He took her hands from his face and held them before she slipped them around his neck and continued kissing him. When they first came in, David was revved up enough to take her on the floor of the foyer. But something had changed and the tenderness, the sweetness that was coming from Kate, deserved no less from him.

When he laid her on the bed, she stretched and probably didn’t realize she’d struck a pose that was worthy of a magazine spread. This woman had no idea how magnificent she was, how beautiful. Years didn’t seem to affect her, and if there were any flaws, David didn’t notice. What kind of idiot divorced her?

David was falling for her, and his biggest fear now wasn’t that Kate would become too clingy, but that he wouldn’t measure up. He had to make sure he did everything right. He had no room for error with a woman who’d been through so much.

He began undressing her. Slowly removing each item, touching every newly exposed jewel as he whispered how beautiful she was, how much he wanted her. The urgency was gone and it was replaced by soft warmth—something that was more enduring than the flash of heat—something that would last.

*

With each touch, words flooded Kate’s brain, but her reaction was to reach out and twine her arms around David’s neck. He responded in kind, pulling her close.

She couldn’t understand why she was there or why he even wanted her, but here she was, naked in his bed, and completely and totally happy.

And at that moment, losing herself in him was enough. She stopped trying to attach a reason to everything. The only thing left to do was kiss him. So she did. Her hands threaded through his hair and her mouth touched his. This was more than a physical kiss; it was a kiss of souls. It took seconds for his weight to settle on her and for his hands to start stroking. In California, David had been about wonderfully patient; now he was so tender she was close to crying.

“David,” she whispered over and over, allowing herself the pleasure of feeling totally possessed.

He was strong and gentle, each touch made her burn. For the first time in a very long while, Kate trusted someone enough to be completely vulnerable. He entered her and each movement was a remedy to the problems of her life. Each time he said her name, Kate’s world mended. Whether it was possible or logical or wise, she felt her heart crack and open and then fall. When he came, the warmth of him penetrated her core and touched her deep within. She held on and this time, when she cried, Kate was happy.

*

At three-thirty in the morning, Kate sat on a stool in David’s kitchen. Wrapped in his blue terrycloth bathrobe, the ends of her hair still wet from their shower, she watched as he made omelets. Sporting a pair of gray knit shorts and nothing else, David moved around the kitchen like he moved on the ice and in the bedroom—with total confidence. It was too bad her head was throbbing and she couldn’t enjoy it.

“Feeling any better?” he asked.

“Eh.” She took a sip of water and waited for the Advil to kick in. “I haven’t had that much to drink, that quickly, in a long time.”

“How many glasses of wine did you have?”

She held up three fingers. “And they were those oversized glasses, so that’s more like five.

David laughed. “No wonder.”

Taking another drink of water, she got her mind off her headache by watching him cook.

“You really know what you’re doing.” she said, astounded.

He was chopping vegetables so quickly she was afraid he’d take off a finger.

“I love to eat. And since I didn’t want to condemn myself to a life of menus and take out, I learned to cook.” He tossed the vegetables into a hot pan and threw on some seasoning.

“It’s a kick watching you, but it’s such a cliché.”

“What? Cooking?”

“The omelet.” He looked confused, so she explained. “Why is it in books or movies whenever the hero cooks for the heroine, he’s always making an omelet?”

He continued to chop vegetables while he thought about what she said. “Well, things become clichés for a reason, but if I had to guess, it’s probably because people almost always have eggs around. Add whatever you have in the fridge and bingo—omelet.”

She considered him for a minute and nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever cooked for you in the middle of the night?” He grinned at her while he cracked eggs and Kate felt the warmth shoot right through her.

“If you’re asking if Richard ever did, no. Richard had a clear idea of men’s work and women’s work. He never cooked.”

“Neanderthal?”

“He doesn’t seem to have a problem thinking like a modern man regarding divorce settlements,” she murmured.

“At least you have a good career. You didn’t need a settlement.”

“I didn’t get one, I had to buy him out of the house and now he’s looking for money—a lot of it.”

David stopped beating the eggs for a moment to consider what she said. Kate felt a little nauseous just thinking about the way Richard took advantage of her.

“What does he want?”

“Two million, plus child support when he gets custody,” she croaked.

David’s hands gripped the whisk more tightly. “Are you kidding? He cheats, he leaves you, and he wants a couple million bucks?”

Kate sat back. “The thing is, he could get it. If it’s for Laura, I guess I couldn’t really argue. I don’t know where he thinks I have this money right now, but he could get the award based on my contracts.”

Not missing a beat, David put the bowl aside, turned off the burner and went around the counter. He wrapped his large hands around her tiny ones and crouched before her. “I just can’t believe he’d take the money. No man with any self-respect would do that.”

“Richard isn’t just any man, and his self-respect is limited only by his greed. I don’t care about the money for Laura’s support, but I know I should fight the settlement. Unfortunately, I’ve never been very good at standing up for myself.”

“What do you mean?”

Kate dropped her head and thought about the intimidation she suffered for years. Feeling she was never good enough; and believing, when she was young, it was his brilliance that made him act that way. She looked up and David was still there, gazing at her, waiting for an answer. Something about the way he held her gaze made her feel as if she could tell him anything.

“I was just twenty when Richard married me. He was twenty-nine, handsome, and intelligent. He’d come from San Francisco to Cambridge and was working on his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT. I was young and inexperienced and thought he was sophisticated. I let him run my life and he took away everything I was.” She stopped.

David didn’t say anything, but his eyes asked the questions. His hand came up and stroked her cheek and his silence encouraged her to go on.

“I went to Harvard with a history. I wasn’t just a student, I was an elite athlete.” She drew a deep breath and kept her eyes on him.

This part of herself was lost long ago, and she never talked about it. But if David was going to be with her, he had to know who she’d been and how she got here.

“What sport?” he finally asked.

The look in his eyes betrayed his surprise. Hearing Kate was a competitive athlete was the last thing anyone expected from her. The way her life evolved, she was anything but athletic. He held her hands, and from what she could see, he had no intention of letting go.

“I was a champion figure skater. I was one-one-hundredth of a point from making the Olympics.”

David was just plain stunned at this point, but the look on his face also told her he knew why they understood each other so well. Figure skaters and hockey players were different breeds, but they both grew up on the ice, and that bound them to each other. “That’s amazing. What happened?”

Kate shrugged. “Before I went to college, I crashed during Olympic trials. That’s why I didn’t make the team. I missed a jump I’d landed a thousand times. I should have been given a spot on the Olympic team regardless of the fall, because of my finish at worlds, but it didn’t happen. I don’t know why.” Even now, the unfairness of it still burned. “All those years training and it was over. I walked away from the whole scene because I just couldn’t do it anymore and went to college ready to reinvent myself.”