Key of Light (Key 1)

He got to his feet, hooking a hand in Moe’s collar before the dog could leap on Malory. “You look great. Smell even better.”

“And I’d like to keep it that way.” She leaned down, tapped a finger lightly on Moe’s nose. “So, no jumping.”

“Why don’t we take a drive down to the river? Then he can run around like crazy.”

SHE had to give him points. He’d managed to turn walking the dog into a date and had done it smoothly. So smoothly, she didn’t realize she was on a date until they were sitting on a blanket by the river eating fried chicken while Moe raced around barking hopefully at squirrels.

But it was hard to complain when the air was cool and fresh, and the light softening as the sun sank lower in the west. When it dropped beneath those peaks, everything would go soft and gray and it would be cooler yet. She would need the light jacket she’d brought along—at least she would if they stayed to watch the stars come out.

And how long had it been since she’d watched the stars come out?

Now that she was here, she wondered if the enforced hibernation, however brief, had accomplished anything more than creating a logjam in her mind.

She wasn’t an isolationist. She needed contact with people. Conversations, stimuli, sound and movement. And realizing that only made her understand how much she needed to be part of the workforce again.

If she grabbed the million dollars at the end of this strange rainbow, she would still need to work. Just for the day-to-day energy.

“I have to admit, I’m glad you got me out.”

“You’re not a cave dweller.” He dug in the bucket for another drumstick when she frowned at him. “You’re a social animal. Take Dana, she’s more cave dweller than social animal. If you left her alone, she’d be perfectly happy holed up with mountains of books and a vat of coffee. At least for a few weeks. Then she’d need to come up for air. Me, I’d go nuts after a day or two. I need the charge. So do you.”

“You’re right. And I’m not sure how I feel about you figuring that out so soon.”

“Soon’s relative. I’ve spent, oh, about a year thinking about you in the past week. Given time and energy ratios. It’s been a while since I’ve given that much thought to a woman, in case you’re wondering.”

“I don’t know what I’m wondering. Yes, I do,” she corrected. “Why haven’t you brought up the key, or asked me what I’m doing about finding it?”

“Because you’ve had enough of that for now. If you’d wanted to get into it, you’d have brought it up. You’re not shy.”

“You’re right. Why did you bring me out here, away from town?”

“It’s quiet. Nice view. Moe likes it. There’s the slim chance I can get you naked on this blanket—”

“Try slim to none.”

“Slim’s enough to keep me going.” He dipped a plastic fork into the fast-food potato salad. “And I wanted to see if Brad’s moving in yet.” He looked across the ribbon of water to the rambling two-story frame house on the opposite bank. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“You miss him.”

“You got that right.”

She plucked a blade of grass, ran it idly through her fingers. “I have some friends from college. We were so close, and I guess we all thought we’d be close forever. Now we’re all scattered and hardly see each other. Once or twice a year if we can all manage it. We talk on the phone or through E-mail now and then, but it’s not the same. I miss them. I miss who we were when we were friends, and that telepathy you develop so that you know what the other’s thinking, or what she’d do in some situation. Is it that way for you?”

“Pretty much.” He reached over, toyed with the ends of her hair in the same absent way she toyed with the blade of grass. “But we go back to being kids together. None of us are big on phone calls. Maybe because Brad and I end up on the phone through most of our workday. E-mail does the job. Jordan, he’s the E-mail king.”

“I met him for about ninety seconds at a book signing, in Pittsburgh, about four years ago. All dark and handsome, with a dangerous gleam in his eye.”

“You want dangerous?”

It made her laugh. He was sitting on a ratty blanket eating bucket chicken while his big, silly dog barked at a squirrel that was ten feet up a tree.

Then she was flat on her back, his body pressed to hers, and the laugh died in her throat.

His mouth was dangerous. Foolish of her to have forgotten that. However affable and easy he appeared on the surface, there were storms inside him. Hot, whippy storms that could crash over the unwary before they could think about taking shelter.

So she didn’t think at all, but let it rage. And let that secret part of herself, that part she’d never risked exposing, slide out. And take, even as it was taken.

“How’s this working for you?” he murmured as he fixed that amazing mouth on her throat.