She stood up and brushed off her b.u.t.t. He got up, too, and he was standing so close to her that they b.u.mped a few times as they got cleaned off.

"So, wait, which way are you facing?" she asked.

His hand collided with her hip, a solid weight. "This way." The other hand landed, and there went that heat between her thighs again. That single, intense pulse that flung her whole body headlong into l.u.s.t.

He could kiss her, if he wanted to. He was breathing hard. Maybe he did want to.

Here, in the dark, where she was safe, she could even kiss him. She wondered how far away his face was. If he was staring over the top of her head or looking to the side. How difficult it would be to seek his mouth with her own and to find out whether his lips were soft or firm.

"I need to get out of here," he said.

Right. She had s.e.x on the brain, and he was in fight-or-flight mode.

"Okay. Let's go over to the side wall so I can turn the light switches off, just in case the power comes back on tonight."

She pried one of his hands off her hip and held it, pulling him along behind her as she took tentative steps into the blackness. She realized too late that she should have followed the back wall instead of walking in the open, because every step she took, she became a little more uncertain, a little more worried she'd drop into an abyss or trip over something. Get eaten by a lion. Whatever primitive fears her brain unleashed upon her at moments like this one.

Tony was breathing as though he'd just finished running a marathon.

"You never told me what your worst fear is," she said, hoping to distract him.

"This. This is it."

"No way. This is just a phobia. I mean something bigger than that. Like what mistake would you most regret making? What's the one thing you could never get over?"

He didn't answer for so long that her stomach started to hurt, and she wanted to retract the question. She shouldn't be prying, not when she knew there was something he didn't want to tell.

His reply came as a relief. "You have a gift for asking weird questions, you know that?"

"Sorry. I-ow! Son of a biscuit!" Her shin had slammed into something.

"What?"

Amber felt around with her free hand until she could make sense of it. One of those rolling racks of basketb.a.l.l.s. If she remembered correctly where it was, that made the wall ten or twelve feet farther ahead. "I ran into some b.a.l.l.s."

Great. Now even normal conversation sounded dirty.

"You bleeding?"

"No, I'm fine." She started walking again, Tony in tow. "My worst fear is that I'll get to my deathbed and realize I've never done anything with my life."

"You're not even twenty-five yet."

"So?"

"So that's a stupid thing to be afraid of."

She forgave him the insult, since his palm was sweaty, and it was hard to be kind while freaking out, and clearly her question had punched a b.u.t.ton she needed to learn to avoid if she was ever going to talk to Tony again. "It doesn't seem stupid to me. You know, I have a younger brother in the army, and he's living in Germany. My baby sister, Katie, wants to move to Paris-or she used to anyway. Lately she keeps talking about Alaska, which is where her boyfriend wants to go after graduation. And I'm just ... here."

"You finished college. You have a job. It's not like you have to leave town to prove yourself."

"I know."

"Family's important, too."

"I know, I'm just ... I don't know who I am yet. I feel like I'm still living the wrong life."

She reached the wall and pulled his hand forward until his fingertips touched it. "Here. We made it. Now we just have to keep moving forward, and we'll reach the stairs in no time."

"Thanks." He exhaled, a ragged sound. "You want to get married, have kids, the whole nine yards?"

Yes.

The thought seemed to come from some part of her other than her brain. It leapt out from the cellular level, straight to the tip of her tongue.

Then she realized he was asking if she wanted to get married someday, to someone. Not to him, immediately.

Amber swallowed. "Sure. You?"

"I don't know."

"You ready to start walking?"

"Yeah."

"Do you need to hold my hand, or ..."

"No, I can just use the wall."

"Okay. Keep up."

They started walking toward the front of the bas.e.m.e.nt, moving faster now. Even at a more rapid pace, the room felt four hundred times as large as it had when the lights were on.

"So how can you not know if you want to get married?" she asked. "You're almost thirty. It seems like you would have figured it out by now."

"You sound like my sister."

"Oh, don't turn this into a woman thing. It's a human thing. Do you want to find someone to marry? Do you want to reproduce? These are not complicated questions." She reached the light switches and flicked them all off.

"Well, I'm not going to say No, not ever,' because I try not to do that these days."

"Why's that?"

"You never know what's gonna happen in life. Sometimes you win the lottery. Sometimes tragedy knocks you on your a.s.s with no warning."

A raw note in his voice.

"So expect the unexpected?"

"I try to. But I don't see myself getting married from where I'm standing right now."

"Because ..."

"You know what you said, about your worst fear? I guess that's mine. I can't take the idea of letting people down. Whenever I think about getting married, even in the abstract, I imagine myself making the wrong choice and then seeing it all fall apart ten years down the road. I guess I'm old-fashioned, you know? I think it should last forever. But I want to know it's forever, and that I wouldn't ever flake out on my family. Get careless or distracted and f.u.c.k it up."

"n.o.body can know that."

"I know."

"So you're just not going to do it? That's your solution?"

"So far, bunny."

"You promised not to call me bunny.' " She reached the opening at the bottom of the staircase.

"See what I mean? Careless. I f.u.c.k a lot of things up."

And then he more or less flung himself up the steps, and she followed him at a sprint, because she needed the burning pain in her lungs to dispel the unsettling loneliness that had come over her.

Chapter Six.

When Tony finally emerged through the door at the top of the stairs, he wanted to sink to his knees and weep with happiness. He'd never been quite so pleased to see daylight-even this strange, faded, greenish-blue daylight brought by the storm.

Amber skirted around him and headed straight for the phone. He walked to the front windows on wobbly legs to look out at the parking lot.

He could still breathe. Everything was fine. Thank G.o.d for her, though. If she hadn't been down there with him, he probably would have come up and risked getting carried off to Oz rather than sit in all that darkness.

The parking lot was trashed, leaf litter and small branches strewn all over and rain still pouring down. Something caught his eye off to the back end of the lot, where both he and Amber had parked. A big branch down off the oak tree, right on top of her little yellow car.

"Hey, Amber?"

He turned to look at her, but she was holding up her finger, phone pressed to her ear.

"Good. Glad to hear it. Yeah, I already said I'm fine. I'll be home in a while. I have to check out the center first."

"Amber, you're going to want to take a look at this."

She glanced at him, but her eyes weren't really focusing. "I have to go, Mom. All right. Uh-huh."

How was it possible that she could look so different now? Same slim figure in khakis and a blue polo shirt. Same long, dark hair up in a ponytail. Same whistle around her neck, same sweet, round face.

And everything about her turbocharged with s.e.x.

"No, he's still here, too. What? None of your business. No. Seriously, no, just stop. I'm going. Goodbye."

She leaned over the counter to hang up the phone, and her khakis tightened over a million-dollar a.s.s.

How had he missed that a.s.s?

He was still trying to wipe the image from his mind when Amber walked over, looked outside, and saw her car.

"Oh my gosh! Noooooo!"

She flung open the door and ran into the lot, and Tony had to follow her, because ... well, he just had to.

He picked his way across the lot, avoiding the deepest puddles until he reached her side. She was standing ten feet away from her car with both hands over her mouth. The rain plastered strands of loose hair to her face and made her pants stick to her thighs. "I just paid it off!"

"That sucks."

"I mean, I just paid it off. Last week! I was so happy! And now it's wrecked."

"It's insured?"

"Of course it's insured, but for Pete's sake! This isn't fair! I just want to-I don't even know!"

She stomped her foot, spraying water all over his legs.

"Sorry!"

"No worries."

"Gosh darn it!"

Her hands were curled into fists, her face was red, and she looked as though the top of her head might pop off if she didn't calm down soon. "You ever consider saying a swear word or two?" he asked. "Just to take the edge off?"

"You mean like f.u.c.k'?"

"Exactly."

"Does that help?"

"Helps a lot."

She glanced over at the wreckage. The branch lay across the crumpled hood. It had punched a hole in the windshield, which meant the interior was probably full of water. The roof was half caved in, too.

"I hate that motherf.u.c.king tree!" she cried.

"Now you're talking."

"Stupid sonofab.i.t.c.hing tree killed my car!" Amber stalked across the wet lawn to the trunk of the offending oak tree, hauled off, and kicked it.