"Yes! G.o.d!" Knowing she was close to stuttering, she held her hands up to hold him off. "Just stop. I've never had anything tie me up like this. Instant attraction. I said I believe in it, and I do, but I've never felt it before. I have to think about it."

"Why?" It was a simple matter to reach out, grab her by the wrists, and tug her forward against him. "Why not just act on it when you know it'll feel good? Your pulse is jumping." His thumbs skimmed over her wrist. "I like feeling it leap like that, seeing your eyes go cloudy and dark. Why don't you kiss me this time and see what happens next?"

"I'm not as good at it as you are."

Now he laughed. "Jesus, woman, you're quite the package. Let me decide for myself if you're good at it or not. Come on and kiss me, Jude. Whatever happens next is up to you."

She wanted to. Wanted to feel his mouth against hers again, the shape and texture and flavor of it. Just now his lips were curved, and the light of fun was in his eyes. Fun, she thought. Why couldn't it just be fun?

With his fingers still lightly braceleting her wrists, she leaned toward him. And he watched her. She rose onto her toes, still his eyes stayed on hers. Tilting her head just slightly, she eased up to brush her lips over his.

"Do it again, why don't you?"

So she did, mesmerized when his eyes stayed open, compelling hers to do the same. She lingered longer this time, brushing left, then right. Fascinating. Experimenting, she sc.r.a.ped her teeth lightly, over his bottom lip and heard her own quiet sound of pleasure as from a great distance.

His eyes were so blue, as vivid as the water that stretched to the horizon. It seemed her world turned that single, marvelous color. Her heart began to pound, her vision to blur as it had that first time at Maude's grave.

She said his name, just one sigh, then threw her arms around him.

The jolt rocked him to the soles of his feet, the sudden heat, the abrupt burst of power that whipped out of her and snaked around him like rope.

His hands streaked up, over her hips, her back, into her hair to grip hard and fast. The kiss changed from a coy brush and nibble to a wild war of tongues and teeth and lips where body strained to body and pulse thundered against pulse.

In that warm cascade of sensation, she lost herself. Or perhaps she found the Jude that had been trapped inside her-like a voice locked in a silver box.

Later, she would swear she heard the stones sing.

She buried her face in the curve of his neck and gulped in the scent of him like water.

"This is too fast." Even as she said it she locked her arms around him. "I can't breathe, I can't think. I can't believe what's going on inside my body."

He gave a weak laugh and nuzzled her hair. "If it's anything to what's going on inside mine, we're likely to explode any second here. Darling, we could be back at the cottage in minutes, and I'd have you in bed in the blink of an eye. I promise you we'd both feel a good deal better for it."

"I'm sure you're right, but I-"

"Can't go quite that fast, or you wouldn't be Jude."

Though it cost him, he drew her back to study her face. More than pretty, he thought now, but solid as well. Why was it, he wondered, she didn't seem to know just how pretty or just how solid she was?

Because she didn't, more time and more care were needed.

"And I like Jude, as I've said before. You need some courting."

She couldn't say if she was stunned, amused, or insulted. "I certainly don't."

"Oh, but you do. You want flowers and words, and stolen kisses and walks in soft weather. It's romance Jude Frances wants, and I'm the one to give it to you. Well, now, look at that face." He caught her by the chin as an adult might a sulky child, and she decided insult won. "You're pouting now."

"I certainly am not." She would have jerked her face free, but he tightened his grip, then leaned down and kissed her firm on the mouth.

"I'm the one who's looking at you, sweetheart, and if that's not a fine pout, I'm a Scotsman. It's that you're thinking I'm making fun of you, but I'm not, or not much anyway. What's wrong with romance then? I'd like some myself."

His voice went warm and rich, like whiskey by the fire. "Will you give me long looks and warm smiles from across the room, and the brush of your hand on my arm? A hot, desperate kiss in the shadows? A touch"-he skimmed his fingertips over the curve of her breast and all but stopped her heart-"in secret?"

"I didn't come here looking for romance."

Hadn't she? he thought. With her myths and legends and tales. "Looking or not, you'll have it." On that score his mind was made up. "And when I make love with you, the first time, it'll be long and slow and sweet. That's a promise. Walk back with me now, before the way you're looking at me makes me break that promise as soon as I've made it."

"You just want to be in charge. In control of the situation."

He took her hand again in the friendliest and most annoying of manners. "I suppose I'm accustomed to being so. But if you want to take over and seduce me, darling Jude, I can promise to be weak and willing."

She laughed, d.a.m.n it, before she could stop herself. "I'm sure we both have work to do."

"But you'll come see me," he continued as they walked. "You'll sit and have a gla.s.s of wine in my pub so I can look at you and suffer."

"G.o.d, you're Irish," she whispered.

"To the bone." He lifted her hand and nipped her knuckle. "And Jude, by the way, you're d.a.m.n good at kissing."

"Hmmm," was the safest response she could think of.

But she went to the pub, and sat and listened to stories. Over the next days as spring took a firmer hold on Ardmore, Jude could often be found at the pub for an hour or two in the evening, or the afternoon. She listened, recorded, took notes. And as the word spread, others with stories came to tell them, or to be entertained by them.

She filled tapes and reams of pages and dutifully transcribed and a.n.a.lyzed them at her computer while she sipped at what was becoming her habitual cup of tea.

If sometimes she dreamed herself into the stories of romance and magic, she thought it harmless enough. Even useful if she stretched things a bit. After all, she could understand the meanings and the motives all the better if the stories and the actions in them became more personal.

It wasn't as if she was going to waste time actually writing it that way. An academic paper had no room for fancies or fantasies. She was only exploring until she found the core of her thesis, then she'd tidy up the language and delete the ramblings.

What the h.e.l.l are you going to do with it, Jude? she asked herself. What do you really think you're going to do even if you polish and perfect and hammer it until it's dry as dust? Try to have it published in some professional journal absolutely no one reads for pleasure? Use it to try to kick off a lecture tour?

Oh, the idea of that happening, however remote the possibility, felt like an entire troop of Boy Scouts tying knots in her stomach.

For an instant she nearly buried her face in her hands and gave in to despair. Nothing was ever going to come of this paper, this project. It was self-defeating to believe differently. No one was ever going to stand around at a faculty function and discuss the insights and interests of Jude F. Murray's paper. Worse, she didn't want them to.

It was no more than a kind of therapy, a way to pull her back from the edge of a crisis she couldn't even identify.

What good had all those years of study and work accomplished if she couldn't even find the right terms for her own crises?

Poor self-esteem, bruised ego, a lack of belief in her own femininity, career dissatisfaction.

But what was under all of that? Really under it. Blurred ident.i.ty? she mused. Maybe that was part of it. She'd lost herself somewhere along the line until whatever was left, whatever she'd been able to recognize, had been so pale, so unattractive, that she'd run from it.

To what?

Here, she thought and was more than a little surprised to realize that her fingers were racing over the keyboard, her thoughts were speeding out of her head and onto the page.

/ ran here, and here I feel somehow more real, certainly more at home than I ever did in the house William and I bought, or the condo I moved into after he'd grown tired of me. Certainly more at home than in the cla.s.sroom.