Thankfully, instead of getting upset with him this time, she smiled. "Has anyone ever told you how cute you are when you’re being overprotective?"

"I’m pretty sure that’s not the word Mia uses."

Brooke laughed. "I was teasing about this being an investigation. You can ask me anything, Rafe. Anything at all."

The way she said anything had his mouth going dry, and he had to reach for his glass of wine and take a big gulp.

The problem was that he wanted to know too much about her. Her first kiss. Her first boyfriend. Her first broken heart, if only so that he could track the guy down and kill him. Same went for her first lover...and all who had come after. He’d never wanted to be a woman’s first before, had never thought messing around with virgins sounded particularly fun, but Brooke kept making him think—and feel—things no one else had.

She was a good girl. Wholesome. Nurturing. Sweet. She should be predictable and safe, but every time he was near her, he felt like he was teetering on the edge of something dangerous.

At the same time that being with Brooke was refreshing because she didn’t play games and said exactly what she meant, it was also terrifying. He’d never been with a good girl, had always stuck with women who knew the score. But even though Brooke had told him she just wanted a fling, he couldn’t believe she meant it at her core.

"If we’re going to wait another—" She lifted her wrist to look down at her watch. "—twenty-three hours, then don’t you think we should use them to talk?" She licked her lips in an unconsciously seductive way before adding, "Because once the twenty-four hours are up, I’m guessing our mouths are probably going to be busy with other things. Although," she added into his stunned silence, "I suppose we could always fill those hours talking about all the things we’re going to do to each other..."

"Brooke." Her name was a warning on his lips. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to find out just how wild he really was, right here in the middle of the small Italian restaurant on Main Street.

Of course she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. In fact, by the way her eyes were dancing, he knew just how much fun she was having playing with him. Hell, he could only imagine what she’d hit him with next. Probably ask him to draw her a diagram of the kinkiest position he’d ever been in.

"How can you look so damned innocent and then say things like that?"

"I never have with anyone else," she said with perfect honesty, "but with you it feels so natural that I can’t seem to help myself."

He could barely stop himself from dragging her across the table and feasting on her instead of his meal. Fortunately, Holly brought their food over right then, nearly dropping their plates onto their laps as she paid more attention to what was going on outside on the beach than her customers. Brooke thanked her sweetly anyway and then, for a few minutes, they enjoyed some of the best spaghetti with meatballs he’d had in a long time.

Mrs. Lombardi came over to their table to check on them. "What do you think of my grandmother’s famous recipe?" she asked him. "Still as good as when you were kids?"

Rafe nodded. "It’s fantastic."

Brooke put a hand over her heart and agreed, "Best I’ve ever had."

She had a little tomato sauce on the corner of her gorgeous mouth, and without thinking, he reached across the table with his napkin to wipe it off.

Their hostess took in their every move, of course, along with the fact that both of their ring fingers were bare. Her husband—the chef—came out briefly to say hello to Brooke and to shake Rafe’s hand. When he went back into the kitchen, his wife’s eyes were full of love as she watched him go.

"Jim and I met when we were children here on the lake. It will be fifty years this fall."

"How romantic," Brooke exclaimed. "Congratulations!"

The bell over the door rang as another couple walked in, and as the older woman left to seat them, Brooke sighed, her eyes soft and full of romance. "Imagine being so in love for fifty years that you still look at each other the way they just did."

Rafe gestured to the couple in the other corner of the restaurant who had been either glaring at each other or arguing the entire time he and Brooke had been seated. "Seems easier to imagine couples like that. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to make it another fifty minutes."

Brooke frowned at him. "How can you be that cynical when your parents are the definition of true love?"

"As far as I can tell," he told her, because he didn’t want her to have the wrong idea about where he stood on romance and forevers, "my parents are the exception, not the rule."

"I know you’ve seen a lot of bad marriages because of your work, but from what you told me, I have to wonder if maybe they were people who never should have been together in the first place."

"Even if that’s true," he argued, "it sure doesn’t seem to make it hurt any less. My office manager has to buy more boxes of tissues for our clients than an allergist would." He shook his head as flashes of dozens of crying women ran through his head. "If that’s how hard people cry when bad marriages break up, then I sure as hell never want to see what true love gone wrong looks like."

"But if it’s really true love, then how can it go wrong?"

He couldn’t believe how optimistic she was, so much so that she actually thought there were different kinds of love...and that if you hit on just the right one, you’d have won the forever lottery.

"Plenty of ways, Brooke. So many that I could spend the next twenty-three hours listing them all for you."

"I’d much rather you told me your definition of true love."

Of all the things he thought they’d talk about tonight, true love would have never made the list in a million years. "I’m a guy," he reminded her. With his thumb, he gestured out the front window at his Ducati. "I ride a motorcycle. I’ve never tried to define that, apart from knowing it only happens once in a blue moon."

"I wonder which I can get you to say first," she mused. "Kinky or true love."

She surprised another laugh out of him.

"Actually, I’d much rather hear you laugh like that again." And then she caught him off guard one more time by asking, "Try now. Just for fun. Pretend true love is real and out there for any of us to find."