Two

“SO, WHAT’S IT going to be? Are you going to die or what?” The deep, husky voice filtered through the darkness, reaching Leslie’s consciousness, echoing painfully as it moved on into infinity.

Slowly she opened her eyes. Quickly she closed them again. She was totally blind. In that split second, she saw nothing but endless, empty darkness. Her throat constricted and tears of despair welled in her eyes. An irrepressible moan of misery escaped her as she moved her hand to pinpoint the source of the excruciating pain in her temple.

“If you’re planning to die, don’t. I’ve already wasted most of my day watching you sleep. I don’t have time to dig you a grave, so I’m warning you, if you die, I’ll leave you here for buzzard bait,” came the male voice from seconds before.

Instinctively Leslie reopened her eyes. God was good. She could make out the bulky shadow of what appeared to be a very large man standing over her.

“Do you need my decision right away?” she muttered, closing her eyes again, grateful for the vision she had left and finding it less painful when she wasn’t straining to see. “My head’s killing me.”

“I’m not surprised,” the man stated matter-of-factly. “It looks like you took a pretty good thump when you ran me off the road. Want me to light the lantern?”

Pain shot through Leslie’s head and neck as she jerked them toward the man’s voice and strove to focus her eyes once again.

“It’s dark?” she asked bewilderedly. “It’s nighttime?”

“Can’t you see? Of course it’s nighttime. It’s pitch black out here,” the man said, his voice gruff with anger—or concern, Leslie couldn’t tell.

“Well, I thought I was going blind,” she said a bit more testily than she meant to. But her memory was returning. The wedding, the impulsive trip into the mountains, the camper … she was beginning to feel more than a little discouraged.

Leslie heard an exasperated sigh and listened while the man moved toward her. There was a blinding flash of light as he struck a match. She followed the light and watched as the lantern came to life. Looking up, she saw a pair of clear, intense eyes holding hers so forcefully that a shiver passed through her and her skin began to prickle with fear … and excitement.

With those eyes, so shiny and deep, the man sought out Leslie’s soul, the essence of her being. He asked silent questions and took the answers he wanted. Leslie had a peculiar feeling that he was reading her thoughts, absorbing her most intimate dreams and desires and was at the same time measuring and evaluating her character and values. She felt as if he were turning her inside out, and for some reason, she knew he was enjoying it.

He gave no outward sign of his pleasure, however. As he finished his assessment, he finally pronounced, “You’re not blind. But you still have some explaining to do. Are you thirsty?” he asked absently, getting to his feet and walking off into the darkness.

As she watched his tall, lean frame move away, she had to admire the grace with which he moved. His shoulders were broad, and the plaid flannel shirt he wore couldn’t conceal the large muscles that bulged beneath it. His legs were long and thick and powerful, but they moved with a loose fluidity that Leslie found oddly fascinating.

Suddenly her view was obscured by a huge blue mound that went straight up in the air like a dome. Leslie gasped as she realized it was the skirt of her dress and that everything under it was completely exposed. She tried to push it down but only succeeded in causing it to bounce around and increase her embarrassment at looking like a fool.

“Relax,” the man said from somewhere beyond the cloud of pale blue silk and lace, “I can’t see anything from my side either. Your petticoat covers up everything but your feet. Are they cold?” he asked as an afterthought. “I only had the one blanket, and I wasn’t sure which end of you to cover.”

Recalling the low cut of her bodice, Leslie was grateful for his decision and began to wonder if this awful day would ever come to an end.

“I don’t have any aspirin with me,” he said, not really apologizing as he moved back into the low circle of light. “But I was about to start a fire. At least you’ll be a little warmer.”

He came down on one knee and bent over Leslie. She experienced a sense of relief as she recalled that he wasn’t as ominous looking up close as he was at a distance. Reluctantly she had to admit she liked his face. It wasn’t conventionally handsome, but it was interesting in a rugged, earthy way.

He offered her water from a canning jar. When her neck wobbled under the strain of holding her head up, he slipped a hand to the back of her head to help her. Leslie was surprised at how warm and gentle his hand was. Nothing else about this man seemed warm or gentle.

“I hope you appreciate the restraint I’m using here in deference to your headache,” he mentioned casually, his deep, thick voice devoid of humor. “It’s not every day I have a beautiful woman in a fancy dress drive me off the road, call me a trespasser, and then faint dead away, you know.”

Leslie tried to look surprised. “No?”

“No,” he confirmed, pointedly. “And I want your story as soon as you can think straight. And it better be good.”

The man put the water down beside the lantern, then turned his back to Leslie as he started the fire. She knew she owed him some sort of an explanation. Gruff and obviously put out as he was, he had taken care of her after she’d passed out. And she could feel that she was testing his patience sorely with every minute she remained silent. But how did one go about explaining to a stranger that one was an idiot.

Trying to find the best way of stating her case, Leslie found the events of the day as unbelievable as she was sure he would. Self-pity and spontaneous behavior were new to her. Leslie was normally calm, easygoing, and fairly certain there wasn’t much in the world that was worth getting upset over. Everyone had problems, but to Leslie it had always been just a matter of choices. She’d floated through twenty-eight years of life being bright, capable, and financially sound. When conflicts arose, she had simply examined them, determined the direction she wanted to go with them, and solved them. Her life was simple and logical … most of the time. And she liked it that way … most of the time.

Her particular character traits were also the reason she enjoyed and performed her job so well. She liked facts and raw data. They didn’t lie, they rarely changed, and there was nothing mysterious about them. They were simple and logical.

Those same traits, Leslie felt, were the sources of her greatest flaws. When something wasn’t simple or logical to her, a compulsion to twist and mold them to be so overwhelmed her. Take love, for instance. Where was the simplicity and logic in that?

So how on earth was she going to explain all of this to a stranger? Would he understand that she was scared witless that she’d never be in love, because she didn’t understand it, or that she’d never be loved, really loved, because it would wither and die waiting for her to recognize it? Should she tell him that she was terrified of discovering that the fondness she felt for Jeff Warner was actually love after all? That the friendly relationship they shared was as good as love got? That she was beginning to believe there were no such things as passion or deep abiding devotion or selfless giving and cherishing between two people?

On second thought, maybe she should just stick to the facts, she decided. He’d never believe she drove all the way up there to see something as powerful and moving as God’s handiwork in the mountains just to prove to herself that she was capable of feeling something.

“I was supposed to be in a wedding this afternoon,” she offered in a soft, tentative voice.

The man turned to look at her. He considered her for several long, tense moments before he arched a dark brow and asked, “Your own?”

“No. My sister’s. I was supposed to be the maid of honor.”

“I take it you didn’t get to the church on time.”

“Well, yes. I was there … but then I left.”

“And came up here,” he finished her story for her in a dry tone of voice that normally would indicate it all made sense. They both knew it didn’t.

Still, Leslie realized the man wouldn’t care about all the events that had taken place between her arrival at the church and their accident on the mountain, so she said, “That’s about it. Except that I haven’t eaten all day. That may be another reason why I fainted. I’ve never fainted before, so it’s hard to tell why I did today.”

Again the man studied her face intently—and again Leslie felt like an open book. His eyes moved down her blue-silk-and-lace-clad body and back again. Finally he spoke. “You ever thought of writing short stories for a living?” he asked, his tone cynical but with the addition of his humor not biting. He smiled briefly, more to himself than at Leslie, and when she refused to comment, he said, “I suppose all the details are grossly personal and highly painful, and to recite them would have you in tears in seconds, so I won’t ask for them right now. But for our survival, I need to know if someone’s going to come looking for you when you don’t show up tonight.”

“I doubt it,” Leslie said without hesitating. “Even if they called, they wouldn’t think it out of the ordinary to get my answering machine, and tomorrow … well, I was supposed to be leaving town in the morning. I’m afraid it’ll be at least two weeks before anyone misses me.”

“Great.” There was a long-suffering sigh. “I guess that settles that, then.”

“What settles what?”

“I was hoping there’d be a husband or boyfriend waiting for you. Someone to start a search. In which case it would be easier for everyone if we stayed close to the cars so they’d find us faster. As it is, I guess I’ll have to take you with me.”

“Take me with you where?” Leslie asked, more than a little distracted.

“Home.”

Leslie knew it would take several days to hike out of the mountains. Even if this charming fellow could find it in himself to loan her some more appropriate clothing, she was sure she couldn’t endure the hardships of spending days on end alone with the man.

“I wouldn’t want to put you out that way,” Leslie said. “I could stay here. There’s water at the creek, and I’m sure I could find some berries or something to eat. You’d make much better time without me. You could call my family and tell them exactly where they can come to get me. We wouldn’t even have to bother with a rescue team.”

“I don’t have a phone,” he said, watching her curiously. “And it’s still a little early for berries.”

“What about your neighbors or a gas station along the way or something. I could even give you the money for a pay phone,” she said, grasping at straws, not worried about the berries.

“My nearest neighbor is twenty miles away and after that it’s thirty more to the nearest ranger station. And frankly I don’t have time to go visiting either one of them on foot.”

“Where do you live?” she asked with a gasp as hopelessness and despair settled over her for the second time that day.

“A little more than ten miles that way,” the man said, indicating with his dark head that he lived higher and deeper into the mountains.

“But—” Leslie stopped herself. She turned her head away from the man and looked straight out into the night as tears began to blur her vision.

“But what?” His question was more like a command for her to finish her sentence.

“I don’t want to spend two weeks with you,” she admitted with her usual grace and tact, her voice quivering slightly for emphasis.

“Aw. Cheer up, beautiful. By the time they get around to searching this far into the mountains and find our cars, then track us down through my truck’s registration papers, we could be looking at months here. But if it’ll make you feel any better, I’m not real crazy about this myself.”

“That’s quite obvious, thank you.”

“Good. I don’t want us starting off on the wrong foot,” he said in a deceptively affable voice.

He turned back to his fire, which had started to glow and snap noisily as it consumed the dry leaves and twigs. Depressed and feeling vulnerable, Leslie wanted to stand up to this pompous, obnoxious man. Never had anyone treated her so badly. He wasn’t even pretending to be civil. And people thought she was unfeeling, she ruminated with an ironic half laugh. Well, she had plenty of feelings now, and not one of them was pleasant.

With great determination, she pushed herself into a sitting position and cried out in pain and alarm as her head began to throb, and at the same time, she felt the bodice of her dress fall away from her body. Quickly clutching the dress and the blanket over her bare breasts, she turned startled and accusing blue eyes on the man who was now facing her. He looked concerned until he saw the anger in her eyes, and then he frowned.

Before he could speak, Leslie attacked. “What have you done to me?”

“What?”

“I’m half naked,” she stated, the implications of which were clearly audible in the tone of her voice.

The man actually laughed at her outrage. “When someone faints, you loosen their clothing. Even twelve-year-old Boy Scouts know that,” he told her in a patronizing tone. “My intentions were honorable.”

“Oh,” Leslie uttered, somewhat mollified.

“But,” he said quickly, moving back to her side, covering the short distance on his hands and knees so that when he stopped and looked at her, their eyes were level, mere inches apart, “I can’t say I wasn’t tempted to peek,” he said, wickedly grinning and allowing his gaze to lower and take in all Leslie hadn’t managed to cover with the blanket.

Her heart began to pound harder and faster. Her skin grew warm, and her muscles began to tremble.

“Stop that,” she ordered him with great bravado, her chest heaving as she struggled to breathe.

“What?” he asked, his eyes round.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Why? Do I make you nervous?” he asked, enjoying himself.

“A little,” Leslie admitted, her eyes narrowed cautiously even while her chin tilted defiantly.

The strange man sat back on his haunches, resting his hands on his knees as he regarded Leslie with a great deal of humor sparkling in his eyes. Leslie, on the other hand, sat perfectly still, but she, too, was taking inventory with a leery eye.

His dark hair was wavy and thick, a little unruly, and he wore it longer than most of the men she knew. His skin was tanned golden, almost bronze, and there were little lines creased in his face that deepened when he smiled or thought something was amusing, as he obviously thought she was at the moment. Overall, Leslie had to admit, he was much better looking when he was happy as opposed to not so happy.

“Look, lady,” he said finally, merriment still gurgling in his voice, “I can’t even remember the last time I jumped an unconscious or unwilling woman. But don’t push me, because I’m not saying it hasn’t entered the realm of possibilities here. I didn’t give in to the temptation to peek while you were out, and even though I’ve found you provoking to an extreme since you ran me off the road, I haven’t attacked you yet. So, if you watch your step, I think you can feel reasonably safe with me. Do you want me to zip up your dress for you?” he asked, his eyes daring her to test his control.

Swallowing hard, Leslie took up his challenge.

“Yes, please,” she said, glad her voice sounded stronger than she felt.

Carefully, the man moved behind her. Leslie ground her teeth together and began to pray he wasn’t a crazed maniac when she felt his big hands come to rest on her bare shoulders. She refused to release the scream that was building inside her when he slowly and purposefully glided his fingers enticingly down her back. Her mind ran amok when he slipped his fingers inside her dress.

“You’ll have to stand up. I can’t get the little thingie to move,” he said with far less emotion than Leslie was feeling.

Performing the simple task of getting to her feet proved to be easier said than done. Hampered by the reams of material and the damnable hoop below the waist, she also had to contend with her aching head and precarious bodice. It was some time before a frustrated and exhausted Leslie gave up her efforts. She found her companion waiting patiently with his hands on his hips and an idiotic grin on his face.

“That’s one hell of a dress you got there, lady. You must feel like you’re living a nightmare from Gone With the Wind,” he observed, shaking his head in wonder. “You want me to help you up?”

Something deep inside Leslie snapped. No longer was she the slightest bit grateful to this man, nor was she afraid of him. No longer did she care what he thought of her or if he was indeed a homicidal maniac. He had gone too far, and Leslie was spitting mad.

“Yes,” she ground out through clenched teeth.

“Please,” he reminded her good-naturedly.

“Yes, please,” she said, seething.

He stretched a hand out across the ruffles and wiggled his fingers at her in a very irksome way. With no other option, Leslie had to take a firm grip on his hand and hope for the best.

This wasn’t her day. His big hand covered hers almost entirely. It was calloused and strong; its grip warm and secure. In one firm tug, Leslie was vertical and moving forward until she came full force into the man’s broad chest. Winded by the impact and overheated by her anger, Leslie stood stunned and breathless in the man’s arms, her face only inches from his. She felt the need to pull away, but something inexplicable appeared in his eyes and kept her still.

The mocking humor in his expression of moments before was now laced with an undefined challenge, the indifference became almost a plea to take on his dare, and the scorn … the scorn had taken on a smoky cloud of mystery, it had become a puzzle for Leslie to solve, a question to answer.

The moment seemed to stretch out past forever, but in actuality, it was only a split second and was gone before Leslie was ready to release it. The idea that this man was in any way vulnerable appealed to her very much. But that feeling, too, was short lived when, in a flash, the man was full of arrogance and mischief once more.

“Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have made such a hasty decision,” he said as he lowered his head and boldly took Leslie’s lips with his own.

At first Leslie was furious and tried to fight him off. But with her hands holding up the bodice of her dress, all she could do was squirm and try to pull away. When her movements only succeeded in allowing him to reestablish a firmer grip and give her a second kiss, Leslie decided to take a new approach. She stood perfectly still and the second his arms relaxed a little, she kicked him as hard as she could. It took her two attempts to finally hit his shin bone, but her reward was well worth her efforts.

He gasped in pain and immediately released her. When he did, she held her dress up with one hand and used the other to push him away. To Leslie’s astonishment, as he held on to his leg he was also laughing uncontrollably.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she shouted. “And don’t you ever touch me like that again. Do you hear me?”

The man laughed harder at her indignation.

“I mean it! I’m sick of this.” She stamped her foot once. “I’m sorry you’re a nasty, ill-tempered, and extremely rude individual, but you’re not going to take it out on me anymore. The accident wasn’t all my fault. I refuse to take all the blame for it. And if I’m going to be such an imposition to you for the next two weeks—or so—well, I’d just as soon take my chances alone than put up with you.”

By the time Leslie finished her tirade, the man had pulled himself together somewhat and stood watching her. His eyes held a certain humorous admiration, and his lips were still twitching at the corners, but at least he wasn’t rolling on the ground in a convulsive fit of laughter.

“You’re not very funny.”

“No. You’re right. I’m not,” he said, his amused look having faded to a smirk and a twinkle. “If I promise to be a good boy from now on, will you let me zip up your dress?”

Leslie considered his offer with great misgivings. She was sure she shouldn’t trust him, but she definitely wanted her dress zipped so she could have two free hands. Courageously and with all the dignity she could muster, Leslie turned her back to him.

Several endless seconds passed before she felt his presence behind her. All her senses were on red alert, on guard for the slightest untoward action. None came. With a minimum of movement, the man deftly secured her dress, said “There you go,” and walked away.

But even though he’d amended his behavior, Leslie wasn’t satisfied.

“Aren’t you going to apologize?”

“For what?” The man didn’t bother to look away from feeding the fire. He kept throwing twigs and small branches into the flames as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened between them.

“For being so rude and … and for what you did to me,” Leslie said.

“I kissed you,” he said, because she didn’t seem able to identify the activity and he wanted to make his next point. “It wasn’t exactly a rape. I could have used a little more finesse, I guess, but all in all, I’m not sorry I did it. So, I won’t apologize.”

“Honestly. You’re the most insulting man I’ve ever met,” Leslie said, disgusted.

“That’s too bad. Maybe if you’d met a lowlife like myself sooner, you wouldn’t be so snooty now,” he said, turning to her at last.

“Snooty? Snooty? I am not snooty.”

“Defensive, then.”

“I’m only defensive when someone else is attacking. In this case, that’s you.”

The man seemed to be thinking her statement over. Leslie knew her argument was valid and drew confidence from it. The man finally nodded twice and said, “Maybe in the beginning, when I was still in shock. But I took care of you when you passed out, and that was nice of me. And since you woke up, I think I’ve been pretty civil.”

“You kissed me,” she said in an accusing tone.

“Oh. Well, that was bound to happen eventually anyway. I just figured that as long as we were in the right position, we might as well get it over with.”

“What?” Leslie’s face was a grimace of shocked disbelief. Was this man not only rude and vulgar, but insane as well, she wondered.

“Let’s face it, I’m reasonably good-looking. You’ve got all the right parts, very nicely put in all the right places. We’re alone in the woods together and most likely will be for some time to come. We were bound to kiss eventually,” he said, in a very matter-of-fact way.

“What?” she repeated, more and more convinced that she was stranded in the mountains with a madman.

“Come on, … What is your name?”

“Leslie.”

“Leslie, what?”

“Rothe. What’s yours?” she asked, not really sure she wanted to know, fairly certain by now that it could be found on the F.B.I.’s ten-most-wanted list.

“Joe Bonner,” he said. “And I think that human nature being what it is, we each would have started wondering what it would be like to kiss the other sooner or later anyway. I just wondered sooner, is all. There’s no need to make a federal case out of a simple little kiss, Leslie.”

“There is if you won’t apologize for it,” Leslie said doggedly.

“I’m not sorry. I admit I might have enjoyed it more if you’d cooperated a little, but it wasn’t so bad as it was.”

Leslie gasped in frustration and anger. There was no dealing with him. He was impossible to talk to, she decided, as she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and began to walk away from him.

“If you’re going off to visit the bushes, you should stay on the road and out of the underbrush. You’d probably hang yourself in that dress. Go up around the bend if you want,” he said in an annoyingly omniscient way.

Leslie glared at him over her shoulder but took his advice nonetheless. Making her way clumsily through the darkness in her high-heeled shoes, her mind automatically switched to her problem-solving mode. In her usual way, she quickly identified her problems: The man, Joe Bonner, and being stranded in the mountains with him. Objectives: Get rid of this Joe Bonner person and get home safely. Solutions: The answer to the first problem was easy. Shoot Joe Bonner at the first opportunity. The second problem was not as easily solved. And, unfortunately, it looked as if she was going to need Joe Bonner to accomplish it.

On her way back to the fire—and Joe Bonner—a calmer Leslie decided she simply would have to grit her teeth and bear with the impossible man until she was rescued or until she could come up with another answer to her dilemma.

In the meantime, she knew of another problem she could easily solve. Knowing there was little of her to see under the skirt of her gown because of the additional slips she’d worn, she freely gathered up the silk and lace in one hand and began untying the strings of the hooped skirt with the other. With the hoops gone, the dress hung straight to the ground. It was now far too long but much less cumbersome.

Well satisfied, Leslie looked up to find the man—as she preferred to think of him—watching her. Something in the way he was regarding her made her feel agitated and uneasy. He nodded his approval of what she had done and said, “Good idea.”

“Thank you so much,” she said stiffly.

“Definitely snooty,” he said as if it was a final judgment of her character.

Leslie walked over to the man and strangled him with her bare hands—but only in the back of her mind, where she kept her fondest wishes and desires. In reality she gathered her skirts once again, ignoring the man, and settled herself on the tarpaulin where she’d been lying before. With great flair, she arranged the silk and lace over her legs and drew the blanket closer around her bare shoulders.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Cannibalism flashed through her mind as a possible solution to one of her problems. But she quickly discarded the idea, assuming it would be rather tasteless, both literally and figuratively.

Two pieces of bread landed in her lap. The slices were stuck firmly together, but with the aid of the light from the fire, Leslie could see the adhesive was either an appetizing pate or peanut butter. Considering the sandwich’s origins, she assumed it was peanut butter. However, she wasn’t altogether disappointed or ungrateful. She was very hungry.

“Where did this come from?” she asked between bites, not caring that the food stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“I was on my way back from getting groceries when we met on the road,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “My truck is full of food.”

“And now it’ll all go to waste.” She shook her head regretfully.

“Hardly. We’ll take as much as we can carry in the morning. And I’ll make another trip down for the nonperishables in a couple of days.”

Leslie nodded. This made sense to her, and she’d always believed in carrying her share of the load. Basically a city person and not overly fond of outdoor sports, she really wasn’t looking forward to the hike through the mountains. But she vowed she’d accomplish it with as much grace as possible. She’d show him snooty.

They were silent through most of the meal. Leslie took a second helping, her host went back for thirds. He’d boiled coffee in a saucepan and asked, or rather told her to hold a filter over two pint-size canning jars while he poured the hot, dark fluid into each.

“I wasn’t planning on a camp out,” he said, needlessly explaining his lack of equipment.

Leslie had to admire his ingenuity. The coffee was strong and hot, warming her from the inside out, which was more than she could say for either the fire or her blanket. While the heat of the fire did a fair job of warding off the cold night air in front of her, the chilling breeze seemed to catch and settle in the blanket that lay around her shoulders and across her back.

After her third rather obvious shiver, Joe got to his feet and came over to her side of the fire.

“Scoot up,” he told her.

“What for?” she asked, confused and suspicious at once.

“I’ll sit behind you and keep the wind off your back.”

“That’s not necessary. I’m perfectly—”

“Perfect. I know,” he broke in on her objection. “But if we’re going to survive this night without the right gear, we’re going to have to keep each other warm. My jacket will hold off the wind. So we’ll sit on the tarp facing the fire with me at your back.”

No longer confused, Leslie focused her attention on her distrust of this man. “If you think I’m going to give you a second chance to manhandle me, you’re crazy,” she said, pulling the blanket closer, glaring up at him stubbornly.

Again, he mocked her with laughter.

“You’re certainly full of yourself, aren’t you? I give you one little kiss and suddenly you’re irresistible to me? Is that what you think?”

“No,” she said. “What I think is that you’re a lunatic or maybe an axe murderer. The nicest thing I’ve thought so far was that you’re just some poor thing who wandered out the front gates of an asylum and can’t quite get the hang of being normal.”

“Hey. You’re all heart, aren’t you? I’ll have to be careful not to let your high opinion of me swell my head,” he said. He didn’t appear to be offended at all, but he certainly was wearing a peculiar expression. At first Leslie thought he was still amused, but for a fleeting second there was almost a look of admiration in his eyes, and then it was gone, replaced by the thoughtful, considering look she was growing very familiar with. “However, flattered as I am, I am none of those things. I am hard to live with sometimes, which is why I spend a lot of time alone up here in my cabin. But you don’t need to be afraid of me. I am both safe and sane, and I won’t hurt you.” He paused briefly. “I won’t even touch you again without your permission. How’s that?”

“That’s how it should have been from the beginning,” Leslie pointed out, still wary.

“True. But be that as it may, I think I can prove to you how harmless I really am and that I’m not such a bad guy after all, if you’ll allow me to.”

Leslie was doubtful, but for some inane reason she wanted to believe him. A lot of it had to do with his being the only other human for miles around, and some of it had to do with Leslie’s basic good nature. But that still left a small part of the reason unaccounted for, a part that made Leslie feel uncomfortable and excited at the same time, a part she didn’t want to examine too closely just yet.

Leslie gave her nonverbal consent for the experiment to begin. This time she was sure of the approval she saw in his eyes, and even though he didn’t actually smile, he did look pleased.