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determined not to allow yet another retreat, especially not at a moment like this.
    “Why are you running away?” she demanded, brushing at her own freely falling tears. “Surely you’re not afraid to let your emotions show.” The taunt was deliberate, an appeal to what she suspected was a very macho self-image.
    “I’m not running. I have things to do.” After his display of sensitivity, he was all stiff-necked pride again, and the urge to shake him came back with a vengeance.
    “You just got through to that little boy. Don’t you feel like celebrating?”
    “I feel…” He shrugged, apparently unable to express to her the mixture of joy and pain swirling through him. A smile tugged at his lips, even as his eyes brimmed with tears again.
    “It’s yourvictory, Justin,” she said without a trace of jealousy. “You got through to him and you have every right to feel good about it. Damn it, you can even cry if you want to. Look at me. I’m a mess and I was only an observer.”
    She was not an especially competitive person. As long as Davey became whole again, it didn’t matter to her which of them claimed the breakthrough. Davey would be the real winner. It was that way with all of her patients.
    Justin refused to meet her gaze. “There’s a long way to go. You should know that better than anyone,” he said curtly.
    “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be grateful for each step along the way. Today he responded. By tomorrow, maybe he’ll talk to you.”
    Mallory was a toucher and without thinking about what she was doing, she put her hand on Justin’s cheek as she spoke. The stubble of his beard was rough beneath her fingers, the flesh warm, the line of his jaw strong. The gesture would have been, under any other circumstances, between any other two people, an innocent expression of sympathy. Between them it was an explosive invitation.
    Before she even recognized the touch for what it had been, Justin groaned and pulled her into his arms, his kiss desperate, yet gentle, possessive and yet uncertain. His lips slanted across hers persuasively, his tongue venturing a tentative touch that left her gasping and wanting more.
    After the initial instant of shock, her arms crept up and circled his neck. Her body arched into his embrace until she could feel every solid inch of him pressed against her, and she knew for certain exactly how aroused he was. He was strength and tenderness, hungry passion and silent desperation. He was the flame and she, God help her, was drifting toward it with swift inevitability.
    Then, before shecould get burned, he was gone. She stood there staring after him, her heart thundering in her chest, heat sizzling through her to create an almost unbearable tension. With trembling fingers she reached up and touched her swollen lips, which had curved into a rueful smile.
    “So, Mallory Marie, so much for good intentions. Like it or not, I guess that’s your answer,” she muttered wryly. “Now what the hell do you intend to do about it?”
    The first thing she did after picking at a dinner she didn’t want was to call home.
    “Hi, Mom. How are you?”
    “Mallory, sweetie, how are you? We miss you. Are you settling in okay?”
    Mallory glanced around her half-empty apartment. She hadn’t had her furniture shipped from home yet, and she was making do with a few rental pieces that were both nondescript and uncomfortable. “If you like an apartment that looks like it was furnished by a particularly inept and color-blind decorator, I suppose you can say I’m settled.”
    “You could have your things sent.”
    “I know. I’m still looking around for a better apartment, though. I’d like to buy something overlooking the water. After all those years in the desert, it seems I can’t get enough of the Bay.”
    “I would have to go and have a child born under a water sign, wouldn’t I?” her mother said with a laugh. “It wasn’t particularly good timing on my part.”
    It was an