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want to make love to you,” he said.
               
“Same here.” She smiled tremulously, enjoying the quivery sensation in her legs
that spread to her middle.
               
“But I don’t want us to be some once a year fling.” His throat moved as he
gulped. “And I sure as hell don’t want to read about some new guy once you go
back to Hollywood.”
               
“I don’t want that, either.”
               
“Which part? The fling, or the new guy?”
               
She brushed a strand of her hair from his face, where it had caught in his
shadowy whiskers. “Maybe both.” What a scary, wonderful thing it was to finally
know what she wanted.
               
“We’ll see what happens, Joely. I…I don’t know what’s going on. This is the
last thing I expected….”
               
She dropped her leg from his and returned to her position with her head on his
shoulder. “I know.” It was amazing how fast her desire dropped from sizzling to
fizzling. She sighed and gave his chest a little pat. “I hope it’s more than
just a Christmas thing, too.”
               
“Me, too.”
    He resumed stroking her hair until he
fell asleep. She was careful not to waken him as she crept out of bed and went
down the hall to her room before the kids woke up. It was enough that she and
Ben were confused. She didn’t have to throw Molly and Ian into the mix.
               

Chapter 8
     
     
               
The landscape rolled by in a whirl of white snow and green pine trees. Joely
squeezed her eyes shut and stifled a scream as Ben jumped the snowmobile over a
little hill. The motion slammed her against his back, to which she clung for
dear life.
               
“Had enough?” he called over his shoulder, and she shook her head as adrenaline
coursed through her. Tensing her thighs as another hill approached, she leaned
into him, settling her arms tighter around his waist.
               
“Faster!”
    She sounded just like Ian when he and
Ben had streaked by her earlier. Straddling the snowmobile, her arms around
Ben, was something she would never have imagined doing just a week before, when
she stood in her summery kitchen. Then, she dreaded facing Ben when she brought
the kids to his place. Angry words were all they’d shared in the last few
years, but now, this week in Montana had been like something out of a holiday
movie.
               
She looked over his shoulder and got a glimpse of the side of his face. His
exposed cheek and jaw were apple red, and she noted the faint grizzled
appearance of where he hadn’t shaved. He seemed young and carefree, as when
they’d first met. How many times had she kissed his lips, that looked carved
from granite, or gazed into his eyes, as blue as the Montana sky above them?
Sometimes she couldn’t remember why they’d ever split up. Foggy memories
lingered of accusations and rumors when he was on the road, and then that awful
time a paparazzo caught her in a friendly handhold off set with her sexy co-star.
               
By the time they could have salvaged their marriage, they were already used to
long distances. If Ben wasn’t in training or on the road, she was locked in
another whirlwind shooting schedule of Love My Enemy . Soon, too soon, it
became easier to forget to call each other or meet every few weekends. Her
assistant began arranging the time for Ben to see the kids. They were living
the divorced lifestyle and they hadn’t even filed.
               
Until the day when a fresh-faced kid who didn’t look as if he were out of high
school knocked on her dressing room door and served her with divorce papers.
               
A tiny piece of ice stung her cheek. She released Ben’s waist with one arm to
snake her gloved fingers beneath her helmet visor. A frozen tear slipped down
her cheek, and was quickly replaced with