“Stop it,” he said softly, in a desperate plea.

Maureen wasn’t easily intimidated. “You’ve held on to this anger way too long. It’s time to let yourself have the life you really want.”

They locked eyes for long seconds. Then Sean bounced out of the house, all smiles. “Well, we ready to head out? Mom? Luke?”

It took a second for them to recover themselves. “Sure am,” Maureen said, handing off her coffee cup to Sean. “Just let me go down to the river and say goodbye to Art.”

“Yeah, I should do that, too,” Sean said, handing Luke the cup. “Then let’s make tracks, huh?”

Luke waited by Sean’s car until they came back. His mother was smiling that enormous smile of hers, green eyes twinkling. “Luke, honey, it was wonderful. I love your house and cabins, your town, your new friends. I think if you decided to stay right here, you might like it.” She went to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you so much for everything. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Real soon,” Luke said. “Sean, drive carefully. Get her there in one piece.”

Luke was brooding long after his mother and brother left. He knew what point she was trying to make. He could even give her credit for making some sense, but what she didn’t understand was that even if he could work up the courage to take that kind of risk, it was impossible for him to put Shelby through a challenge like that. She was young and fresh. He was not. He was seasoned, bruised and holding back how he felt was by now a habit.

He could’ve worked on one of the cabins, but he didn’t. He puttered. There weren’t even breakfast dishes to clean up—his mother had done that. He laundered the sheets and towels. He wandered from the house to the porch and back again. At one point he saw Art come back from the river. He waved at Luke and went into his cabin for a while, then back to the river. Lunch break? Luke thought about getting him a little more gear just to ring his chimes—maybe a canvas vest, a creel, a fancy fisherman’s hat.

Luke loved his mother so much. He held her in such high esteem, and he hated that he’d disappointed her. It wasn’t a question of what he wanted, it was a matter of survival—didn’t she get that?

She really annoyed him with her theories. He had to remind himself where she was coming from. She wasn’t like women of his generation. She’d been considering the convent, although he’d seen pictures of her and she was a beautiful young woman; boys and men must have been after her all the time. But, being the prude she was, she hadn’t slipped an inch. Although she wouldn’t speak of indelicate things, Luke’s father had said their mother was pure as the driven snow. Luke took that to mean a twenty-three-year-old virgin, a rarity in these days. Luke didn’t run into women like that.

Until lately.

But that was a whole different thing—Shelby. She wasn’t necessarily a virgin because she had been saving herself, but because she’d had no opportunities. That was what Shelby needed now—opportunities. Education, career, experience and, yes, a few more men so she could learn for herself what worked best for her. It wasn’t a good idea for a young woman of Shelby’s intelligence, curiosity and gratitude for the good things in life to get herself stuck. Just because Luke was the first didn’t make him the best. God, he was hardly the best….

Still, there was a part of him that wished his mother’s fantasy could be real—that you accidentally find this person, this one ideal person, and you dive in, not wasting a minute, and make her yours. And then everything for the next thirty or forty or fifty years is just one big lovefest. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just his bad experience he drew from. He’d been around a lot of men the last twenty years and too few of them had relationships that held strong; too many had been fucked over by a woman. Being a big tough guy, he didn’t get into emotional conversations with men by habit, but as a matter of fact he’d held a few young, sobbing soldiers as they grieved lost love. The same men who could go into a bloody battle fearlessly could be brought to their knees by a woman who couldn’t keep her promises.

His mother didn’t know what she was talking about. His mother didn’t understand him, he groused. She meant well, wanted the best for him, but she was pie-in-the-sky delusional.

And then Shelby drove up to his house. It was early afternoon and Shelby had known his mother and brother were scheduled to leave in the morning. She came. He stood from his chair on the porch and watched her get out of her Jeep, her hair full and free as he liked it. She wore tight jeans and boots, a down vest over her turtleneck sweater, and she stood there beside her car, smiling at him. She could have waited for him to show up at Jack’s, or to call her and tell her the coast was clear. But she didn’t wait, she came.

“Where’s Art?” she asked.

“Fishing.”

“Good,” she said, grinning.

He forgot everything he’d been dwelling on. He smiled at her and never even felt all the tension drain from his face, his neck and shoulders. He laughed and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. She slammed her car door and ran up the porch steps; she lunged at him, her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, her lips on his lips. She laughed against his open mouth, but only for a moment.

He devoured that sweet mouth, holding her up. He couldn’t move from his spot on the porch. All that was important to him at the moment was having her in his arms, tasting her, smelling her, feeling his mouth on her mouth. “I’ll slow down,” he promised against her lips. “I’ll take some time.”

“It’s okay,” she said in her own breathless whisper. “You don’t have to slow down for me, because I’m in a big hurry.”

“Oh God,” he whispered, weak. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m dying for you, Luke.”

“God,” he said again. And he found his way into the house. He carried her like that straight to the bedroom and fell with her onto the bed.

“I couldn’t get away any sooner,” she said while pulling at his clothes. He began to peel away her clothes at the same time. The vest and sweater went first; his shirt was flung from the bed to the floor. “And I wasn’t exactly sure when—”

He stilled her with his mouth on hers, hungry and aching.

She wrestled free of his lips and said, “Boots, Luke. We have to get rid of the boots.”

He laughed a loud, lusty laugh. “Be interesting, doing it in only boots. Let’s take off the jeans and put the boots back on…”

“Someone could get hurt,” she said. “Hurry up.”

He thought he’d die, having her like this, rushing him, needing him. “This an emergency, honey?” he asked her.

“Oh, man,” she said, tugging at his lips. “Boots. Take care of the boots!”

He got an evil, amused glint in his eyes. He pulled off his boots, then hers, very slowly. It was fun, Shelby in a wild state. Holding her pleading eyes in his hot gaze, he grabbed her wrists, held them over her head and gently kissed her body, on top of her bra, on her belly, on her chin, on her neck. She laughed at him. “Will you please!”

“Need something?” he asked teasingly.

“I’ve been turned on all day, just waiting for you to be alone again.”

He leisurely unsnapped her jeans and slipped his hand down over her flat belly.

“Luke!” she scolded. “We can play later!”

It made him laugh. He released her arms, pulled off the bra, pulled down the jeans and got rid of his own. Against her lips he said, “I’m going to last two minutes.”

“I think I have one minute in me,” she answered.

He lifted her legs for her, teased her a little bit, and then he went in for the kill. But Shelby was way ahead of him, hungrier than he was, which seemed impossible to him. Her legs came around his waist and within seconds she was astounding him with a shattering climax, sending him reeling into another world. He groaned low in his throat while he held on, letting her ride it out. And when she was on the way down from the experience, he let go. A week of tension, worry, doubt and paranoia pulsed out of him. He was in the only place he wanted to be.

Then there was the part he’d come to love as much—holding her while she returned to the world, conscious of their surroundings, relieved and appeased, flushed, happy. She laughed softly. “That was embarrassing,” she said. “What have you done to me?”

“Nothing you didn’t do right back to me,” he said. He gave her a kiss. “I missed you.”

“Yeah, but it was a good week,” she said. “Whew. We’re too new to have separations like that, I think.”

“I hated my mother every night,” he said as he slipped out of her.

“Aw. She’s great. You’re lucky, you have a wonderful mother.”

He settled onto his side and pulled her close. Funny, the thing that came to his mind first was that he had learned more about Shelby’s life by listening to her talk to his mother than he had from their time together, which had been intense and intimate. Something about that made him feel bad.

“Tell me about your mother,” he said, hugging her.

“She was fantastic. If my mother had lived, our mothers would have liked each other. Before she got sick, she was such a bundle of energy. She was beautiful—I’ll show you pictures sometime. She always worked. She had to, of course—my dad left us before I was even born. My Uncle Walt was a huge help, but still… Even though she worked full-time, she still made it to every concert or game or school thing I had going on. Not only did she make time for me to have girlfriends over, we were like chums. Everyone else hated their mothers, they were fighting all the time, but I was shopping and going to movies with mine.” She got a little sniffly and said, “I’m so damn grateful we had that when I was a teenager. It’s not the usual way, you know.”

“I know,” he said, brushing her hair away from her face.

“You do? Were you fighting with your parents?”

“I have four brothers. Everyone was fighting. We still fight.”

“Aw, how can you say that, now? Sean is so sweet….”

“Stop saying nice things about him,” Luke said. “He’s a troublemaker. So tell me some more.”

“You sure? It’s boring.”

“Not to me,” he said.

“Well, after she slowed down and needed me, we couldn’t get out much together anymore, but that didn’t keep us from having fun. We both loved to read—I read to her till late in the night. I read all of Gone with the Wind and Anna Karenina, even though we’d both read them before. We loved those old, rich, deep, complicated romances. And we used to watch chick flicks—and cry. Then we’d talk about them—about what the girls did that was stupid, what the guys did that was inadequate, and of course what they did totally right. We’d develop our ‘perfect man’ fantasies around those characters. We were kind of alike, you know. She hadn’t had a perfect man, either. We’d talk about the best things a man could say to just bring you to your knees. Like the Jerry Maguire line—you know?”

“Who’s Jerry Maguire?” he asked, running his hand over her bare shoulder.

“Tom Cruise,” she said.

“He’s short.”

Shelby grinned at him. “So am I.”

“Stop,” he said, laughing. “What did he say? What was the line? I’m always looking for a good line.”

“You complete me.”

Luke’s eyebrows rose. “Really? What does that mean?”

“You make me whole…” He frowned at her. “I’m not a whole person without you. You know.”