THE ROAD OF ADVENTURE

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

By

Robin D. Owens

Contents

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven

Chapter One

He was the ugliest cat Jake had ever seen. The black-and-white tom had an aura of maleness surrounding him, even as he licked his paw and eyed Jake with disdain. One of Jake's ex-girlfriends had used that aura-of-maleness phrase to describe him, and he'd thought it was crap—now he knew what she'd meant.

The cat set down his paw and sniffed. "I knew you'd come here." Jake must be dreaming. Cats sure as hell didn't talk. The surroundings hadn't tipped Jake off. He spent a lot of time in the gym locker room. He shifted. The bench seemed solid and hard for a dream.

He looked back at the cat and choked. Now it sat on what looked to be a small, ancient Greek pillar, like Jake had seen while watching the Olympics. Behind the cat wasn't the opposite wall of gym lockers, but a temple that showed bright blue sky between fluted pillars.

Jake swallowed. Definitely a dream, though since he'd never had a cat, he wondered what the thing was doing in his dream. He narrowed his eyes. That cat! The battered tom looked familiar. Didn't he have a run-in or two…

"I am not a thing or an it."

Great, now the cat was reading Jake's mind. He wouldn't let a cat correct him. "You got balls?" asked Jake, pretty sure the tom didn't.

The cat lifted a pink nose with a black spot and sent Jake an icy stare. Jake's cop instincts rang loud and clear that something was very, very wrong. But what could be too wrong in a dream? He looked down. Yep, fully clothed. He wouldn't walk into the captain's office naked.

The cat hissed. "My name is Borisssssssss."

"Huh," said Jake. He stood and stretched; all his muscles worked fine. Some called him an endorphin-adrenaline junkie, but he just liked the way his body felt when he was in shape. Though he was thirty-two, he wasn't slowing down at all. Looking around his side of the room, everything was comfortingly familiar, the dull green lockers, the bench, the tile floor. But it changed in the middle of the room, becoming marble slabs.

"Boris, huh?" Jake tested reality by strolling over to the cat and looking down on him. This side of the room remained a Greek temple. Jake could sneer, too. "I think we've met."

He stepped back as the pillar grew until it loomed over him.

"You don't remember Me?" Boris hunkered down, his already horizontal ears flattened even more.

How the cat could speak and growl at the same time eluded Jake. He shrugged. He was dreaming.

Boris stretched out a paw and sharp, curved claws sprang out. Oh, yeah. Jake remembered those claws. He'd tangled with the tom on the front porch of a house and gotten scratched. Badly enough that he'd had to get a tetanus shot, and that made his arm ache so he couldn't work out for a day. Yeah, the cat had cost him. Hadn't it also pissed…

His stare latched on to the cat's paw where a bloody spot marked the side of the cat's white foreleg, like where a vein had been opened or a needle inserted… Jake's heart started to pound in his ears.

"No," said the cat. "Your heart…" He sheathed his claws and tapped Jake's chest.

Jake saw it now, the big, dark stain on the chest of his uniform. Fear lanced through him. Woozy, he retreated to the locker room bench. He didn't want to think about stains. He wanted to wake up. Now!

Nothing happened except the cat lifted its leg to groom. Jake was right. Boris had been fixed.

Boris growled.

Jake couldn't help rubbing his hand up and down over a stiff, dark spot, hoping it would go away. If it didn't… Out, out damned spot! What was that from? Bugs Bunny?

"Shakespeare, his play Macbeth." The cat smirked.

Jake could really dislike this cat.

A door opened on his left. Jake blinked. There wasn't a door there in the locker room. Oh, yeah, he had a really bad feeling about this.

Boris jumped from his pillar and swaggered to the small, balding man in a gray rumpled suit who stepped through the door.

"Hello, Boris," the guy said. The cat rumbled a purr, then trotted into the next room.

The threshold looked ordinary. The man pinned Jake with eyes as gray as his clothing. Such colorless eyes shouldn't have had an effect on Jake but he couldn't move.

He'd faced down plenty of tough customers and won. His guts twisted. He should be the one in charge. He could lift this guy with one hand. He tried to speak and couldn't.

"Come in, Jake Forbes. You can call me Gray." The man turned and stepped across the threshold.

Finally Jake found his voice. "Whatever," he croaked. He wanted to swagger like Boris—Jake could swagger with the best of them—but his feet dragged until he reached the door and looked in.

The office had bare dingy white walls, utilitarian furniture, and gray linoleum. Hell, the captain had a nicer office than this.

Dull inside, but golden sunshine streamed through a window high in the opposite wall. Two doors in that wall framed a scarred wooden desk where Gray sat. Each of the other walls had two doors also. Jake didn't like the setup. Too many options and potential for danger coming through those doors—or going out through them. A chill feathered down his spine.

Gray raised a thin eyebrow. "Problem?" he asked with just enough patronization to challenge any guy. Jake sucked in a breath and stepped into the room. Nothing earth-shaking happened. With a pen the man pointed to a standard wooden office chair with arms. A couple of yellow aspen leaves were on the seat, and Jake brushed them off and sat. One of the chair legs wobbled. Jake cursed under his breath.

Boris sat four feet away, acting as if he were a king, but his seat was a raggedy carpeted post with long hanks of unwoven rug hanging around it. And it was pink.

Jake grinned.

Boris looked supremely uncaring. Of course, cats couldn't see colors, probably not even in dreams. The cat batted at a twig of yellow aspen leaves.

The man squared a stack of papers on his desk and placed his pen at an exact angle. He folded his hands and shot Jake another look. "This isn't a dream, Jake. Accept that and it will make all our decisions quicker and easier. You're dead. Boris is dead." He waved a boney hand around the room. "Consider this the atrium to a change, a new existence."

Breath whooshed from Jake's chest. He felt his heart beating, his lungs working—the guy couldn't be right. Jake hooked his thumbs into the loops of his jeans and angled his head. He wanted to tilt the chair back, but didn't trust the wobbly leg. "So, you're what? An angel?"

The man pinched the skin above his nose. "A facilitator."

"Yeah, right." Jake curled one side of his mouth.

"Jake, you're a jerk. Look at yourself."

Gray's words punched Jake. Jake the jerk. Jake the jerk. More than one of his father's "ladies" had called him that—and more than one of his mother's men. Even his ma—he nipped the thought, as always. Heat rose from his feet to his face; a flush reddened his neck along the line of his T-shirt. He'd worked hard to make sure no one ever called him that again. Developed a smooth and charming manner. Jake the jerk.

T-shirt. Jeans. He looked down at himself. The police uniform he'd taken so much pride in had vanished. He was in his off-duty clothes of white T-shirt and jeans. The T-shirt had a hole over his heart and a red stain. Pure shock froze him.

"Boris," the facilitator said sharply. "You failed in your mission in this life. You were to bring Jake and Shauna together. The opportunities were there and you refused them."

A cat shrug rippled down Boris's back. "Not time yet," he said.

"Untrue. The truth is that you wanted no other male"—Gray glanced at Jake—"no male of superior strength in Shauna's life. You wanted to be the male of the house. You wanted to be the only male she loved. You knew she'd love and bond with Jake more than she could ever love and bond with you."

Boris sniffed. "He's human and ugly. I'm beautiful. I know this and Shauna said so. She is human and ugly, too, but she is Mine."

Boris had serious problems. He was ugly even for a cat.

"Jake's not good inside, either." Boris sounded triumphant.

Jake shifted. He was a good cop with plenty of friends.

"Men friends." Boris turned his head, eyes like lambent jade. "You have men acquaintances. Only."

Jake shrugged, grinned. "Women aren't made for friendship."

"Wrong," both Boris and Gray said.

Gray tapped his pen on his desk, frowning. The hollowness Jake always tried to deny yawned wider inside him. He covered it with a flashing grin. "You want me to be friends with a woman, I'll give it a try." He winked. "But we won't be friends long."

"See!" Boris yowled. "I am better than he. He doesn't deserve to be in Shauna's life. He would not love her like I do, cherish her, protect her."

Jake snapped his teeth together, inhaled, and counted to ten. "That's enough. I'm a good cop. I serve and protect."

Gray's sigh seemed to shiver the room. "Jake, I'm afraid you didn't progress emotionally and spiritually in the manner anticipated. That's a concern."

Boris slurped as he washed his ear. "So I get My Crown, and My Temple, and when I am bored, My Road of Great Adventure."

The man frowned. "No. Your task was to introduce Jake and Shauna. You ignored the task."

The cat stopped washing and sat straight up, glaring. "He does not deserve—"

"That was not your judgment to make," Gray said. "People can change, especially in a loving relationship."

Jake doubted that. He'd seen plenty of broken marriages, bad domestic crises, didn't even think there was such a thing as love between a woman and a man. Sex. Lust. Some tenderness, maybe. That was it.

"Boris, you didn't complete your task, so you don't get your Crown, Temple, or Road of Great Adventure. You don't even get wings to become a lower angel."

Boris hopped to his feet and arched his back. "No wingssss! I was good. I was the best. You know what I had to put up with from those other cats! You know my bad life before Shauna! You know my sick-hurt and death! I should get wings."

Gray's face softened. Maybe the guy had some compassion and mercy after all. Jake began to think he'd need it.

"You're very close to wings, Boris, but haven't achieved them. We have several options available for you." Gray took a sheet of paper from the pile and Jake blinked. He couldn't read it, but there were bullet squares, most with checkmarks, and at the bottom some paragraphs in fancy lettering, each gleaming in a different color: red, blue, gold.

He narrowed his eyes at the rest of the stack. Cramped handwriting in dull brown. Sheets with empty squares and only a couple of checkmarks. Looked like a performance review. Were those about him? His gut tightened. He'd always done well in reviews. Before. What did the papers say about him, his life—hell, he started to think this whole crazy thing wasn't a dream.

Shaking his head, Gray stared at Jake. "You followed the path of least resistance. What happened to that ideal you had about a good family life? A loving wife, children?"

Jake scowled, trying to remember, but couldn't pinpoint when he'd lost that dream, abandoned the goal as unattainable.

"You could have had that ideal, Jake. If you wanted it enough to work for it and work at a relationship instead of using women and letting them use you. You had a destined mate in this lifetime. A woman who would have helped you grow as you would have helped her. You just didn't believe in yourself enough."

Fear spiked. "Bulls—" Jake shoved the chair back and stood—at least he meant to. Nothing happened. He was stuck sitting, couldn't move. Couldn't even speak.

Gray waved a hand. "You worked hard on honing your body, a charming manner, but you neglected your intellect, allowed your finer emotions to wither, ignored any spirituality that entered your life." He tapped his pen. "Didn't relate well to women. You would never have received that captaincy you wanted because you wouldn't have enough respect from others."

Jake's gut clenched. Respect from his peers was the most important thing in his life. "I was a good cop!" But his voice cracked. Jeez, he was talking in the past tense. A very bad sign. He gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles whitened. Sweat gathered at the small of his back.

"Yes, you were a good cop."

Jake relaxed a little.

"Honorable, believing in the motto to serve and protect. But you substituted the general public for individuals. Easier than being intimate with someone, isn't it? You didn't even like being touched."

Smiling weakly with the most sincere smile he'd felt on his lips for a long time, Jake said, "A good cop should get wings?"

A flash of amusement showed on Gray's face. "I'm afraid the standards for human wings are higher than for cats."

Alarm jolted through Jake; his mouth dropped. "I can live without wings. I mean—uh, I don't have to be a cat, do I? I don't want to be a cat!"

Emerging from his sulk, Boris hissed.

Soft chimes wafted through the room. Gray tilted his head toward the room they'd come from. His expression folded into dismay and sadness. "I was afraid of this. Sometimes destiny can't be denied."

Jake didn't see Gray move, but the guy was at the door and through it before Jake could turn his head.

In the other room Gray said, "Come in, my dear Shauna. I'm sorry to see you. I'd hoped to avoid this." His mellifluous voice had the range and depth of an orchestra. "Welcome to the Atrium."

He drew a woman of about twenty-eight into the room, holding the tips of her fingers with exquisite gentleness, his manner one of old-fashioned respect and courtesy. With a gesture he indicated a deeply cushioned chair of green plush velvet patterned with golden aspen leaves that solidified between Boris and Jake.

"You're very beautiful," she said in awe, looking at Gray.

Jake frowned. The guy seemed to glow and was taller. Jake shook his head and the man appeared the same. Beautiful? Ha. If this was the Shauna woman Boris and Gray had talked about, she'd called Boris beautiful, too. Obviously she had no taste.

She looked at Jake and he was caught by her lovely eyes—a deep amber with gold and green flecks and a rim of brown around the irises. They were soft with emotion that matched the sweet curve of her lips. She smiled at him with warmth and sympathy and—yearning?

Those eyes drew him to his feet. Words tore from him. "I know you. We met beyond those doors. Our last time together was far too short, mere days…"

"I know you, too," Shauna said. The sun lit her blond hair.

Gray's voice came distantly. "Hmmmm. Recognition, rather easy here, harder during physical lifetimes. However, probable that once both accept recognition, the knowledge will always be there, in every future life. Interesting." His pen scritched.

Boris yowled. Shauna jerked. She hurried to Boris and picked him up as if he were delicate china, clasping him close.

Jake felt the loss of her attention like an absence of the sun's warmth. Stupid.

The sense of recognition faded. He'd never met her. She wore a floaty dress in blue that concealed her body, but he thought her breasts were nice handfuls and her hips good and round, even if she was a little plump.

Boris purred, opened one eye, and smirked at Jake.

When he heard her sniffling and saw tears rolling down her cheeks, he had an overwhelming urge to comfort her—but he'd have to brave the damn cat. He scowled and glanced at Gray, who smirked at Jake, too. Jake wished he could growl.

"Oh, Boris, it's so good to see you! It was so hard to put you to sleep, but I couldn't stand watching you die by inches. Say you forgive me."

God, the dramatics. Jake sat down. Gray frowned.

"I am fine," Boris said. "Except I don't have My wings or My Crown or My Temple or My Road of Great Adventure." He sniffed. "Perhaps you can speak with—"

"That's not how things are done here," Gray said.

Shauna looked at the man behind the desk and blinked. Tears caught on her lashes, and Jake was transfixed at how pretty she looked.

"No intercession accepted?" She smiled.

Gray actually hesitated. Jake couldn't believe it.

She shrugged. "I don't have anyone to intervene for me, but if I can help Boris—" Her brow furrowed. "What about my other cats? Who'll take care of them? What of the feral ones I feed?" She whirled to face the door. "They won't be put to sleep and come here, too, will they?" Pain laced her voice.

As she turned, Jake got an eyeful of the deep, bloody indentation on the side of her skull, round and as big as his palm. He swallowed.

"Sit, Shauna, that tumble down the stairs was hard on you," Gray soothed. "There is no true security even in your home."

"I'm sorry." She sank into the soft chair. Jake became aware of the hard wood under his own ass. When she looked at him, he forgot discomfort. "Sorry to bore you with my tears."

He flushed, then shrugged. "No problem."

She smiled again, then set her shoulders and looked at Gray.

The guy tried to appear stern, but Jake could tell it was a façade. A paper edged with gold with a gold seal in the shape of an aspen leaf and gold ribbons floated to him. "We will review Shauna's life first."

Gray tensed.

"Shauna, you learned most of your life lessons."

Jake wondered if she'd get wings. He gritted his teeth and examined the doors again. Jake was sure he didn't want to open a couple of them.

Gray went on. "But you didn't take advantage of the greatest opportunity we sent you." One big checkbox was blank.

"I was considering it!" she shot back, then slumped in her chair, petting Boris. "No, you're right. I probably wouldn't have taken the chance. Too cautious." Her gaze slid Jake's way. "Too repressed." She sighed.

Oddly, Jake didn't believe that for a minute. He judged she was as intense and passionate about everything as she was about her damn cat. Ex-cat? Ghost cat? Jeez, his brain hurt.

As Gray gazed at them, the only sound was Boris's buzz-saw purr. Jake wanted to squirm, but sat at attention. Shauna leaned back, face composed, as if she didn't care which of the doors she'd leave by. His nerves jittered. Which door would be the worst?

Gray sighed. "We have a Situation here. Please put Boris on his stand," the facilitator said very gently. "He has his decision to make, as do you. You should not influence him."

Shauna rose and stood regally, with a straight spine—a pretty spine above a heart-shaped ass Jake would have recalled if they'd ever met. Thinking he knew her was another mind trick.

"Yes, Boris must be free to choose what's best for him," she said, setting Boris down. "Oh, Boris, that nasty tower." All she did was look at it and it became pristine quilted blue velveteen. Jake choked at the thought that Boris was now more comfortable than he. Shauna gazed at him with raised eyebrows.

Jake nodded at her and said to Gray, "What's the deal?" His voice came out rougher than expected.

"Had you, Jake Forbes, and she, Shauna Russell, met as was intended"—Gray looked at Boris, who lifted his nose—"you would not be here. Even if you hadn't stayed together as lovers or helpmeets, your lives would not have ended. As for Boris, he might or might not be here."

"So?" asked Jake.

"So, it's first up to Shauna to decide whether she wishes to go on or go back."

"Go back? We could go back?" Jake jumped from his chair and the longer leg clattered behind him.

"You want to go back?" Shauna stared at him with soft, luminous amber eyes.

"I sure as he—I sure don't want to pick Door Number One, Two, or Three," he said. "They can't all lead to good places."

"Why not?" she asked.

He just stared. An optimist. Jeez.

"You may have earned wings, but I didn't," he said.

She pinkened. "What are our options?" she asked Gray.

"Individually you may all decide whether to go back to your old life or go forward. If you go back you will have the chance to change vital decisions." He tapped the papers with a long index finger. "If you go forward, your new circumstances will be based upon what you accomplished in your shortened lives."

Her eyes widened and her breath became shallow. She licked her lips—signs of anxiety. Finally she got the picture that flower-filled meadows might not be in her future. Jake exhaled slowly.

"I didn't take the chance that was given to me. I could do it, now." She glanced at Jake. "Would we remember?"

"After you make certain decisions, you can remember if you try hard enough. But if you go back, there is no guarantee that you'll meet. If you do meet, you will be given the chance for a long lifetime of love."

"If we don't choose love, do we croak again?" Jake asked.

Shauna winced. She was prissy, too.

Papers shuffled. "No. You will live your allotted time, but you will have failed at one of your life goals."

Shauna looked Jake straight in the eyes, and he felt as if she saw into his mind and heart. He stiffened. Her lips firmed. "I want love. I want Jake."

A bolt of shock hit him. What had she seen in him? How could she know that? How could she decide so quickly?

"Jake Forbes…" She frowned. "Sounds familiar. You died?"

"Yeah." Jake cleared his throat. He vaguely recalled his death now, and didn't like it.

Shauna said, "I'll take the risks. All of them. I'll work hard at our relationship." Her words echoed like vows in the room. Unease prickled Jake's skin. What was he getting into?

Gray stared at her. "You cherished security too much. You'll have to change, and you'll have to risk your heart. Even then, Jake has free will. He could walk away."

Her chin trembled, but she lifted it all the same. Jake felt a spurt of admiration.

"I'll take the chance," she said.

What about me? Jake wondered. Could he take the chance at love, with her? Or just a second chance at life? He eyed the doors and shuddered.

"Jake Forbes will have to grow, too. He will have to realize his core belief is that he is unlovable, then change."

"I'll love him more than enough!" The passion in her voice made Jake squirm.

"Jake must learn his own lesson. He'll have to know that he is worthy of being loved before he'll accept you," Gray said.

Boris snorted. "I do not want to go back, but I will help." He slid Gray a glance. "I will get My wings, then My Crown and My Temple and My Road of Great Adventure. I will be an Angel Cat."

"Done!" Gray's word roared like a whirlwind.

Shauna jumped on Jake and he caught her reflexively. She felt good and right and just plain incredible against him. Incandescent golden aspen leaves seared his eyes, then lightning-filled darkness descended.

Chapter Two

Earlier that August morning, Denver

In the police station locker room, Jake held his Kevlar vest at arm's length. "Phew, this stinks. They promised my new vest would be in today—that's why I let Roy use this one when he forgot his last night. It's still wet." He looked for Roy, but the man was long gone. Only Jake and Fred, his old friend and partner, were in the locker room.

Fred wrinkled his nose and patted his chest. "Yeah, and it isn't going to dry out. It's been over a hundred degrees for two weeks and I'm wet all day, every day. At least I can put up with my own smell. Yours doesn't look in good shape, and it's your last day as a patrolman. Maybe—"

Jake didn't think he could bear the hot vest or Roy's sweaty stench. "Maybe." He started to set it aside, then gritted his teeth and put it on, tightening the fraying tabs and donning his shirt. "There are times to break rules and take a chance. This isn't one of them. But I'll have something to say to Roy, you can bet on that." Something poked him. He pulled a yellow aspen leaf from where it had been stuck inside his vest. He stared at it.

"Let's roll," said Fred.

Jake dropped the leaf.

That afternoon Jake smoothed his police tunic again, wishing it didn't stink and he was better turned out on his last day in uniform. When he started his shift next Monday he'd be Detective Forbes. A promotion with more responsibility and more interesting work. He'd miss Fred, and working with a woman, Maggie, would be a challenge, but it was his first real step up to his goal of a captaincy.

He stood beside the cruiser and shook out his legs. Fred and he had been sitting for too long. He squinted at the neighborhood sandwich shop, almost able to taste ham slathered in cool mayonnaise, the bite of brown mustard on his tongue. He hoped Fred hurried up. The temp had reached 105.

A couple of pops down the street caught his attention. Backfires?

Screams. More gunshots. A child's hysterical voice, cut short.

Swearing, Jake banged on the sandwich shop's window, caught Fred's attention, and pointed down the street. Jake ran, pulling his gun from the holster. When he reached an alley entrance to his left, he stopped to glance down it. Nothing.

About twelve feet ahead of him a man ran from a liquor store, holding a young boy about four. And a gun.

The little boy opened his mouth and cried, "No, no, no, Daddy! Daddy bad." He started wailing again.

Jake's insides froze, but he kept running.

"Shut up, Mike," the man shouted in the kid's ear, then muttered, "I'm not bad. Just had bad luck. Shit happens and ya gotta deal with it." He saw Jake and snarled, "Get back. Get away from my truck."

Jake was next to the passenger side of a decrepit red truck; the keys were in the ignition. "Put the kid down!" Jake yelled above the child's cries. His heart pounded.

"No." Spittle flew from the man's mouth. He looked for a way out on the street full of shops and parked cars. People watched from windows. Sirens shrieked, coming closer.

The guy waved the gun. Put the barrel of the weapon near the boy's head—a head that flailed along with small arms and legs. "Holster your gun and get away from my truck!"

"Sure, man." Jake moved one step at a time, trying to keep the guy's focus on him. Fred had ducked down the alley and would be running around the half-block to come up behind the man.

Jake wanted the guy concentrating on him. Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with a slow, broad gesture, Jake snicked the gun's safety on. One step back. He lowered his gun to his side. Step.

The child's screams seemed distant. Step.

Jake held his gun near his holster. Step. The man's bloodshot blue gaze followed Jake. The guy inched forward. Slow. One step.

Sweat pooled on Jake's body. Hell, it was hot. Step. The little boy sobbed and held out his arms to Jake. Hell.

Jake smiled and the kid started struggling and screaming again. Jake's gut tensed. He moved slow.

Fred moved fast. His weapon came up to the back of the guy's head. "Police. Drop your gun!" Fred shouted.

The man jerked, dropped the kid, jerked again, and fired at Jake. The blow of the bullet to his chest knocked him down, head hitting concrete. Pain exploded in his chest and head, then blackness swallowed him.

The phone rang, snapping Shauna from her doze over a new landscaping plan. She blinked. The phone trilled again.

She knew who was phoning and had to pick up before voice mail did. Where was the cordless? It rang downstairs. Hopping to her feet, she ran to the stairs and down, missed a step, and saw the banister knob heading straight to her head. At the last instant she grabbed the rail and ducked, taking a hard blow to her shoulder.

There was no time to stop and shake as she sped to the phone in the kitchen.

"It's Shauna. Sorry for the delay. I was upstairs working." She tried to steady her breathing, but there was no way she could hide that she'd run to the phone.

"Oh," her friend Phil Hassuk, a bank officer, said. "I hoped you'd thought better of this notion and were going to let us both off the hook."

"Put the loan papers through." The words coming from her lips shook her to the core.

"This isn't like you, Shauna; are you really sure? You could fail and lose your house. Starting up a little landscaping company in this economy is era—imprudent, especially in mid-August instead of May or June. As your friend and financial adviser, I'm against it."

Shauna shut her eyes and fiddled with the phone's antenna. Her thoughts ping-ponged back and forth over the pros and cons of her action—her future. "I just won that city award for Best Landscaping." Her voice was high. If she hadn't been so terrified, she'd be filled with pride.

"For a cat sanctuary!" Phil sounded as incredulous as everyone else.

Steadying her breathing, Shauna said as firmly as she could, "It brought me several inquiries, potential customers. If I'm going to start my own business, now's the right time."

"Shauna—"

"Why shouldn't I step out on my own? Why shouldn't I have faith in my own talent and creativity and pure green thumb? So I'm petrified, but being a coward won't bring me what I want. Taking a risk might."

"I've never heard you talk like this," Phil said, disapproval lacing his voice. "You've always been cautious, wisely considered your future."

Despite the huge risk, she felt time slipping away from her, as if this was the last chance, perhaps the only chance for her to grab the dream she'd thought of for years.

"I have to do this. Now. Put the loan papers through. Or don't you think I'm good enough to succeed?" Why did she ask? She trembled awaiting her friend's answer.

The pause lasted an eternity.

Phil said, "The chances of failure—"

"I can do it. Will you support me or not?"

"You sound odd. Have you been drinking?"

Shauna laughed. "Not yet." She rubbed her temple; hazy dream images appeared and voices whispered, trying to make themselves heard, but she didn't have time to focus on them. "Do I have to go to someone else, Phil?"

"You could lose your house. If you fail, I won't be able to bail you out."

"I've never asked you to help me and I won't." Shauna set her jaw. "Do I have to go somewhere else?"

"I'll put the papers through. At least you still have that lousy florist job with George."

She wouldn't tell Phil she was quitting. "Thanks, Phil."

"Do you want some company for that drink?"

"Not this evening. I want to contact my new clients." Mrs. Mally would be first. Shauna could be at the lovely home near Skyline Park with preliminary plans as soon as tomorrow evening. She did a little dance step; giddiness fizzed through her.

"Fine," Phil said. "As I explained earlier, the money from your mortgage should come through in about a week."

"Great." Shauna would not let fear close her throat. "I have everything ready to ramp up by then."

"I've got to go. I have your business to transact."

Laughing, Shauna said, "I'm on the Road of Great Adventure." She blinked, wondering where the words came from.

"What? Never mind," Phil said, and rang off.

Shauna hung up. The room whirled around her. The air thickened until she had trouble breathing. Gasping, she let herself slide down the wall to the floor, not able to make it to a chair. Dizziness rushed through her. Jimbo, her fat gray cat, trotted through the cat door with a twig of yellow aspen leaves, out-of-season color. Something very, very strange was going on.

"Hello."

Jake jolted as the greeting echoed through his brain. Looking around, he saw an ugly black-and-white tomcat atop one of the stools in his curtained hospital space. A prickle slithered up his spine. The cat looked familiar.

He narrowed his eyes, then shook his head. For a minute he'd thought the cat had actually spoken. Jeez! Banging his head on concrete had made more of an impact than he'd thought.

"You're not dead," the cat said. "You were, but aren't now."

Jake ignored the whispery words. He finished tucking his shirt into his jeans, slipped his keys into his pocket, and strode to the tom. "Damn. What's a cat doing here?"

He'd liked the doc, wouldn't want her to get in trouble. He grabbed, but the cat leaped away and up to the hospital bed. Images of the cat and a pillar and temple flowed into Jake's brain, and he shook them impatiently away—fuzzy images of weird dreams when he'd been out. There'd been a woman—

"Sorry, Jake, I didn't hear you." Fred walked in.

Eyeing the cat, Jake saw bloody hands in his future, but guessed he was too macho a guy to ask for help in getting the animal out of the place. "Fred, hand me the towel, will you? I want to take care of the cat."

Fred picked up a damp towel the doc had used on Jake and tossed it to him. He grimaced, sure that trying to wrap a sodden towel around a cat would lead to injury. Huh. He'd faced down a gun and a bullet this morning, but hesitated at taking on a cat. Some hero he was.

"A cat? Since when did you get a cat? I thought you didn't like pets."

"That one there." Jake gestured to the tom.

Fred frowned. "What cat?"

Jake opened his mouth to say "Boris," and froze. Why would he call the cat Boris?

Fred looked at Jake strangely. The cat smirked.

"Your head hurting?" Fred asked.

Jake rubbed the bump on the back of his skull. "Yep."

"Seeing things?" asked Fred.

"Like cats?" Jake laughed. It came out strained. He pretended to scan the area. "You don't see any cats, do you?"

Eyebrows bobbing, Fred shook his head. "Nope. No cats. No dogs. No pink elephants in tutus."

Fred looked a little worse for wear, too. "What went down? You in any trouble?" Jake asked.

Hunching a shoulder, Fred said, "I didn't kill the guy, and Betty Pazinski from Social Services took the kid."

Jake nodded. "She's a good woman." He wished he'd known someone like her growing up. "She'll do right by him."

The cat sniffed. Fred stared at him.

Jake preferred direct action. He sauntered to the bed and started to sit down on the cat.

The tom hissed and hopped away. "You're not dead," the cat repeated. Then he lifted his nose and twitched his ears. "But I am. I am a Ghost Cat. Soon to be an Angel Cat. I will go home with you to help you meet Shauna. Then I will get wings. When you love her and marry her, I will get My Crown and Temple and Road of Great Adventure. And I am Borissssss."

"Are you okay, Jake? Hell, the blood drained right out of your face." Fred hurried to help Jake sit on the bed.

Jake dropped his head to his hands. "Jeez."

"You hallucinating, man? What kind of drugs did they give you?"

"Nothing," Jake mumbled. "It's nothing. Just a little dizzy," he lied. Summoning up a charming smile, he sent it to Fred. "I'll be fine."

Fred shook his head. "You're lucky." He grinned and Jake felt to his bones that Fred's lopsided smile was gold while his own was tinfoil. Jake didn't like his facade anymore.

Then Fred sobered. "I'd invite you home, but you know my sister is staying with us. We don't have room."

Now Fred was lying. He lived in an old sprawling farmhouse that had been surrounded by burbs. Jake rubbed his head again, glancing to his right from the corner of his eyes. Boris—no, he would not name the cat—was still there. Jake let his shoulders slump. "You don't have to say that, Fred. You just don't want me near your sister."

Fred's big feet shifted. "Sorry, no offense, but—" He stopped.

"Yeah, I know. I use women and let them use me." Jake didn't know where the phrase had come from and was appalled he'd said it. He scrubbed his face. "Don't know what's gotten into me. Tough day. I'd appreciate a ride home, though."

"Sure." Fred lightly punched his shoulder. For once, Jake didn't stiffen or flinch. Fred cocked his head.

The doctor, an older woman, came back in. Jake rose on unsteady feet and offered his hand. "Thank you, Doctor," he said sincerely. She shook his hand, then gave him a bottle with a couple of pills. "These will help you rest. Don't be as macho as you look. Take them."

"I will. Thanks again for all your help," Jake said.

Fred stared. The doctor nodded, then left. Studying Jake with cop's eyes, Fred said, "A close shave with death can shake up a man, make him rethink his priorities."

"Rethink his whole damn life," Jake said. Buzzing in his ears solidified into "Jake the Jerk." Had he been a jerk?

"Yessssssss," hissed Boris. "Fred always thought you could be a better man, especially with women." Jake's gut twinged. He'd always thought Fred had respected him. Being respected by his buddies was the most important thing in the world.

Jake turned his head. The tom appeared as solid as ever. Ghost cat! "Jeez."

A short laugh came from Fred. "That's the old Jake, saying jeez instead of damn or shit or f—"

"Yep." Jake stood and struggled to find his balance. Flashing memories blew through his mind of slaps and backhanded blows accompanied by cursing from members of both sexes—his parents and their lovers that came and went. It was an old, sorry wind and brought the taste of blood in his mouth from a split lip.

He blinked, remembering for the first time in a long time the six-month stretch where an old neighbor guy gave him soda and corrected his swearing into the mild "Jeez." It rocked him to realize that he'd used the word all this time out of simple respect for that man.

"Ready?" Jake asked Fred, glad nothing more revealing came out of his mouth.

"Sure."

"Yessss," said Boris, hopping down.

"I don't like cats," Jake mumbled.

Fred gripped Jake's upper arm. "I know, buddy, but you don't have to deal with any," he soothed.

That's what he thought. Boris marched, tail waving, in front of them. A ghost cat. Right.

"Jake?" Fred's voice pulled him from a light daze to find himself outside and next to a car, with Fred holding the door open. Jake slid into the front seat and fumbled at his seat belt, then grunted when Boris landed in his lap. For a ghost cat he was damn heavy.

"Yeah?" Jake pulled the door shut, trying to ignore the animal. Fred went to the driver's seat, slammed his door, hooked his seat belt, inserted his key, and took the wheel. His face set in impassive lines. His fingers flexed once, then curled around the steering wheel.

"Don't take this wrong, buddy, but it seems the hit you took is improving you. Keep it up."

"Up what?" Jake asked ironically.

Fred grinned and shrugged.

"Being honest," Boris said. "And not superficial, especially with women."

"Huh." Jake would have to think about all this. Boris kneaded his thighs and Jake tensed. "One last question, Fred."

"Yes?"

"Do you see any cats?"

Boris settled and lifted a paw to lick it, slurping loudly.

Fred peered out the windshield, checked the driver's and passenger's windows and mirrors. "Nope. Not a one."

"I may be turning over a new leaf, but I still won't like cats," Jake said, shutting his eyes and letting weariness take him. Boris grumbled. Not purred, grumbled. Jake sighed. "Jeez."

Jake crashed at his place—a rented condo near Skyline Park—for the rest of that day and the next. Strange dreams played through his mind. Mostly of a woman, but now and then there was a shadowy figure called Gray and an insistent cat. He liked the erotic ones about the woman the best, even though they stopped before he climaxed and left him aching.

Finally he awoke to a growl. He stared. There was the cat, sitting next to him on the bed, glaring at him.

"What's for dinner? It's four o'clock, time to eat," Boris said.

"You're a ghost cat. You don't eat," Jake said before he could stop himself. Hearing a cat and replying! He rolled over. "I'm asleep and dreaming."

"You always think that. We have things to do."

"We?" Jake asked. "You do them. You're the talking cat. You can do anything, right?"

"I'm hungry."

"Go catch ghost mice." Were there ghost mice? What was he thinking? How'd he get into this mess? If he got up and got his act together, he wouldn't be talking to an imaginary cat.

Boris moved in, glowering, until they were nose to nose. Jake sat up. Claws pierced his skin and scratched. He looked down.

Where there should be red lines there was nothing. The stinging vanished as if it had all been an illusion. He narrowed his eyes at Boris and visualized sending the ghost cat through the wall.

The cat stepped out of reach, sat, and began to whine. Jake slid down and rolled over and put the pillow on his head. The yowl started low, then increased to pierce his ears.

"We need to go out to the park. Now," Boris said.

"This can't be happening," Jake mumbled. A heavy weight settled on the pillow over his head. The screech stopped. Jake sighed.

Something cold and damp touched his arm. Jake flinched, hoping it really wasn't a cat nose. Then the nose slid up his arm, leaving a wet trail. Jake couldn't stand it. He rolled from bed and stood, weaving a bit to get his balance and suppressing a groan at all the aches in his muscles. He opened one eye, then the other.

A scruffy black-and-white tomcat sat like a king in the middle of Jake's bed. He rubbed his face, shook his head. He turned and limbered up with stretches. When he glanced back at the bed, the cat had his back leg stuck in the air and was grooming. Jake stared. Boris was well equipped in the sex department. That didn't seem right.

"You have time to shower and dress before we go to the park. You should open a can of tuna so I can eat while you shower. You have slept very long and I am hungry."

Jake grunted. As far as he was concerned, the cat could scavenge in the garbage cans of the park. He wondered if he should bother talking to the tom. Maybe if he ignored it, it would go away.

"I am not an it—"

"Haven't we had this conversation?" asked Jake, then shook his head. "No."

Boris lifted a paw and licked it. "You can remember now, if you want."

Jake didn't. He stalked from the bedroom to the bathroom. The park might be a good idea. He could work the kinks from his muscles with a speed walk.

The park would also be crowded on a summer Saturday afternoon. Usually he'd think about picking up a woman, maybe near the tennis courts, but now the idea didn't appeal. Somehow he didn't think it would ever appeal to him again. His world had shifted—or maybe it was just his perspective—but he was going to try and figure out how to act without the shallow, joking mask he'd worn for so long. All his adult life. No more practiced and charming manner, just straight honesty.

A walk in a public park would settle him. The image of a golden aspen tree came, and he shook it away, though it made him smile.

When he finished cleaning up and went back to the bedroom to dress, he found a blue polo shirt and darker blue slacks laid out on the bed. The cat grinned. "Shauna likes blue."

Shauna. The name echoed in his head and to his amazement it also stirred his body with recollections of hot dreams.

He shrugged and dressed. If the tom wanted to visit the park so much, maybe Jake could ditch the cat there. Not much of a plan, but other than pretending Boris didn't exist, Jake didn't know how to deal with an alleged ghost cat.

Boris jumped from the bed and led the way to the front door—tail straight up and humming creakily.

Jake started out at a brisk walk along his sidewalk that led to the asphalt paths of the park. To his horror, several people jogged right through Boris. The cat grumbled and hissed and the runners stumbled a few steps later.

Others angled away from the tom, but didn't appear to see the cat.

Boris's head swiveled back and forth, his ears perked and rotated. He was obviously a cat with a mission. When they reached the tennis courts, Boris stopped. "This is a good spot. We will wait there."

"You can," Jake said, and got a couple of odd looks. He snapped his mouth shut. He took a stride away from the cat.

"If you continue on the path, I guar-an-tee you will step in dog shit and ruin your shoes." Boris grinned.

Jake liked him better when he scowled. Jake looked down at his new white leather, expensive, cross-trainers. "Jeez."

"Isn't it time you said shit?" asked Boris.

"Shit!" The word brought the image of the sad old man who'd corrected him and he felt bad. He could overcome that, but why? He scowled at Boris. "I'm going to stick with jeez."

The cat's smile was worse. "A mature decision."

"What are you going for, wings?"

The smile widened to Cheshire-cat proportions. If Boris disappeared and left the smile, Jake would check into the nearest mental health clinic.

But Boris remained, ugly smile and all. "Yesssss."

A cat's high meow distracted Shauna as she did a final tour with Mrs. Mally of her flower beds bordering Skyline Park. Since Mrs. Mally, also a cat lover, ignored the whine, Shauna did, too.

"I am so glad you've started your own business, dear. With the drought the last couple of years, I'm rethinking my lawns and gardens."

Shauna smiled briefly. "Very wise. Flowers and grass natural to the plains have their own beauty, and I'll ensure you'll have an arresting yard in all seasons."

"I'm very happy with our plans. The budget is acceptable and so is the time frame. You can start on Monday?"

"Absolutely. You're my first priority." Shauna beamed back at the lady.

"How many clients do you have, my dear?"

"Five," Shauna said proudly.

Mrs. Mally nodded. "Off to a good start. We're finished?"

"Yes," Shauna said. The cat yowl was insistent. If it had been one of her cats, she'd have placated it five minutes ago.

"I'll see you Monday." With a wave Mrs. Mally entered her house.

As Shauna turned, she realized the cat sound wasn't coming from the Mally yard but from the park, near the tennis courts.

With a sigh she placed her plans and notebook in the car—she'd have to think about turning it in for a truck—locked up, and went to find the cat.

The howl rose and fell at irregular enough intervals to drive a sensitive person mad.

Then she saw the cat and stopped. He was black-and-white and hefty, like Boris, whom she'd had to put to sleep. She gulped. He seemed entangled in a swatch of old net hanging from a large trash can. She wondered if he was feral.

When she approached, he grinned a big, silly grin, a lot like Boris's. He looked incredibly like Boris, down to the black spot in the middle of his nose. She bit her lip. Boris had only been gone a couple of days. Seeing this cat hurt.

"Hi, guy," she said, advancing slowly, trying to figure out how he was trapped. As she got closer, he rumbled a purr. She swallowed. So much like Boris!

Shauna looked down at the cat and frowned. He didn't appear caught in the netting, just sitting on it.

"Hey!" a man shouted.

She turned and stared. It was the man who'd haunted her dreams last night. All thoughts of cats vanished.

Chapter Three

Her heart pounded. Her mouth went dry. She couldn't think of any reason for the trembling in her knees, or her breathless anticipation as he walked toward her. Except they'd been very intimate in her dreams. She remembered the feel of his body, his touch, and his eyes more than anything else. But she knew him now and would never forget.

He was slightly over medium height, well built, and muscular, obviously in fine shape. His blond hair, blue eyes, and ready smile made him the image of a mature all-American boy.

Very mature. His wide shoulders and the faint lines around his eyes showed he was in the prime of life. Vital. Virile.

Yet there was an air of darkness around him, painful secrets behind those stunning blue eyes. Shauna didn't know how she knew, but she did. One look at him and she knew he was the utmost danger to her. She could fall for him hard. If she let him into her heart, he could break it.

He was not a man she should ever consider being with. A woman who valued safety and security and a calm life would run from such a man. Screaming.

She wanted to fling herself in his arms and feel the hardness of his muscles pressing against her. She wanted to caress all of him, learning his shape and the texture of his skin and all his beauty. She wanted.

"Hey," he said again, more softly, and smiled.

"Hi," she managed, caught by the blue eyes with shadowy depths.

"Did you notice the cat? Want to take him off my hands?"

"What cat?"

He closed his eyes as if praying.

That lessened the spell on her. Enough for her to recall the cat and glance at the garbage can. The net was gone, and so was the cat.

"He is gone, finally!" The man grinned at her.

"Um, did he follow you home?" She hadn't heard that story in ages. She could understand why female gazes would follow him, why bolder women than she might literally follow him, but a cat?

The man scanned the park, shook his head, but his smile didn't dim—until he met her eyes again and they locked gazes.

She knew him. Didn't she? Even before recently in—She felt light-headed, dizzy, and concentrated on her balance, the solid earth under her feet. Shauna could always count on the earth. Still, as she noticed the darker rim of blue-gray around his blue eyes, she felt as if he drew her very heart to him. To play with, put in his pocket, and forget? Could she even try to believe that he might cherish a woman's heart?

"Yeah. The cat has been a nuisance. You wouldn't believe…" He stared at her. "I know you. Haven't we met? Beyond—" He snapped his mouth shut, hunched his shoulders an instant, then straightened. "You saw the cat?" he asked in measured tones.

"Yes, he looks like one I used to have." Her smile wobbled a bit; she blinked. "Must be one of Boris's descendants."

"Boris," he said flatly.

Shauna frowned. "Is something wrong?" She touched his arm and sparks of desire zipped from his skin, through her fingers, to her core.

His gaze was cool, very observant. He held himself a little stiffly, and kept his emotions from his eyes and face. It was something he was used to doing, she realized.

"You're Shauna?" he asked.

"Yes, Shauna Russell." She took a step back from him.

His eyebrows raised, but he didn't follow. He held out a hand. "I'm Jake Forbes. I think we have a mutual—friend." Jake did a swift review of the garbage can, the tennis courts, the park. "The cat's gone."

The park was even more crowded than a few minutes before, but Shauna didn't see the tough, black-and-white cat. Jake Forbes. The name tingled at the back of her mind. She associated that name with—with what had happened to her yesterday. With Boris. Memory came. "Jake Forbes. You're the police officer who was shot."

He rubbed his chest and looked stoic. "Yeah." Then he held out his hand again.

She looked at his hand and the tingle increased. If she took his hand, everything would change.

She was turning over a new leaf. Not playing it safe anymore. There wasn't true security even in her own home. She put her fingers in his.

Everything changed. Her heart gave one hard thump as she recognized her man.

Jake started, dropped her hand. "Maybe we should do a lap on the path to make sure the cat's really gone. Would you take him if we found him?"

Shauna sighed. "I already have two cats. But, yes, I'd take him. No one could ever replace Boris, though; he was such a character." Jake walked rapidly and that was a blessing; it stopped the stupid tears behind her eyes.

"I haven't seen you around here before," he said.

And as a cop, he would have noticed her, she supposed.

"I'm a landscape designer." Saying it amazed and thrilled her. "I have a client." She waved a hand in the direction of Mrs. Mally's and tried not to pant. He sure was in good shape. She wasn't. Her breath escaped on a quick sigh. A man like him would want someone as buff as himself. She wouldn't qualify. Easy to dismiss the attraction. Not so easy to forget about him, but her new career would help.

"I live in Skyline Condos." He gestured.

Shauna knew them. They had no charm, either in the architecture or the landscaping. Another difference between them.

By the time they'd reached the path leading to the tennis courts, Shauna was sure she'd imagined her previous feelings and that stupid idea there was something important, fateful, between them. He couldn't have been her dream lover. That man had been sensitive to her needs, tender. She snorted, a dream lover for sure, nothing like a real man. Jake was a real man; his muscular body and the faint sweat of him told her that at every step.

Jake stopped when they reached the tennis courts again. She followed his glance to the garbage can. No net. No cat.

There'd been no cats at all in the park.

She summoned up a bright smile. "Nice meeting you." If she left fast, it would put an end to her indecision about him.

"Don't go," he said. By now he was sure this was the woman who'd starred in his dreams, doing wonderful things to him with her hands and mouth. That notion irritated and intrigued him, and being a cop, he had to solve the puzzle. Get his mind around it, his hands on it. His hands on her.

She was so pretty. So… different, like a fairy. No, that couldn't be it. Fairies were little and slender. She was little, but plump. Pleasingly plump. Nice round breasts his hands itched to touch. Nice round hips he wanted to squeeze. He'd copped a glance at her ass, too. Sweet. Very sweet. Yeah, that was it. She was sweet and had this distracted air—that's why he thought of fairies.

Her light golden blond hair was so fine that the breeze wisped it about her head in tendrils. He wanted to smooth and, in smoothing her hair, touch her skin, slip down her cheek, and tilt the small round chin up so he could gaze into her eyes for a long time. Eyes that were the color of an amber glass candy dish his mother once had, that he couldn't stay away from despite all warnings and slaps.

He'd loved picking up that dish and holding it to the window to watch sunlight stream through it and turn it into pure gold. But he'd touched it once too often, been caught, and in the jolting surprise and scuffle with his dad had dropped the dish and watched it shatter. More than a few slaps then. When he cleaned up the mess, he'd mourned. And inside her haze of drugs and liquor, his mother had never noticed the amber dish was gone.

So he wanted to touch Shauna, but kept his hands to himself and just stared. "Don't go."

She nibbled at her lip. "I should." She glanced to the west, where the sun was dipping behind the purple smudges that were the mountains.

"You like sunsets?" he asked. Fairies would like sunsets.

She stared. "Sure. What's not to like?"

The fact that it led to the dark, and in the dark a lot of crimes were committed.

"Skyline's the best place in Denver for sunsets," he said. He caught up her hand again, accepted—welcomed—the shock of attraction, of some sort of strange link between them, liked the feel of the sizzle along his nerves, the heating of his blood. He was throbbingly alive. "Walk with me," he said.

Her small, red, and tempting tongue came out and dabbed at her lips. "Yes."

They stopped at the west edge of the park, where it fell away to rocky hillside. "I want to kiss you," he said. He'd thought of other, more charming lines, but decided to go with honesty. Something about being with her demanded honesty from him. That was interesting and a little alarming, but part of the puzzle.

"I've dreamed of you," she whispered, and he got the idea that she hadn't wanted to say it and didn't want him to know.

"I've dreamed of you, too." He grinned wholeheartedly. "Excellent dreams."

She just looked up at him with wide eyes.

"Shall we see how they compare to reality?" He dropped her hand to slide his arm around her waist. He'd anticipated the move and figured it wouldn't be anywhere close to smooth. But his body, tight though it was with nerves, moved easily.

He drew her close to his side, and they fit as he'd never fit with any other woman—a fact his body celebrated but gave his scrambling mind pause. She pressed against him with muscles as quivering under her skin as his own. Her scent came to him, floral overlying the fragrance of her own womanliness.

He let his hand cup over the upper curve of her ass, and his heart picked up a beat. She didn't say anything, just kept a half smile on her face. He traced his finger up the indentation of her spine, spread his hand across the top of her back—she was small.

He paused a breath before his lips touched hers. That close, with eyes locked, tingles of sensation raced between them. Her body trembled.

Slowly he bent his head, brushed her lips with his own. No zipping sizzle like the shock when their hands first met, but the pulsing attraction between them was tangible, tantalizing. Her eyes darkened to deep amber flecked with gold, her breath sighed out between her open lips and into his own mouth, and a tremor rippled through him, sensitizing his skin until the air felt heavy like a coming storm. Thudding came to his ears—his pulse or hers?

Again. He pressed his lips against hers, accepting the shock of wonder, of desire. His tongue slid over her mouth to taste. Sweet. Almost too sweet to bear.

He couldn't keep his eyes open. Impossible, for the first time.

But his body—demanded he learn her from her mouth, from the pliant arms around his neck.

Tentatively he sent the tip of his tongue past her lips. Her mouth opened wide to his foray, and he sensed her entire self, opened to him for his pleasure. For him to plunder and ravage if he wanted. He could only sigh.

She shuddered against him as she took his breath inside her, as if his breath alone would change her forever. Exultation surged within him. Triumph. He'd claimed her with his breath, with the lightest of kisses. Her. His woman.

He slipped his hand beneath the hair at the nape of her neck. Her head tilted back and her eyes looked at him, unfocused. "More," she said.

"Yes. More."

Jake angled his lips on hers. Her mouth opened and he swept his tongue inside to taste all. But taste was not enough; he pulled her against him. The feel of her body—that he wanted to savor, too, to stretch into as many moments of pleasurable tension as he could. She felt like no other, the plumpness of her belly cradling his hard erection in softness that teased him with how he'd feel inside her. Her breasts, with their hard little points against his chest, lured him to forget their surroundings so he could explore her curves. The silky fall of her hair over his hand at her nape made him think of all the other textures of her. All the tastes.

Passion roared through him. He lifted her and drew them together sex to sex. She moaned into his mouth.

Her tongue rubbed against his. He captured it and sucked it and brought the true taste of her deep within his memory so he'd never lose it.

She pushed against his shoulders, broke the kiss. Her panting breath sounded loud. As loud as his thundering heart.

"We were supposed to be out of the park by sunset. They'll be closing the roads." Her teeth flashed. "A cop will drive by to ensure only residents are here."

All his blood was pooled in his groin. He was in no shape to make love to a woman in short grass over earth baked hard from drought. Though he desperately wanted to.

"You'd better put me down before we do something that will humiliate us." She blushed.

He blinked. Even in the dim light of nightfall, he was sure. She had blushed.

He set her gently on her feet. "Shauna," he said, and watched his breath stir her hair.

"Hmmmm?"

He smiled. "Just trying your name out."

"Good. You'll remember it."

"No chance of forgetting."

"Not for an observant cop like you."

A chill made his toes curl. "Does that bother you? My job?"

She looked up at him, and her face, highlighted by the sun's dying radiance, was serene. Serenity wasn't something he'd often seen. He didn't know that serenity was an emotion many cops ever saw. He wondered how many cops would cherish it and only knew that he did.

"Being a police officer isn't just a job for you, is it, Jake? It is you."

How did she figure that out so fast? Was she learning things about him from the quiet between them? What things? How much was he unconsciously telling her?

"That's right," he said. The light was too dim to see the amber of her eyes and that hurt a little—how often would he see her eyes? How long would this strange interlude last?

"I've never had a friend who was a police officer. I don't know how I'll act when your profession affects me—us." She ended on a whisper. "Do you want there to be an 'us,' Jake?"

"Yes!" he answered without thought. "Want to get together tomorrow?" he asked gruffly and waited an eternity, staring into her eyes. Why was he letting her go now? He didn't want to. He wanted to take her home. To bed. And keep her there, preferably under him. He shifted at the thought and his bruises twinged. Well, maybe over him, then. With him, though, positively.

She tore her gaze from his. At least it seemed she was having problems not looking at him.

"Um," she said.

He thought that was a good sign. "Tomorrow." He ached with unfulfilled lust, but beneath that were the all too real aches from his recent bout with a concrete sidewalk and a bullet. A hot bath and as much sleep as possible would be best if he could talk her into bed tomorrow.

Clearing her throat, she said, "Sunday. Sunday is my Meditation Morning with Friends of the Forest."

He stared. She couldn't be serious.

She didn't meet his eyes, but her lips firmed. "I really need it this week. It's been a—very eventful week."

When she glanced at him again, he got the impression that he was one of the major events. His ego swelled, almost matching his body. His body that was getting tighter by the moment. His body that might start ruling his head any minute.

"Would you like to come with me?" Shauna asked.

To a Meditation Morning with some New-Age flakes called "Friends of the Forest"? More than anything else he wanted to be with her. Deep inside him a small, persistent need to please her started clamoring. "I've had a—uh—major week, too." Understatement.

Now she smiled up at him, trusting. An optimist. "We go to an old estate in Cherry Hills with huge trees. Very peaceful. You'll like it."

He wondered if they'd be back in time for the Broncos kickoff. Hell, it was only the second preseason football game and he could miss it if he was rolling around with her in another kind of sport. The best sport.

"Meditation Morning with Friends of the Forest. At an estate in Cherry Hills. Right," he said neutrally. Could have been worse. Could have been Catholic Mass in the Basilica all morning. But the guys would understand Mass better than a meeting of the Friends of the Forest. Maybe they would never hear. Yeah. Maybe he had pink hair.

Then he looked into Shauna's eyes and was caught. They told him he was valued and valuable. He couldn't recall the last time anyone looked at him like that.

And she—she was small and lovely with a childlike wonder encased in her very womanly body. He sensed an underlying delight and passion in everything she did, and he wanted that passion directed at him. Hell, he wanted her entire concentration on him.

"Yes," he said. "I'll go with you. We can spend the day together. " To hell with the Bronco game. It was only preseason, after all. The way he and Shauna had connected earlier, it was a good bet he could talk her into bed tomorrow.

"I'll walk you to your car." He placed his fingertips at the small of her back and she trembled. He sucked in a deep breath and forced hot images from his brain.

She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He nearly staggered at the thought. This was more than lust. Just by looking at her, a person could tell she wouldn't hop into bed with a stranger.

But she didn't treat him like a stranger, and she didn't feel like a stranger to him. That was so odd that it might have scared Jake a little last week. Certainly, he'd have played this whole scene differently. But he was trying to be more up front and honest, and it wasn't as hard as he'd thought.

Just how noble he could be with her in his condo the next day was a whole different question.

Chapter Four

The next morning Jake had second thoughts about the Friends of the Forest, but not about wanting Shauna, not after more hot dreams. They'd been even sexier since now he knew the scent of her arousal, the timbre of her voice, how her amber gaze seemed to melt after she kissed him.

Shauna was special, not like any other woman he'd ever met. Okay, her type hadn't attracted him before, women who wanted more than just a hot time between the sheets, some superficial dates. And how cold that all seemed now. How sterile.

He pulled up in front of her house and recalled he'd been there before—twice. Once during a winter day when a gang of teen burglars had struck the neighborhood. No one was home. The second instance had been the night two small planes had collided in midair and fallen, one crashing a half-block away.

The whole force had been called out that night, and he'd been part of a door-to-door giving residents correct information and looking for debris. Both times Boris had appeared on the front stoop before the porch, hissed, clawed, and pissed on his shoes—definitely making himself memorable. The house had been dark and he'd given a perfunctory knock and left as soon as possible. But the plane crash had been at the beginning of the year, just as night was falling.

Now it was the end of summer, before the cold nights and the first frost, and what a difference! Her front yard was terraced and showed a verdant tangle of blooming flowers.

He was halfway up the short sidewalk to her house when Shauna stepped from her enclosed front porch. "Jake." She smiled. He returned it and helped her into his SUV.

Jake was remembering Boris, and trying to remember Boris without thinking about how the ghost cat appeared in his life. As he drove, hazy visions of someplace else wisped into his mind. He wished he was at the gym where he could work out and think instead of on his way to a stupid New-Age thing. He answered Shauna's social questions distractedly.

"Please pull over, Jake," Shauna said coolly.

"What?"

"I asked you to pull over."

He slid a glance to her. Her profile was probably as stern as a pretty face like hers could get. He signaled and pulled his SUV over.

When they were stopped, Shauna faced him. "Just what do you find objectionable about sitting in a peaceful natural setting for an hour and meditating?"

"Ah." He didn't want to offend her, but she just stared at him with serious amber eyes, eyes that didn't seem to indicate a mind that was the least flakey. He took his hands off the wheel and pushed his fingers through his hair.

"I'd imagine you aren't accustomed to meditation. Do you think it has no value?" she prompted.

"No. That is, I know some people find it—ah—soothing."

Shauna nodded. "That's right, I do. It settles me. And I find it even more useful when I'm surrounded by the beauty of nature. Do you have a problem with nature, Jake?"

"I like to fish and camp the same as any other guy," he said.

"So you probably are used to settling your mind while doing something else." She looked at him until a word was pulled from his lips.

"Exercise. I exercise a lot. I work on my body and let my mind rest then—let it take care of itself."

She flashed a smile. "It shows that you exercise. And it shows that I don't, a lot, but my new business will tone me up. Meanwhile, I find a need for meditation to let my mind rest. I don't like to drive to the mountains every weekend, and it's not easy meditating in Denver parks."

The thought of her sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed, completely defenseless, in a couple of the parks chilled him to the bone.

"That leaves personal property. My own yard isn't conducive to meditation, either."

She sounded way too logical.

They watched each other. Shauna tilted her head and a little frown line knitted between her brows. "Is it the name? I can see how the name might put some people off."

"How could a normal guy even want to meet a person who was a 'Friend of the Forest'?"

Shauna chuckled. "It is a little New Age."

"Why didn't you just call the group 'Tree Huggers'?" Jake muttered.

"Because we don't hug trees. We just sit under them and meditate."

He could deal with meditation. Maybe. "Like the Society of Friends, the Quakers?"

"I suppose so, though I've never been to a Quaker Meeting. The Friends of the Forest does have an activist branch, of course, and we have monthly meetings. But Sunday mornings are for meditation. You don't have to come if you don't want to. I'm sorry it makes you uncomfortable. The estate is only a couple of blocks away. I can walk. Someone will give me a ride home."

He didn't want her to spend any time in anyone else's company but his. "Seems a waste of time," he muttered.

"A waste of time?"

He waved to the city outside the window. "It's been hot all week. It'll be hot today."

"And you'd rather be doing something, anything, other than just thinking or stilling your thoughts and letting your mind rest." Shauna unfastened her seat belt. "This was a mistake. I'm sorry." She smiled at Jake, but he knew better than anyone else when a smile was false.

He narrowed his eyes. "I want to spend time with you, the day with you." He just plain wanted her.

Shauna inclined her head and a considering expression came to her eyes. "Don't the Broncos play today?"

"Second preseason game. In Texas," Jake said.

"You strike me as a sports fan."

"I like to watch. I work hard. I play hard. I relax watching sports."

"Sounds like you're a normal guy."

He hoped so. His hormones certainly were.

"I suppose you were going to invite me to watch the game with you out at some sports bar?" Shauna said.

Heat crept up the back of Jake's neck. "Actually I thought we could watch it on my big-screen TV. In."

Her eyebrows lifted.

His neck burned.

Her lips twitched, but her gaze had heated. Good.

"I see."

"I have guacamole and chips," Jake offered, as if food would make the invitation more innocent.

"I don't often watch sports," Shauna said. "What with just starting my business, I have a lot of other things I should be doing."

Jake set his jaw.

"But I want to spend time with you, too, Jake. I sense a compromise." Shauna clicked her seat belt back into place.

A breath he hadn't been aware of holding released. "After the med—this thing, I could drop you off at your house and you could work a little. I'll stop by the grocery and pick up a pizza. Kickoff is at two p.m. If you got to my condo by one, we could talk before the game."

"Sounds like a plan." Shauna looked straight ahead. Serene, hands folded on her lap. A faint smile curved her lips, as if she was contemplating food. He hoped she was thinking about tasting him, too.

"About this upcoming hour. I can concentrate for an hour on my job," Jake said, checked the empty road behind him and pulled away from the curb.

"Or guacamole and chips this afternoon," Shauna said with a laugh in her voice.

So he was obvious. If it got her in his house, in his bed, he didn't care.

"Vanilla ice cream and hot fudge," Shauna murmured.

"What?" Jake said.

"I like vanilla ice cream and hot fudge. For dessert," Shauna said. "After the pizza. An all-American meal." She licked her lips. "Hot fudge. Yum."

Yeah, right, Jake thought as he drove into the circular entry-way of the Cherry Hill address and parked. Like he was going to be able to meditate after that comment.

The owner of the large, old estate, Mrs. Freuhauff, was dressed in something gauzy and probably expensive. When introduced, she raised little painted-on eyebrows and showed even, white dentures in a smile. Her eyes were every bit as sharp as Shauna's. Canny old lady. Canny young one, too, he thought as he saw Shauna putting new business cards discreetly on a patio table beside the path that led to the garden.

They wended their way down the crushed red sandstone path until they reached a section of the estate that boasted towering trees.

"Jeez," Jake said. "These must be the oldest trees in Denver." They arched overhead like a natural chapel. About twenty padded chairs were set in the deep shade. It was almost cold, the space obviously rarely getting direct sun. In the distance a large fountain tumbled water, the sound adding to the ambience.

Shauna stopped suddenly and Jake ran into her. He reached out to steady her and felt a fine tremor go through her body. "What is it?"

She slid her hand down to twine her fingers in his. "A dream. I dreamt earlier this week I was in a place—almost like this—but more, better," she gasped.

Jake didn't know how it worked, but visuals flashed from her to him, and his own back. He tried to grasp them as they flitted. "No. It was an office. A shabby—" Their memories clashed in every way—an office/grove; a gray man/angel; ominous doors/windows of opportunity. Except they'd both seen the golden aspen leaf.

He felt dizzy. "I'll go save us some seats." He dropped her hand. He wanted a minute to compose himself. Too bad he had to sit instead of run.

Shauna looked up at him with eyes holding recollections of otherworldly experiences. "Sure, find seats for us, please. I want to talk to the facilitator a minute."

Facilitator. It echoed in his mind like an inward curse word.

The garden filled and Jake observed those who entered. Mostly women, some tweedy-looking men, and even a regular guy or two. They nodded at him like they accepted him right off. Odd, but nice.

People settled. Shauna stepped in front of the group, hands together and fingers twisting. She cleared her throat. "I asked Jennifer if I could provide the meditation topic for this morning and she graciously agreed."

Shauna's cheeks pinkened. "I thought we should consider risk. I am not a risk-taker." Her lips trembled. "But this week I quit my florist job and started my own business as a landscape designer."

There was a patter of applause and approving smiles. A lady in the row ahead of Jake murmured, "It's about time."

Shauna ducked her head, then looked at those in front of her with steady eyes. She was adorable.

"It was a very big risk for me, something I thought I'd never find the courage to do. I like security."

Jake shifted in his seat as dream-images flickered through his brain. Review sheets, his bad, hers good.

She inhaled, held her breath, then released it. Several others around him did the same.

"I brought a guest, Jake Forbes, a detective in the Denver Police Force. Police officers have inherently risky lives. They essentially put their lives on the line for society every day," Shauna said.

Jake recalled the sound and punch of the bullet that had knocked him down and rolled his shoulders to release tension. He didn't think risk would be a good meditation topic. Who knew?

"So I thought we should all meditate on risk. The amount of risk we have in our lives and whether it is enough.

"My affirmation for the group is: 'I step out of my comfort zone and risk change so my life might be more fulfilling.'" She ducked her head again. "Thank you."

Then she walked with a steady step to take her place next to Jake. As she sat, he naturally reached for her hand.

The hour of thinking turned out to be too short. First he had to sort out the dream. His conclusion was that he'd screwed up before, and if he didn't shape up, he'd be going through one very bad door.

Then he thought of his promotion and his new woman partner, Maggie. He was determined to be straight with her at all times. His old manner toward all women had been one of superficial charm—that had worked on his ma best when she was clear of the drugs. But that was the old Jake. It was over.

Shauna shifted and her body brushed his. And she invaded his thoughts. He hoped she'd take a risk with him. He had a strong feeling in his gut that he'd be risking a lot with her. It wouldn't stop him.

In the supermarket Jake noticed the strange sound first. An odd whooshing intermixed with little cackles of glee. He let the heavy glass refrigerator door slam shut. He had a bad feeling about this. His life had been blessedly Boris-free since the evening before.

Sure enough, when he looked up, it was to see the ghost cat swooping down his aisle. Jake sighed.

Boris did a loop-de-loop, then whizzed past Jake like a rocket. The cat sure could move with those wings. Golden wings. Completely incongruous on a black-and-white cat.

"Got your wings, I see," Jake said.

" Yessssssss. I fulfilled my duty of ensuring you and Shauna met."

Jake grunted, eyed the wings closer as the cat hovered before him. "Gold, huh?"

"They wanted to give me white!" The cat wrinkled its nose.

"I thought all angel wings were white."

"Ordinary ones."

Well, that explained it.

The cat hunched a wing-curve forward so he could admire it. "I did not want white. Or black. Or gray. Or silver. Or—"

"I get it. Only gold."

"They will match My Crown," he said smugly. "I will be awesome."

"You'll be something."

"Open the seat of the basket so I can sit."

Rolling his eyes, Jake did so. Boris hovered, tottered, and landed in the seat with a lurch strong enough to rattle the beer bottles.

Boris turned his head and surveyed Jake's shopping with disgust. "There is only frozen pizza and imported beer here."

"I'm buying guacamole and chips, too." And ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream.

The cat sent him a sly look. "Shauna makes excellent guacamole. I, of course, do not eat plant mush, but I have heard other humans comment upon it."

Jake grunted again. "Maybe you can point out a good brand for me to buy, then."

Boris abandoned his seat to press his nose against the freezer door. Then his whole head went through the glass. It gave Jake the creeps. Probably unsanitary, too.

When Boris's voice came, it was oddly muffled. "Shauna likes this stuff."

Jake jerked open the door. "What?"

Boris extended a paw to tap a frozen crust.

"Quiche," Jake grumbled. "Should have known. This will never work out." Not that any affair lasted longer than a couple of months after the sex got average, and a guy shouldn't really expect more. Hadn't wanted more. Now he did, with Shauna.

He recalled the look in Shauna's eyes when she stared at him, wide and soft and interested. He got the fancy quiche and studied it. It had eggs, cheese, and bacon. How bad could it be? Looking at the instructions, he realized all he had to do was heat the oven and put it in, just like pizza, only a little longer. He tossed it in the basket.

"Careful," said Boris. "The crust can crumble and break."

"Huh." Jake guessed so. He took the quiche out of the cart, set it back on the shelf, and got a new one he placed carefully on the pizza.

Back on the seat, Boris scowled. "There is no cat food in the basket."

"And there isn't going to be, either," Jake said, tooling the cart to the deli. Probably better if he got some store-made guac instead of frozen.

Boris's yowl went straight through Jake's head. He winced.

"You haven't fed me at all. I am starving."

"You can't starve. You're dead."

A pitiful cat face lifted to Jake. He shrugged.

"I need food," whined Boris.

"They should have fed you in, uh, well, before."

"I did not need food there. I only need food here."

Jake wondered what had happened to his nice, steady, logical life. Nothing had been the same—since the bullet. He didn't want to take a leave of absence, not with the new job coming up.

"Okay, okay. I'll get cat food."

"Tuna fish would be all right. Fresh shrimp. Even sardines," Boris said.

"Sure they would. You get cat food, the store brand."

Jake glanced at the clock. The food was in his fridge, he'd changed the sheets, and dusted the top and around the TV and entertainment center. The rug had hardly any lint, so he didn't need to vacuum. Plenty of time to do a little home workout—no, cancel that, he might need all his energy later.

"I'm hungry and want food." Boris sat on the kitchen counter.

That looked unsanitary, too. Good thing he hardly ever used the counter. Jake considered Boris.

Boris smiled in a way Jake didn't like. The cat could screw up Jake's plans with Shauna. She could walk in, take one look at Boris, and shower him with all the affection Jake wanted.

Jake tapped a fork on a can of chicken and beef. Disgruntled, he opened it and spread it on a plate for Boris. The cat stuck his muzzle in the food and inhaled.

Jake waited. He wasn't sure what he expected, but shouldn't have been surprised when the food simply stayed on the plate. After a minute or two, Boris sat back on his haunches and grinned at Jake, then burped.

Waving the fork at the dish, Jake scowled. "The food is still there."

Boris lifted his nose. "I have absorbed its essence."

Jake wondered what sort of essence the bad parts of chicken and cow could give an angel cat. "It doesn't look any different."

"It's still good food. If you put it outside on your patio the feral cat who lives under the bushes near the Dumpster will eat it."

That didn't sound like a good idea to Jake, but it irked him to wash the food down the garbage disposal.

"The cat needs food," Boris pressed on. "Shauna feeds the feral cats in her neighborhood. That's how she got Me."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Jake muttered.

His doorbell rang and Jake's insides tightened. The stove buzzed that the quiche was done. He pushed aside the curtain of the sliding-glass door to the patio, opened the door, and stuck out the plate. "Beat it," he said to Boris.

"I will tell the cat he has good food, and that you might be an acceptable human friend. We will both watch you in the future."

"I don't care if I fail probation," Jake said. Not with Boris. The doors were another matter. How much would he have to change? He thought he was well on the way.

His doorbell rang again. "Get out of here."

Boris zoomed through the glass.

Jake felt awkward as he opened the door. Usually he just had guys over, or women who'd spend the night and leave before dawn. "Hey," he said to Shauna.

"Hi." She smiled and nothing else mattered except she was here.

Shauna walked into Jake's home. Her eyes went to the only bit of greenery.

"That's my plant," Jake said unnecessarily. It was the only thing in the living room besides two leather recliners, a coffee table, a lamp, and a huge entertainment center.

"I can see that." Shauna walked around the rubber plant.

Jake was sure it looked okay. Its stalks were straight and strong, the leaves large and glossy.

"You take good care of this plant."

Simple pride flooded him. She made him feel good.

"You know, Jake, this plant has some bark, making it almost a tree." She slanted him a look. "I bet I could hug it."

"Aw, jeez," he said.

"You're cute. And you take care of your plant very well." She beamed, crossed to him, and stroked his cheek. "Does it have a name?"

"Of course not!" He was offended. He marched into the kitchen and got out the guacamole and chips, thought a little and dumped the chips into a big bowl and put the supermarket container and the bowl on a tray he'd gotten when he'd bought some Christmas cookies last year.

It looked fine to him.

After consuming the guacamole, they went into the kitchen and ate quiche and talked and laughed. It amazed Jake how good a time he had, especially when he tried to explain the rules of football to Shauna. She followed his gestures and explanations with a twinkle in her eye that told him she was humoring him. But he figured it was his turn, after spending an hour with the Friends of the Forest.

He lost track of time and it took the click of his recording equipment as it came on to alert him that it was game time.

They hadn't reached dessert and he grinned. Half-time, if he was unlucky, but he didn't think he would be.

Shauna eyed the far recliner, but he had other ideas.

"Com'ere," he said, and brought her down on his lap. He liked the weight of her, a lot. He even liked the idea of watching the game with her. He'd give her a little time to get used to him, settle in, and then…

The first quarter elapsed with undistinguished playing. Shauna couldn't get excited about the game. But getting excited about Jake was another matter. As each minute went by, the atmosphere in the room thickened. She was aware of Jake as she'd never been aware of anyone else. The air around her body seemed to crackle and she thought she could feel every inch of her skin, and wondered where he'd touch her first.

Chapter Five

Shauna sat sideways across his legs, her own dropping over the arm of the lounger. Jake turned her toward him, widening her legs so the most needy part of her pressed against the hard length of him. Shauna bit her lip to keep a moan of delight from escaping. At the point of contact she could feel the throbbing beat of both their hearts. Her hands curled over his shoulders to anchor her—to keep her upright, though winding anticipation sizzled through her blood.

She met his eyes and fell into the deep blue. Connected. Though they hadn't physically joined yet, she knew they were connected. By the past. By dreams. By hopes for the future.

Jake wasn't watching the game, he was watching her. His face was tight, his eyes dilated; he radiated intensity.

He slipped his hands under her bottom and lifted. She rose obediently. Locking his gaze with hers, he stripped her shorts and panties off. She adjusted her position so she knelt with her thighs on either side of his hips.

Vaguely Shauna could hear the wild cheers of the crowd on TV, the excitement in the announcers' voices. Jake unzipped his jeans and it was louder than anything in the room, even her panting breath, even the blood roaring in her ears.

He reached to the side table, a rip and a crackle, as he protected them. Then his hands curved around her waist, lowered her slowly down on him.

She gasped at the sensation of his hard erection penetrating her, slowly, totally. So good. Her eyes closed and her head fell back. Inch by inch he sheathed himself in her until the most important thing in her life was feeling him inside her, completing her. She didn't know how long she could bear the delicious passion rising in her without moving, without screaming her desire.

Shauna opened her eyelids and was caught again by his gaze. Blue eyes, boy-next-door features, blond hair. The leather recliner was one that could be bought in any outlet store. His condo walls were white, the room barely furnished, sports noise from the TV. Everything ordinary.

Jake was inside her. Pulsing. Watching her with shadowed blue eyes.

It was the most extraordinary event of her life.

He moved his hands under her loose T-shirt, unsnapped the front of her bra, and cupped her breasts. Instinctively she arched and he went deeper. A strangled whimper of pleasure escaped her.

He filled her, caressing her inside. She rocked and neared the ultimate edge of passion.

"Don't," he said, and his jaw clenched. His nostrils flared and he inhaled. "Don't move. Let's just sit here. Enjoy ourselves. I want this to last."

His hands were on her breasts; her thighs and bottom rested on denim. His sex was inside her and nothing was casual. His forefingers and thumbs held the nubs of her nipples, pulled gently, exquisitely, sending a spear of passion clear through her.

"Don't move," he whispered.

She knew he was tempting her, goading her, pushing her limits to see how long she could just sit there with him inside her and not go mad with wild passion. She'd burn up from spontaneous combustion soon.

He tugged at her nipples. "Kiss me."

She leaned into him and slid along him and her inner muscles squeezed him and she thought she'd expire from the pure rapture of it. Somehow her lips found his and opened.

He plunged his tongue into her mouth.

Too much.

She clamped her thighs against him, rose until his arousal slid nearly out of her, pressed against the sensitive nerves of her entrance, then impaled herself on him with a cry of delight.

Up and down she pumped. He kept to her rhythm, his eyes going dark and glazed.

Faster.

Harder.

Now!

Shauna flung back her head and screamed her release.

Jake clamped his hands around her waist, raised her, lowered her, rocked his hips, and twisted.

She came again with a keening sob.

He pulled her bottom tight against himself, rotated, thrust upward until she thought she'd splinter from the pleasure of him, and pulsed into her.

Shauna fell against him, smelled the scent of man beneath his shirt, gloried at the pounding of his heart under her ear. Before she was ready to move, he lifted her from him, set her on the recliner.

"Jake?"

He stripped off her shirt, then shucked his own clothes. Never looking away from her, he picked up the remote, punched a button, and the TV died. He threw the remote on the chair and swung her up into his arms. His eyes blazed blue.

"Too restrictive, the chair," he growled.

"You—you didn't want to move. Wanted—"

"—it to last." He shut his eyes and she could swear he shuddered. When he opened his eyes his gaze was fiery with masculine need, male possession. "Slow first. Wild now. In bed."

She couldn't manage a reply.

He looked at her sprawled on his bed, ready for loving again. The dappled light accented different portions of her body—the top and nipple of one breast, one rounded thigh. He sensed her unease. He couldn't do anything but stare. Jake was accustomed to picking up hard-bodied lovers from a gym, or the tennis courts along the park. This woman, with all her lush curves, made him feel more of a man than any one of the muscle-toned ladies he'd had in bed.

She looked so… soft. Soft round breasts that fit in his hands, a slightly curved belly that had molded around his cock when they'd petted in the recliner. She was the epitome of woman for him.

"I'm not buff," she whispered. "I'll be doing hard physical labor soon and will tone up. But now…"

He couldn't get a coherent word out of his mouth. A growl emerged. He'd go mad if he couldn't feel her under him, all that comforting roundness telling him intimately, body to body, that she was woman and his. He swallowed, tried again. "Mine." And he pounced.

She felt better than he'd expected, better than he ever dreamed a woman could, soft and luscious, letting him sink into her.

He grasped her wrists in one of his hands and lifted her arms above her head so he could see how her breasts plumped. Tipped with tight rose nipples, her breasts were the most beautiful he'd seen in a long, long time.

Arching against him, her soft belly caressed him, and he lost all reason, consumed by hard, demanding desire. He slid into her and inside she was as lush and as welcoming as out. He flung his head back as a moan tore from his throat. He couldn't get enough of the sensation of sheathing and withdrawing; the warm, wet friction made him wild. He plunged and twisted and emptied himself in her, hearing her cry of release matching the ragged rasp of his breathing.

And was grateful for that female sound of pleasure. It told him that while he'd completely lost control of himself, he had still brought her pleasure. He rolled to his back and took her with him.

Her limp body atop his felt incredible, womanly, right. Even the thought that sex had never been so unbelievably great before didn't bring a hint of wariness into his mind. Her charms were bountiful and he planned on sating himself with them—no matter how long it took.

The next two weeks were the busiest and the best of Shauna's life.

With her starting a new business and Jake beginning a new job, they spent more hours at work than together, and consequently she thought their affair was so much more intense.

They managed to spend some time out of bed, too. She took him to a play and went to a football game. Jake even attended two meditation sessions. They talked and laughed and ate and found they both had a passion for trying new restaurants.

Since his condo was close to her first job, they spent most of their time there and always made love there.

Jake dominated her thoughts and made her more physically aware of her body than she'd ever been—in a good way. As for her, she couldn't keep her hands off him, was total in her exploration of him.

She'd remembered the entire scene in the Atrium and had written it down. Jake was for her. But he had to decide and accept that, too. So right now she was enjoying the moment—a lesson that the angel hadn't told her she needed to learn, but a benefit nonetheless.

Finally it was time for the next step—time for her to invite him for dinner and overnight loving. When she'd confessed that she had two cats, Jake's face went odd and he said he fed two.

Shauna decided to keep the meal simple with salad, pot roast, and brownies for dessert.

She wondered what he'd think of her home.

Jake drove up to her house and sat outside a moment. The more he looked at the place, the more it looked just like it must belong to Shauna. From the landscaping she was putting in near Skyline Park and the plans he'd glimpsed on her laptop, she had a unique style that he'd always recognize.

Her own short front yard was a riot of late-blooming flowers. The casual-looking plantings were very deliberate—and they worked. Just looking at the flowers, he felt better. They reminded him that beauty lived in the world and could be seen in just one wild rose. He grimaced. Definitely hanging out with Shauna too much to be thinking that way, but he didn't have to tell anyone he had such thoughts. Jake stared at the flowers a moment longer and let the sight lift his spirits and bring him a measure of calm. Then he opened the door of his SUV and got out.

When he reached the steps, the scents of the flowers and plants came on a slight breeze that brought a hint of fall's chill and the contrast stopped him. In a couple of months the pretty blooms would be dead, the plants leafless and brown. The change of seasons was upon them, and it seemed as if his life was changing, too—but becoming more fulfilling rather than dying.

He snorted. The last thing he wanted to think about was dying. Been there, done that, returned—just as Shauna had. He'd acknowledged the event, analyzed it a bit, but figured he was on his way to putting those checkmarks in the boxes. He'd changed and was up-front with everyone, now. But didn't want to talk about the experience.

Jake reached the front porch and rang the bell. No Boris "greeted" him this time. Jake grinned; the cat was an angel now and probably zooming around with those wings of his.

Shauna came to the door, and the sight of her took his breath away. She wore a loose-fitting dress of some filmy material and was barefoot. Definitely more summer than autumn. It suited her and started him thinking again about what her bed was like. And where it was. He hoped to find out soon.

She crossed to the front porch door and opened it to him. "Hi, Jake."

He smiled slowly, enjoying looking at her. She flushed a little, and stepped back. He joined her and stared down. Here were more scents—flowers again, and woman. He liked woman better.

Her dress dipped into a V and he saw the upper curve of her breasts. Heated desire rose as he recalled how her breasts felt in his hands, the ripest and tastiest of fruits.

Since he felt like jumping her, he looked around the neighborhood again. "The last time I was here was after the plane crash."

Shauna paled. "The plane crash. I was on the street at the time."

"What!" His heart lurched. That was too damn close.

"I got off the bus early and bought some cat food at the store and was walking home. If I'd gone up a block to walk…"

"Jeez." He glanced in the direction where one of the planes crashed, cleared his throat. "It took out three houses."

Her smile was tipped. "There's no security even in your own home. I haven't spoken about it much, but I heard the crash. I didn't know what it was, just felt this powerful, irrational fear and I hurried home. By the time I reached the back gate, there was this awful smell."

"I knocked on your door. Boris was guarding your place."

"I was next door. Chuck and Pete were solid as rocks. I'm so grateful. When I realized a lot of my friends would be calling, I went back home. Boris was on the front step."

"If Boris had yowled…" Jake said, getting mad at the angel cat.

Shauna nodded. "Yes, I'd have come running. It was a bad time. A bad time in the neighborhood for a couple of months." She looked across the street in the direction of the crash, then down at her flower beds.

"Come in, Jake," she said.

He had to kiss her.

Before she could move away, he placed his hand under her chin and tilted her face up to his. Keeping his gaze locked on hers, he brushed her soft mouth with his and welcomed the flash of arousal.

"Lovely Shauna," he breathed, and pulled her into his arms, glorying in the softness of her against him. Just holding her was a delight—and an exercise in control. But he wanted to savor the anticipation. He didn't want to rush this time with Shauna. His tongue swept along her lips, asking for entrance; she opened her mouth on a sigh, then her tongue dueled with his and blood fled from his head straight to his groin. Maybe he was going to have more problems lasting through dinner than he'd thought. He broke the kiss and liked it when her hands clamped around his arms to steady herself. Her eyes were wide and dreamy, her lips ruddy from his kiss. He liked that she showed her reaction to him. She wasn't a lady to be casual about sex or light about emotions that tangled with passion. He hadn't experienced such emotions much with any woman before Shauna, but found his feelings growing. Sometimes it made him wary, but mostly he enjoyed how he felt when he thought about Shauna, or was with her, and most of all when he was with her in bed. In her.

"Jake, you are the best kisser," she said.

And the warmth that was different than passion, more than affection, suffused him, gathered around his heart. Yeah, he really liked being with Shauna.

She sniffed and her eyes cleared. "The brownies!" She pulled away from him and rushed back into the house.

Homemade brownies. Jeez, could a woman be so perfect?

The threshold to the house was dim and the entryway lit only indirectly from the porch. He stepped in and knew he was in trouble.

It was too perfect. Too comfortable. Too everything he'd always dreamed of as a child and his ma and dad never provided.

It was a home.

After the greatest sex of his life, Shauna drifted asleep beside him in the gentle rocking of the waterbed. The glow from the nightlight in the bathroom down the hall was faint, but comforting. Everything in the house was comforting, a home, just like he'd desperately wanted when he was a child. That concerned him. Her home attracted him just as much as her heart—welcoming strays open-handedly, her spirit—optimistic and completely honest and natural, not to mention her body. He curved his hand around her sweet ass. She twisted so sensually, shattering his control faster than he believed possible. He'd slaked a need he'd never known.

Yeah, he liked her body a lot. Liked that she was so unself-conscious in the act of love, so willing to do whatever pleased them both.

Nothing about this house was uncomfortable. He stilled. It wasn't just a home to him. It was a trap for Shauna.

It was too comfortable. She could withdraw from everything that was messy and uncomfortable in life here. Everything that didn't suit her. All the wild emotions that might make her live deeply. He could see her as the stereotypical old maid fifty years from now.

A whuffle and thump came from under the headboard, where her cat Jimbo slept. Jeez, Shauna already had a good start on the cat part of the old-maid scenario. She was twenty-eight and had two—three, counting Boris. By sixty she'd have six, and by ninety… Jake shuddered. It didn't bear thinking about.

He'd save her from that fate. Make sure she didn't fade into this house and never come out, and only cared about by cats.

He frowned. Maybe he was wrong about the number of cats. How long did cats live, anyway? Boris sure hadn't looked too old. Beaten up and tough, but not old. How old was old for a cat? Surely one or two would kick the bucket along the way.

But she'd get more. She wouldn't be able to turn them away. Jake settled. He could rescue her. Make sure she lived life to the fullest. That was a quality most cops had. They didn't take life for granted, and they really lived. She would give him comfort and he'd give her excitement and they'd give each other great sex. That's how this relationship would work. Sounded good to him.

A faint whish of sound and his head rocked up and down on the bed from the addition of a new body. He stared up into the unblinking, gleaming eyes of Prima Donna, the little delicate Siamese. The snotty one. Boris had his faults, and they irritated the hell out of Jake, but Boris hadn't stared at him with the complete and utter disregard of the Queen of the Universe for a peasant too low to touch her dainty paws.

The cat walked over him with the deliberate prick of her claws, stopped near Shauna's head by his shoulder, then the thing scratched at the bedspread. Shauna mumbled and lifted the covers. Jake stared, appalled. The cat slept with Shauna? Under the covers? This was going too far.

He was under there, too, and he was naked. And he sure as hell didn't trust that cat and her beady eyes.

He picked her up. Her yowl woke Shauna. Prima twisted with a flexibility that amazed him. He dropped her fast over the side of the bed.

Shauna pushed hair out of her eyes. "Jake?"

"No cats in the bed under the covers," he said. "Especially when I'm naked."

She looked at him with sleepy eyes. "Oh. All right. We'll get used to it. I'll think of something Prima will like better."

Not possible. He watched warily as Prima Donna stalked away, tail high.

"No cats under the covers, eh?" Shauna purred. Her hand slid down his chest, over his thighs, between them. She found him and stroked, long and delicately.

He swallowed. "I could make an exception. One exception."

"And you're naked?" Her eyes were wide now, teasing. The tip of her tongue darted out to touch her lips, and she smiled. Once he would have said a catlike smile, but this was all woman.

"I think I'd better verify that you're naked," she purred. She ducked under the sheets. The purring stopped when her tongue took the place of her fingers, caressing the length of him exquisitely. She used her teeth, too, with just enough pressure and skill to shatter him.

Chapter Six

Shauna gripped the phone tightly. The mechanic continued to squawk in her ear, but she didn't hear him. Her car was dead. He paused and she said, "Thanks, don't work on it yet. I'll get back to you tomorrow morning."

Blindly she hung up the phone. Wrapping her arms around herself, she slid down the wall of the kitchen, waves of nausea washing through her. What was she going to do?

For a while she just sat there, sick, until Prima and Jimbo circled her, mewing in worry. Then she pushed to her feet and tottered out to the dining room and the business ledger. She didn't need to open the pages. If she poured money into her car, she couldn't make her first payment on her business loan—surely a big, red flag to the bankers who watched. If she didn't fix her car, she wouldn't have a business.

She propped her elbows on the table and put her face in her hands. Was life going to be like this every month? Full of worry as to whether she'd be able to make her business go, pay the loan? Full of moments of pure stomach-rolling nausea as she faced the future? She was doing what she always dreamed of, and this was the dark, nightmare side. She'd mortgaged her house and used all her savings for the start-up. Winter was near, along with an inevitable slowdown in projects. Money was coming in, just not soon enough to pay the loan. She should be all right through the winter unless there was a major disaster…

After a few deep breaths, options marched through her head. She could set up payments with the mechanic; she'd been a good customer. She could rent out the spare bedroom and take on a roommate. She could find a part-time or a full-time job.

Or she could quit. Right now. Bury her dream. A last clenching of her stomach reminded her of the benefits of that. Less worries.

How much did she want this dream? Enough to pay the cost of moments of sick terror like this?

Another minute of deep breaths and visualizations—how she'd loved the designing and, most of all, the planting. How she'd anticipated going by her projects next spring and summer and seeing the fruition of her work. She set her shoulders and opened the ledger.

Jake banged the door as he came in. "I've got Chinese," he said. His footsteps stopped in the living room as he saw her. "What is it?"

She didn't want to look at him and let him see her failure or the tears in her eyes. Was torn for an instant as to whether she could share this with him. "Car is dead."

"Oh." He passed her on the way to the kitchen, and the smell of the Chinese food sent another rush of nausea through her. There was the crackle of bags as he set the food on the counter.

The next thing she knew, he was stroking her head. "Don't worry, Shauna."

She braced her shoulders so they wouldn't tremble. "I'll think of something. I'm not going to quit."

"Of course you won't," he said, but his soothing hand left her and she felt bereft.

Then he flipped open his cell phone and punched in a number. "Roy?" Jake said. "You still have that used truck that looks like hell but runs good in the back of your place? Can I borrow it for a friend?"

Jake looked at Shauna. She stared up at him, heart thumping hard. "How long?" he asked her.

Her brain scrambled, but she knew her finances and when more money was coming in. "Two weeks?"

"A coupla weeks," Jake said into the phone. He smiled at her. "Yeah, yeah, we'll get an oil change and a lube job. Promise." He glanced at his watch. "How about we pick it up at seven-thirty? Fine, see you then."

Shauna stared at him. Just like that. Jake, the man of action, had just given her two weeks of breathing room. With that she could look around for a truck of her own. She jumped up and her chair fell to the floor, and flinging her arms around his neck, she kissed him hard. "My hero."

"Oh, yeah!" He pulled her hard against him.

With the relief rolling through her body, she felt a little lightheaded, but she knew what she wanted. "I feel like wild sex."

"Oh, yeah."

Later that night Jake still felt like a hero. He'd had no doubt that Shauna could have fixed her problem on her own, but it was great to be able to help her. It was great to know that Roy trusted him—and Shauna—with his truck, too.

The world was fine, or would be after another bout of sex.

He pulled Shauna close, fitting her against him. Her smooth skin and soft body moved all along his own and he hardened, fast. But he fit his mouth on hers, slowly teasing her lips apart, probing with his tongue, and she gave the little moans that told him he was arousing her. He'd make her moan, then writhe, and then surrender.

He kept his thrusts slow and steady, bringing them both to the brink, then retreating, letting them calm a little before he began again. Her eyes glazed and her breaths became one long crescendo of whimpers for fulfillment. A fine sweat shone on her skin, accenting her breasts, dampening the hair along her brow—and lower. She was lost in the spell he wove for them, not thinking at all, only feeling what he was doing to her, and he was supremely pleased.

Finally the demands of his own body and the pressure building in it snapped his control. He plunged and groaned and thrust until she shuddered and clamped around him and his mind exploded.

"I love you!" Shauna cried.

He froze, then realized she didn't really mean it. He could breathe again, though his heart hurt. A woman like Shauna would rationalize great sex with love. Her words had to be just bedroom words, like sex words. He'd heard them before without any meaning, and said them himself. But he wouldn't with Shauna.

All right, maybe they meant more than that to Shauna. She'd said the words because she'd been sleeping with him for more than a month now. She was a spiritual person and would need to justify the passion and hot sex and spending time with him as something more than… dating, a hot affair.

He shut his eyes and his mind and his heart and slipped into sleep.

Shauna bit her lip. Jake hadn't wanted to hear she loved him. Tough. She'd needed to say it. Difficult to believe she loved Jake so quickly, but they… connected. She admired him and his work.

She smiled in the darkness at his snoring. Jake was real and she'd needed a man in her life for a long time. He might not be a "good" man—she still knew he was dangerous to her heart if she got attached and they broke up—but he'd be worth the effort to forge the relationship between them. She didn't mind doing 75 percent—for a while. But only for a while.

She'd been set up by fate, and by the iridescent Angel. She turned and rubbed her nose against Jake's shoulder, inhaling his scent and the fragrance of them together. Not to mention the sex was incredible…

Her saying she loved him changed their relationship. They still dated, still spent a lot of time in bed and out of it, but Jake looked at her as if always measuring her words. She was sorry the phrase had slipped out, but she'd been biting her tongue for days and wasn't ashamed of her feelings—her love.

He just wasn't ready to hear it, though he hadn't said anything about her declaration. And he hadn't made one of his own, and for that lack her heart ached. She knew more of his background now; they talked in bed. Shauna learned that he would open up to her in the dark, whether or not they made love.

Another week passed and Indian summer slowly died. A couple of gray days brought rain and a spitting of snow, and when they were gone the days were noticeably cooler. Shauna worked from sunrise to sunset landscaping clients' yards and a couple more hours at her desk drawing plans. She'd been very lucky and was sure the business would survive the winter, though she might need a part-time job to keep her and the cats—and Jake—in food.

One late afternoon, as Jake and his partner Maggie were on their way back to the station, a report of shots fired and units responding came over the radio.

Jake was driving. "Sweet Motel, South Sheridan. We're closest." He glanced at Maggie from the corner of his eyes.

"Not our job," she said.

The dispatcher's tone rose slightly as she added that a child was involved. Maggie looked at Jake. "Let's do it."

"Right." He hit the radio and called it in. An image of the place formed in his mind's eye, and his gut tightened. It had a door—several doors that reminded him of doors he had not wanted to go through. "Put your vest on, Maggie."

"Huh?"

"Do it!" he said.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm senior here." She twisted and got it from the back. Slipped it over her head, and he felt her stare. "I've got to be sure of you, Forbes."

"I won't clutch 'cause I was shot earlier."

"Wasn't thinking of that." She cleared her throat and leaned into a turn Jake took fast. "You don't have a great rep for working with women. You've been fine with me, but I have to know you'll follow me into that motel room. I always go through the door high; you go in low so we'll cover the room."

"Yeah, well, I go in high, too, but for you, I'll go in low." He grinned, adrenaline rushing through him. "And I'll be right on that hard ass of yours." She was a good partner and a good woman. He reached out and yanked one of her vest tabs tighter.

She sucked in a breath. "Shit, Forbes, take it easy."

"Nope. That was the old me, pretending. I've got a bad feeling about this, about you." The car laid rubber as he stopped. Jake flung open his door, slid out, grabbed his vest and yanked it on, and pulled his gun.

Maggie kept up with his run to the front of the seedy motel. "Fasten your vest better!" she gestured with her free hand.

"Not my time to die," Jake said, thinking of Boris.

Maggie froze a second, hopped to keep up. "What, those trees you visit every Sunday told you so?"

He should have known that would get out. It couldn't bother him now. Wouldn't bother him, ever. What his buds thought of it didn't matter. "Yeah, they whisper to me. I'll know my time." He knew that with complete certainty.

People huddled in front of the motel on the cracked asphalt of the parking lot, fear mixed with fascination on their faces. Some looked at a broken second-floor window that had screams coming from it, some watched Jake and Maggie.

"Got news for you, Jake. There ain't no trees here," Maggie said. "What's going on?" she demanded of a potbellied guy who stepped forward.

He looked at Jake, but answered Maggie. "I'm the manager. I dunno. Guy just started shooting up the place."

"Is there a child in there?" asked Jake. "Who else is in there with him? What do you know about him?"

"A little girl may be in there. His wife, maybe. His name is Jones and he's paid through the end of the month."

Maggie jerked her head and they took off up the outside concrete stairs. "Police!" she yelled. "Put down your weapon and come out with your hands up!"

Shots peppered the window.

"Police!" Jake shouted, flicking off the safety of his gun.

They stopped short of the door. "Mr. Jones, this is the police. Put your gun down and come out with your hands raised."

"Davis—" A woman's cry cut short on a slap. Another shot zinged through the window.

"On three," Maggie said. "One. Two. Three."

They went in. A shot took Maggie high in the shoulder and she went down. Jake fired and killed a skinny man with wild red hair. A woman screamed and waved a knife she clutched. She stared at Jake, looked down at Maggie. Blood trickled from scratches on the woman's face next to her eye, her mouth. She gaped and Jake noted missing teeth.

"You killed my man. My Davis." She staggered toward Jake.

Taking a long stride, he twisted the knife from her hand, pushed her into a chair. "Sit. Stay." The situation reminded him of his childhood. Only worse. At least he'd been spared this ending. "You have a daughter?"

The woman burst into wild wailing. Keeping an eye on her, Jake went over and helped Maggie sit up. She rubbed her shoulder. "Shit." She struggled to stand. Jake set a hand under her elbow and boosted. Maggie nodded thanks and went over to the woman. "Ma'am, is your daughter here?"

No young girl peeked out at them from anywhere.

"His. The brat is his." The woman wiped her nose with her hand, then on the faded dress she wore. "She's in school." She stared at Davis's body with glazed eyes, lifted her head to glare at Jake. "We were just having a little argument." She said it as if their arguments generally included guns and knives. Just another loving relationship.

Jake remembered his own parents' "discussions." He'd hated the shouting voices, slamming doors, sizzling rage. But they'd never been as bad as this.

Maggie sighed, met Jake's eyes. "Thanks, partner." She cleared her throat. "Excellent job." She looked around and shook her head. "Let's clean this up."

Shauna was waiting for him when he left the station. He spotted her leaning against the blue second-hand truck parked across the street. He hadn't taken her to the station, introduced her to his friends, hadn't been ready. Still wasn't.

He slipped his keys into his pocket, walked to her and straight into her arms. She felt so good. He closed his eyes and just savored the softness of her body pressing into him. The warmth of her, like the last warmth of Indian summer, steadied him, comforted him.

"I heard on the radio," she said.

"I'm glad you're here. I killed a man and I'm suspended while they investigate." He didn't open his eyes, just let her stroke his head and his back.

"I'm sorry."

"I am, too. It happened so fast. Maggie was down. I shot. He's dead."

"Is Maggie all right?" Shauna asked.

"Yeah. fine. But the guy's dead."

"Shhhhh." When was the last time someone held and comforted him? He hadn't ever wanted it, as an adult. But he needed her arms around him, her gentle touch. Too much had brought back his childhood today, and maybe it was the ghost of the old child that wanted her so. He breathed in her scent and the residual adrenaline transformed his need for comfort into something more basic. No, it was the man who wanted her. Now.

She shifted against him, hesitated, kissed the side of his jaw. "My place is closer."

"Yeah."

"Let's do it."

He seemed to have echoes in his head. Reluctantly he separated from her, glanced at his SUV in the station lot, and shrugged. He went to the passenger side of the truck, got in, and buckled up, then let his head fall back. He wanted Shauna's hand on his thigh, between them, but she was driving.

She gunned the motor and stamped on the gas, taking off faster and less cautiously than ever before. Jake smiled. She'd drive fast, but safe, and soon they'd be in her bed and it would be quick and hard and wild.

He reached out and put his hand above her knee. Her breath caught, but she didn't speed up. His smile widened. He hadn't fumbled, known exactly where her leg was, would always know.

They didn't make it to her waterbed. They didn't even make it to the living room couch. He took her on the floor with no finesse but all the need in the world.

The next morning Jake woke near dawn and stared at the pale green ceiling of Shauna's bedroom. "I've been suspended." It was standard after a killing, but nasty fear that he wasn't good enough nibbled at him.

She moved closer, pillowing her head on his shoulder, stroking his chest. The tightness around his heart eased.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know how much your vocation means to you."

Vocation. Yeah. Trust Shauna to use the right word. Not a job. Not work. Not a career, though it was that, too. But most of all it was a vocation.

Of course she spoke of her own work as a "calling," or even worse, her "bliss." No one would ever say police work was "bliss," but he could agree that it was a calling, a vocation.

"So." Shauna ran her thumb along the side of his jaw, and he looked at her—pleasantly mussed from their loving, lips slightly puffy from his wild kisses. He rolled onto his side and caressed her smooth skin from her waist to the curve of her hip.

"So, what?"

"So, how would you like to help me plant four apple trees today and about three hundred bulbs the rest of this week?"

He thought of digging, of young trees that he could circle with his hand, of bulbs that would sit in his palm and, with their very being, show him promise of new life. "Yeah."

She sighed and snuggled closer. "It will be good for you to think of planting and growing and flowers in the spring."

Inside himself wonder bloomed. He was unable to express it, couldn't tell her how incredible he found her. So he slipped again into her body and showed her.

Jake weathered the hurt of suspension very well, with the support of Shauna, Maggie, his buddies in the force, Boris, and the Friends of the Forest at Sunday meditation. Even the feral cat crept nearer to take the food he offered every night.

The shooting was investigated and he was exonerated in record time. After the meeting, he was informed he was expected to be back at his desk the next day. On a bubble of happiness, Jake leaned against his SUV, pulled out his cell, and made enough indecent suggestions to have Shauna breathing heavily in his ear. She promised to meet him at her home.

This time they made it into her bed and bounced around it in cheerful passion.

After her pulse slowed and her breathing steadied, Shauna stroked his chest and looked into his fabulous blue eyes and said, "I love you."

"You don't mean it."

Shauna's temper broke. She jumped out of bed and stalked around the room. "At least you finally said it out loud. Every time I've said I loved you, you always changed the subject or started making love to me, or did anything except believe me."

Jake stared at her.

"What, you didn't think I had a temper? That I was too Goody Two-shoes and too Ms. New Age to think I couldn't get angry? Or is it that you think I'm just too much of a wimp?"

"No, I—"

"Too much of a wimp to get angry, then it would follow that I'm too mushy or whatever you'd call it in your macho-speak, to be in love with you. I'm just acting girly or have blinders on or think that since the sex is so incredible it has to mean I love you. Is that what you're telling yourself about me and my declarations of love?"

"Yes. No! Jeez." Jake rubbed his face.

She looked at him, lip curled. "You have a low opinion of me. Because I tend to think the best of people, because I try to be kind, because I experiment with different kinds of spirituality, you think I'm nuts, or stupid, or naive. That I don't know my mind." She thumped a fist on her heart. "I love you. I'm a mature woman. I've had other lovers, other men friends. I know what I've felt in other relationships, and I know what I feel now. I know how I love my friends and even my blessed cats! But you don't think I know my mind about you."

Now she stamped back close enough to drill a hole in his chest with her forefinger. "Just because you're too much of a coward to open your eyes and see I love you, to listen when I tell you, doesn't mean that it isn't true."

Jake shot out of bed and dressed. "I'm not the one in this relationship who's the coward. You made this house a home so comforting that you'd never have to leave it, risk yourself."

"Maybe I did, once, but not since I died and came back. Not since we died and came back. I put this house on the line, mortgaged it to the hilt to found my new business—if that isn't risky, I don't know what is."

He could only shake his head. "You're making a go of the business; not a chance it will fail."

She was torn between pride and despair.

"You keep ignoring that we both died and came back for a second chance. It's a simple fact that you should deal with since you're a police officer."

"I haven't ignored it. I just don't want to talk about it. You think that just because some guy in a gray suit in a shabby office said we belonged together, that we do. That love is everything."

She straightened her back. "First of all, it was an angel in a magical grove. As for love being everything—yes, I do believe that. And I don't think that belief is anything anyone can call 'New Age.' It's been around for centuries."

"It's bullshit."

"Is it? Is that why we're arguing? If it were bullshit, if you didn't want to believe that I love you and I know the meaning of love, why are you so angry?"

"I don't want you falling for me. Getting expectations of being soulmates or something like the guy said."

It was true she had all the expectations of him in the world, but she wasn't going to say so. But she also knew that if he believed in their relationship, he'd work hard at it and they'd have a partnership that was loving and long-term and special. He obviously wasn't ready to hear that, either.

So she said, "My heart, my expectations, and my beliefs are mine. I can accept my feelings and the consequences that come with them."

He shifted. "Relationship-speak."

"And only women talk about relationships? You've been good with me, and Maggie, but I got the idea that you didn't always think much of women."

"Jeez, don't turn this back on me. Women can do as much as a man. They just tend to have screwy beliefs."

"Some women tend to have screwy beliefs." Tears clogged her throat, and her lips were pinching together as she tried to control her voice. "Namely me. You think I tend to have screwy beliefs and one of those screwy beliefs is that I love you. Well, I think that you can't accept you're lovable. We've circled around to the start of this argument and nothing's been resolved. Resolve it, Jake."

He stood straight and still and looked angry and absolutely beautiful and stared at her for a full minute. She was sick with an apprehension of doom.

"I'll resolve it. I'm outta here." He turned, grabbed his overnight bag—he'd never left anything of his in her house, as if her home would contaminate it—and marched out.

Out of her life. She sank down onto the bed and put her face in her hands. She'd done what was right, though. She'd never been dishonest, had told him she loved him when she needed to. Just now she'd confronted him. She hadn't waited and hoped. She hadn't manipulated.

She'd lost. She hurt like she'd been broken in two, and all the glorious love and shining hope had trickled away like sand.

She sat there a long time, until Jimbo came and sat on her feet. Until Prima came and gave her cheek a lick, then whined for food.

When she rose, she moved like an old woman and envisioned a flashing image of herself alone forever in the house with cats. She straightened. She had her business. Keeping that going would work her hard and take her out of the house. She still had the same friends she'd had before Jake. With an awful feeling in her stomach that she would now always divide her life into "Before Jake" and "After Jake," she opened cans of food and dumped them on plates.

Jake worked out in the gym until exhaustion glazed his vision, then showered and went home to fall onto his bed in the twilight, one aching mass. The inner emptiness in his chest hurt the worst.

With a whoosh, Boris zoomed in, landing with a thump beside Jake. He didn't take the arm from his eyes. "Why are you here?" He heard Boris slurp. Probably licking his paw.

"It's dinnertime."

Jake grunted.

Boris started purring in his engine-like voice.

Lowering his arm, Jake looked at the cat. A golden outline surrounded him. One wing-tip was being studied in approval.

"If you are stupid enough to lose Shauna, then you need Me. I will stay with you and be your companion until you go back to Shauna."

"Doesn't Shauna need you, too?" Saying her name was hard.

"She hurts as much as you," Boris admitted.

Not possible.

"But she has the other cats. You only have Me. What's for dinner?"

Jake sat up. "You're going to hang around and nag me to go back to Shauna. I get it."

"You are not too stupid. I think you will see things the right way soon."

When Jake stood his thighs protested. But he rubbed a hand over his chest where it hurt more.

He dumped out food for Boris. After the cat was done sniffing it, Jake put the plate outside. He saw the brindled, scraggly cat huddling behind the thorns of the overgrown rosebush, watching the food with lambent eyes. Maybe—

"It will take a long time for him to trust you; maybe he never will. He is old for a feral cat. He is three."

Grief twisted in Jake and he shoved it aside. Stupid to grieve for a cat. For himself.

At work the next day Jake fiddled with his pen, until he realized that he was doing that bastard Gray's trick. Then Jake wondered how his score sheet looked now. How many little square boxes were checked. If suffering gave him brownie points, he should be damn near perfect. Yet he thought one big box might still be blank. The love and loving and lovableness thing.

He wondered about Shauna's. Were hers full now? Had he been good for her?

Boris glided through the window and lit on his desk, fluttering papers.

"Draft in here," said Maggie.

Boris grinned. "You were the best thing ever to happen to Shauna. She pines for you."

Jake ignored the cat, the twinge of hope that expanded his heart, picked up his notebook, and left to work a case.

Chapter Seven

All that week and through the weekend, when he wasn't distracting himself with long hours at his job, he thought of Shauna's words. Her simple, incomprehensible words, which had been impossible for him to answer: "I love you."

How could she? How could she know after so short a time? How could anyone know, ever? And how could she love him? He'd been better with her than with any woman—any person—in all of his life, but that didn't mean he didn't know his own enormous flaws.

He was a good cop. Once—before—he would have said he was a good enough man. But ever since he'd escaped death, he'd been reconsidering what he'd thought was a good man, and he hadn't measured up. He was working on it, sort of like one of Shauna's brand-new gardens: He thought he had good seeds in him, and some strong roots, but he still was far too barren. A long time would pass until he could show a good crop of anything except weeds.

Boris gave a long slurp and burp. The food in the can on the floor had lost a little color and odor, but the feral cat would gulp it down. Jake shoved the plate outside, closed the door, grabbed a beer, and stumped back to his recliner.

Boris trotted into the living room, rose vertically to the arm of the recliner without even flapping his wings, and burped again.

"It's Monday night. Time for football!" Boris purred, eyes gleaming. "Turn on the TV!"

"The Broncos aren't playing," Jake said, taking a swallow of cold beer that seemed flat. Everything seemed flat since he'd broken up with Shauna.

The cat snorted. "Doesn't matter, I loooove football."

Jake usually liked to watch all the games, too. He had a problem with the recliner, though, recalling how wonderful Shauna had looked, how fabulous she'd felt raising and lowering herself on him.

With a flick of the remote, Jake turned the game on. The teams were running onto the field. He looked at Boris, whose gaze was glued to the tube. "What happened to your crown and temple and Road of Great Adventure?"

Boris's back rippled with a cat shrug. "They wait."

Everything in Jake sharpened. "What do you mean, they wait? Did you earn them?"

Boris slid green cat eyes in Jake's direction. "Yesss."

"So why aren't you there!"

Turning his head, Boris leveled a gaze at Jake. "You need Me here."

"Not so much to make you stay with me when you could have what you really want."

"Verrrry good." Boris twitched his whiskers. "You are growing. You think of Me more than yourself."

Jake shifted in the recliner, shrugged. "Yeah, well, I know how much you loved the idea of your crown and temple and Road of Great Adventure."

With one of those uncannily wide grins, Boris said, "I grew, too, putting your needs before My own. Because I love you."

Beer spewed from Jake. He coughed. His eyes watered. "You—uh—love me?"

Boris wrinkled his nose at the pungent odor of beer coating Jake's shirt and droplets on the arm of the recliner. They both ignored cheers coming from the TV at a touchdown. Boris beamed, for the first time looking a little angelic. "Yesssss, I love you. You are a good man. You are worthy of love."

Jake's vision clouded. He couldn't explain the emotions flooding him. He barely understood them. He wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. "You—you—you love me?"

"Like Shauna does." Boris turned back to the TV. "Maybe not like Shauna. She loves you like a human. I love you like a cat. I have grown, too, and you love Me. I have always been worthy of love, but it took you time to learn that."

Flopping back on the recliner, Jake guzzled some more beer. He had to really think about this.

The next couple of days he continued to wear himself out exercising at the gym, but no answers came. Finally he picked up the telephone and called Mrs. Freuhauff, requesting some private thinking time in the Friends of the Forest glen the next evening.

Mrs. Freuhauff made some pointed comments about how both he and Shauna looked terrible lately, gestured to a stone chair that looked more like a piece of modern art to Jake, and left him in peace.

The seat was unexpectedly comfortable.

He surveyed the glen, truly appreciating the beauty of the surroundings. There was green, but also many layered colors of autumn that, it soothed his soul. Nature. Peace. Somehow one had become the equivalent of the other. To the old Jake, peace had meant a nice soft bed and pillows. Or the peace of unthinking exhaustion after a workout.

But he had felt uneasy in his bed since he'd broken off with Shauna, and the workouts hadn't helped.

Now he'd learned to still his mind. Meditate, he guessed. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Scents of fall, of leaves about to turn tickled his nose. Another long inhale—the only sound was his soft breathing.

His mind fell into calm rhythms. He opened his eyes and let them rest on the pretty scenery. A little path led away from the copse, overgrown with ferns. Not at all like the wide, golden Road of Adventure Boris had always projected. Jake smiled.

As his mind settled, he was able to separate his feelings from his thinking. He wasn't a loser like his parents—like the guy who'd shot him or the man he'd killed.

Looking at it logically, he'd made a great success of his life—especially lately. He'd had it all. A promotion, a rising career, the respect of others—

"A cat," Boris said, appearing on a thick branch above him and to his right. "Two Cats, counting the feral."

Jake ignored him. Most of all, he'd had a loving woman.

Shauna loved him. She'd said it several times and he'd thrust it away, uncomfortable with the feelings that little phrase engendered. Gray had been right. Deep down he didn't think he could be loved, because the losers in his life hadn't loved him.

But he was a success. Shauna was a success. They were good people. Strong people, emotionally.

"And spiritually," Boris pointed out helpfully.

Jake winced.

"Of course you are human and not as superior as Cats, but you are good for humans."

"Thanks a lot," Jake panted.

They were loving people. Shauna loved him. If Shauna loved him, he must be lovable. A simple, logical syllogism that his feelings had stopped him from seeing before. His heart lightened.

"Not as lovable as Me," Boris said. "But you will do for her since I will be gone on My Road of Great Adventure."

"Will you shut up, Boris?" Jake asked. "You can't be seen. You don't exist."

Boris snorted. "Like love. Can't see it, so it doesn't exist."

"Wrong," Jake said and stood. Conversation with Boris wasn't conducive to good meditation. He needed to let the conclusions he'd come to simmer, make sure they were right. His mind said so, but he wanted them to feel good in his gut in the morning. If they did, he'd take the next irrevocable step that would change his life forever.

Shauna lay in bed, Prima on one side of her, Jimbo on the other. The nights were getting colder, and the cats liked the warmth of the bed and her.

She missed Jake's warmth. Her body was hot and throbbing and aching for Jake's hands and mouth. She wanted him with every fiber. Had she been stupid in thinking they were meant to be? She shook her head. She knew he was the only one for her. She was absolutely sure that she could fulfill him like no other woman in his life—if he ever let another woman into his life as much as he'd allowed her in.

Was she delusional, one of those poor, pitiful women who couldn't give up on a man? Couldn't see that the whole relationship was bad?

She thought and felt and moaned and thought some more until her brain ached. Finally it simply came down to the fact that she had died. She'd died and met Jake and Boris in the Atrium, and the luminescent angel had told her that they were mates.

The angel said Jake, that stubborn son-of-a-gun, had free will to break her heart and his own. She wondered if Jake suffered. She really hoped so.

The angel had also scolded her for not taking risks. Not accepting the greatest challenge life had given her. At the time she'd thought it was not believing in herself, not taking the chance on her business. That had been her greatest flaw, not taking risks, always following the secure path.

Since coming back, she'd tried to change. She'd started the business, put herself out to find clients, do advertising and promotion far outside her comfort zone. And the business had taken off, would show a profit this year, and she had a solid schedule set up all next spring. She'd won in that area of her life.

On a personal level she'd risked her heart with Jake. She swiped away tears. She'd been herself, not hiding her idiosyncrasies, and unwilling to accept less than she wanted, less than she was sure he could give her. She'd rushed him, but she had needed the commitment.

She'd lost.

Or had she given up? Was this one more challenge that she should rise above? One more life problem that she could face and solve? If she risked again.

She wanted Jake, the life they could have together, the children they could make. Was she going to let it go?

She would have if it hadn't been for that time in the Atrium. She believed in the angel, what he had said. She believed in herself and in Jake and her love for him. She believed Jake was close to loving her.

One more time. She'd try one last time to convince him that she loved him, then suck up the hurt and the rejection and get on with her life. In any event, she would have tried her hardest. Knowing that, she could find some measure of peace.

After a night of tossing and turning, Jake rose and dressed carefully. He went to his bedroom closet and reached up to a shoebox he'd stashed on a shelf many years ago. The little, dark green velvet jewelry box that held the ring wasn't even dusty.

It had been his father's mother's engagement ring and had come to Jake on his dad's death. He'd heard his grandfather and grandmother had been very much in love. They certainly had died together, sailing on a small boat back East, when his dad had been a kid. Maybe there was some tradition of love in his family after all. He flipped it open and studied the square-cut emerald. The stone wasn't big, but it had a deep, rich color.

"Shauna will like that," Boris said in great satisfaction.

For Jake, holding the box in his hand was like holding his future. He wanted Shauna so much.

The doorbell rang and he stuffed the box in his jeans pocket.

"A present!" Boris called.

When Jake walked into the living room, the cat hovered near the door, wings quivering with excitement. Jake checked the peephole only to see a huge mass of flowers, then opened the door.

"Jake Forbes?" asked a man's voice.

"That's me."

With a grunt, the guy shoved the three-foot vase at Jake. "Flowers."

Jake stared.

"Take'em, will ya?"

Jake grabbed the light green vase as it tilted. It was heavy and he grunted himself as he balanced it on the way to the kitchen, where he set it on the table.

The florist guy, round face red, wrote up a slip. "Sign here."

Jake did, but the guy didn't move.

"You give him money!" Boris said.

Duh. Like pizza delivery. Jake felt stunned. He fumbled a couple of bills from his wallet and shoved them at the man. He couldn't wait to get back to the flowers and look at them. Flowers came with a dinky card, didn't they?

"Thanks," said the guy and left.

Jake slammed the door and hurried to the kitchen.

Flowers! It was such a female thing to do. Leave it to Shauna to do something like send him flowers. The bouquet included leaves and grasses, and the last summer blooming flowers.

His mouth dried. What if it wasn't from Shauna? Nonsense, it had to be. She worked with flowers, after all. And he hadn't been seeing anyone else.

No one had ever sent him flowers. It had to be Shauna.

Had to be. His heart started pounding.

The angel cat had already retrieved the card and circled the room with the little white square in his mouth.

"Give it to me, now!" Jake ordered.

A tiny envelope fell into his outstretched palm. Jake was glad angel cats didn't slobber. With trembling fingers he pulled out the little card. "I love you, Shauna." Her handwriting, big loops, slanted upward. His head went dizzy and he let the note fall to the table.

Shauna loved him. Still. She put it in writing. Somehow that made it all the more real. In writing.

He snatched up the card again and scrutinized it. Turquoise metallic ink. Only Shauna. He hadn't been able to forget her, probably never would. He'd had no wish to see any other woman.

He had to have her. But he also intended to do this scenario right. He picked up the phone and called Mrs. Freuhauff at her Cherry Hill estate.

An hour later, all his plans rolling along, he left his condo.

As he drove away, he was unsurprised when yellow aspen leaves whisked across his windshield, even though there were no aspen around. Some of the weight lifted from his heart.

Jake found Shauna sitting on the iron bench in the middle of the clearing. The whole place was beautiful, but it was Shauna who made his heart clutch. He touched the little box in his right trousers pocket, Shauna's little flower card in his left. Good-luck charms. Talismans, the dreamy-minded like Shauna would call them, and boy, did he feel better for having them.

She looked sad and he knew it was his doing and his breathing tightened. He hadn't ever wanted to cause her pain, but he had, maybe as much as the suffering he'd done himself, though he didn't think that was possible.

Just watching her was a pleasure. How he'd believed he could ever live without her, he didn't know. He'd lied to himself. But he'd lied to himself about a lot—that people wouldn't see through his charming mask, that his childhood hadn't mattered.

That Shauna didn't love him.

But she did, and he'd hold on to that truth forever.

"Shauna."

She jerked upright, stood, straightened her shoulders, and pasted a smile on her face. As she faced him, she gulped. When he walked closer, he saw behind the sadness in her gaze a desperate hope. Always hope. Yes, Shauna loved him and wanted him to love her in return.

He crowded her against the bench; he couldn't take the chance she'd run from him. He took her limp, cold hands in his. He wanted to remove the pain from her eyes, fast. "Shauna, I've been lost and lonely without you. Will you marry me? I'll work hard to make a good marriage with you."

Shauna could hardly believe Jake was standing here. Her ears rang. She thought she'd heard him propose. Marriage.

"What?" She tugged at her hands, but he didn't let them go. She couldn't think with him so close, could barely breathe.

His face tightened. He pressed his lips together, squeezed her hands until they hurt, and repeated: "Marry me, Shauna. I don't want to live without you." He thought back to their argument. "Believing in love isn't screwy. You don't have screwy beliefs, and I am l-lo—" He swallowed. "Loveable."

Shauna thought he sure had trouble with the L word. What he said wasn't quite enough, but it was a start, and the tenderness in his eyes took her breath. She'd never seen him so open, so vulnerable, so looking as if he might love her.

She licked her lips. "Yes."

When he put the emerald on her left hand, her mind went dizzy and her knees weak. She plopped onto the iron bench.

Jake sat beside her, still enfolding her trembling fingers with his steady ones.

They sat a moment in silence, breathing together, holding hands, letting the sun filter through the trees, now bright with autumn color. Connected. She tried to think, but she could only feel an incredible, huge bubble of happiness.

He eyed the beautiful clearing around them. "This place would be perfect for a wedding."

"I think so, too. Mrs. Freuhauff would love to host it." Shauna laughed. "Denver's finest and the Friends of the Forest. What a mix."

He squeezed her hand and met her smile with a grin of his own. "Should be interesting to watch."

A shaft of light hit their feet and a triumphant growl followed. They both looked up.

"My God," Shauna gasped at the sight of a window opening in the clouds to a different place, with Boris.

"Don't give him delusions of grandeur," Jake said. "He already has enough."

The scene focused and magnified. Boris trotted through a marble temple of Greek columns, a small many-pointed gold crown on his head, tilted over one ear.

Jake gave a crack of laughter. "Must be a pretty light crown, maybe gold paper. Think they got it from a fast-food place?"

Now Shauna did the hand squeeze and leaned against him to whisper. "It's a magic crown."

Boris stopped. Sniffed. Looked down at them. Then he grinned. "You look good together. You love each other." He lifted his nose. "I have done very well."

Shauna coughed, covering a laugh. "I can see that."

"You will both do well, also." He scowled. "Jake, do not forget the feral cat. Goodbye, Shauna. Goodbye, Jake."

Tears came to Shauna's eyes. She let them flow over and trickle down her cheeks. "Goodbye, Boris. Until we meet again."

"Oh, boy," Jake muttered.

Boris nodded, and his crown slipped from one ear to the other. "We will meet again someday, on this side of the doors." He smirked at Jake. "I have made sure they are good doors for you to go through here. Mostly. Now I must go on My Road of Great Adventure." With another nod, he trotted down stairs and onto a wide, dusty dirt track, on his cat business. The window closed.

"Looks like the temple got boring real quick," Jake said.

Shauna sniffled.

Jake raised their joined hands and kissed her fingers above the engagement ring. "You okay?"

"Yes. I love him. I love you."

Jake smiled one of the lopsided smiles that tugged at her heart. His eyes held only a few shadows. His vocation would bring more, some she and their love could vanquish, some that would stay, but they would face that together.

She pulled her hand from his to frame his face, stroke his beloved face. "But Boris is wrong, you know."

Jake pretended stunned amazement. "Boris wrong? How could that be?"

The last of her tears dried. "We're the ones on the Road of Great Adventure—love, marriage, children. It may get rocky, but we'll travel it together."

Jake's eyes softened. "You're right. I love you, Shauna, and always will." He stood and pulled her up, grabbing her hand.

A whirl of golden aspen leaves encircled them for a moment like a blessing, then blew away.

"I guess we made the grade," Jake said.

"I guess we did." Shauna smiled.

"Our road waits. Let's go!" Jake linked hands with her and they walked into their future together.