"I believe so," Tyber replied. Although not your brand of healing.

"Excellent!" LaLeche rubbed his hands together. "This has really been a most enlightening evening." Everyone concurred. Zanita privately thought it was Tyber who had been enlightening.

"But it's far from over." Kim stretched her long legs out. "What was it you were saying about energy and sex and all, Tyber?"

A dimple popped into his cheek. "Well..." Zanita elbowed him in the gut. "Umph. It, ah, it's getting kind of late. Zanita and I really have to get going...."

"You're leaving?" Kim pouted.

"Yes," Zanita answered for them. "We're visiting some friends and really have to get back." She impaled Kim with a frosty glare. "So sorry."

"We'll be back tomorrow," Tyber added helpfully. Zanita threw him a disgusted look.

John stood up with them. "Too bad you have to leave, though. Zanita, maybe you and I can take a walk tomorrow through the woods. I'd like to show you a perfect place for meditating I found this afternoon."

"We'll see," Tyber responded, placing his hands on her shoulders.

LaLeche walked them to the door, gushing fondly over them. "I'm so glad you both came. We'll resume the sessions tomorrow around two in the afternoon. See you then."

As soon as they were in the truck driving to the inn, Tyber issued a proclamation straight from the quarter deck. "You're not going walking with him through the woods tomorrow."

Zanita faced him, surprised by his attitude. He seemed so nonchalant in the cabin when John had suggested it. "What if he has some information for the article-"

"No."

Zanita sighed. There was that pirate streak again. "Tyber, you can be very unreasonable when you want to be."

He did a double take. "What does that mean?"

"It means, sometimes you are unreasonably reasonable, and other times you are reasonably unreasonable, but right now you're unreasonably unreasonable."

Tyber muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "doomed to disorder" and that he was an "entropic victim."

Moonlight filtered across the bed through the open curtains.

Tyber leaned over Zanita, letting the tip of his finger trace the center line of little ribbons and bows on her thin cotton nightgown.

He sighed. "What is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"As much as I think this nightgown is pretty and sexy and downright irresistible, I have to ask myself why you're wearing it."

"Don't be ridiculous." She pushed his hand away.

Tyber raised his eyebrows.

"Something I said?" She remained silent. "Ahh. Something I did."

She turned her face to the window.

He turned it back.

"What did I do, baby?" His open mouth brushed tenderly along her jaw. She stiffened under him.

"You know very well what you did!"

The corners of his mouth curved slightly. "Why don't you refresh my memory?"

She shoved at his chest, pushing him away from her. "Did you have to smile like that?"

Tyber peered at her, cautiously bewildered. "I beg your pardon?"

"And well you should!"

"What are you talking about?"

"As if you didn't know!"

Tyber looked up at the ceiling and counted to ten. "Let's start over, okay?"

She stuck her chin in the air. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"No."

Zanita gasped in horror.

"Yes!"

This time she threw her pillow at him.

"I mean..." Tyber put his hands up beseechingly. "I don't know? Dammit, what answer am I suppose to give here?"

"You're so smart, you figure it out." She gave him her shoulder, turning on the bed.

He put his hand on her arm, turning her back. "What is the matter with you?"

She glared at him. "Do I have to spell it out for you?"

"Humor me."

"All right." She sat up, crossing her arms over her chest, unwittingly pushing her breasts up against the scooped neckline of her nightgown.

Tyber's sights fell to those breasts and remained there a second too long. "I'm listening."

"I am not talking to the top of your head. This is just what I'm talking about!"

Tyber locked eyes with her. "I'm glad one of us knows what it is."

"That look!"

"What look?"

"The one you just gave my... chest."

His brow furrowed. "You don't like me looking at you?"

"Don't be ridiculous!"

Tyber rubbed his ear. "Does that mean, don't be ridiculous you do like my looking at you, or don't be ridiculous you don't like me looking at you?"

"Are you being obtuse on purpose?"

Tyber let out a bark of laughter.

Zanita continued unabated. "Because if you are, I don't appreciate it." She lifted her nose in the air.

He clasped her shoulders. "Baby..." He took a deep breath and bravely forged ahead. "Do you like me looking at you?"

"Of course I do!"

"Good." Tyber nodded. "Then there's no problem." He bent toward her, ready to creatively press his mouth against those luscious full lips of hers.

"I-wasn't-talking-about-me." She spaced her words with deadly accuracy.

Tyber froze on the downshift. This had all the earmarks of trouble. He raised his lashes slowly to look into her eyes. "Something bothering you, baby?"

She narrowed her eyes at him until all he could see was little violet slits. He released her, flopping onto his back. He knew that look: he was in for it. Although, he still had no clue-but then again, this was his Zanita.

Tyber decided in a lightning-quick calculation that his best chance of survival lay in doing nothing. So he patiently waited for her to throw the next volley. He didn't have to wait long. One small, deadly word rent the air.

"Kim."

His focus shifted from the intricate marble ceiling to Zanita lying beside him. "What about her?"

"Don't be coy."

"Coy?" He choked. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You looked at her." Her lower lip pouted.

Light was beginning to dawn. His blue eyes twinkled with understanding. Tyber was careful to make his tone a combination of surprise mixed with a light dash of horror. "I did?"

"Yes! And you smiled at her, as well."

"I didn't!" Tyber tried not to grin as he gasped.

She nodded emphatically. "Your come-hither smile, too."

"Aw, baby, I'm sorry." He put his arms around her. "I didn't realize I was doing it." That was the truth. He couldn't even remember what Kim looked like.

"You... you didn't?" She gazed up at him earnestly, tugging at his heartstrings.

"Of course not." He brushed her lips with his several times. "Why would I give anyone else my-what did you call it? My come-hither smile?-when you're the only one I want to come hither? Or is it thither?"

Relieved, Zanita snuggled against him, putting her arms around his neck. "It doesn't matter, Doc; it's really not important." Now that she was mollified, Zanita saw the wisdom in dropping the subject immediately. If not sooner.

Tyber was not so easily sidetracked. His blue eyes glittered down on her, amusement evident in their crystalline depths. "You know, Zanita, you almost sound jealous." She stilled in his arms at once.

"Don't be silly."

"One could almost say that you sound like..."-he paused to shudder slightly-"...a girlfriend." Then he laughed deeply, nibbing his nose teasingly against hers.

"I do not!"

"No?" His open mouth possessively slipped down the column of her throat, stopping midway to lave a particularly enticing spot. "If it looks like a girlfriend and acts like a girlfriend..." He sharply bit the rounded curve of her breast.

"Tyber!" She walloped the back of his head with her pillow.

Unfazed, he nuzzled between her breasts, chuckling low against her heart. "Then it must be a..."

"Don't you dare even think it."

He raised himself to look down at her. A laugh line curved the side of his cheek as he lifted one imperious eyebrow. "Have I taught you about resonance yet?"

Zanita groaned. Tyber looked intent on delivering one of his "special" lessons.

As he lowered himself onto her, his seductive whisper echoed provocatively against the marble walls. "Let me tell you all about pairs and harmony and synchronous vibration...."

Chapter Nine.

"Throw your leg over and climb on. It's not going to bite you, baby."

Zanita eyed the motorcycle warily. "I don't know, Tyber, it doesn't look all that friendly to me."

"It's not supposed to look friendly-it's a Harley. Now, c'mon-hop on."

"I-I'm not sure. Why don't we take the truck instead of- eee!" Patience at an end, Tyber had simply reached around with one arm and hauled her up behind him on the motorcycle. With a brief "hold on tight" thrown over his shoulder, he gunned the bike and took off down the drive of the mansion to the main road heading toward the small village the innkeeper had told them about that morning.

"I don't think I like this, Tyber." Zanita buried her head in the broad plane of his back, her arms clasping his waist in a death grip.