He stayed away from her for a very long time. He sent someone to fix her heat and her oven, and, as the weather grew warmer, the broken heat wasn’t really a big thing anymore, anyhow. She moved back into her apartment, but he did not move into his floor of the house. She supposed she should be grateful for that. She was chiefly disappointed.

            The truth was that Tucker was avoiding her for all he was worth. Whatever had happened in the brief twenty-four-hour period he’d allowed himself to spend with her had been way more than he’d bargained for, and he wasn’t about to let himself, knowingly, that much in over his head again. Reid and Kingsley were teasing him about it mercilessly. Tucker thought that, if it was happening to them, they would recognize there was absolutely nothing to laugh about.

            After a few weeks, though, even Tucker began to feel that he was behaving ridiculously. He had overreacted. He had been out-of-character. He should move back into his own house, dammit.

            He walked through the first floor, calling her name hesitantly. The memory of how it felt when she said his name was still vivid in him, and he wasn’t sure if it worked the other way around, too. She didn’t answer, and he decided she must be upstairs. If she was home at all.

            He went out the back kitchen door, rounded to mount the narrow staircase leading up to her floor.

            She was tugging at something, trying to pull it out of her house, presenting him with a mouth-watering view of her shapely bottom.

            Tucker swallowed thickly. Maybe this had been a mistake after all. “What are you doing?” he asked, when he’d decided he’d ogled for an indecent amount of time.

            She started, glanced over her shoulder at him, wavered, and started to lose her balance. He saw the shock in her eyes as she grabbed for the wall, and leaped up a couple of stairs. She collided against him with a gentle thud, and the pulse of desire that kept Tucker up at night shot between them as brightly as an atomic bomb. “What are you doing?” she asked, breathlessly, smoky eyes fastened onto his.

            “I came to tell you that I’m moving back in downstairs.”

            “Oh. I thought you would. You fixed my heat. And my oven. Th-thank you.” She wished she didn’t sound like a complete moron.

            He straightened her out, so she could stand on her own and he could put some distance between them, then glanced behind her to the suitcase. “Going somewhere?”

            “Home. For Christmas,” she answered.

            He felt something close to relief. Good. She was going. “Let me help.” He reached past her, brushing against her in the narrow staircase, ignoring the almost audible hum between them, as he pulled the suitcase over to him and then down the stairs.

            She smoothed her hair down behind her ears and followed after him anxiously.

            “What are you doing with the car?” he asked, regarding the Lamborghini in the garage.

            “Parking it at the airport.”

            He stared at her. “You’re what?”

            “What?” she asked, defensively. “That’s what I did over Thanksgiving.”

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