have.”

“We had breakfast,” he offered.

“Do not make fun of me,” she flared. “This is not a joke.” She groped for something else to say, but she was lost. The silence was fraught with exquisite tension.

“It wouldn’t be much of a leap,” he said.

“What leap? What are you talking about?” she asked crabbily.

“From where we are to the kind of relationship where I could offer for you to stay with me. There’s a gap of”—he held up his thumb and forefinger with barely any space between them—“about that much.”

Oh. Whoa. Shivery tingles chased themselves across the entire surface of her body. “I’ve known you for one day.”

“Time is an illusion,” he said.

“Don’t give me that lofty metaphysical crap. It just pisses me off.”

“Okay. Just the facts, ma’am.”

She grunted, unwilling to be cajoled. “So is this an exchange of goods and services? I shack up with you, in return for what?”

“No! Do I strike you as such an opportunistic pig, then?”

“Whoa!” His anger gave her something to push against. “Excuse me! Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t help noticing a certain wave of hurricane-force sexual energy coming off you, Liam!”