"You said that we could be friends," she reminded him.

"We can. But you can't notice that I'm s.e.xy."

"Oh. All right."

Her hands went to his face, to trace its elegant lines. His eyes closed, so that she could touch the ridge where his thick eyebrows lay, and the long, thick lashes of his closed eyelids.

His nose was broad and straight, and below it, he had a wide, chiseled, very s.e.xy mouth. His teeth were white and straight. She'd read somewhere that Native Americans had very few cavities compared to white people.

While she was exploring him, his body was reacting to the closeness of hers. He moved back a few inches and his eyes opened. His lips were parted, and his breath came too quickly through them.

His lean hands caught her waist and lingered there, without pulling or pushing, while they looked at each other.

"You smell of spring flowers," he said.

"And you of wind and fir and open land."

His dark eyes wandered slowly over her face, capturing expressions, texture of skin, eye color, hair texture. "Take your hair down."

She only hesitated for a minute. "Why?" she asked as her hands went to the bun. "Do you want to compare length?"

"Perhaps."

She took the pins out and shook her head, letting waves of platinum blond hair fall around her shoulders. His hands lifted to it, testing its baby softness, its fine silky texture.

"It isn't quite as long as mine," he remarked.

"Or as thick," she added. Shyly, her hands slid back up and into the cool strands of his own hair, clutching handfuls of it as she moved imperceptibly closer. Dimly aware that she was being provocative, but unable to stop herself, she tilted her face up to his.

His eyes fell to her parted lips and lingered there while he touched and lifted the silky strands of her hair and fought to maintain his reason.

"The only thing I ever really liked about white culture," he said huskily, and his head dipped closer, "is the way you kiss each other."

Her lips parted in breathless antic.i.p.ation, and she felt his hand contract in her hair. "Careful," she whispered unsteadily. "I may be addictive."

"So may I."

His hand tilted her face at a closer angle and his mouth brushed in tender, brief strokes across her lips. The touch was arousing, especially when it was complicated by the gentle nip of his teeth on her lower lip and the nuzzling contact of his face with hers.

Her nails bit into his upper arm as he tormented her mouth. "That isn't fair," she managed shakily. "You didn't say...you were going to do that."

"Now you know." He nudged her lips a little roughly. "Open your mouth for me," he whispered. "And I'll show you how hot a kiss can get."

She felt the sun on her face through the trees as she complied, felt his arms suddenly swallow her up and lift her against the length of his powerful body. Then she felt his mouth grinding down into hers, his tongue penetrating the soft darkness behind her lips. She heard a high-pitched gasp echoing in the madness of the pa.s.sion he was kindling, and realized with wonder that it had been torn from her own throat.

The slamming of a car door barely registered. Cortez heard it, though, and pulled his head up. He didn't look at Phoebe's face, because he knew the temptation it was going to represent. She was trembling in his arms. He let go of her, steadying her, just as a family of tourists descended on the beach.

"Don't you kids go too close to that water!" the man yelled. "You'll get sucked under!"

"That's right, you wait for us!" the woman called.

The normality of it brought a faint smile to Cortez's face. He did look at Phoebe then and he grimaced. She looked devastated.

"I knew it was a bad idea," he said.

She felt shaky inside. She touched her tongue to her swollen lips and tasted him on them. "So did I."

He caught her hand in his and led her back to the car. He hesitated as he started to open the pa.s.senger door for her.

"Look at me."

She lifted her eyes to the storms in his.

He searched them intently, with an unblinking scrutiny that made the shaky feeling much worse. She could barely breathe at all, and it showed. He wanted nothing more in the world at that moment than to invite her back to his motel room and spend the rest of the day making unbridled love to her. But it would mean nothing. It would lead to nothing.

"I'll drive you home," he said, turning away to open the door.

"I would...go with you, if you asked me," she said tautly, not looking at him.

"Yes, I know. And I want to ask you to," he returned honestly. "But we've already agreed that addictions are unwise and that this is a relationship without a future. We kissed and it was very good," he added, looking down at her with a wistful smile. "Leave it at that."

Her soft eyes held his. "I'll bet you're the Fourth of July in bed," she said.

"Christmas and New Year's Eve, too," he returned with a smile. "Eat your heart out."

"I probably will," she sighed. "It would have been the high point of my life."

"The world is full of men," he said cynically. "Most of them make love well enough."

"I wouldn't know."

His eyes cut back to hers and searched them. They narrowed with intense feeling.

"I was waiting for someone explosive and mysterious," she explained. She smiled demurely. "If you come to my graduation, who knows what might happen?"

He didn't smile. He wasn't sure he was still breathing. "The years are wrong. You need someone your own age."

She lifted an eyebrow. "If you really thought that, you'd never have kissed me at all."

His jaw clenched. d.a.m.n women with logical minds, he thought. He opened the door for her without another word and drove her back to the cafe where she'd left her vehicle.

"I don't know that I'll be able to get down for your graduation," he said stiffly when he was ready to leave.

She looked in the driver's window at his expressionless face, and knew without words that he was finding it difficult to say goodbye. So was she.

She smiled at him, her blue eyes twinkling. "You'll hate yourself for the rest of your life if you miss it," she told him. "I promise you will."

He grimaced and glowered at her. She couldn't see his eyes through the dark gla.s.ses. "Maybe."

She stood up, away from the car. "Drive carefully. I have proprietorial rights now."

"Because of one kiss? Dream on!" he said curtly.

"Cultural appropriation," she told him. "Primary group a.s.similation. I'm gong to a.s.similate you." She licked her lips slowly. "Just thinking about it should keep you sleepless for the next seven months."

He was going to break out in a cold sweat if he didn't leave. He put the car in gear. "Hold your breath," he invited, and pressed down on the accelerator.

Phoebe chuckled softly to herself, watching him run for it. He'd be back, all right. She smiled all the way home.

Chapter Nineteen.

Nikki was knee-deep in invitations for her wedding to Kane, with the phone at her ear while she addressed envelopes, trying to get a stubborn government agency to give her permission to hold a political rally in their building.

"I have certain inalienable rights," she quoted, frowning as she crossed a "t" on an address. "One of them is the right to public a.s.sembly at a place of my choosing. You only own the building, not the street in front of it. Is that so?" She chuckled. "All right, have us arrested. That should make a very tidy headline for the morning editions. You wouldn't like that? I didn't think you would. Yes, I thought you might see things my way. I'll look forward to meeting you. Thanks. Goodbye."

She hung up, her mind more on the addresses than her savoir faire at manipulation.

Kane, watching her, was laughing to himself. She had a keen brain and she exercised a form of diplomacy that might have come out of his own book. He adored her.

She felt eyes on her downbent head and lifted her own to meet Kane's. She beamed.

"I'm on the last one hundred invitations," she said. "I wish we could coordinate the wedding to coincide with the election, though," she pondered. "It would give us such an advantage at the polls..."

"Your candidate, not mine," he chided.

"Your future brother-in-law," she corrected pertly.

He bent over her, his eyes acquisitive and warm. "Did I mention that I loved you this morning?"

"Only five times," she replied. "A few more never hurts."

"Say it back."

"I do, every time I look at you. Kiss me, you mad fool!" She draped her arms around his neck and jerked him down onto the sofa with her in a tangle of arms and legs.

While he was trying to keep them from tumbling onto the coffee table and into her cup of cooling coffee, a throat was loudly cleared at the doorway.

They looked up. Clayton glowered at them. "Can't you stop that?" he muttered. "For G.o.d's sake, we haven't even had breakfast yet!"

They looked at each other. "Are you sure he's your brother?" Kane asked.

"He must be adopted," she murmured, smiling against his lips. "Otherwise he wouldn't be such a wet blanket after all I've done for his campaign. Something must have upset him."

Clayton took that as an invitation. He moved right to the huge coffee table, moved the coffee cup and invitations aside, and linked his hands on his knees, ignoring the fact that he was interrupting a very private conversation.

"Derrie's on that soapbox about the owl again," he began with a long sigh. "Now, listen, Nikki, we've got to get this owl off my back. I know we can't...Nikki, will you stop nibbling on your fiance long enough to pay attention to what I'm saying. This is important!"

Nikki sighed. She arranged Kane into a sitting position, curled herself into his lap, and gave her brother her undivided attention in a bit of physical diplomacy that left both men speechless.

Kane lifted an eyebrow at her. "It will be a pity if he loses the election," he said, nodding toward Clayton. "You're a natural at politics!"

"I'm going to be a natural at motherhood, too," Nikki pointed out, smoothing a loving hand over her belly. "Besides, I'm going above and beyond the call of duty on my brother's behalf, already."

"You mean with the campaign?" Clayton asked.

"I mean that I'm producing a new voter for you. The thing is I'm not going to be a lot of help to you after I finish this latest bit of organization. You see," she added with a loving glance at Kane, "I had to go to the doctor this morning for a checkup and he listened to the baby's heartbeat."

"Are you all right?" Kane asked at once. "You didn't tell me you were going to the doctor!"

"I was saving it for a surprise. I'm all right!" she said, exasperated by the terrified looks in two pair of eyes. "It's just that things are a little more complicated than we thought."

"Complicated, how?" Kane asked tautly.

She curled up in his arms with a loving sigh. "The doctor heard two heartbeats."

"Two..." Kane began.

"...heartbeats!" Clayton finished.

The men exchanged complicated looks and Kane's was positively arrogant.

"Twins!" Kane burst out, beaming down at her as he wrapped her up closer in his arms.

Nikki chuckled. "Yes. How's that for family loyalty, brother mine?" she added, smiling at her brother across Kane's broad chest. "I'm not just producing one brand-new voter for you-I'm producing two!"

ISBN: 978-1-4592-4689-8.

Also available from MIRA Books and DIANA PALMER.

LAWLESS.

DESPERADO.

THE TEXAS RANGER.

LORD OF THE DESERT.