To some extent, she was appalled. The game was simple, really, just like any other competitive sport in which one team tried to score higher than the other. The terminology, unfortunately, was like a foreign language she hadn’t learned yet, but the gist was obvious. The only problem was that the players on both sides seemed to spend more time trying to kill one another than trying to score. She’d let Johnny go to a game like this with friends when she monitored every violent show on TV? And the more violent the game, the more the crowd roared its approval.

“…so I applied to Whitaker and Laker.” Aaron was responding to her questions, patiently and gently asked. “Matthew Whitaker is the best. I knew I’d be the youngest member of his firm, but I…”

Lorna’s eyes all but popped out at the scene on the ice. She pulled at Matthew’s sweater. “He hit our guy with the stick,” she hissed furiously. “Did you see that? He deliberately hit him with the stick. He didn’t even have the ball.”

“Puck,” Matthew whispered.

“Puck, then. They’re letting him get away with it!”

“They’re a wee bit ticked they’re losing,” Matthew commented. “See where they’re pulling the goalie? They’ve got to score and now, or they’re going to lose.”

The goalie wasn’t being “pulled” anywhere; he left the ice of his own volition, as far as Lorna could tell.

The fans hurled themselves to their feet and stayed up, screaming encouragement and insult. The puck pitched back and forth at the speed of light. Adrenaline was racing through the crowd; lights were flashing and eardrums were popping.

By the time it was over and the Red Wings had won, Lorna was exhausted, exhilarated and without question, warm. Johnny was crazy. She could have worn a sundress.

An hour and a half later, Matthew had dropped off Aaron and Becky and was driving Lorna home. “So what was your impression of him, Misha?” he asked her.

“I have to vote no,” she said simply.

He frowned in surprise. “I was almost sure you liked him.”

“I did. He’s a very nice young man. Bright, from a good family, ambitious, personable, nice-looking.”

“Misha.”

She leaned back against the car seat. “He lacks commitment, Matthew. He wants to get ahead-he’s willing to work. I have no doubt he’ll do his best on anything you tell him to do. But the commitment he made to go into law school was only a commitment to secure a niche in the higher income brackets. That’s not a feeling for the law. There’s no instinct there from the heart.” Her cheek brushed against the car’s velour upholstery as she turned to look at him. “Go ahead,” she murmured. “Tell me that’s a perfectly stupid way to judge a job applicant.”

“Maybe that was what I wanted,” he said quietly. “A perfectly emotional reaction, Mish. It was the reason I wanted you to come-to get your honest opinion.” A smile played on his mouth as he turned into the driveway of her building. “There might have been another reason or two.”

“Such as?”

“The way those slacks fit across your bottom.” He slid up and out of the car, closing his door and striding around to her side. He opened her door, and in a moment they were strolling up the walk to her front door, his arm looped around her neck. “The way your hair looks when it’s loose on your shoulders.” He pressed a kiss on her hair. “The way you fill out a sweater…”

“I believe that was a sexist comment,” she directed in general toward a black velvet sky.

“I take it back, about the way you fill out a sweater,” he offered obligingly. At the door, he seemed in no hurry for her to produce her key. She’d understood from the beginning that there would be no long ending to the evening. It was a weeknight; Matthew was exhausted; it was already after midnight. Still, when she started to open her purse, he hooked both arms around her shoulders and pressed his forehead against hers. White frost-breath suddenly appeared between them. “The game was an excuse to be with you,” he remarked. “And then, you happened to mention that you were a big hockey fan.”

She found an imaginary piece of lint on his coat shoulder. “A good game,” she said brightly.

“Have you ever seen anything like that last slap shot?” he questioned dryly.

“Shut up, Matthew.”

“You’d never seen a hockey game before in your entire life.”

“Maybe I just happened to want to be with you, too,” she informed him gravely. Gray eyes met ebony ones. They were both smiling. “Matthew, jogging makes me ill. You might as well know it. I hate physical fitness. I love potato chips.”

“What else?” he murmured.

He didn’t exactly make it easy for her to find her key, insert it in the lock and turn it. He was unbuttoning her coat as she rummaged in her purse; once the key was in the lock he was pulling her close again, checking the fit of her pants with the palms of his hands, cradling her to his thighs, which were parted as he leaned against the door. Moonlight glistened down on snow, gleamed on his dark hair. His eyes shone like black opals. He was so dark in the winter’s light, all tall and proud and sensual in a way she had never understood a man to be sensual. Sure of himself, but not overt about it. Experienced…in life, in love. He radiated that, as if he could be so sure…

“Have you loved many times?” she queried softly.

“Many? No.” His palm brushed back her hair, first one side and then the other. “Let’s get back to potato chips and the other things you think I need to know about you.”

“My weaknesses?”

“I already know your strengths, Misha.” Teasing kisses landed on her temple.

“I have to read before I go to sleep or I have insomnia,” she confessed.

He chuckled, his arms folding loosely around her again, his fingers lifting and playing with the tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck. “Try harder,” he suggested.

“I hate to be interrupted when I’m working. No human being could want to live with me the first day of my period.” He kissed her, hard, on the mouth then, as if he understood how shocked she was at letting that personal detail slip out. “I like TV dinners. I lose socks in the dryer. I also lose my temper on occasion. I’ve always wanted to go to one of those…uh…movies. I have no control over my son, no discipline. I hate grocery shopping… How long do I have to go on?” she questioned. “Your turn for true confessions.”

“Not yet.” His slash of a smile was only token; it did not reach his eyes. Those dark orbs held stark desire, depths of feeling where lightness suddenly didn’t belong.

“I need to hear just a little more.”

Was that why he was still lingering on her doorstep, because he thought he needed a little conversation? Lorna touched her cold fingertips to his cheek. “It’s warmer inside.”

He shook his head.

“Johnny’s next door at Freda’s.”

He turned the key in the lock. The front door that invariably stuck in cold weather obligingly opened at his slightest push. Lorna had forgotten to leave a light on, and it was dark inside. Dark and warm, as Matthew was dark and warm. He took off his coat, then hers, tossed both over a chair. She barely had the chance to slip off her shoes before he reached for her.

“So you need a book to put you to sleep, do you, Misha?” She considered him brilliant for being able to follow that thread of conversation. His lips were still chilled from the outside air, until they were warmed by hers. His mouth sank into hers and stayed there as his arms enfolded her. Up and down, up and down, his hands rubbed in an evocative pattern, first very slowly and then picking up speed until the pressure was almost hurtful. Almost immediately she felt her own response start to build; then it accelerated until she felt an ache inside her that was almost painful, a longing that was alien, fierce, wild.

She could hear his breathing in the dark room, and wondered vaguely why neither of them had turned on a light. The first time they had made love it had happened the same way-so fast, like dynamite, like a raging fire from the first touch. He was so hungry for warmth, fanning those same desperate flames in herself. Her arms curled around his neck, her fingers closing on a handful of dark hair.

His leg insinuated itself between hers, his thigh tight and hard against her softer flesh. She could feel-could almost hear-the change in his heartbeat as his hands stole beneath her sweater and blouse to the skin over her ribs. Her whole body throbbed when his palm closed over one breast, kneading the firm, swollen flesh, heating it… She felt so warm. Restlessly, she stirred, and his mouth followed hers, his tongue stealing between her teeth, thrusting and probing. She was melting like butter in the sun. She was less and less like herself; she was so cautious about pursuing her sexual feelings. Lorna would never be taking such initiative, her fingers fumbling mindlessly with his sweater, angry at that heavy barrier to closeness. Eventually, he helped her remove the sweater.

“Touch,” he urged her. “Touch me, Misha. I feel as if I’ve been separated from you for a year. As if one more minute is too much.” Her palm touched the mat of hair on his chest, then curled, as she traced up and down with her fingers the swell of male breast to his throat, her thumb flicking over the flat nub of masculine nipple exactly as he was doing to her.

“Matthew…”

He slipped her sweater over her head. He undid two buttons on her blouse, then stopped to flick on the lamp by the couch, eventually undid the rest of the buttons, slowly sliding the blouse and her bra off. “God, you’re beautiful.”

The lamp cast a warm apricot light on her high, firm breasts, the darkened nipples pouting up for him. He looked, his touch gentle and slow as his fingertips glided over her creamy satin skin. His eyes were a dark charcoal glaze of want and the most intimate of needs.