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he’d spoken without a trace of malice, Vanessa still felt as though she’d been slapped. “You can’t just—just leave me like this….”
    “Don’t worry,” he said, still toying with her nipple. “I don’t intend to.”
    Moments later, he drew the jumpsuit down over her hips and legs and tossed it away. He kissed Vanessa thoroughly before trailing his mouth down over her collarbone, her breasts, her belly.
    When he reached his destination, the lightning would wait no longer. It reached into the room, scooping Vanessa up with crackling fingers and bouncing her mercilessly in its palm. Only when she cried out in primitive satisfaction did it set her back on the rug in front of Nick’s fireplace and leave her in relative peace.
    She was crying, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at the man who had unchained the lightning.
    He covered her gently with an afghan as though she were a casualty of some sort andkissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said.
    By the time Nick returned, Vanessa had rallied enough to get back into the jumpsuit. She was standing at the window, looking out on the gloomy spectacle of a city dressed in twilight gray, hugging herself. Nick stood behind her, putting his arms around her, and she felt the chilly dampness of his bare chest against her back and guessed that he’d taken a cold shower.
    “Why?” she asked, not looking at him because she couldn’t. “I would have given myself to you. Didn’t you want me?”
    “Oh, I wanted you all right.”
    “Then why? Why didn’t you take me?”
    “Because this is your time, Vanessa. Because I think you’re hiding somewhere deep inside yourself and you need to be coaxed into the world again. That’s what I want to show you—that it’s safe out here.”
    She turned in his arms, sliding hers around his waist. He wore nothing but a pair of jeans and an impudent half grin. She rested her forehead against his cool, muscular chest.
    “It was as though the storm came inside,” she confessed. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”
    Nick simply held her and listened.
    “I’m not some kind of neurotic, you know,” she went on. “And I’m not a prude, either.”
    He chuckled, and his lips moved softly at her temple. “No prude would have responded the way you did.”
    Vanessa looked up at him. “You were right earlier, Nick DeAngelo—you are a remarkable man.”
    He favored her with a cocky grin. “You have no idea how remarkable,” he teased.
    “I think I’d like to go home before I decide to find out,” Vanessa replied.
    Nick didn’t argue, get insulted or try to convince her to stay. He simply put on a shirt and shoes, got her a paper bag for her jeans and sweater and drove her home.
    “Will you come to dinner on Friday night?” Vanessa asked him, when they were standing in her kitchen and he’d just given her a goodbye kiss that brought faint flickers of lightning to her mind.
    “Do I have to wait that long to see you again?” he countered, albeit good-naturedly.
    Vanessa nodded. “I’m afraid so. If you’re around, I won’t get any rest at all, and when that happens, I don’t do well on television.”
    Nick touched the tip of her nose with an indexfinger. “Okay.” He sighed. “I’ll content myself with watching you sell cordless screwdrivers and videotape rewinders for a week, but be forewarned, when Friday night comes around, you’re in for another lesson on why I’m the only man for you.”
    Vanessa felt a pleasant little thrill at the prospect and hoped he didn’t notice. “Eight o’clock,” she said.
    He kissed her again. “Seven, and I’ll bring the wine.”
    “Seven-thirty,” Vanessa negotiated, “and you can also build the fire.”
    Nick laughed. “Deal,” he said, shaking her hand. And then he was gone, and Vanessa’s big, empty house seemed bigger and emptier than ever.
    She fed Sari, who had been telling a long and woeful tale in colloquial meows from