She rose from the tub abruptly.

“Did you see that view, Angel?” Justin teased. “Your mom is trying to drive me crazy. And doing an outstanding job of it.”

“We can’t stay here all night.”

“Why? She’s happy.”

“Because she’ll turn into a prune, you goose. But keep her in here for a couple more minutes, okay? While I go heat up a bottle and fix a place for her to sleep?”

Naturally she’d brought a diaper bag and a change of clothes for the baby, but several hours before, it really hadn’t occurred to her that they might be spending the night. Now, wrapped in a towel, she prowled the downstairs, spotting a half-dozen places where she could set up a secure sleeping arrangement for Angel, just trying to pick the best. She decided on the couch in Justin’s office, where she could push two chairs against the open couch edge to create a secure barrier. Then there was the business of finding the equivalent of a rubber sheet, and a real sheet, and blankets, and then getting the bottle warmed.

By the time she slipped back in the bathroom, Ms. Prune seemed to be out of the water and was on a thick, fat towel next to the tub, chortling her head off while Justin tickled her.

“Sheesh. We were trying to settle her down,” she scolded.

“She doesn’t want to settle down. She likes being naked. You know who I think she takes after?”

“You. All day,” Winona murmured.

“I was thinking about you. To think that you’ve been walking around my house that way all this time and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it…it boggles the mind.”

“Well, I admit, I’d been thinking about boggling something of yours, too, Doc. But it wasn’t your mind.”

She was up for flirting with Justin indefinitely…but for a second, words failed her. She caught it. The baby’s first yawn. Faster than lightning, she whipped a fresh diaper and sleeper on Angel. And then there was another rosebud yawn when she settled the darling in her arms, those soft velvety eyelashes already drooping as Angel latched on to the nipple of the bottle.

She kept thinking sex and babies shouldn’t go together.

She kept thinking that maybe she was nuts, because the candlelight and music hadn’t turned her on nearly as much as watching Justin discover being a dad.

She kept thinking that they were teasing and flirting like an old married couple who were already comfortable with each other naked, who already knew the things to say to trigger desire.

And she fell quiet as she fed the baby. So quiet that Justin noticed. She felt his gaze on her face as she coaxed the last drops into Angel, who was all set to snuggle down and sleep deeply now-but Winona didn’t want her trying to sleep for the night short on food. Finally, she lifted the little one to her shoulder-all dead weight and baby breath and smelling of powder-patting, rubbing, trying to get up that last nasty burp before putting her down…and still she felt Justin’s gaze on her face.

“She’s out. Really out this time,” she whispered finally. “I made a bed for her in the den. I’ll be right back.”

Once Winona laid the baby down, though, she suddenly realized how long she’d been parading semi-naked in front of Justin. What had seemed natural before now seemed…different. It wasn’t the same situation without the baby as a barrier. That had been like playing poker without ever having to ante…playing at being lovers without ever being alone.

Reality, though, was that they’d only been lovers one night…and Winona suddenly felt an attack of nerves. Technically, this was what they’d both wanted, to have the night to themselves, the baby finally asleep. Only she seemed to be suddenly standing in the hall outside the bathroom, clutched up like a ninny. Surely Justin was tired of the water by now? But would it be presumptuous to go into his bedroom? Should she be getting dressed? And then suddenly she heard his voice, as if he sensed her sudden uneasiness.

“Win? C’mere, you.”

It was the lazy, easy sound of his voice that made her tiptoe back into the bathroom, and there he was, waiting for her in the tub with those sexy dark eyes. “Yeah, I know,” he said gently. “We’ve been here a hundred hours already. And both of us need some just plain sleep, don’t we?”

“Yes-”

“But how about if you just dip in here for one more minute. I’ll give you a back rub.”

She hurtled back into the tub with splashing speed, making Justin laugh.

“You’re not just a little bit of a hedonist, are you?” he teased, but he wasn’t teasing as he nestled her between his bent legs and started working his hands on her neck and shoulders. Her eyelashes drooped as if they weighed five pounds each and her head bobbed forward. She groaned and kept on groaning.

And he kept rubbing and caressing and molding any last tension from her shoulders, but eventually she heard a different note in his voice. A quiet note. “What were you thinking, Win? When you were feeding the baby a few minutes ago, and you suddenly turned so serious?”

She’d been thinking that she finally believed him-that he really did want to marry her. It wasn’t a dream. It was real. All his plan-making for the baby tonight was proof. The way he treated Angel was another kind of proof, that he had strong, tender feelings for the baby and was already taking joy in being a father. But it was the two of them where she kept feeling this rain of wonder. They’d known each other so long…but until Angel had so accidentally slipped into her life, she’d had no idea that Justin had feelings for her.

Now she wondered how he’d fooled her for so long.

And how she’d fooled herself.

She closed her eyes, struggling to offer him a kind of honesty that she never had done before. “I was thinking…well, I almost don’t remember my mother. But I remember the morning when I woke up and she was gone. I was pretty young-but I knew I was alone. I remember feeling abandoned, feeling that there must be something terribly wrong with me that she’d left as if I were nothing. And as much as I’ve wanted a child, Justin, I think I was always afraid that I wouldn’t be a good mother. That that fatal flaw in me would show up. The thing that made me unlovable. And I worried that I could do that to a child.”

She watched his mouth work, as if he wanted to spill a dozen things to her. Instead he hesitated, and then he just listened. “And…?”

“And then I was watching you play with Angel. Be with her. The joy and fascination in your eyes.”

“Well, hell. There’s nothing surprising there. She could win a tear from a glass eye.”

She smiled softly. “I think so, too. That’s exactly how I feel with her. The joy. The fascination. No, I don’t know what I’m doing. But this huge feeling of love wells up, this bond to her that just seems bigger than I am. And I know I can be a good mom. I just know.”

“Aw, Win, I can’t believe you doubted yourself this way.”

“Well, I did. It’s hard to explain, but I doubted…that I could let go. I was angry when I was a kid. I think I always believed under the surface that it had to be my fault-something wrong with me-that made my mom take off. And I was afraid that something-wrong-in-me could affect my being a parent.”

“Winona. You’ll be the best parent this side of the Atlantic. And this side of the Pacific, too. You already are. Hell. I didn’t know you were worried about this…” He hesitated. “When you suddenly got so quiet, I thought maybe you’d found out something in the investigation of Angel’s mother-and you just hadn’t had a chance to tell me.”

“I’m finding out things every day. But nothing that’s helped me pin down where Angel came from, at least so far.”

“Then…you’re still worried about keeping her?”

“Yeah, I’m worried about that. Badly. And I’m going to keep worrying about that until we know for sure what’s going to happen to her. I can’t help it. Any more than I can help hoping that Angel ends up mine. Ours.” She turned in his arms. “But that’s not the reason I’m saying yes to you.”

“Yes to…?”

“I never gave you a clear-cut answer, did I? I mean…you’ve been making marriage and living plans at the speed of sound. And I know we’ve come together. I know we’ve both used the marriage word. You especially. But I never came out before this and admitted that I’m in love with you, Doc. Really in love. Off the deep end in love-”

She never got a chance to finish the thought before his mouth latched on to hers. The whole evening, she’d been waiting for this. The whole evening, he’d been seducing her with candles and saxophones and his burping techniques and his blowing bubbles on the baby’s tummy…and being in that tub, naked with him, because dark or not, he had to know darn well where her eyes were straying all this time.

She made a soft sound of longing, of want, that he sipped in during another slow, lazy, liquid kiss. His warm, slippery skin rubbed against her warm, slippery skin. His tummy rubbed her tummy. Breasts snugged against his chest, where his wiry dark chest hairs glistened and the orbs of his shoulders gleamed dark gold. His long, strong legs slid and rubbed against her slim, softer limbs. He was inside her before she could catch a breath, had her legs wrapped around his waist before she’d had time to consider whether this was even possible.

“We’re going to drown,” she feared.

“I already am drowning,” he said, and dived for another kiss, taking her tongue. His hands splayed, clasping her fanny, melding the two of them even closer together. Inside, she felt that secret, hot pulsing between them. On the outside, there was nothing but that womb of water, the magic of him, the stars on the water surface caused from the candlelight, the stars in her eyes caused from the look in his.

“I have no protection,” he remembered suddenly.