“I wasn’t insulting you. I’ll bet lots of people clean their ovens dressed to go to a church bazaar.”

“You’d go to the President’s inauguration in a frayed shirt.” Trying not to laugh, she moved swiftly into the kitchen and started to pick up the coffeepot, but he followed and stopped her by capturing her wrist in his hand.

“I want you to go outside with me for a minute or two. I’m not ashamed to be seen publicly with you, even dressed as you are,” he added virtuously.

“Thank you so much.”

“Are you going to be angry if I tell you I called Laird to make sure we could leave by Friday?”

“Yes.”

“And I called your grandmother,” Jake added as he closed the door behind them and nudged Anne toward the parking lot in back of the building. “I called Jennie partly because I’ve always loved her, and partly because I decided that it was the chivalrous thing to do.” At Anne’s horrified expression, Jake grinned. “Chivalrous. You know, like candy and flowers and no sex. Now, Anne, don’t look like that. I didn’t say one word to Jennie about marriage, because we’re not talking about marriage anymore. I just told her that we’re going to Idaho, that my intentions were more or less honorable, that I would take good care of you, and that Gramps would be delighted to hear the sound of her voice should she need anything at all over the next couple of weeks.

“Jake!” Her grandmother had always taken to Jake…reservedly where Anne was concerned, however. Anne had the sinking feeling of being pulled down into quicksand. She was all too aware that Jake must have given her grandmother the same kind of expectations he’d given Gil. Great-grandchildren-type expectations. It wasn’t funny. Neither was the motor home standing at one end of the parking lot. All white, waxed and polished.

“Uh-oh.” At Anne’s level stare, Jake managed to fake a look of dismay. “You were planning on a quick jet trip with return passage all paid for, weren’t you? That certainly would have facilitated an easier, more rapid escape whenever you wanted to call off the adventure and run home.” He shrugged. “Anne, I’m trying to play by your rules.” He started ticking off his actions on his fingers. “I left you at the door last night, all chaste and safe. I sent you flowers and brought candy to you. I got your grandmother’s permission to court you, just as if we were living in the eighteenth century. Now, I can’t think of everything.”

It was one of those times when Anne had a rough time working up any sympathy for him. She reached for the door of the motor home, then stepped up inside the door, turning back for only a moment… “Try to behave yourself for a full five minutes now, will you, Jake? Give it everything you’ve got.”

The cerulean carpet was as thick and springy as a sponge beneath her feet. Rapidly, Anne’s eyes trailed the length of the motor home, from the plush captain’s chair and overhead berth in front, to a blue velour couch and matching chair, to a tiny but remarkably complete kitchen, fitted with everything from a microwave oven to a pull-out pantry. Thoughtfully, she stepped farther in, absently opening the refrigerator to find eleven cans of beer and three apples. Cupboards revealed three varieties of canned spaghetti, canned stew and vitamins. She threw Jake a telling glance.

“We can’t all thrive on yogurt,” he said mildly. “Just look at the rest.”

She did. He must be keeping the tux he’d worn to Link Cord’s party at his grandfather’s, because it wasn’t here. The closet was empty; the drawers of the bureau were stuffed with jeans and sweaters. A double bed in back had a double sleeping bag on it. A door opened to a corner bathroom, tiny and spotless. Another door opened to what must have been intended as a shower cubicle, but instead, it housed charts and maps with pins stuck into them, a pull-out desk and an assortment of strange tools. Picks? Chisels? She didn’t ask for the details.

Her mind had shifted to racing gear the moment she’d stepped into the motor home. Jake, by contrast, had suddenly turned quiet, watching her. When she finished exploring, she wandered back to the front, having to maneuver around Jake’s tall figure…and assisted totally unnecessarily by his hands around her hips. It was a small, natural intimacy, not contrived, just…Jake. Yet it disturbed her. As if she weren’t already disturbed enough.

He popped the lid on a can of beer, which he raised in her direction. She shook her head. “Bertha’s not a toy, Anne.” A motor home named Bertha? Anne thought. “Coeur d’Alene’s loaded with all the comforts of home, but I have to have a more accessible place to stay when I’m working out of the mining district.” Eyes locked on her face, he sat back on the couch with one leg loosely crossed over the other. “Idaho isn’t exactly loaded with Holiday Inns. Not in the Silver Valley.”

Facing away from him, Anne explored the rest of the cupboards. She found a lone tea bag, tentatively tested the faucets for water, and had a disposable cup in the microwave oven seconds later.

“There are enough beds for everyone to sleep lonely,” he said dryly. “The berth is just as comfortable as the double bed. I meant what I said, Anne. The sleeping arrangements are up to you.”

Anne said nothing. After a minute, the signal on the microwave pinged, and she was suddenly very busy, searching for a spoon, stirring her tea, finding a place to toss the tea bag…

“I can’t read your mind, dammit. Sit down.”

He’d given up the lazy drinking of his beer and was hunched forward on the couch, clearly unsettled all of a sudden. Anne calmly took her tea to the blue velour chair, sat down, crossed her legs and faced Jake calmly, certain that he couldn’t see the panic inside her head. And she was panicking.

“Do you really have that many objections to our traveling this way? It’s only for a few days, Anne, three at the most, two with the best of weather. At the end of the two weeks, I’ll send you home on a luxury jet, if you still want to come back to Michigan.”

“The motor home’s fine, Jake,” she said quietly.

It wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine. The motor home-Bertha-was just a detail, bringing an awareness that they were going to be on top of each other. There would be no privacy, no easy escape-things she’d counted on when she’d agreed to go with him.

She sipped her tea. Truthfully, his whole campaign lacked subtlety. Skip the motor home. He’d encouraged both Jennie and Gil to anticipate cooing over great-grandchildren. He’d started a no-touch policy so they could get to know each other in a nonsexual way. In principle, she approved of the no-touch policy. In reality, her body very definitely expected attention when Jake was around; her body wasn’t getting it. Her hormones were already furious, a totally unnerving situation.

And, of course, there was Jake’s money. The money she never knew he had. Well, Jake could take his assets and chew them up in little pieces. That was his business, and Mr. Laird would just have to get an ulcer at the sight of the Rivard multiple assets going down the drain as far as the Yale Bank and Trust went. Except that one look at that cashier’s check and her eyes had lit up at the thought of all the potential long-term gains for Jake, a nest egg she might be able to force on him before he had the chance to blow it on silver mines and heaven knew what else.

And last, the violets.

Anne dismissed the violets. They were very definitely part of the campaign, but no woman with breath in her body could have resisted the violets. It was the rest. She added up his actions on the master calculator inside her head. “I’ll take the upper berth,” she remarked idly.

“Fine.” Jake looked relieved that she was talking.

“You’ve been walking all over me, Jake,” she announced.

A flash of surprise lit his eyes, very quickly masked by those short black lashes of his. “We’ve been testing the waters,” he agreed, and changed the subject. “I didn’t buy you the violets so you could put them on your bookcase.”

She took another sip of tea, trying to force the alien feeling of panic out of her bloodstream. “No?”

“You want to know what I really had in mind?”

Anne was not without intuition. “No.”

“I had this dream last night. Of you naked in a tub of hot water. Surrounded by violet petals…”

She jumped up from the chair, tugging her prim gray suit into place. “Actually, the motor home is an excellent idea, Jake. Because at the end of two weeks, you’ll be happy to hire a private plane to take me home. That’s what this trip is about! Different lifestyles. Your adventurer to my stick-in-the-mud. Which is very funny…only not exactly. You’ll see, when I replace your beer with yogurt, when my neatnik habits get to you, when day after day you have to live with the differences between us… Over the long term, we just won’t work. And love by itself isn’t worth a ripe plum. I learned that early. Married people have to speak the same language, share the same values, want to live the same way…” She shook her head. “To prove that to you, and maybe even to prove it to myself one last time, I’m willing to go to Idaho with you. But I really don’t think it’s going to take even two weeks for us to drive each other mad.”

For some unknown reason, tears were trying to well up in her eyes. Hurriedly, she turned away, and in two steps had reached the door. The handle refused to give for a minute, but she managed to open the door on the second try. She took a step down and strode off, only vaguely aware that her next-door neighbor was pulling grocery bags from the trunk of her car, which she’d parked behind the motor home.

“Anne?” Jake’s voice came from behind her.

All regal pride, she turned with the utmost patience.