A muffin with a fried egg and a piece of Canadian bacon nestled inside it.

She sipped her coffee as miles of nothing stretched before them.

They were married and that was all that counted for now.

f They reentered Phoenix six hours later.

Barely half a dozen sentences had passed between them during the

trip.

Caitlin attributed it to the fact that, Graham being Graham, he was working all this out in his head slowly. There could be no intrusion during this mental duel, so she left him to his thoughts.

Rather than conversation, country and western music from the radio filled the empty space Her mouth curved. She could relate to the mournful tales of woe that came wafting across the airwaves.

Some goldenthroated woman was declaring that she couldn't make love with her lover's body if his heart and soul weren't in it. Tell me about it, Caitlin thought sadly as she glanced at Graham's rigid profile.

Sighing inwardly, she looked out the side window.

The route was beginning to look much too familiar.

"Gray, where are we going?"

Did he live that close to her?

All this time and she hadn't known?

It didn't seem possible.

'Home.

He wasn't talking about his own home.

She could tell from his tone.

Did he think he could .

just bring her back and then leave, as if she were some bogk mile'd

checked out of the library for the day and then returned after he'd

gotten his information?

"This is the way to my house."

"Yes, I know."

She probably wanted to go home to change, Graham felt, to be in her own

surroundings for a while.

None of what had happened in the past twenty-four hours had exactly been planned. He thought that perhaps she wanted a little time to herself to get her bearings and come to grips with what she done.

He knew that he did.

Caitlin shook her head.

"'Home' means your house now."

She stopped, unsure of what to say next.

Why was talking to him so difficult now?

It had always been so easy for her.

Even though they'd come from different backgrounds, somehow Graham had

always seemed like an extension of her own soul.

They'd both been unhappy, yet striving for a place in this wide world

that felt right when they had found each other.

Why did that have to change now?

Caitlin bit her lip.

Right words or not, she had to make him see things her way.

"If I'm your wife, Gray, I have to live with you."

She didn't want to go to her own home.

She wanted to start their life together.

However awkward those first steps were going to be, they had to be

taken.

If they weren't, none of this would ever gain any more length and breadth than it had right at this moment.

The charade would never become reality.

"Besides."

She forged on.

"I want to meet your mother and your son."

They were stopped at a light.

Graham paused, thinking, wrestling with his thoughts.

He supposed she was making sense.

When the light changed, he signaled, switching lanes beyond the

intersection until he was on the extreme left.

He made a U-turn at the next light, retracing his steps.

Taking her to his home the way she requested.

Caitlin hung on as the car shifted, a big, lumbering buffalo in a

sleek, feline world.

She couldn't help grinning.

"Doesn't exactly turn on a thine, does it?"

"She," he corrected, a hint of a smile glinting on his lips.

Her eyes opened wide as she stared at him.

"Your car's a she?"

Graham nodded, easing through another yellow light.

"Esmerelda."

"You named your car?"

The laugh throbbed in her throat as she posed the question to him

incredulously.

He spared her a look as he took another corner.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing."

This time she did laugh, with pure delight.

And a measure of relief.

"Gray, there's hope for you yet."

He had no idea what she was talking about.