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same.
    “But now I gotta wonder if somehow she knew. She was always so sure we were never going to have kids, so sure we’d never grow old together… and I always said you’re nuts, this is forever, you and me, but….”
    I put a hand on his cheek, and he turned quickly and kissed my palm, my skin feeling branded by the simple press of his lips.
    “I told her if I died she had to find a man to love her as much as I did, and she always said she’d find a person to love her. A person. And I’d tease her and say, you’re going to become a lesbian, and she said she didn’t know, couldn’t say for certain. Because maybe it would be a woman, after me, that would fill her heart, and maybe it would be a man for me.”
    His wife was an angel and I’d always have to remember that.
    “I used to laugh at her,” he husked. “A man… for me… are you high?”
    God, I really hoped it would be a man for him. “And what did she say?”
    “She’d say, whoever loves you with their whole heart, don’t turn them away.”
    “Yeah,” I whispered. “Don’t do that.”
    He grabbed hold of my face and pulled me forward, into him, and his mouth settled hard and hungry over mine.
    I kissed him back as passionately as he kissed me, over and over, until I could feel the trembling excitement of need wash over me. I shook with it, with the idea of what I could have from this man, what I could take and give in return.
    We parted gently the second time, each caught in the other’s gaze.
    “I thought maybe I just needed to get laid,” he confessed.
    I grinned at him even though he was trying to be so serious. “I see. Now all the women make sense—you were running away from me.”
    “I was trying to see if I was just lonely.”
    “Or you hoped that if you slept with enough of them, you wouldn’t think about sleeping with me anymore.”
    “That too.”
    “And what did you figure out?”
    He inhaled sharply and I saw the fear on him. “That sleeping around isn’t going to help me when the only person I want to be with is you.”
    “How come?” I pressed.
    The scowl was adorable.
    “Mike?”
    “’Cause you love me, right? I mean, you do.”
    “Do I?”
    “Yes,” he said quickly, irritably. “I don’t see you lighting all up when other people smile at you or touch you. There’s a difference.”
    Yes, there was. “Clearly,” I agreed, stepping into him, my hands around his neck as I attacked him again, in the bushes, kissed him breathless until the sweet, urgent moans made me ready to get on my knees in the dirt.
    We tore free of each other, and he pointed to the parking lot. When we emerged—flushed, hair tousled, clothes rumpled, lips swollen—Coz and Arad were there talking, leaning against their cruisers.
    “I thought you two were gone,” Arad stated in his superserious cop voice.
    “We’re going,” Mike informed him, taking my hand and tugging me after him.
    “You’re not worried about this?” I asked Mike as we started for home, squeezing his hand, not wanting him to pull away from me.
    “Worried about what?”
    “You’re holding my hand.”
    “I am.”
    “And what if people see?”
    “I suspect that most everyone who does see will say the same thing that Kelly Seaton did when I passed him on the way to the jail.”
    “Which was?”
    He started walking faster. “He asked me, ‘Are you going to the jail to get your man out?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’”
    He was going to kill me with how possessive he was being.
    “And he said, ‘Once you get him out, you keeping him?’”
    Kelly Seaton was both a blessing and a curse.
    “And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m keeping him,’ and he said, ‘That’s good, because pretty soon, somebody else will.’”
    “That’s crap,” I said with a chuckle as I started jogging to keep up with how quickly Mike was moving. “Nobody wants me; I’m a joke in this town.”
    He stopped so suddenly, I almost got whiplash.
    “You’re not a joke,” he snarled,