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scent of the man beside her.
    “You should go for what you want, for your dreams. What kind of doctor do you want to be?” he asked her.
    “Pediatrician. Maybe a surgeon who only works on kids. Or maybe a pediatric heart specialist. The fields are opening up. We’re learning more and more every day about the human body, what it can do, what it can endure, what we can do to help fix and negate problems. And . . .” She broke off.
    “And?”
    Kaitlyn looked up at him. “You really want to hear this?”
    His cobalt eyes narrowed. “I’ve already told you, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know.” He squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to weigh what you tell me, or what you think you can tell me. I’ll listen.” He squeezed her hand again. “Always.”
    “You can’t say that.”
    He hopped over a log and helped her over, picking her up at the waist and holding her so they were at eye level again. He pulled her forward, leaning in. Just a breath away, he said, “Yes, I can.” Then he kissed the tip of her nose. “Come on.”
    They hiked a bit more. He told her of his family. Of how a brother died over in Nam, how his other brother was in law school at Columbia. How he’d graduated from Harvard, how their parents and little siblings had died all too early.
    He seemed so . . . confident, so balanced, but she sensed something else.
    Loneliness.
    Then again, what did she know? She’d thought she’d met the man of her dreams, only to find out he was more her personal nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. Though at this moment, beside the lake, on an outcropping of cliff, she was happy.
    “You’re thinking about him,” Jock said as he turned toward her.
    They were sitting again, tossing rocks down into the water, but Jock was leaning on one arm, turned toward her.
    “What?”
    He reached out and rubbed a finger between her brows. “You get this crease just here when you speak about him and your eyes change.”
    “My eyes change?”
    “The spark fades,” he muttered, his finger moving from her forehead to trace her cheekbone. His thumb rubbed gently just under her bottom lip.
    “Spark?” She couldn’t think when he did that, when he touched her. “I wasn’t really thinking of him. Rather, I was thinking one thing about him, about finding out that was a lie, and it has made me question if I can read people as well as I thought.”
    His eyes, so very blue, rose from watching his fingers to look at her. “Me. You mean read me?” He shook his head. “Kaitie lass, you don’t need to read me. What you see is what you get.”
    “I don’t believe that,” she said softly.
    He leaned closer. “You will.” His fingers slid from her cheek to the edge of her hair.
    He was going to kiss her. What did she do? Where did she put her hands? She was leaning back on them and . . .
    His lips met hers, softly at first, not demanding, but there was a spark. He might see it in her eyes, whatever that meant, but there was definitely a spark there between them. She felt it when he touched her, so lightly, so carefully. She felt it when he took her hand, when their fingers laced. Like when there was a storm coming and everything she touched shocked her. Like there was an energy dancing over her skin.
    His lips on hers moved and she realized he was speaking.
    “What?” she whispered against his mouth, not opening her eyes.
    “I should have asked if I could kiss you,” he muttered, pulling back slightly.
    “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.”
    “I would never hurt you,” he told her, looking into her eyes. “And he’s damned well going to pay for putting those marks on you.”
    It was her turn to reach up and trace the corner of his eye. “When you think about him, you don’t get a crease, but your eyes change.”
    “Really?”
    She nodded. “They get cold, or hot, I don’t know, I can’t tell.”
    His cheek was warm beneath her hand, the stubble rough.
    “Look at me,” he said.
    “I am.”
    “He