But not always. Sometimes she thought herself into a frenzy of need and frustration. However, just occasionally, the thinking was...pleasant. The sound of his laughter, the long touch of his leg against hers in the theater, the way his knees b.u.mped hers under the table-those were pleasant too.

The warmth between her thighs was developing a distinctive tingle. She'd really like it if he kissed her. And held her. She absolutely knew there'd be no safer, better feeling than being held by Boone Brennan. Well, maybe not safer. Boone being Boone, he might very well drop her. Even that would be all right, though, because he'd stick around to help her up.

Oh, he was talking.

"Are you missing Richmond and those conveniences you mentioned the other day? I've heard they have more than one gas station there."

Heat climbed her cheeks. She wondered exactly how much she'd missed. "I'm sorry. My mind was out there somewhere." She didn't think she'd tell him exactly where. "Oh, Richmond? No, I really don't miss it very much. I miss everyone who worked at Dolan's. The last few years I was there, they were the only people I really talked to. I always worked at the restaurant, but I'd had my own apartment for eight years or so when Dad was diagnosed. I didn't move back home until it became necessary, about five years ago, but then there was no life other than Dad." She smiled sheepishly. "I started going to church so I could have a couple of hours on Sunday that were all my own. I gained faith as I went along, but in the beginning it was just so I could have that two hours."

"Never married?"

"No. Went steady in high school. Engaged once later on."

He raised an eyebrow. "Cold feet?" He moved his knees so that they b.u.mped the sides of hers and the crisp cotton of his slacks caressed her bare legs.

"Not mine. My high school boyfriend went away to college and met a cheerleader with great legs and a black Corvette. My fiance-" she hesitated, surprised that it still hurt when she thought of Scott Knight's defection, "-forced the choice between him and my father. Dad was already sick, and I was all he had. I couldn't leave him."

"Hard to call that a choice. You really didn't have one."

She shrugged. "Made the decision easy." And lonely.

It was just after midnight when she parked his Jeep behind Crockett's car. Boone walked around and opened her door. "I'll walk you home."

"All that way?" She met his eyes in the moonlight. "Do you mind that I consider this my home?"

"I'd mind if you didn't." His lips were close to hers. "Do you mind if I do this?"

He didn't wait for her answer, just captured her mouth. He tasted of coffee and strawberries and longing. Response flowed warm and liquid through her. Oh, dear Lord, nothing had ever felt this good. It wasn't as though she was completely inexperienced-she was nearly thirty-three and had left her virginity with the high school boyfriend on prom night-but she was positive nothing had ever been this right.

"Good," he murmured, breaking away just long enough to catch her bottom lip in a nibble before kissing her again. Longer and deeper, his embrace fitting her body to his.

Her arms went up around his neck, her right hand tunneling into his streaky brown hair. The night air was deliciously cool against her skin, contrasting sensuously with the heat where their bodies touched. And where they wanted to. She imagined steam rising and stifled a giggle against his mouth.

"Funny?" he murmured, breaking contact. "I'm doing my very best 'come and see my etchings' act and you think it's funny?"

"Huh-uh." She framed his face, relishing the feel of his skin against her fingers, smiling into his eyes. "Just fun."

"Ah."

From somewhere came the faint sound of music. "Hear that?" he whispered. "I ordered it so I wouldn't have to let you go." His arm went around her waist and he took her hand in his other one. "I have to count," he said, leading her into a two-step, "but it's really very romantic if you can ignore me saying one two, one-two over and over again."

She tilted her head into his shoulder, laughing. He smelled so good. "I can ignore the counting if you don't dance us into the rose bushes."

"I wouldn't think of it. Aunt Gert would-one two, one-two. No, left foot-be out here in a heartbeat telling me to cut a switch so she could-one two, one-two-whale the tar out of me."

They danced the length and breadth of the driveway, swooping between cars and around bicycles. When they got close to the bench that sat in the flower bed, Boone lifted a foot to its seat and draped her dramatically across his leg. "Beautiful," he said. "You're beautiful." He kissed her. Not an especially s.e.xy kiss-his lips were barely open, hers even less so-but appealing and arousing all the same. It made her feel everything with startling intensity. The soft cotton fabric of her dress against her legs, his hand warm on her arm, the strength of him. As precarious as their positions were, she had no fear he would drop her.

The dance ended after the song did, but she didn't notice when the music stopped and she didn't think he had, either. They stood at the back door of the house and he released her hand to lay his on the upper curve of her breast. "Your heart's beating fast," he observed, slipping his fingers inside the vee neck of her dress. "You feel like warm silk."

His kiss was deep this time, his tongue exploring, doing an erotic little tangle with hers before withdrawing. His fingers mirrored the movement, teasing her nipple to a pebbled crest then pulling away just enough to weigh the curve of her breast with his palm.

"We need to go in," she said, when she could get her breath.

"I know." He kissed her some more, his hands sliding up and down her bare arms. Up and down, chasing gooseflesh in their wake. He held her, swaying a little to music only they heard. "Really," he murmured, "we should go in."

A few minutes later, they did. She straightened her dress and he re-fastened his shirt where the b.u.t.tons had mysteriously come undone.

"Thanks for the evening," she said inside the kitchen. "It was fun."

He backed her up to the island and kissed her once more. Long and leisurely and deep. Way deep. She'd never drunk brandy, but his kisses reminded her of how she'd read it described. Dark and sweet and hot. Oh, G.o.d, hot.

"It was. What do you say we do it again soon?"

Easy question. Her answer was instant, whispered against his mouth. "Okay."

"I'm going to check on Sims before I go to bed."

"Goodnight."

She took off her shoes and went up the back stairs, humming almost silently. She felt like a Rodgers and Hammerstein movie. All that was lacking was a swirly skirt and a little more cleavage. The thought made her breathe soft laughter as she slipped inside her room.

For the first time in longer than she could remember, she slept through the night, not waking until the sun made its presence known at the east windows of her room.

"I have to get back to Richmond," Crockett said. "I've already been gone longer than I intended. They get along fine without me, but there are things I need to attend to. Programs that involve kids like you and I were, like Jack is. "

Boone stood at the door of Crockett's room, watching him pack his things neatly into a black leather duffel bag. "When will you be home again? Aunt Gert likes having you here." I do too.

"When I can, or when she really needs me to be." Crockett's eyes met his, and something light glimmered past the sadness that seemed to have settled there. "So. You and Lucy, huh?"

"I don't know." Boone shrugged. "She's a nice girl. Fun." The room was motel neat, the bed made, the dresser without so much as a handful of change on its top. He remembered when Crockett's room was as messy as his own-they used to bribe Kelly to clean for them. Forcing them to pay up on the bribes was probably why she'd become a litigator. He guessed that meant both he and Crockett had something to answer for in the hereafter, because he didn't think Kelly Brennan as an a.s.sistant prosecutor was a whole lot of fun.

Crockett frowned. "Fun? Is that all?"

"I feel something for Lucy, something I hadn't expected to ever feel again," Boone admitted, "and I feel guilty as all h.e.l.l."

"Don't."

The terse reply stung. And irritated. "Oh, come on, Crockett. I know you're still mad at me, but surely we can talk about it after all these years."

Crockett glanced up, his expression startled. "Mad at you?"

"Yes, mad. Over Maggie. Because I loved her when you did, but not enough. I lost her when you wouldn't have, and I don't think even you have enough faith to forgive that." There, he'd said it aloud, and the pain was as sharp and ragged as he'd feared. "If I'd stayed out of the way, she'd have married you and she'd still be alive and you'd both be happy. You'd probably even have a bunch of little Crocketts running around. I knew you cared for her that first weekend when you brought her home. I knew it and, G.o.d help me, I didn't care."

"Boone." Crockett just stared at him, then walked around the room shaking his head. "Gentle Jesus, where do I start?" He stood still, apparently listening. "Why can't I be one of those who hears the voice of G.o.d when I want to rather than when He wants me to?" He paced more, then faced Boone over the s.p.a.ce between them.

Facing him over fifteen years of...no, not silence-they'd stayed stiltedly, steadily polite-but stormy quiet.

Boone braced himself. What if the quiet was better? Sometimes it was. Grief had become more bearable when he'd stopped feeling like screaming. Work had even become easier when he'd learned to draw with less volume in the music filling his studio.

Crockett sighed, sounding uncannily like Aunt Gert when she was about to cut loose on one or more of them. "You're completely nuts."

Oh, for G.o.d's sake. "That's beside the point."

"No, usually it's beside the point. Right now, it is the point." Crockett seemed to be trying to gather his thoughts. "I was in love with Maggie from the moment I met her," he admitted. "Something you can identify with. But that didn't mean she was in love with me. Not for one minute. Even before you and she met, that ship had already sailed and I was getting over it. Besides," he added wryly, "I already had a pretty good idea that my particular ship was taking me in another direction altogether. You don't enter the priesthood because of a broken heart, Boone. At least, you shouldn't. Maggie probably had a little more to do with it for me than she should have, but that's not your fault or hers-it's mine."

"But she would still-"

"No, she wouldn't. She had an aneurysm. You didn't give her that. No one even knew she had it. Had I been with her, I wouldn't have known."

Boone hadn't cried over Maggie in a long time. He'd cursed and shouted out his anger and mourned in long and mostly silent pain, but he thought he'd come a long way. He spent time with her family without falling apart. He enjoyed seeing pictures of her in Aunt Gert's photo alb.u.ms. He was able to talk about her without losing his voice to grief. He'd found pleasure with other women and was pretty sure he was finding something more than just pleasure with Lucy. But he'd always felt guilty. Still felt guilty.

Tears pushed at the backs of his eyes and he lifted his hand to his face, trying to keep them back with his fingers. He hadn't been raised with the old archetype that said men didn't cry, but he'd never gotten comfortable with the fact that sometimes they did.

"How could I not have known?" he asked, although he understood that even Crockett's G.o.d-endowed wisdom probably didn't have an answer for him. "How could we have been together d.a.m.n near every minute for ten years without me knowing she had a time bomb inside her?"

"You weren't given that power," Crockett said. "I don't know why. I don't even begin to know why. G.o.d wanted Maggie in a different place, and I don't know the why on that, either. But there's one thing I do know."

"What's that?" The tears were there, moving past his fingers and down his cheeks. He turned his face away.

"I see lots of people, even elderly people, who never, ever have what you and Maggie had. Who have never loved anyone the way you did her and who've never been loved the way she did you. For ten years, you both started and ended every day fully aware you were somebody's heart and soul. That was an unparalleled gift, Boone. It ended too soon-I know that, and I can't tell you the reason for it, but that doesn't take away from what it was."

Boone nodded. He knew that too, but knowing it didn't make the ending any more bearable.

"And I know something else."

Crockett wasn't going to go on unless he turned to face him. Boone finally did, after wiping his face with his palms. "What?"

"That it's time."

Boone didn't have to ask, "Time for what?" It was time to let Maggie rest, to accept memories as just what they were: memories. He thought he'd done that in Rising Sun with Lucy, but it had only been one of the intricate steps in the grieving process. He still wasn't sure he was ready for that dance to be over. "I don't know if I can do it," he said aloud.

"I don't know either," Crockett admitted, "but I know you should."

"It wasn't just Maggie I lost," Boone said. "I lost my best friend too."

Crockett met his gaze again before stepping into the bathroom between their rooms and coming out with a tissue and handing it to him. "I've been here the whole time," he said, unsmiling, "and the truth is so have you. We don't talk a lot, but I never doubted that if I needed a friend, I always had one."

Boone realized he'd always known that, too, though it wasn't the same as it had been when they were young. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be. "I kept thinking you were the one who was angry and blaming you for it," he said. "Maybe it was me."

"Maybe. And maybe-" Crockett hesitated, "-maybe the only way I could do the priesthood thing was by giving up who I'd been, including being your best friend. Being whatever I was to Kelly. I think I was wrong."

Boone drew in a wavering breath. "Wanna kiss and make up?"

Crockett grinned. "I think I'll pa.s.s."

They'd known each other their whole lives, but they'd never, ever hugged. Not that they minded men hugging, but they'd always been more the shake hands and say rude things and slap shoulders type.

Boone didn't know who stepped first, but for a moment, they were the hugging type, holding hard and close. "Be careful going back," he said gruffly.

"Will do. You and Lucy-take care of each other."

"Okay."

Back in his room, Boone sat on the bed and held the picture of Maggie for a long, aching time. "If I let you go," he said aloud, "it doesn't mean forgetting, does it?"

There was no thunder or lightning, no epiphanic understanding that life would go on from this day forward unfettered by memories or grief. It would have been nice if he could have heard Maggie's voice urging him to freedom. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Boone," he wanted to hear, "what's taken you so long?"

But when he kissed his fingertips and pressed them to the gla.s.s in the picture frame, as he'd done every night for three years, he understood that he wouldn't do it anymore. "Love you," he whispered.

Before he slept, just for a moment, he smelled lilacs and spring.

And he felt hope.

Chapter Nine.

Kelly Brennan was pale and listless. Her makeup was as perfect as ever, but it was more like a mask than an enhancement. Lucy felt sorry for her in spite of herself. She poured a cup of orange spice tea and set it in front of Kelly at the kitchen's island. "Would you like some breakfast?" she asked brightly. "I was going to make oatmeal."

The lawyer's glance was baleful. "I'd rather eat glue. I came over to talk to my brother and my aunt, and I'd like some privacy while I do that."

"Fine." Lucy went into the laundry room, closing the door with a snap that very nearly qualified as a slam-Lucy the Pleaser never slammed doors. She emptied the washing machine and carried the basket outside. Every bed in the house was changed on Monday morning. Gert was a modern thinker most of the time, but her evolution had stopped with certain housekeeping habits-even when Monday was a holiday. One of Lucy's favorite jobs was hanging the crisp white bedding outside. It was a dose of sanity on even the worst of days.

When the two sets of sheets from that load were flapping on the line, she went to the garden behind the garage, getting a hoe out of the shed. Jack did a good job keeping the weeds at bay, but there were always a few to take one's frustrations out on. She'd chopped up earth around the tomato plants and onions, pulled a handful of radishes, and was hoeing the beans when she heard a drawling voice behind her. "You were wearing those shorts when I met you. I liked them that day too."

She had to stop herself from saying something rude. It wasn't Boone's fault his sister was a pain in the backside. "Thank you," she said primly, not turning around.

"I'm going to drive out to the cemetery. You want to go? It's a pretty morning."

She'd had to call and order flowers for her parents' graves in Virginia after the fire fiasco on Sat.u.r.day and she felt a sharp twinge of regret that she wouldn't be able to visit.

"Dad and I went every year. He made me," she murmured. She straightened and faced Boone, leaning on the hoe. "He'd sit on a bench and talk to Mom and I'd run around looking at all the names on the markers. There was an Isobel Dolan who was buried three rows away, and I used to put flowers on her grave. I just knew she was a long-lost grandmother." She smiled sheepishly and handed him the hoe to put away. "My grandparents are all buried in Ireland and I never knew any of them, but that didn't stop me from daydreaming." She nodded. "I'd like to go."

The Jeep was full of flowers. Some were silk arrangements, some real, their aroma sweet in the warm air. "You just want me along to help distribute all this," she accused, climbing into the pa.s.senger seat and accepting a bouquet of yellow roses from him.

Boone started the Jeep. "You got that right. Aunt Gert and Kelly will go to the cemetery today-it's one way we're all very traditional, I guess-but I always get to be the flower boy."

"These are gorgeous," she said, sniffing the flowers in her lap.

"They were her favorite."