things, who tried valiantly to fix all and to achieve perfection. She took it all on...until the weight of it nearly crushed her.
Where had that thought come from? She loved her job. Putting together joyous and memorable occasions for others had soothed the pain of her father’s abandonment, and had, thankfully, been enough to fill her world ever since the defection of Jerry from her personal landscape.
Or had been enough until less than twenty-four hours ago, when Drew Jordan had showed up in her life and showed her there was still such a thing as a hero.
She turned and fled before she did something really foolish. Like kissing him again.
Becky found that as much as she would have liked to rebel against his advice, she had no choice but to take it. Clear of the kitchen, her limbs felt like jelly, heavy and nearly shaking with exhaustion and delayed reaction to all the unexpected adventures of the day. It took every bit of remaining energy she had to climb the stone staircase that led to the wing of the castle with her room in it.
She went into its cool sanctuary and peeled off her wet clothes. It felt like too much effort to even find something else to put on. She left the clothes in a heap and crept under the cool sheets of the welcoming bed. Within seconds she was fast asleep.
She dreamed that someone was knocking on her door, and when she went to answer it, Drew Jordan was on the other side of it, a smile of pure welcome on his face. He reached for her, he pulled her close, his mouth dropped over hers...
Becky started awake. She was not sure what time it was, though the light suggested early evening, which meant she had frittered away a whole precious afternoon sleeping.
She wanted to leap from bed, but her body would not let her. She felt, again, like the girl who had had too much to drink. She tested each of her limbs. It was official. Her whole body hurt. Her head hurt. Her mouth and throat felt raw and dry. But mostly, she felt deeply ashamed. She had lost control, and she hated that.
Her door squeaked open.
“How you doing?”
She shot up in bed, pulled the sheet more tightly around herself. “What are you doing here?”
“I knocked. When there was no answer, I thought I’d better check on you. You slept a long time.”
Drew Jordan looked just as he had in the dream—gorgeous. Though in real life there was no expression of tender welcome on his face. It did not look like he was thinking about sweeping her into his big strong arms.
In fact, he slipped into the room, but rested himself against the far wall—as far away from her as possible—those big, strong arms folded firmly across his chest. He was wearing a snowy-white T-shirt that showed off the sun-bronzed color of his arms, and khaki shorts that showed off the long, hard muscle of equally sun-bronzed legs.
“A long time?” She found her cell phone on the bedside table. “It’s only five. That’s not so bad.”
“Um, maybe you should have a look at the date on there.”
She frowned down at her phone. Her mouth fell open. “What? I slept an entire day? But I couldn’t have! That’s impossible.”
She started to throw back the covers, then remembered she had slipped in between the sheets naked. She yanked them up around her chin.
“It was probably the best thing you could do. Your body knows what it needs.”
She looked up at him. Her body, treacherous thing, did indeed know what it needed! And all of it involved him.
“If you would excuse me,” she said, “I really need—”
Now her brain, treacherous thing, silently screamed you.
“Are you okay?”
No! It simply was not okay to be this aware of him, to yearn for his touch and his taste.
“I’m fine. Did your brother come?” she asked, desperate to distract him from her discomfort, and from the possibility of him discerning what was causing it.
“Nope. I can’t seem to reach him on my phone, either.”
“Oh, Drew,” she said softly.
Her tone seemed to annoy him. “You don’t really look fine,” he decided.
“Okay, I’m not fine. I don’t have time to sleep away a whole day. Despite all that rest, I feel as if I’ve been through the spin cycle of a giant washing machine. I hurt everywhere, worse than the worst hangover ever.”
“You’ve had a hangover?” He said this with insulting incredulousness.
“Of course I have. Living in Moose Run isn’t like taking vows to become a nun, you know.”
“You would be wasted as a nun,” he said, and his gaze went to her lips before he looked sharply away.
“Let’s talk about that,” she said.
“About you being wasted as a nun?” he asked, looking back at her, surprised.
“About the fact you think you would know such a thing about me. I don’t normally act like that. I would never, under ordinary circumstances, kiss a person the way I kissed you. Naturally, I’m mortified.”
He lifted an eyebrow.
“There was no need to throw myself at you, no matter how grateful and discombobulated I was.”
His lips twitched.
“It’s not funny,” she told him sternly. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not your wanton and very un-nun-like behavior I was smiling about.”
“Wanton?” she squeaked.
“It was the fact you used discombobulated in a sentence. I can’t say as I’ve ever heard that before.”
“Wanton?” she squeaked again.
“Sorry. Wanton is probably overstating it.”
“Probably?”
“We don’t all have your gift for picking exactly the right word,” he said. He lifted a shoulder. “People do weird things when they are in shock. Let’s move past it, okay?”
Actually, she would have preferred to find out exactly what he meant by wanton—it had been a little kiss really, it didn’t even merit the humiliation she was feeling about it—but she didn’t want to look like she was unwilling to move past it.
“Okay,” she said grudgingly. “Though just for the record, I want you to know I don’t like masterful men. At all.”
“No secret longing?”
He was teasing her! There was a residue of weakness in her, because she liked it, but it would be a mistake to let him know her weaknesses.
“As you have pointed out,” Becky said
