"I'm very sorry," she said gently. "You must miss them terribly."

"I do." He put his head in his hands and leaned his elbows on his knees. "I miss them every day of my life. G.o.d, I'm so tired."

"Am I contagious?" she asked after a minute.

"I don't know. Some types of pneumonia are. Some aren't."

"If you don't mind the risk, you might climb in here with me," she said, croaking with every word.

He looked down at her cold-eyed. "Why?"

She managed a weak smile. "Because you look very much as if you need someone to hold you." She pulled her arms free of the covers and held them up to him.

He was still wondering two hours later why he'd gone so eagerly into those outstretched arms. It hadn't been s.e.x, because what he'd felt in her embrace was nothing if it wasn't tenderness. He'd rolled over with her, cradling the length of her overwarm body to his, holding her as he tried to cope with the nightmare his life had become.

She'd smoothed his dark hair, whispering soft incoherences, and after a time, the edge of the pain had been dulled and he felt a sigh of peace ease out of his broad chest.

"It's all right to be alive, even if they can't be," she whispered at his ear. "They love you, too, and miss you, and know where you are. In some sense or other, they know."

His big hands flattened on her back, feeling the warmth of her seep into him, making him stronger. It was an incredible sensation, as if they were touching inside somehow, mind and heart and spirit. He wasn't sure he wanted to. On the other hand, the wonder of it overshadowed his doubts and fears, and suddenly all he could think about was how sweet it was to hold her. But it wasn't close enough.

"No," he whispered when she softly protested the sweep of his hands carrying away her gown. "No, let me. I want to be close to you all night. I won't take you. Let me hold you like this."

While he spoke, he shouldered out of his robe, and seconds later she was lying nude against his equally bare body. She shivered at the unfamiliar contact and tried to pull away, but he wouldn't permit it.

"You're afraid," he whispered, and his voice was both surprised and tender. "There's no reason to be. You're an invalid and I have too much conscience to take advantage of it."

"Are you sure?" she asked nervously.

His hands swept down her spine and he groaned pleasurably as he felt her silky skin in exquisite detail, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s on his chest, her belly against the helpless thrust of his body.

"No, I'm not sure, but I can't let you go," he murmured roughly. His hands pressed gently at the base of her spine and moved her, his long leg trespa.s.sing between her thighs.

"No," she said quickly, staying his hip. "No, don't."

He lifted his head and looked into her frightened eyes. None of this made sense. He moved back, but his hand slowly eased down and, containing her shocked jerk, he whispered her name softly and kissed her frightened eyes closed. The caresses weakened her resolve. He was touching her...!

She caught his arm, but it didn't stop him. He was slow and tender, but relentless. When she felt the sudden twinge of pain, she was unprepared for his shocked roar.

"My G.o.d!"

She swallowed. Her legs were trembling from the pleasure of his intimate testing of her, but her hand pulled at his invading one.

"You can't know," she said weakly. "A man can't know..."

He threw himself over onto his back, his eyes wide-open on the shadows that played against the ceiling. His body throbbed, his mind throbbed. He lay on top of the covers with moonlight streaming in the window and outlining him. He couldn't believe what he'd just found out.

"Kane?" she murmured. Her voice sounded rusty.

"Is he gay?"

She swallowed. "He doesn't want to sleep with me," she said, avoiding the implication.

"Why?" he persisted.

"It...isn't what you think."

He felt her move and his head turned. She was reaching for the cover, but he stayed her hand.

His eyes looked at her in a new way. The same boldness was there, but now there was curiosity and wonder.

"Haven't you ever wanted to, with someone?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," she replied honestly, remembering her unbearable pleasure when Mosby had asked her to marry him and she'd thought he felt the same raging desire she did.

"But you didn't?"

She met his eyes levelly. "He couldn't, Kane," she whispered. "He really wanted to, I think. But he...couldn't."

His breath felt suspended. "And you didn't want anyone else?"

She smiled sadly. "I'm afraid not."

He stared down at her without smiling back, without speaking. "I see."

"Your lover," she began. "You said she'd managed to make you impotent."

He lifted an eyebrow and faint humor stole into his eyes. "Yes. Well, obviously, you don't produce the same reaction."

She laughed through the weakness and pain. "No, I don't, do I?"

His eyes slid over her nudity with gentle appreciation. "You aren't in any condition now. But later, when you are..."

Her eyes fell to his chest. She couldn't tell him about her past, or her present. She'd lied to him all around. He would have to know eventually who she was.

"It isn't that easy," she said.

"I remember. You don't want to get pregnant." He let his eyes drift down to her flat stomach and he felt a jolt of pleasure at the thought of it growing large, round, as his wife's had years ago. His wife hadn't really wanted a child until Teddy was born, he recalled. She'd been viciously accusing and horrible, until they laid the tiny infant in her arms and she learned to love him.

"A baby is...a terrible responsibility," Nikki managed, without realizing what she was saying.

He wasn't listening. His big hand suddenly flattened on her stomach, so large that it covered most of her to the navel.

"Babies can be prevented," he said. "So can most diseases, with a very simple device." His eyes lifted back to hers. "I'll use one. There won't be a risk, of any kind, and you won't catch anything from me."

"You talk as if it's only the risk I don't want," she said. She was too weak to fight, and her illness had confused her. Surely that was the only reason she was lying here naked in a man's arms. "Kane, s.e.x is more than a casual pastime to me," she added gently. "I want to be loved, not had."

"Do you think I won't know how to love you?" he asked quietly. His hand began to move, very tenderly. "How to please you? How to give you pleasure beyond your wildest dreams of intimacy?"

She pulled his hand away from her body with a shaky sigh. "What you want is a body to ease your physical need for s.e.x," she whispered. "Presumably, you already have someone you can do that with. I want much, much more. I want total communion and total commitment. I want forever."

His face hardened and his eyes grew mocking. "Forever is an illusion. No one has forever."

"I will," she said stubbornly.

"You won't. You're living in dreams."

"Then I'll live in them. But I won't be taken in a fit of screaming pa.s.sion and then discarded like a morning paper that's just been read."

His dark brows arched in surprise.

"You know what I mean," she said stubbornly. "I won't be a s.e.xual object to any man."

"You're naked," he pointed out. "So am I."

She dragged up the covers to her chin. "I'm sick," she said accusingly.

"So you are." He smiled at his own fallibility. "Do you want me to leave?"

She did. She didn't. Her eyes sought his and she vacillated.

He jerked the covers back, slid under them, pulled her close and replaced them. "Lay your cheek on my chest and go to sleep," he murmured.

There was no more argument left in her. She closed her eyes and her body seemed to melt into his. Only seconds pa.s.sed before she was asleep.

In the morning, she woke in her gown and alone. She must have dreamed the whole thing, she thought dazedly. But it had seemed so real. She laughed at her own folly. She really did have to get her life back together.

When Kane stopped in the doorway later to check on her, she smiled warmly but without embarra.s.sment and said that she was fine.

"I have to make a few telephone calls, but I'll come back in time to have lunch with you. Can I have Mrs. Beale bring you anything?"

"No, thanks. I still have some of the juice she brought me at breakfast."

"Okay."

He smiled, letting his dark eyes slide over her pretty face. Even sick, she was lovely to look at.

"You've got a little more color than you had yesterday. How's the chest?"

"It's better," she a.s.sured him. "Kane, thank you for bringing me here and taking care of me."

"How could I let them put you in the hospital, when you have no one else to look out for you?" he said quietly.

That wasn't true. She had a brother who loved her. But she couldn't admit it. "Thank you anyway," she murmured while she wondered in a panic what would happen if Clayton should telephone late at night and not find her at the beach house. Would he rush up here looking for her, involve the police? She had to find a way to contact him.

Meanwhile, she looked at Kane with faint puzzlement and involuntarily, her eyes drifted to the pristine pillow beside her head.

He moved into the room and came to a stop beside the bed. "Nikki, it wasn't a dream," he said soberly.

Her eyes dropped suddenly. On the covers, her nails looked like pink ice. "Then you know..."

"Yes. And so do you," he replied with a quizzical smile. "Everything there is to know about me, physically. Does it matter? I didn't seduce you, even if it was touch and go for a few minutes."

"I suppose not."

"Don't look so stricken. A few intimacies aren't going to stain that snow-white conscience too much. You're old enough to play with fire, aren't you?"

He was fire, she thought, studying him. He was a wildfire, and he caught her up every time he touched her. She'd never known what it was to be so helpless.

"You don't know anything about me, really," she said. "You might not like what you find out one day."

"What sort of dark secrets can a virgin have?" he asked, his voice soft as velvet.

"You might be surprised."

"And I might not." He reached down and brushed the unruly hair away from her oval face, his touch as tender as his voice. "I'm not going to love you, you know."

"I'm not going to love you, either," she whispered.

He bent and brushed his lips softly over her forehead, her closed eyes, her cheeks. He paused at her mouth, barely touching it.

"I'm contagious," she whispered, a plea in her voice.

"You won't be forever," he whispered back. He hesitated but after a heartbeat, he lifted his head.

He looked vibrantly alive, big and dark and dear. Nikki's eyes adored him hopelessly.

"Don't push your luck," he teased with black humor. "Last night is all too vivid in my mind."

"Don't you sleep with her like that?" she asked suddenly.

He chuckled at her fierce glare. "Not naked," he returned easily. "Usually it's in a feverish rush and then I get up and go home. Neither of us has much inclination toward tenderness. In fact, she doesn't really like s.e.x. She likes controlling men. I tolerate the relationship because I don't want commitment and neither does she. I like it quick from time to time."

She was curious. She shifted a little against the pillow and studied him. "Was it like that with your wife, if you don't mind my asking...?"

"I felt very tender with my wife when we first married," he said, reading the question. "I was in love with her, and she with me. We reached heights that I've never found with anyone else. But it all went wrong when she got pregnant with Teddy. After he was born, she lived for him, I suppose I did, too. We lost each other in the act of becoming parents." At the mention of the little boy's name, something terrible flared in his eyes, in his face. The nightmare exploded, like the bomb that had wiped out the young life and all his hopes and dreams...

"Kane!"

She dragged herself up from the bed, shaky on her feet, but anguished at what she saw on his face. He was sweating and his eyes were wide, wild, dangerous.

"Darling, it's all right," she whispered, hugging him fiercely. "It's all right, it's all right!"

He swallowed and his body jerked. His hands found her shoulders, resting heavily there while he fought the terror. He'd shut it out for a whole year. Now, with her, it was all coming back. The comfort she offered was making him vulnerable. He realized, shocked, that he felt safe to talk about it because Nikki was there to hold him when the nightmares came.

"Kane, don't look back," she said, nuzzling his chest with her cheek. "You have to stop tormenting yourself."

"They died," he said in a ghostly whisper. "They were torn to pieces, lying there in the metal shards that had been a car."