Jillian would have thought that her experience on the roof, having been so completely satisfying, would have held her for a while. Long enough to eat dinner, at least. But, no. By the time Colin had driven her deep into the woods to his cabin, she was crazy with wanting him all over again. And by the way he grabbed her around the waist and wrestled her gently to his bed, he was in the same agonizing condition.

Jillian had never in her life experienced lovemaking like this. It was as if he’d known her body and her needs forever. He drove her wild, made her beg as he said he would and delivered an astonishing series of cl**axes that shook her to the marrow of her bones. Again she collapsed in his arms, panting; again he chuckled proudly.

Then came a shower, then some food. Then she said, “You should probably take me home.”

“Why? You have a better deal at home? Seed catalogs in a recliner or me, n**ed and ready and right next to you in case you need me?”

“You do make a compelling argument….”

He pulled her close and said, “Sleep with me tonight, Jilly. I promise two things—I won’t try to make you give all your nights to me.”

“That was one promise. What’s the second?”

“I’m going to have to buy you a bed. I don’t think I can do it in that recliner and I’m not going up on the roof again….”

So she stayed with him. With the warmth of his body curled around her she slept deeply, soundly, and in the night she woke to the sensation of his hands gently stroking her, caressing her, and she rolled over and opened up to him. She was like a rosebud that came into full, fast, multilayered bloom, rich with the color of pleasure, and deep with the fullness of satisfaction. He rocked her world to the core. Better still, by the way he shuddered and groaned his pleasure, it was obvious she rocked his.

Jillian was aware of a profound difference with Colin from any other intimate experience she’d known. Normally she would feel vulnerable and unsure until she’d known a man intimately for some time. With Colin, whom she’d known hardly at all, she felt completely safe and protected. And while it usually took her a while to trust and let go of her inhibitions, she held nothing back from him. She was surprised by the force of her own voice, crying out with abandon, and the sound of his hushed, raspy voice encouraging her, urging her to let herself go…. To let it all go…

It was her first night with him and rather than holding back until she knew him better, she found herself slipping down his body and pulling him into her mouth. His hands in her hair, the growl of pleasure rumbling through him fed a deep need in her and she loved it. And when pushed as far as he could be pushed, he pulled her up, flipped her over in one deft movement, applied his protection and took her; he took her to heights she couldn’t remember ever exploring before.

She was completely limp and full, nourished to her very soul. And she slept in her lover’s arms as she had never slept before. In the early dawn she opened her eyes to find him watching her, gently smoothing her hair away from her brow. He gave her a brief kiss. “Jilly, I think that was the best night of my life.”

She put her hands on his cheeks. “Thank you, Colin. Thank you for saying that.”

“We have something, you and me.”

She laughed brightly. “We had something several times. Don’t you ever wear out?”

“Not with you. Just when I think I’ve had my fill, I touch you and feel the hunger again. It’s morning—we should get up.”

“We should…”

“Can you take me one more time?” he asked, running a finger over her lips, lips that were plump and pink from so much kissing. “Just one more time if I promise to be gentle?”

“Maybe just once more,” she whispered, pulling that finger into her mouth and sucking it. She let go of it and said, “You don’t have to be too gentle….”

His breath caught and he moaned. “Baby, you blow my mind.”

“And other things,” she said with a laugh.

But he wasn’t laughing; he was inside her before she even saw him coming, rocking her, devouring her, pushing her to her absolute limit, falling with her into the sweet aftermath of sheer, blinding pleasure. All she could say, when she caught her breath, was, “Oh… Colin!”

Eight

Jillian hadn’t even thought about how she was going to handle the clothes and shoes and other paraphernalia that landed on the sunporch roof, but apparently Colin had. When he took her home after their first night together, he examined the sunporch from the inside and found a couple of skylights. He came back later with an A-frame ladder, screwdriver and can-do attitude; he removed a skylight, got up on the ladder and poked his head through the hole, reached onto the roof with a long-handled broom and retrieved their stranded items.

“Thank you for doing that,” she said. “I might not have thought of it.”

“No problem. I really like those boots and I know you’re attached to the furry slippers.” He lifted her chin for a kiss goodbye. “Will you come to my cabin tonight?”

“You can’t keep me away.”

Jillian began driving herself to Colin’s cabin in the woods when the sun set and the day was done. She was so grateful that he asked her every morning if she’d come back again that night because she wasn’t sure how she’d admit to him that sleeping with him was so perfect that she wanted to be in his arms every night. He never put her through that; he always told her how much he wanted her beside him.

“You talk in your sleep,” he informed her.

“No way!”

“You murmur about peat moss, mulch, smudge pots, shears…. It’s not about me or sex or what you want me to do to you next, but about your garden.”

“Are you feeling offended? Slighted?”

“No,” he said with a smile. “Because when you’re conscious, you yell to me what you want, what you need, how you feel, what you’re going to do to me. Sweetheart, I am anything but slighted. Over and over and over again.”

Four days after their first night a bed was delivered to Jillian’s house and set up in her downstairs bedroom. Since first telling her he was going to make sure she had a bed, Colin hadn’t mentioned it again. She left Denny in charge that afternoon and headed for Fortuna to buy linens and groceries. Would he come to help christen the bed, knowing it had been delivered?

He did.

Every morning they decided where they would spend the night. Sometimes the big old Victorian; sometimes the little cabin in the woods by the creek. She loved that creek at night, with a bit of moonlight filtering through the tall trees, and at dawn, with wildlife creeping close to the cabin for a drink.

“I’ve never had so much sex in my life,” she confessed to him. “I’m surprised I can walk.”

“Funny, I’m walking better than ever,” he said.

What was very interesting to her was that she’d never felt so secure in a relationship in her life and yet she should probably feel the most vulnerable. They had entered into this liaison because they were driven physically, knowing that this was a brief space of time during which they were both planning their next lives—lives that did not include each other. He was going off to find wild animals and perhaps an edgy flying job in another country; she wasn’t likely to spend much more time in a six-bedroom Victorian when all she really needed was a little living space and a lot of gardening space. It was temporary, yet it felt so safe, so permanent.

She played her cards pretty close to her chest for a couple of weeks and concentrated on developing her gardening operation. She had irrigation installed in her portable greenhouses, bought the kind of grow lights Dan Brady recommended and then paid him to help Denny set them up. Denny picked up the generators Dan suggested as the alternative to running wiring all the way from the Victorian, and together they got them operational.

By day she gardened and Colin painted. By night they had dinner together and then lay in each other’s arms, sometimes making wild love, sometimes enjoying the comfort of togetherness.

In April sprouts popped out of the ground and appeared in her seed cups—strong sprouts. She smiled on them; she kissed them. She believed the fullness in her heart brought them out in a rush of glory and she knew, knew they would be hearty plants. When her fingers touched the soil, they were fingers that held in their memory the most powerful and beautiful physical love imaginable and she believed the seeds could tell and responded. And then, finally, on a call to her sister she said, “I’m having a love affair.”

“Are you now?” Kelly asked with a laugh. “I thought you’d sworn off men. You sure didn’t last long. Who’s the lucky guy?”

Jillian explained about Colin, about how she met him, how she responded to him as though he was made for her. She told Kelly that he planned to leave at the end of summer and that she wasn’t sure where she’d settle down—it would all depend on the harvest. It was probable she’d dismantle her greenhouses after the fall harvest and begin looking for a plot of land just right for her gardens. “If I can make my organic crops work, this might be my next job.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kelly said. “Are you in love?”

“I don’t know. Do I have to be? I’ve never experienced anything like this before. We’re so right together it’s almost scary.”

“But it’s all over in September?” Kelly asked.

“We came into this knowing our lives were going in opposite directions, that this was a holding pattern. I’ve never felt better about things. Isn’t it funny that in every relationship I’ve ever been in, all my worry was focused on the future, on where it would go. This time I’m focused on where it is. And it’s all good.”

“But Jillian, will you change your plans? Ask him to change his? Will you tell him you love him?”

She just laughed. “All I plan right now is that I wake up each morning knowing that for the whole day I have the most wonderful man in my life and a whole bunch of seedlings who seem to be responding to my happiness. I might be crazy or just hopeful, but I swear his paintings, which were awesome to begin with, are getting even better. They’re growing, too. Seriously.”

“My God, I think you’ve been hypnotized. You aren’t growing anything you can smoke, are you?”

“No, but I got a lot of my advice on local crops from a pot grower. He’s the one who tipped me on how to find the right seeds, how to irrigate and power the greenhouses. He’s a very smart man.”

“He’s the one you’re sleeping with?” Kelly gasped.

“No,” she laughed. “I mean yes, Colin is very smart, but this was a man I met in the bar, not the same one I’m sleeping with.”

“Jesus and Mary—do I have to kidnap you and get you deprogrammed?” Kelly asked sharply. “I feel like I don’t even know you!”

“Isn’t it wonderful? I loved my job at BSS, but until I got up here and stuck my fingers in the ground, I didn’t know life could be so satisfying. I haven’t thought about that rat race for weeks.”

“But Colin’s leaving you!”

Jillian became serious. “Listen, Kell—I suffered for weeks over a scoundrel, a conniving jerk who cost me so much, who trapped me and tricked me and took from me what was mine, what I’d built! I’ll take a few months with this good, solid, awesome man to six years with a loser like Kurt. Colin’s plans for Africa were made before he even met me, and my plans for the garden were already coming into focus. This is the arrangement, Kelly, this is how it will be—it was the first thing we knew about each other and is completely nonnegotiable. I’m not going to spoil something as perfect as this by trying to change him to suit me. I’m not that crazy.”