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fireworks and get into bed," she literally ran for the stairs.
    "I have an opener," he called out.
    As if he needed one
, she thought, her mind so carnally focused every word he uttered shrieked sexual innuendo.
    He wasn't thinking innuendo so much as consummation. Drawing forward a wicker chair for a better view of the river, he pulled up a small table and set down the bottle. They'd have some champagne, watch the fireworks, and go from there.
    And he knew exactly where he wanted to go.
     
    WHEN STELLA RETURNED with two flutes, she immediately sat down to keep from hurling herself into his arms and watched
    "Maybe I do."
    He smiled. "You don't
have
to have sex."
    "Damn right I don't."
    "We can just sit here and watch the fireworks." He grinned. "If it doesn't rain."
    "Arrogant bastard."
    "Uh-uh. I'm just honest with myself."
    "And I'm not?"
    "Vegas odds? I'd say forty to one not on this one."
    "So women just fall into your arms?"
    "Give me a break. This isn't war. I'd just like to get to know you."
    "Meaning?"
    "Meaning anything you want."
    "Liar."
    He smiled. "Well, I have my preferences, but I'll live either way."
    "With or without sex, you mean."
    He nodded. "With or without."
    "That's awfully big of you."
    "It's up to you, that's all I'm saying. You decide. I'll be as accommodating as hell."
    When he offered carte blanche like that, it went a real long way in obliterating objections large or small. It didn't help either that the phrase,
Why don't you come upstairs with me
? had been looping through her brain since she'd answered the door. Nor that he was stretched out on her railing, looking sexy as hell, his back against one of the elaborately carved posts holding up the porch roof, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his balance superb considering he was very large and her railing was not excessively wide. And bottom line, if she was honest with herself, she had to admit he was about the best thing she'd seen since Hostess Sno-balls went pink.
    "Just tell me what you want," he said, the welcome mat out in the silken softness of his voice.
    "I'm thinking." She took a deep breath. "Give me a minute." She must have gone too long without sex. That was why she was damned near quivering. Or maybe he'd simply appeared at some opportune time when her hormonal stars and sexual receptors were all perfectly attuned and any red-blooded male would have inspired the same acute reaction.
    Yeah, right.
    If that was the case, she would have looked with interest at any number of men on the yacht this afternoon.
    She hadn't.
    Not to mention she was damned near salivating. And struggling to concentrate on something—
anything
other than sex.
    Not an easy task with Danny Rees in all his glory close enough to touch.
    Where was her commitment to the separation of business and pleasure when she desperately needed it?
    "We could go to the street dance afterward if you want."
    "After what?" How could he be so calm when she was being literally swamped by tidal waves of horniness?
    "After whatever you want." He smiled a sweet, sexy smile that made her want to throw her arms around him and kiss him with total disregard for the imminent possibility of falling into the hydrangea bushes below. And he was clearly talking about sex—not fireworks… hot sex, she was thinking—that lasted all him deftly open the bottle. His motions were swift and sure, foil and cage taken off, the cork pulled out with a couple turns, and that small, almost nonexistent pop. A true professional. Her mind sprinted ahead to the obvious comparison of professional skills in other areas; she was apparently without censuring mechanisms in her frontal lobes tonight. In an attempt to derail the ready-for-sex-right-now locomotion racing through her senses, she silently screamed,
Stop
! According to a self-help book she'd skimmed once, that sort of internal vigilance was supposed to short-circuit one's thought process—and allow more reasonable thoughts to surface.
    It