Something caught in her throat. “How dare you know what I’m thinking even before I do, Griff? I just can’t imagine why I love you.” She volunteered a kiss, took the pillows from the top of his bundle, and volunteered another kiss, then followed him through the dark, silent hall. Their staircase had a landing halfway up, with a long, low built-in window seat to match the long, low windows that stared out on their three acres. Normally, she would have been mentally hanging pictures and stuffing cushions for the window seat as she walked up the stairs. Not tonight.

Tonight her heart was full of Griff, and her mind was totally on him. On the intimate touch between them that she knew was coming. He was the kind of man who tried very hard to guess her every wish, who must have known hours before that she would want to stay here this night. He’d moved mountains to get her the house, just because she wanted it. And he’d moved her own private defensive mountains just to get her, making it very clear he’d be happy to treat her like spun glass if she wanted that. She didn’t. She just wanted…Griff. His happiness was already irretrievably linked to her own.

Her thoughts strayed back to Griff’s children, and the smallest of frowns etched her forehead. At the top of the stairs, one wing of the house was closed off by a set of double doors; there were four rooms where the original owners of the house had undoubtedly stuffed their offspring. Isolation tactics were not an element of Griff’s concept of raising children, nor of hers. Tom was to have the first room in the main wing. It wasn’t large, but Susan had already guessed that Griff and his seventeen-year-old son were fighting a few generation-gap battles; accordingly, she’d placed Tom far from his father’s door. Tom of the winsome smile and lanky limbs and his father’s pride-the boy just might appreciate a little privacy after coming in from a late date. The long conversation Susan and Tom had shared had been on the subject of energy and its effect on world politics; not the easiest topic to pursue at McDonald’s, when the rest of the group were gregariously bickering about French-fry portions. Susan had not expected such a quick feeling of rapport with Griff’s oldest child, but now she had high hopes they might develop it…