if he’d asked her to reveal her deepest secrets. “My family?”
“Yes. Big? Small? Where are they?”
“I have two older sisters, both married, both totally unambitious and disgustingly content with their husbands and kids. They still live in Ohio, within a few miles of our folks. They all pester me about my solitary lifestyle. They don’t get it.”
“Were you close?”
She smiled. “As close as three girls can be when they’re fighting over the same dress to wear to a dance.”
“Do you envy them? What they have now?”
“At times,” she admitted, her expression thoughtful. “I love what I do and I am ambitious, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish I had someone to share it with.”
Her thoughts so closely mirrored what Richard had been thinking only moments before, it made him sigh again. “I know what you mean,” he admitted with rare candor.
Melanie regarded him with surprise. “You do?”
“Sure. What’s the thrill of conquering the world, if there’s no one to tell, no one who’ll get excited about it?”
“Exactly,” she said at once. “It doesn’t mean we’re dissatisfied with what we have or that we’re ungrateful, just that we recognize that there can be more. That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”
“Self-awareness is always good, or so they say.”
“So, if you know there’s something lacking in your life, why haven’t you married any of those women with whom you’ve been involved?” she asked.
Richard shuddered. “Because I couldn’t imagine bringing a single one of them into a place like this for a crab cake and homemade apple cobbler.”
Melanie’s expression softened. “Really?”
“Yes,” he said. “But don’t let it go to your head.”
“Of course not,” she said at once.
“And it doesn’t mean I’ll think about hiring you,” he added for good measure.
“I know that,” she agreed, but she looked a little smug.
“It just means that you remind me a lot of Destiny,” he explained, trying to sort through his feelings even as he attempted to explain them to her. “You’re outspoken and unpredictable and…” He faltered.
“Open to new ideas?” she suggested.
Richard laughed. “Don’t push it.”
“But people who are open to new ideas aren’t—”
“Stuffy,” he supplied before she could say it. “I know. I get it.”
She studied him intently. “Do you really?”
“Yes,” he assured her.
“Then maybe we should go back to the cottage,” she suggested.
“So I can read your proposal?”
“That, too, but I was also thinking of getting totally wild and letting you kiss me again.”
Richard stared at her, bemused by the outrageous suggestion. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I have an open mind.”
“Which means seduction could be back on the table?” he asked, wanting to be sure he got it exactly right before he made a damn fool out of himself. He hadn’t wanted a woman as badly as he wanted Melanie Hart in so long, he wasn’t sure he could trust his own instincts.
“You never know,” she said with a shrug.
“I think you need to be clearer than that,” he said, as he tossed a handful of bills on the table to pay for lunch, then grabbed his coat.
“What fun is life, if everything has to be spelled out ahead of time?”
He frowned at her. “It may be more fun, but my way averts disaster.”
She accepted his help with her coat, then faced him, her expression totally serious. “Okay, then, here it is. Not that I’m crazy about it, but right now, this minute, I want you to kiss me again. I am still opposed to anything more happening between us, because it could get messy, especially if I wind up working for you.”
“I see,” he said.
“However,” she added, then grinned, “I might be open to persuasion.”
His pulse kicked up at the tiny opening.
“Maybe not today,” she added pointedly. “Maybe not tomorrow. But the future could hold all sorts of surprises.”
Despite the fact that she’d pretty much told him he was going to go to bed frustrated tonight and possibly for many nights to come, Richard couldn’t seem to help whistling as they walked outside into the cold air.
Melanie frowned at him. “You seem awfully chipper for a man who’s just been told he’s not going to have sex.”
He laughed. “Is that what you said?”
“I certainly thought it was.”
“Not what I heard,” he said. “I heard that there would be no sex tonight, but that tomorrow—as a very famous fictional Southern belle once said—most definitely is another day.” He took her hand and kissed it. “I’m a very patient man. Was that in that research of yours?”
She regarded him with a vaguely shaken expression. “I thought I was very thorough, but I must have missed that.”
“Keep it in mind. It could be important,” he told her, then scooped up some snow and pelted her with it. Best to cool them both down for the moment, he thought.
Eyes wide, she stared at him in shock for fully a minute before her eyes filled with that fire he’d come to crave.
“You are so dead,” she said, bending down to make a soft snowball of her own.
“I doubt that,” Richard said, not even bothering to run.
“You don’t think I’ll throw this at you?”
“Oh, I think you’ll throw it,” he said, then grinned. “I just think you’ll miss.”
Even as he started moving, she hauled off and managed to hit him lightly on one cheek.
“Bad move, darlin’,” he said, coming back for her, even as she frantically scooped up more and more snow and threw it with dead-on accuracy. He had her off her feet and on her backside in a deep drift of snow before she realized what he intended.
Sputtering with indignation, she stared up at him and then started laughing. Only when
