The smoke could dissipate on its own. She had to beautify. She yanked off her shirt, tripping over Rufus. “Sorry, baby.”

“Did you say something?” Lucas asked. He may have been laughing.

“Shut up! Just wait for me!” The shirt caught on her hair clip, tugging painfully, and she whacked her knee on the door frame, then staggered into the door so that it slammed into the wall.

“Colleen?”

“I’m coming! Just keep your pants on.”

Seven minutes later, she was slightly sweaty but totally gorgeous, please God. Tight black dress, hair down (if perhaps smelling of charred mollusks), some lip gloss, long silver earrings, barefoot because she’d spilled some boiling water on her foot and her slutty shoes were a bit painful to begin with.

Oh, crikey. She needed a nap. And possibly the fire department.

But no, no, Lucas was here. Her one and only love, etc., etc., and yes, she was excited about that. It would’ve been nice if she had time for a shower, but hey. What was a girl to do? She opened the door.

“Hi,” she said, trying for dew-kissed and sultry, and her voice did sound huskier, thanks to the smoke inhalation from earlier. “Come on in.” Rufus began his Serenade of the Visitor. Ah rah! Ah rah! Ah rooroo rah!

“It smells so good in here,” Lucas said. “Were you burning feathers?”

“Hush, boy. It’ll be delicious. I had a slight fire. It was nothing. Wine?”

“Sounds like I’ll need some.” He held out a bouquet of yellow roses.

“Thanks,” she said.

They were her favorite. He remembered.

Le sigh.

Lucas surveyed the kitchen. “Wow. Look at all this. Did you just make dinner for China?”

“You want to eat tonight or not?” she asked. But yeah, okay, she was seeing the kitchen through his eyes. Plates, pots, bowls, spatulas, three frying pans, a Dutch oven, several whisks and three cookie sheets. Oh, and the baseball bat she used because she couldn’t find a rolling pin.

“How many people are coming tonight?” he asked.

“You’re it.” She poured some wine and downed it, then refilled her glass and got him one. “So. What’s new? Oh, shit, I forgot about those conceited beets! Go in the living room and stay out of my way. Sorry! I meant that in a nice way. Get. Go. Come on, I’m losing the war here.”

“Do you want help, Colleen?”

“No! Just get out. Scratch my dog’s stomach.”

He left, Rufus following, and Colleen yanked on an oven mitt, grabbed the beets out of the oven (they looked like charcoal briquettes, for the love of God, maybe jacking the heat to five hundred hadn’t been wise). The Pyrex dish slipped from her hands and clattered against the oven door, spilling half the ashen vegetable.

“I’m fine!” she called. “Do not come in here.”

Forty-five minutes later, feeling as if she’d just fought off an army of rabid mountain gorillas, she sat down at the table. “Beet salad with goat cheese and roasted almonds over a bed of arugula,” she said.

Not that she was hungry, not after seeing all this food for the past eternity. But hey. Maybe she’d feel better after she started eating.

She tried to cut a beet. It was harder than perhaps it should’ve been. She had sawed off the burnt parts, and they were the requisite color of blood, but they weren’t exactly tender. She kept trying. Nope, nothing. More pressure, perhaps? The knife snapped, her hand thunking down on the table, clattering the dishes.

Lucas raised an eyebrow—Prince of Darkness, Sardonic Edition—but said nothing.

Well, how about an almond? Harmless creatures, almonds. Except this one appeared to be petrified. Onto the goat cheese. That, at least, was delicious. A little clot of it fell off her fork and shot right down into her cle**age. Colleen opted to pretend that didn’t happen.

Lucas smiled.

“And how was your day, dear?” she asked.

“Wonderful.” He tried to cut a beet, failed and took a bite of arugula, chewed, winced and washed it down with a lot of water. Sue her. It wasn’t arugula season, and yes, fine! It was bitter. “How’s Paulie today?”

“Sad. Hungry.” She tried another almond. Crikey, the thing was as hard as a pebble. Hopefully her molar hadn’t just cracked. “How’s Bryce?”

“Unemployed once again.”

“Yeah, I heard about that.” From the kitchen came a popping sound.

Damn it! She’d turned up the heat under the scallops to warm them up, as she maybe cooked them a tiny bit early (like, two hours too early). “Back in a flash.”

Scallops, she learned, could be both leathery, burnt and yet still undercooked. The celery root and potato puree was the consistency of water; perhaps she shouldn’t have boiled the ingredients quite so much, but she’d been trying to speed things up. The carrots and parsnips were okay, if you liked tasteless, rubbery vegetables.

Ah. Here was one small scallop that was only charred and not raw. She ate it, cringing at the carbon flavor, and heard the unmistakable crunch of sand.

“This is delicious,” Lucas said. “Maybe we can go out for cheeseburgers later on.”

She closed her eyes in defeat. “Okay, it’s a disaster. You’re very welcome.”

“I’m very grateful. You get an A for effort. Next time, I’ll cook for you instead.”

She peeked at him through her lashes.

When the Prince of Darkness was smiling, women everywhere should lock up their special places.

A hot, electric ripple spread through her, nearly painful, it was so intense.

Her special places weren’t going to be locked up, nuh-uh.

“I did have some success with dessert,” she said.

“Then let’s have dessert.”

“Shall we leave ground zero and eat in the living room?”

“Sounds good.”

He picked up the wine and their glasses, and she took a few candles that were failing to mask the odor of char, and set them on the coffee table. It smelled better in here, at least, and it was cozy and neat, except for the magazine Rufus had apparently eaten and regurgitated at some point when she was wrangling veggies. She sighed and went to the kitchen, returning with the paper towels.

“Let me do that,” Lucas offered.

“Just sit there and look pretty.”

The rain had picked up, and it was such a lovely sound, the patter and tap, the occasional car passing. Rufus crooned at Lucas and splayed himself obscenely.

Colleen ignored her slutty pet (though she knew the feeling) and went into the kitchen, washed her hands twice in the crowded sink, then got two servings of pudding from the fridge and put the berries on top. Beautiful. At least they’d have this. She might suck as a chef, but she could handle dessert. The necessities in life, that was the theory.

Carrying the ramekins into the living room, Colleen decided that all was not lost. There was Lucas, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, idly scratching her dog’s belly. “You’re allowed on the furniture, you know,” she said.

“I’m good here,” he answered.

Yes, he was. He’d be even better in her bed.

She swallowed a bite of pudding, which unfortunately had a raspberry in it. An unchewed raspberry. Some very racy choking ensued.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she wheezed, grabbing a tissue to wipe her streaming eyes. “Good, good. It’s all good. If you can choke, you can breathe.” She choked again, involuntarily. “See?”

He waited until she was breathing more or less normally, then resumed eating the pudding. Which was excellent, thank you very much.

A flash of lightning lit up the living room, and thunder rumbled in the distance, and shit, Rufus hated thunder. On cue, he bolted upright, knocking Lucas’s pudding onto the floor and racing straight for Colleen’s womb.

“No, boy! No! Calm down! It’s okay!” She oophed as he head-butted her abdomen, seeking shelter. “Off, boy. Down.”

Roooo, he moaned, shuddering.

“Hang on,” Colleen muttered, trying to stand, which was not that easy, not with a hundred and sixty pounds of terrified mammal on her lap. “I have a tranquilizer for him.”

Ah rooo rooo rooo, her beloved pet moaned.

“Come here, boy,” Lucas said, standing up. He hauled the dog off her, and she got up and scrambled for the kitchen. For the love of St. Patrick...the mess in here seemed to have grown. It would take weeks to clean up.

She found Rufus’s meds, took a scoop of peanut butter and went back to the living room. “Here you go, boy. Sleepy time. That’s a good puppy.”

He licked obediently, his eyes still tragic, and she knelt down and hugged him. “Good puppy. Good boy. Come on, let’s go to bed.” She led him into the bedroom, told him to lie down, then stroked his giant head until his pretty eyes closed.

Doggy all set. God bless the vet who’d prescribed those drugs. They worked fast and wore off fast, just what you needed for a thunderstorm. Alas, her black dress was now covered with rough gray fur, but that was the price of dog ownership. Dry-cleaning bills up the wazoo.

Lucas had cleaned up the pudding and was sitting back in front of the couch. “Come sit over here,” he said, patting the floor next to him.

“Yeah, one sec,” she said, sitting on the floor on her side of the room. Because the truth was, she was starving, and she, at least, had some pudding left. She shoveled a few bites into her mouth (sustenance for the exertion to come, please God) and watched him.

He hadn’t shaved today, and a faint smile played in his eyes. His hands—his big, beautiful hands—rested in his lap, and his shirt glowed in the flickering light of the candles.

It was time. Adrenaline flooded through her arms and legs—and special places.

And yes, Colleen O’Rourke knew what she was doing in the old boudoir (or living room, whatever). Granted, most of what she knew she’d learned with this man in front of her, but maybe she could show him a thing or two.

She maneuvered to her hands and knees and started to crawl toward him, like in that hot movie whose title was eluding her right now. Her knee cracked (he probably didn’t notice) and her hair fell into her face (sexy? Or just blinding?). She pushed it back with what she hoped was a come-hither smile (but her knee kind of hurt, actually), lost her balance and sort of tilted (just a little, maybe not noticeable?) jostling the coffee table.

And because this night had been against her from the start, two of her lemon-scented candles (which cost seventeen dollars apiece), fell, and there was a small flare of light (because she’d just started a fire).

“Oh, come on!” she yelped. “This is so unfair!”

Lucas grabbed a throw pillow and smothered the flames. The pretty blue throw pillow that Rufus liked best, the one with the ruffles on it. Ruffles which were now melting, adding to that dee-licious burnt smell her apartment seemed to be sporting. She dumped her wine on top of the pillow, and there was a hiss, some foul-smelling smoke, that was that.

Lucas checked under the pillow. “Fire’s out.”

“Oh, good. At least we won’t be dying tonight. Something to celebrate.”

He checked the melted pillow, then looked at her.

Time to admit defeat. She sighed, sitting back on her heels. “I usually do better than this,” she said.

“I don’t want to hear what you usually do,” he answered. Then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, and oh, his mouth, and the sound of the rain, and the memory of them together, the way they fit, the softness of his mouth and the scrape of five-o’clock shadow, the good clean smell of him.

He pulled her closer, his hands going into her hair, tugging gently so her neck was exposed for his kiss, the soft scrape of his teeth in the sweet spot just above her collarbone, and she shuddered with the feeling. Her hands were under his shirt, clever hands, and his skin was hot and smooth and velvet. Colleen seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, because shallow little gasps were coming out of her, and she kissed him, hard, urgently, wrapping her arms around him and pressing against him until he lowered her to the floor, shoving the melted pillow aside.