That night, Baptiste tossed and turned until two twenty-three, when he couldn’t take it anymore. The bed was too big and cold tonight, the gnawing in his belly far too acute.

Rolling onto his back, he sat up, adjusted his pillows, clicked on the nightstand light and reached for his phone.

He dialed. Waited.

One ring…two rings…

Doomsday scenarios scrolled through his bleary mind. Maybe Samira put the phone in some other room while she slept. Maybe she’d turned it off. His nerves wound tighter with each successive ring, until finally—

“Hello?” she said groggily.

He felt a wild—and entirely unwarranted—swoop of relief as he held the phone in front of his face. Unfortunately, he saw nothing other than shadows in varying shades of black.

“Wake up, ma reine.”

“Baptiste? How did you get my number?”

“From work, since I didn’t think you’d give it to me. Hold the phone up.”

“Whaaat?”

“So I can see you. It’s a video call.”

“Oh.”

The picture dived and swerved, finally settling on an indistinct lump that was evidently Samira lying in her bed.

A supremely unsatisfying image.

“Baptiste? What is it?”

“I can’t sleep,” he said gruffly. “It’s your fault, so I decided to make it your problem.”

Loud yawn from Samira.

“Wow. Immature. And how am I keeping you from sleeping?”

How was she—?

Was she kidding?

He flipped the sheet aside and adjusted the angle of his phone, treating her to a close-up image of his raging erection, which seemed to have developed its own pulse and would soon need its own zip code if things continued at this rate.

She shrieked.

There was a scramble and a thunk. The next thing he knew, she’d clicked on her own nightstand lamp and was sitting up, gaping at him.

Better. Much better.

She’d evidently showered earlier, because her hair was curly again, a sexy halo around her head, and she wore some sort of white T-shirt with orange and black writing on it. He couldn’t tell about her panties, but her long legs were on exquisite display as she sat cross-legged.

“What the hell are you doing?” she cried. “Why not give someone a warning before you start flashing your junk onscreen?”

“You asked,” he said, shrugging as he replaced the sheet. “And you know my junk very well. Don’t act shy now. How can I rest like this?”

“Why can’t you just masturbate and go to sleep like a normal human being? Why do you have to spread your insomnia throughout the land?”

“Obviously, I did that already. I’m not that inconsiderate. But it didn’t work.”

Reaching under the pillow, he withdrew her lacy black panties from last night and held them up for her to see.

Her jaw dropped. “What the—? Did you at least wash those?”

What a ridiculous suggestion.

“If I wash them, I won’t be able to smell your sweet pussy,” he said reasonably.

She smacked her forehead and leaned back against the headboard, laughing.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Is that what you did?” Returning the panties to their safe place to be admired later, he rolled to his side and propped his head on one hand while holding the phone with the other. “Touched yourself? Or do you have a vibrator or a dildo?”

She looked incredulous. “None of that is any of your business.”

“I beg to differ. Your sexual pleasure is my highest priority. So I must stay well informed.”

“And to think I was so impressed with your gentlemanly behavior at dinner.”

“Did you appreciate that? My act of superhuman will?”

“I did.”

“Well, it’s over now. My good behavior has worn off. What are you wearing?”

“My Syracuse T-shirt.”

“And panties?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

They stared at each other for a long beat or two, enough time for him to lose his train of thought. He’d meant to suggest she take off her clothes—it was only fair since he was nude, correct? —but staring into her eyes, even over the phone, always left him a little addled and breathless. Especially when she mirrored his posture, sliding onto her side and resting her head on her palm.

“It’s hard for me to breathe when you look at me like that, Baptiste.” Her attempted smile never quite took hold. Maybe she realized, as he did, that there was nothing amusing about the effect they seemed to have on each other. It was too startling. Far too overwhelming. “You should stop before you make me pass out.”

“I would stop if I could. Easier to ask me to stop blinking.”

“And you should stop talking to me this way. It’s too much. Too soon.”

“I agree. I tell myself to shut up, and then I look at you again and…” He swallowed hard. “I can’t help it. So you can’t blame me. I don’t like it any better than you do.”

There was a long pause while she studied him for signs of insincerity. She’d have better luck searching for a third eye.

“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Baptiste. I’ll remember them in the morning.”

Didn’t mean?

“I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re fascinating. You’re beautiful.” The sudden huskiness in his voice caught him by surprise but, again, there was nothing he could do about it. “I can’t recall if I told you last night. And if I told you once, that wasn’t enough. You’re beautiful, Samira.”

Her eyes’ quiet glow lit up his entire screen.

“And you’re incredibly sexy,” she told him.

His heart began to thump loudly enough for her to hear.

Why were they wasting precious time?

Didn’t she feel what he felt?

If not, why was she looking at him like that?

Had he gone insane in the last twenty-four hours?

He glanced at the ceiling for a second, struggling to contain his unruly thoughts and failing spectacularly. When he turned back to her, there was no way to kill the urgency in his tone. It ran far too deep inside him.

“We should be together in the same bed right now, Samira. You know that, don’t you?”

“Baptiste…”

“You should be here, or I could come there. It doesn’t matter. I would even put on some pajamas for you, if you insisted. I would have to buy some first—”

She laughed.

“—as long as I could fall asleep beside you again. Don’t tell me you don’t want that. I wouldn’t believe you.”

She faltered, her smile fading, but she didn’t deny it.

Nor did she look away, which he took as permission to continue.

“We just met. We don’t know each other very well. I understand that. But something is very right between us. Why deny what we both feel?”

She hesitated for a long time.

“I keep trying to figure out whether I should run away from you or run toward you,” she confessed. “Are you always this intense ten minutes after meeting a woman?”

“No.” He thought of the irony and had to laugh. “I’m never this intense with women. I don’t chase them. They come to me.”

She made a derisive sound. “Such modesty.”

“Would you prefer I lie to you?”

“No,” she said, her scowl deepening. “If you’re not used to women telling you no, then you must want me for the thrill of the chase.”

“Or maybe I want you for you. Why not consider that possibility?”

She looked away, frowning with unmistakable bewilderment.

He took a deep breath and focused on evening out his features. They weren’t curing cancer here. No need to carry on as though the fate of the world hung in the balance, even if it felt as though it did.

“Help me understand, Samira. Please. Because spending time with you feels important to me. We were together last night. Now I’m here alone with no chance of sleeping. It feels like we’re playing games for no reason. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

She took time to gather her words. “I told you. I need my job, Baptiste. I don’t think you understand how important it is for me to be a hundred percent professional at work, especially now.”

“Why especially now?”

“I’ve got a lot of debt from the wedding that wasn’t. As it is, I’m thinking about working nights as a server again for a while, like I did through college.”

Samira working a second job on top of her full-time career? From what he’d seen today, she worked her fingers to the bone at the winery, making sure Daniel got full value for every cent he paid her. And now she might get another job? When would she unwind and enjoy her young life? When would she sleep or find time to be with Baptiste?

He frowned, not liking that idea. At all.

“So this is not the time for me to have an office romance and land on shaky ground with Daniel.” She held up a hand before Baptiste could get started again. “I don’t want you to handle Daniel. I want to maintain a spotless record at the office. Why pee in my own swimming pool?”

He paused, determined to choose his words carefully. “Forgive me, but don’t the bride’s parents usually pay for weddings? Why are you—”

“A couple reasons. I’m a financially independent thirty-three-year-old, not some eighteen-year-old virgin that comes along with a dowry and a herd of goats. My parents had planned to pay for some of it, and Terrance and I were paying for other stuff, but I can’t expect my parents to pay for a wedding that never even happened. I’m just not going to do that. They’re retired now, and they were never made of money. So it’s my responsibility.”

He nodded, feeling a powerful surge of admiration for her honor, determination and tenacity, even if those qualities made his life trickier right now.

Meanwhile, a nasty twinge of something—guilt? Unworthiness? —always bothered him when he heard about these sorts of money issues hitting other people. He lived in a rarefied financial bubble where he’d been born with a family fortune and his business manager made sure the funds were there when he wanted to buy a new toy or give his latest girlfriend her own credit card.

Baptiste worked hard because he enjoyed it, hated to be bored and wanted his uncle to look down on him with pride.

He’d never worked hard because he needed the cash.

But most people in the world—especially Samira, who was so much worthier than, say, his mother had ever been—didn’t have that luxury.

The unfairness of his accident of birth rarely irked him as badly as it did tonight.

He didn’t want Samira to worry about her finances. Or about anything else that might put this troubled expression on her face, come to think of it. Didn’t want there to be any impediments between them.

And that brought him back to an idea he’d had earlier and had been thinking about all day—an idea worth exploring. He bookmarked it for later.

“We can be as discreet as you like,” he assured her. “Daniel already knows, but we can, I don’t know, ignore each other at the winery. No one else will know.”

She frowned thoughtfully.

“But I don’t think you’ve told me the real reason yet,” he said. “Have you?”

Her expression closed off like a window slamming shut.

“I don’t want to get into it.”

He hated brick walls between them. He would have to approach his silky cat very carefully on this topic.

“I understand. You don’t know if you can trust me with something personal. But you’ve already trusted me with your precious body, haven’t you? And I took good care of that, non?”

She blushed prettily to the roots of her hair.

“You took excellent care of that. As you know.”

“So…?”

There was a long pause.

“I, ah…” She sighed. Smoothed the sheets with great care. “I hadn’t planned to get into this with you, but…”

He sat up straighter, his entire body on alert.

“Terrance broke it off. The night before the wedding.”

Baptiste tensed. He knew it! Why had that fool hurt Samira so badly by waiting until the eleventh hour to end things? And did he still hold Samira’s heart in his careless and unworthy hands?

“I see.”

“He’s gay,” she said quietly.

Baptiste lost control of his lower jaw, which dropped like an anchor.

“We were together for eighteen months, and I never suspected anything. If he’d told me he was secretly a zombie, I couldn’t have been more surprised.” Now that the floodgates were open, there was no stopping her. “And the man I dated before that? He was also seeing his ex-girlfriend every time he went on a business trip. I only found out when she got wise and called me out of the blue one day. So that was also a nasty surprise. And there were two years between them, and I don’t date much because I don’t warm up to people that easily.”

He nodded, his head spinning.

“Evidently, I’m missing the gene that allows you to be a good judge of potential partners. And the gene that recognizes red flags. And the common sense to know that the marriage is more important than the wedding. So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not ready to jump off the deep end with you, no matter how many sparks are flying.”

He couldn’t think what to say.

“And, by the way, if I’d thought we’d ever see each other again after last night, or that this relationship had the potential to be anything more than a couple hours of sex, I never would have slept with you that quickly. You can have a one-night stand, or you can have something more. You can’t take a one-night stand and turn it into something more. The world just doesn’t work that way.”

Her story told, she watched him with a wary defiance that touched him in a way few things ever had.

This woman of his (and she would be his again, even if only 50 percent of them realized that at the moment).

So proud.

So wounded.

So misguided.

“Say something,” she said with a tinge of desperation in her voice.

“Thank you for telling me.”

She nodded, lowering her gaze.

“To clarify…Are you saying you had a great sex life with your ex-fiancé?”

“That’s what you want to focus on? Out of everything I just said?”

“I have to start somewhere. I’m a man, so I’m starting with the sex.”

“It was fine,” she said irritably, whacking her pillow to adjust it.

He felt a wild surge of satisfaction, but kept it on ruthless lockdown.

“Samira. You didn’t make him gay.”

“I know. But I didn’t recognize him as gay, either.”

“You cannot let those two men make you doubt your instincts. Or your sexiness.”

She made a scoffing sound. “Of course not. Please.”

“Samira. Look at me.”

It took several seconds, but her turbulent gaze finally flicked back to his.

“This is why we should be together in the same bed,” he said, running a hand over his queue, which was no longer fully engorged but still full and achy, ready to surge to complete readiness in another blink or two of her amazing eyes. “It would be so much easier for me to show you how sexy you are.”

Something of his sincerity must have sunk in, because her lips curled into a woman’s sultry smile.

“That’s just your junk talking.”

He grinned. “I think we agree my junk can be very persuasive at times…?”

“You and your junk can be very persuasive.”

“Don’t try to get me off track with your flirting. You think you’re the first woman this has ever happened to? Or the first woman to ever have a cheating boyfriend?”

Mocking smile. “Ah, but am I the first one to have them back-to-back?”

“I’m sure you’re not. What is it that your Thomas Edison said? ‘I haven’t failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that don’t work’? You haven’t failed. You’ve just found two men who are completely wrong for you.”

“I think we’re up to three men now, aren’t we?” she said. “Because a man interested in casual sex who lives on another continent is completely wrong for a thirty-something woman who wants to get married and have kids.”

The funniest thing happened to Baptiste, making him frown just when he opened his mouth to answer.

One part of his brain—the unhappy childhood, partying, model-loving, never-get-attached side—seized up with predictable distaste at the mention of him and marriage in the same sentence.

At the same time, another part of his brain flared to life out of nowhere.

This new half, to his complete astonishment, flashed through the sorts of irresistibly primal images he’d never had before. Never thought he’d have.

Samira beneath him, rising up to meet him thrust for thrust with a smile on her lips and the words I want a baby pouring out of her mouth;

His hands on Samira’s rounded belly, feeling the strong kick of his baby inside her; and

He and Samira sitting on some sofa together with a toddler between them.

The toddler, in particular, was so vivid that Baptiste could smell the baby shampoo on his brown ringlets and feel the sturdy warmth of his body.

It was a he.

Baptiste blinked and all the images disappeared as quickly as they’d come, leaving behind a powerful yearning in his chest and a lifetime’s supply of bewilderment in his head.