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sweet-and-sour chicken, chow mein and fried rice.
    He smiled and shook his head when he saw the jumpsuit. “Feel better?” he asked.
    Vanessa felt a number of things, and she wasn’t ready to talk about any of them. She went to the cupboards and opened doors until she found plates for their food. They ate at the breakfast bar, perched on stools, and Nick insisted on using chopsticks.
    “Show off,” Vanessa said, spearing a succulent morsel of chicken with her fork.
    He surprised her by laying down his chop-sticks, reaching out and unfastening the top two buttons of the jumpsuit. “The weather’s getting nasty outside,” he commented, “but it’s warm enough in here.”
    Vanessa blushed, embarrassed. She knew Nick thought she was a hidebound prude, butshe didn’t have the nerve to prove she wasn’t. Not yet.
    He leaned over and gave her a nibbling kiss on the lips. “Everything is okay, Van,” he promised her quietly. “Just relax.”
    A light rain spattered the windows, and Nick left his stool to light a fire on the hearth. The crackling sound was cozy, and the colorful blaze gave that corner of the room a cheery glow.
    Something Vanessa could not name or define made her leave her place at the breakfast bar and approach Nick. She knelt beside him, facing the fireplace, and said, “I’m not like you p-probably think I am. It’s just that you scare me so much.”
    He turned to her, smiling softly, and slid four fingers into her hair, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “I won’t tell you any lies, Vanessa,” he replied. “I want you—I have since I turned on the Midas Network and saw you standing there with a toll-free number printed across your chest—but I’m willing to wait.”
    “Wait?” Vanessa asked. Nothing in her relationship with Parker had ever prepared her for this kind of patience from a man. He had to want something. “You’re admitting, then, that there is a plan of seduction?”
    He laughed. “Absolutely. I intend to make you want me, Vanessa Lawrence.”
    Vanessa figured he had the battle half won already, but she wasn’t about to say that to him. In fact, she didn’t say anything, because Nick DeAngelo had rendered her speechless.
    He got up, leaving her kneeling there by the fire, and returned after a few minutes with two glasses of wine. After handing one to Vanessa and setting his own down on the brick hearth, he glanced pensively toward the rain-sheeted windows. “Do you want to go out to a movie, or shall we stay here?”
    Even though Vanessa was still wishing that she’d stayed home, indeed that she’d never met Nick at all, she had no desire to leave the comfort and warmth of his fire. She was, in fact, having some pretty primitive and elemental feelings where he and his comfortable home were concerned. It was almost as though she’d been wandering, cold and hungry and alone, and he’d rescued her and brought her to a secret, special place that no one else knew about.
    Vanessa shook her head. She hadn’t even had a sip of her wine yet, and it was already getting to her.
    “Van?” Nick prompted, peering into herface, and she realized that she hadn’t answered his question.
    “Oh. Yes. I mean, I’d like to sit by the fire and watch the storm.” Even as she spoke, blue-gold lightning streaked across the angry sky and a fresh spate of rain pelted the glass.
    Nick came back and sat down beside her on the rug. “Tell me about your life, Van,” he said, his voice low.
    She immediately tensed, but before she could frame a reply, Nick reached out and squeezed her hand.
    “I’m not asking about Parker—I know a little about him because we traveled in some of the same circles. You’re the one I’m curious about.”
    Vanessa took a sip of her wine and then told Nick the central facts about her childhood; that her father had died when she was seven, that her very young mother had been overwhelmed by responsibilities and grief and had left her daughter with her