Hers alone. As male as danger, and sexual in a primitive way. He evoked vulnerability and he evoked desire, both still seeming strangers in Susan’s cool, efficient and well-ordered world. He’d encouraged her to break all her comfortable rules, yet she hesitated now, not sure how to ask for what she wanted. “We really won’t have to go back and forth to the apartment much longer,” she said hesitantly. “The kitchen’s done, and the painting’s finished…”

“We don’t need to rush the move. All our clothes are still at the apartment. We can hardly commute from here to there to change for work.”

“You’re right,” she agreed, turning away.

“We don’t even have a bed in here yet.”

“You’re right,” she repeated, and headed back to the library to take care of the fire. It had been an impulse, a silly, impractical impulse to stay here. To christen the house, just the two of them. In a week, the whole place would be livable-not fully furnished that quickly, but certainly inhabitable. They had a lifetime to spend in the house. There was no hurry.

She crouched down on the marble hearth. Their little fire was now only glowing coals; the large, shadowed room was hauntingly empty behind her. She adjusted the damper, set the screen in front of the fireplace and stood up again, only vaguely aware that Griff hadn’t followed her.

He was there, suddenly, in the shadows of the doorway, with a mound of sleeping bags in his arms and a cold draught of air following him that announced he had just been out to his car. He said nothing for a moment. The wind had whipped his blond hair, and with his square Nordic features and brawny build, she thought of him as Viking, an undeniably physical man with the inner strength of oak…and an incredible gentleness when it came to pleasing her.

“Our room, Susan?”