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  Steve, who knew something about wine, read the label and whistled.

  “I didn’t buy it,” said Elizabeth. “I inherited it, along with the house, from my grandmother. She built a nice wine cellar.”

  “I’ll say. How much of it do you have left?”

  “Quite a bit of this. And some others which are twice as old. There are some nice whites down there, too, but mostly I give them as presents. Except for the Graves. I don’t have the palate my grandmother did.”

  “How do I get on your gift list?” he asked, trying to imagine inheriting a cellar full of vintage wine. Unobtainable wine. Like the ruby treasure flowing smoothly into the decanter on the granite slab.

  “I can open one of the whites for you,” she said carelessly. “It isn’t chilled, but it doesn’t have to breathe.”

  “That would be the wildest, most reckless extravagance,” he said, with real shock in his voice.

  Her laugh blended exotically with the trickle of the wine. “Hardly that. Shall I?”

  “No. Oh, no, indeed,” he said hastily. “This Bordeaux’s been famous for fifty years. I never thought I’d ever have a chance to taste it.”

  Elizabeth expertly twisted her wrist and stopped the flow of wine into the ancient decanter just as the first scant brown sediment appeared on the bottle’s green lip.

  “Pretty slick,” said Steve approvingly. He shut the kitchen door behind him and leaned against it.

  “Ought to be. I learned it at my mother’s knee.” She half filled two claret stems and handed one to Steve.

  “What about your parents?” He found it hard to divide his attention between the legendary wine and a woman so enchanting that she must surely disappear if he blinked his eyes.

  “My father was killed in Viet Nam when I was five, so I don’t really remember him. My mother remarried when I was twenty and lives in France with her husband. He’s a very nice man, who wistfully reviews the cellar every time he visits.”

  “I can’t blame him.”

  The heady bouquet of the wine enveloped him magically as he watched Elizabeth lift her glass. Crimson wine touched crimson lips, and green eyes, shot with sparks of gold, glowed at him above the deep, clear crystal.

  Two sips were all he could manage. His open hand rose irresistibly, and like a man moving slowly through a wonderful dream, he saw himself lay his palm against her cheek.

  Chapter Three

  The warmth of his hand traveled like a river from his fingertips, straight to her heart. Jumbled notions tumbled in her head like small shells in a foaming sea. They surfaced and sank and resurfaced, churning so quickly that she hadn’t time to think about them: I want this kiss, Cara may come down, it’s too soon, kiss me, I’m too involved, I have to think about it, I need more time, kiss me.

  Steve watched this rapid advance and retreat cloud her eyes and switched his attentions immediately. He drew back a little, and she relaxed.

  “Too many distractions, aren’t there?” he said, smiling.

  She nodded gratefully. “Even when they’re out of sight, they’re not out of mind.”

  “That’s the nature of children, I think.” He tapped her cheek with two fingers and said, “Incoming.”

  Elizabeth let reason seep from her cerebral cortex and wash against her consciousness.

  “Cara,” she said, listening. She took a sip of her wine.

  Cara and Allison pushed through the kitchen door in search of soft drinks. Allison smiled. Cara didn’t, but she didn’t scowl, either. Elizabeth supposed that was progress.

  Steve had moved away from her. He and the rich Bordeaux were framed in her narrow, focused vision: a vineyard of pleasure which seemed forever out of her reach. The giddy passion which had possessed them just seconds before had moderated. She couldn’t decide whether to be disappointed or relieved.

  But, oh—how she had wanted that kiss. She had seen Steve nearly every day for six entire weeks and she had wanted a kiss for all of that time. Coveting by day, dreaming by night, wanting, wanting, wanting.

  She just wanted it under different circumstances, is all. She wanted peace in her home and freedom to fall in love, if that’s what she decided to do.

  Melody and Cara made peace and freedom very difficult. And while the unpleasant company of their two scowling daughters did not exactly constitute the fertile earth of love, it created absolutely the garden of desire, to be able to look, but not touch. To hear his deep voice uttering daily pleasantries and imagine love words coming from his lips. To have him shake her hand and cling to her fingers a fraction longer than necessary under the cold disapproving eyes of their sour-faced chaperones.

  She gave a wistful little sigh.

  Steve stood motionless with his hand flat against the cold granite. He could feel her under his hand, the velvet softness of her skin, the pulse at her throat throbbing its manic beat, to heat his blood and fire his imagination. He set his teeth against the storm in his body. The heat and the imagination still raged.

  He could not touch her, not now. He reached instead for the wine bottle in front of him. As Elizabeth watched, he laid his palm lightly against the gentle curve of its side and smoothed his fingers up its long elegant neck. Wine clung to its lip, one drop of sweet wine, and it glistened and trembled as it sensed his coming. That same wine slicked Elizabeth’s lips, wine red like her lips, trembling like her lips, waiting for his touch. The one long finger of his hand grazed the lip of the wine, circling it, stroking it, dipping lightly into it as he spread the droplets around the entrance to its dark and dewy cloister.

  His eyes never left her face.

  Elizabeth held her breath, transfixed. His hand seemed to move across her naked skin as his supple fingers moved across the dark glass. A fantasy touch caressed her, her throat, her breasts, her belly and her seeking thighs; it reached and tickled into her and fed the small electric flutter, which was a sure herald of pleasure yet to come.

  I can’t stand any more, she thought to herself, and on legs like water, she sequestered herself safely behind her thick, wooden kitchen table. It had been pounded, scratched and dented by generations of naughty children, and it definitely looked its age. No one could possibly look at it and think of romance.

  “Is this where I squeal ‘No, no, no’?” she asked. “And you twirl your mustache?” She wanted to squeal “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Never fear, fair maiden,” he said, carrying the wine to the table. “I can’t seduce you. My mustache is too short. And—” and she could hear the truth in his tone “—I want you willing and clearheaded, unencumbered by doubt, unfuddled by drink and uncompromised by imported chocolates. No seduction. It’s dishonest.” His eyes glinted like battleship steel, cutting into her heart and into her soul. “My own appeal will have to suffice.”

  It suffices, she thought.

  “Besides,” he continued, sitting across from her. “This Bordeaux is far too civilized for seduction. You have to have very young wine for seduction, a wine made by lusty, energetic, purple-footed peasants.”

  He greatly desired to remove the glass and taste the dark wine on her lips. Instead, he stifled a sigh and said, “For seduction you need an uncomplicated wine, one that depends on nothing but youth and raw power.”

  “And a loaf of bread?” She was wrong. She could look at the table and think of romance. Of sex. Romance was the wrong word, entirely.

  “No bread. A blanket and a secluded spot,” he told her.

  “With satyrs and dryads lurking in the glade,” she said.

  “As long as they stay out of the way, they’re welcome to lurk,” he said. “How about a picnic on Saturday, with a playful young wine? We could wrap up in the blanket and sit with our backs to the wind.”

  “That sounds wonderful, particularly the blanket part,” she said. “But we might just as well take a serious old wine, because we will also have to take the girls.”

  “Eris instead of Eros,” said Steve. “A perfect occasion for the Graves.”<
br />
  Elizabeth giggled. “There’s one of the few witty puns I’ve ever heard anybody make,” she said.

  “Well?”

  “An interesting thought. We can go down to Valley Forge Park and watch Melody and Cara radiate enough hostility to melt sand into glass.” That was a way to banish libidinous ideas from her head—think of Cara and Melody seething like fulminate of mercury merely one blanket over, unstable and ready to explode.

  “The Feds would get us for destroying a national treasure,” said Steve. “How about a nice noisy fast-food pizza place, with a huge video arcade? It’ll give those two little grumps something to do.”

  “You mean play those shoot-’em-up games?” Two could be alone in a crowd, if two disagreeable little somebody-elses could be successfully diverted. The future looked a little brighter.

  “We’ll give the kids two sacks of quarters to go away and play the games, and during that romantic interlude we’ll pick all the pepperoni out of the cheese and feed it to each other,” he said, and his voice was lower and huskier than he meant it to be.

  “Do you know a place like that?” The scratched and scarred old table was an ineffective barrier.

  “Yes.” He wanted to take her in his arms and pull her close. I am all hormones, he thought. And no sense. He was very heavily in lust. He looked at the big green eyes. Well, he thought philosophically, the love would probably come, if he didn’t do something to stop it. If neither of them wanted to do something to stop it.

  “Is the food any good?”

  “You’re so innocent and adorable,” he said. “So Main Line. So very upper class. People don’t go there for the food.”

  The wine might not have been young enough for lust, but Elizabeth was, and she definitely lusted. Undignified. Dangerous. And absolutely luscious.

  “What do they go there for, if the food’s no good?” she asked. Strange how her demeanor hid the secret workings of her mind.

  “Star Attack,” said Steve. “The latest in virtual reality shoot-’em-up games. There was a line around the block to play it, until the owner put in a take-a-number system. He had to. Nobody was buying pizza. They were all standing in line.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “Are you kidding?”

  “No, indeed. I’ve stood in it myself, I’m embarrassed to say.” He sat down opposite her. “It’s so popular that the manager of the restaurant has limited the play to six minutes a person. That’s two turns. There’s a sign posted. But—” he said, with a devilish, delighted, heart-stopping grin “—he can be bribed.”

  “Virtual reality, like on Star Trek?” she asked, imagining a holodeck, populated by a complete, invented universe, full of invented people as real as life itself.

  “Sorry, no,” said Steve. “Nothing so elaborate. I think you’ll like it, though.”

  She picked up one of the books he’d brought. There was an explosive sun on the cover, with a swirling vortex at its center. Steve’s name was written in huge incandescent letters across the top of the cover, and the title of the book, Fire in the Hole, twisted down the center, getting smaller as the vortex narrowed.

  “Is that what you write about?” she asked.

  “Sometimes. I write about ideas that interest me,” he said, with the look of a man who is satisfied with his work. “Science fiction is suited to that—you can stretch your world to include infinite possibilities. You can pull in or invent anything you need.”

  She traced her fingers across the letters of his glowing name. “Is this the first one you wrote?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I want to read them first to last. Things make more sense that way.”

  “That’s the accountant in you,” he told her. “First thing you do, when you pick up a sci-fi book, is look to see if it’s part of a series. You read ‘em in order, even if other books by the author were written in between. This is the first book in the Fireman series.”

  “Are all your books written by the ‘several’?” Interesting. Everything he said was interesting. She’d found something besides Cara and Melody to distract her.

  “Pretty much.”

  “How come? Can’t you write just one book?”

  “Depends on what you’re trying to do.” He squinted at her. “Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t even read Foundation?“

  “Shameful ignorance, I know. But I did read Don Quixote.“

  “Did you like it?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “You ought to like science fiction then. The good stuff turns on themes like Cervantes’s.”

  She looked at the back cover of Fire in the Hole. A much younger Steve smiled out from the page. His face had that raw-boned youngster look, full of himself and all cocky self-confidence. Very young. Very endearing.

  Steve knew what she was going to ask. “I was twenty and thought I knew everything.”

  She smiled across the table. “And did you?”

  “Surprisingly enough, I knew a great deal more then than I seem to know now.” He shook his head. “My world now is much more confusing than it was then. All I had to think about was the next page, the next bar and the next brawl. The more complicated my life gets, the less confident I am that I’m making the right decisions.” He shrugged. “Life’s like that.”

  “Sounds like a theme for a book.”

  “I expect it will be. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, lately.” He cocked a brushy eyebrow at her. “Tell me what you’ve been thinking about, Lady Greeneyes.”

  As if he didn’t know. Elizabeth looked at him: he was intelligent, sexy and full of fun. Unconsciously she listed the virtues she’d discovered in him in the past few weeks—his commitment to Melody, his dedication to his work, his honesty and ethical behavior. For the first time since her divorce from Robert, she thought, I could fall in love here, if I’m not careful.

  And if she did, how would she reconcile Cara, the Immovable Object, to Steve, the Irresistible Force? Elizabeth had read the statistics about how easily disapproving children could destroy a relationship between a man and a woman. She sighed.

  Steve reached across the table and tapped her hand with a gentle finger. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I’m sorry Cara was so rude to you tonight.” That was close enough to the truth.

  “It’s not me she doesn’t like. It’s Melody. I’m just caught in the fallout.”

  “I hope that’s all,” said Elizabeth. “I’m afraid she’s hoping that her father and I will eventually see reason and reunite. I’m sure that’s why she wants me to date Joe Salvini—except for the nose, he could be Robert’s brother. Not as good-looking, but there’s a definite resemblance. So she’ll take Joe as a temporary substitute, until I’m sensible enough to invite Robert to come back.”

  “Pretty normal, I think, for her to want her father and mother to be together,” he said, wondering if Elizabeth also harbored that hope. She’d been divorced for six years and hadn’t had a serious relationship since. Could she still be committed to Robert and yearning for him despite his faults?

  “Yeah, it’s normal.” She propped her chin on one hand and stared into her empty glass as if she looked for wisdom in its crystal depth. “She thinks he’s wonderful, and I’ve encouraged her. Maybe I’ve overdone it.”

  Steve split the last of the wine between them. “It’s not a bad thing for a girl to admire her father.”

  “I know. That’s why I did it.” She regarded the wine pensively. “She’s too young for perspective. Robert’s her father—if she hated him, she’d have to hate herself. So I emphasize his good points.”

  “What are they?” he asked, and watched her carefully to see if he could tell how she really felt about Robert.

  “Damned if I know,” said Elizabeth, and grinned. “Well, okay. I’ll be honest. He does have good points—two of them. He’s very charming and incredibly handsome. Sort of like a Ken doll who’s been to a personality-plus seminar. But that’s all
there is to him.”

  “How does he manage with these terrible handicaps?” he asked.

  “I only said he’s shallow. I didn’t say he wasn’t smart. He negotiates contracts for professional athletes, and he’s very good at it. I can’t imagine why—he tells everybody exactly what they want to hear, whether it’s true or not. It’s a very poor way to conduct your affairs.”

  “Does he do that with Cara, too?” he asked.

  “Of course. I told you. He does it with everybody.”

  Was she bitter and hurt, he wondered, or just annoyed with Robert and worried about Cara? Testing the waters, Steve said, “That’s bound to cause trouble later.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” said Elizabeth gloomily. “I suppose I haven’t been telling her the truth, either. I let her think he’s something he’s not. But I mean well. And he does love her. He’s just irresponsible, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” said Steve, sounding irritated despite himself. How could she defend a jerk who wouldn’t take any of the emotional responsibility for his own daughter? Cara was stubborn and determined, a feisty and resilient fighter. Those were invaluable traits. If she learned to use them properly, she’d be a world-beater. Any father ought to be proud to have a hand in raising a kid like that.

  Of course, he wasn’t under any illusion about whom the feisty and resilient Cara was fighting, and there was no use pretending that thirteen-year-olds of either sex could be motivated by logic and justice. It just wasn’t in them.

  The thought of Cara scowling and facing him down like a scrappy little alley cat made him smile. Elizabeth, seeing this, scowled herself.

  “You couldn’t possibly think this is funny,” she said, with some heat. “So what are you smiling about?”

  “Cara.”

  “How could you smile about Cara? She’s been perfectly horrible.”

  “Oh, not perfectly,” he told her. “I’ll admit I wish she’d warm up to me, but there’s a lot to be said for anyone who fights as hard as she does for what she believes, even if it’s wrong.”