"Baby, are you okay? Please be okay."

She ran a gentle hand over the cat's side and was beyond relieved to find her still warm and breathing. She immediately scooped her off the floor. Despite the special meals Lori had been making and hand feeding to her, Grayson's cat had become terribly thin, so that every one of her ribs was showing. Even her tail, which had remained thick despite her illness, was now nearly hairless.

Lori was still sitting on the couch rocking the cat in her arms when Grayson came in the side door. "How long were you planning on making me wait for the-" He stopped cold as he saw her with Sweetpea. "Did something happen with Mo?"

For once, Lori didn't correct him on the cat's name. "I don't think she feels very good tonight. But we're just going to cuddle it out."

Grayson sat beside them on the couch and ran a large hand over the cat's skinny frame before placing it over Lori's. They stayed just like that until long past the moment the cat fell peacefully asleep-the loner and the two strays who had refused to let him be alone.

Chapter Twenty-one.

Early the next morning, Grayson forced himself to get up with the sun, despite having the most beautiful girl in the world in his bed, warm and soft and always ready for him. But when he went out into the kitchen to pound a quick cup of coffee, he immediately knew something was wrong.

It was Mo. She wasn't making her little snuffling noises. She wasn't blinking her eyes open to acknowledge his presence for a split second before going back to sleep away the rest of the morning.

She was gone.

His heart broke as he finally lost the furry friend who had been with him every step of the way as he built a new life on the farm. At the same time, he'd come to accept life and death for his animals. It was nature. It was the cycle of things.

But Lori was going to be absolutely devastated.

Taking a blanket off the couch, he carefully bundled up the cat in it. He could bury Mo before Lori woke up and spare her the painful good-bye, but he knew that would be worse.

Carrying the cat in his arms, he walked back into the bedroom. He simply stared at Lori for a few seconds, drinking in the sight of her in his bed, her dark hair spread out across the pillows, her beautiful face calm, her endlessly energetic body finally still for a short while as she slept. Her mouth was tilted up slightly at the corners and he hoped she was dreaming of him.

c.r.a.p. He couldn't do this to her, couldn't wake her from her happy dreams and break her heart. He was moving away to deal with the cat himself when she stirred.

"Grayson?"

He swallowed hard before turning back to face her. She immediately noticed the bundle in his arms.

"Is it Sweetpea?" Lori's voice was surprisingly steady.

Grayson, on the other hand, couldn't seem to find his voice as he nodded instead.

Silently, she drew back the covers and got dressed. She wasn't crying, but he could feel sadness radiating out from her with every single movement. Together, they walked outside, both of them automatically heading past the barn. Lori walked over to the spot with the most sweeping views of his land.

"Here. Sweetpea should be right here. Right by the barn, where you found her."

He handed Mo to her and got the shovel. It didn't take long to dig the hole and, soon, Lori was kneeling and placing the cat into it. One tear slid down her cheek, and then another.

"Thank you for making me feel so welcome here, Sweetpea. I love you."

Somehow, just barely, Grayson kept his own tears from falling as Lori stepped back and he shoveled the dirt into place. She found a rock and some flowers and laid them down over the grave.

When she looked back at him, her face awash with tears and her shoulders bowed with grief, Grayson finally pulled her into his arms the way he'd wanted to from the start. They stood like that for a long time, until she started shivering in his arms. Gently, he brought her back inside, Lori crying harder with every step away from the cat's grave.

"Love is too hard." She fit the words in between sobs. "I'm too weak for love." She shook her head against his chest. "I'm never going to love anything ever again. Never. Ever. Again. Not anyone or anything."

Grayson pulled her closer, held her tighter. He'd known she would cry and he would have done anything in the world to make it so she didn't have to.

But she had to. Because she had loved his balding, foul-breathed cat with everything she had.

He knew now that this was how Lori Sullivan loved. All the way. Every single time.

Even when she knew that her love wouldn't be able to save anyone or anything.

"You have the softest heart of anyone I've ever known," he said, whispering the words into her hair as he rocked her. "And it's exactly what makes you so strong."

And it was why he loved her. One of the reasons, anyway. Because he also loved her bratty comebacks. He loved the way she put her entire self behind whatever she was doing, even if she had no idea what she was doing and was getting it all wrong. He loved the way she danced as if she was connected to the clouds and the sun and the rainbows.

And he loved that she'd stormed into his life and turned everything upside down before he ever had a chance to stop her.

Maybe it wasn't fair to lay this on her now, to combine love and death into one moment. But if there was one thing Grayson had learned during the past three years, it was that life wasn't fair. The weather could take out his crops overnight. A healthy animal could fall sick so suddenly that there was no time to call the vet.

And a beautiful girl could show up on his doorstep and change his life with no warning at all, leaving him no time to figure out how to guard his heart from her.

"I love you."

She was still sobbing, her tears soaking his shirt, as she lifted her head to face him. Her eyes were red and her nose was running...and she'd never looked more beautiful to him.

"What did you just say?"

It figured that when he finally lost his heart again, it would be like this. To a woman who had driven him crazy from the moment he set eyes on her.

"I said..." He paused so that she wouldn't miss it this time. "I. Love. You."

Her sobs receded as she blinked at him in shock. "You love me?"

She said it as though it was the craziest idea in the world. As though there was no way he could possibly love her.

Frustration-the familiar frustration he'd felt since that first day, when she'd told him she was going to be the best farmhand he'd ever had-started to eat at him.

"Yes." He tried not to growl the words at her. "I love you."

He waited for her to smile. To throw her arms around him. To declare her love right back to him.

Instead, she said, "Are you sure you're not just saying it because of Sweetpea? Because if this is some crazy idea you have to make me feel better..."

d.a.m.n it. Couldn't a guy declare his love to a girl without getting twenty questions thrown back at him, not to mention heaps of disbelief?

Not trusting himself to speak this time-he'd yell at her and then she'd yell back and then the next thing you knew, there'd be doors slamming, and none of that would be fair when she was still sad about the cat-he picked her up and headed toward the bedroom.

"Where are you going? What are you doing?"

"I'm going to prove to you that I love you, d.a.m.n it," he said between gritted teeth.

He tossed her onto the bed. Hard enough that she caught air.

"I just bounced." She looked utterly amazed by it.

He ripped his clothes off and then came at her. "You're going to bounce again if you're not careful."

d.a.m.n it, this wasn't the sweet, careful wooing that he should be doing to prove that he loved her. But she drove him so crazy he couldn't think straight, couldn't stop himself from yanking her shirt and jeans and boots off, too.

"I love you," he said as he threw her boots across the room, where they hit the wall and fell with a satisfying thud to the floor. "So that means you're going to have to love something again. I know you hate doing anything I say, but this time you're going to have to. Because you're going to love me back. I'm going to make sure of it."

She only had on her bra and panties now, but suddenly it was irrelevant that he was naked and she was nearly there when she said yet one more time, "You really love me?" as if it couldn't possibly be true. But behind the disbelief, he heard something else.

Fear.

She'd always acted so sure about everything, even when she wasn't. His chest clenched at the thought of his proud, brave girl ever being afraid again. He wouldn't stand for it, wouldn't let her be scared of anything just because she'd made some c.r.a.ppy choices about men before she met him.

Lori Sullivan had been born to face life down, to laugh, and to dance.

And to be his.

"I'd say it again if I thought you were finally going to believe me," he said as he pounced on her. He threaded his hands into her incredibly soft hair. "Now be quiet so I can prove to you that I love you. And that you love me, too."

Of course she opened her mouth to say something, so he covered it with his and kissed the words away.

No more words. He wasn't any good with those, anyway.

But by the time he was done with making love to her, she'd understand exactly how he felt about her.

He'd make absolutely sure of it.

Lori remembered the first dance lesson she'd ever had. Her mother had taken her to the studio in downtown Palo Alto and she'd been afraid. She hadn't let on, of course, that she was scared. Not even when her legs were shaking so hard she was afraid she'd embarra.s.s herself in front of the beautiful teacher. Because one day when she grew up, she wanted to be just like Madame Dubois, tall and slim and proud, her hair pulled back into a bun, her limbs so graceful simply crossing the room to shake hands with her mother. Madame had smiled down at her, then reached out a hand and drawn her into the middle of the room. There were other girls, older ones, stretching along the barres that were placed in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

"Dance for me, Lori," was what Madame had said, and then, suddenly, she hadn't been scared anymore. Because dancing was who she was, the very core of her. She'd started leaping and twirling, closing her eyes so that she could dance to the music in her head, a symphony of emotion and beauty.

Now, as Grayson drew her into him and kissed her so sweetly, so perfectly, she remembered that little girl who had danced because she loved it. She hadn't been trying to please anyone, hadn't danced for any other reason than because it made her feel whole and perfect and beautiful and so wonderfully alive.

It was just how Grayson made her feel, even in those first days when she hadn't wanted to feel anything at all.

He loved her.

Disbelief had come first, but that was because she hadn't been expecting it. And also because he so loved being cranky, even when he was saying he loved her.

But then, there had been fear. Such big fear it threatened to swallow her whole.

Fear that she couldn't love right this time, fear that she didn't know how to put love in its place and keep it there safe and pretty and simple, fear that she'd just end up making all the same mistakes she always had.

Lori clung to Grayson as he kissed her and she spun deeper into him, into everything he'd given her without ever wanting to.

She felt so raw from losing Sweetpea, and she knew she would for a long time, but she could also feel Grayson's kisses already healing her where she was torn and hurting.

He rained kisses over the rest of her face, her eyelids still damp from her tears, and then her forehead and the curve of one ear, before taking her lobe between his teeth. She shivered at the sweet pleasure of the small bite, and then the slow swipe of his tongue over the sensitive skin on her neck.

He was so big, so strong, so tough, and yet no other man had ever been this gentle in bed, this intent on drawing every ounce of pleasure out of her. He moved lower then, his tongue dipping into the hollow of her throat, and she moaned aloud as he laid her back against the pillows so that his hands could follow the devastating path of his mouth and tongue and teeth all along her skin. She arched into his kisses, his caresses, gasping at every perfect kiss.

The morning sun was coming in now through his bedroom window and bathing them both. Where she'd been so cold outside just a short while earlier, now she was warm and safe.

And loved.

He was pressing kisses to the upper swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and she reached out to stroke his cheek. His stubble was thick as it rubbed across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and beneath her fingertips. He licked out across one of her nipples through her bra before catching lace and flesh between his teeth and she wrapped her legs around him, no words necessary to tell him what she needed. She arched her back so that he could undo her bra clasp, and a heartbeat later her chest was completely bare to the most wonderful mouth any man had ever possessed.

She couldn't catch her breath, but it was just as well, because a moment later Grayson was crushing his mouth to hers again and they were rolling over so that he was on his back and she was lying across his big, hard body. His hands cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she sat up to straddle him while pressing the vee of her legs into his enormous erection.

"Come for me, Lori. I need to see you come apart for me."

His kisses had heated her up so much already that his erection throbbing between her legs and a handful of s.e.xy words were a potent combination. So when he leaned up, pressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s together, and took both nipples into his mouth at the same time, she went spiraling all the way over into a mind-blowing climax.

Long before she had her breath back, he had her lying back on the bed again, and was peeling off her panties. She shook with continued need as he brushed his fingertips between her legs, then lowered his mouth to press as soft and gentle a kiss to her s.e.x as he had earlier to her mouth.

Lori had never been so overwhelmed, so completely swamped with desire-and pure, sweet emotion-for anyone. She'd always thought she'd given all of herself to her family, to her friends, to dancing. But when she was in Grayson's arms, when he was loving her so beautifully, she knew she hadn't even come close to the true depths of what she had to give.

Until he'd come into her life-or, rather, before she'd forced her way into his-she hadn't known it was possible to feel this much.

She opened her mouth to tell him he was right, that she loved him, when he slid his fingers into her at the exact same time that his lips and tongue amped up their seduction of her most sensitive flesh. And if he hadn't been there to gather her into his arms and hold her steady as she shook from the force of the pleasure of yet another shockingly strong climax, she would have slid all the way off the bed.

But nothing was forever. Sweetpea had taught her that. So she couldn't wait another second to tell him how she felt, couldn't take the time to find her breath, her voice, to wait until they weren't naked and sweaty and wrapped up in each other.

"I love you." She slid her arms around his neck but she didn't kiss him again, not until she'd said it at least one more time. "I love you so much."

His grin came fast, and was so darn beautiful that she was already grinning back as he said, "I knew it."

How could she declare her love for him in one breath and want to growl at him in the next? "I wouldn't have if I could have stopped myself."

His smile grew even bigger. "You never stood a chance."

She used her dancer's strength to roll them over to straddle him once again. "Of course I did, you farmer."

"Oooh, baby, you know I love it when you call me names. What else have you got?" he taunted.

"Big bully."

He stroked her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and cupped her hips with his deliciously big and calloused hands. "So hot. Give me more."

"Blockhead."