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meaning it was probably George’s old friend Anthony—kept her from saying whatever it was she’d wanted to say. The ambulance showed up not too long after that. They gave their statements, watched the EMTs first rouse the kid and then get him onto a gurney and take him off to the hospital.
    “Why did you do what you were doing?” he asked as they watched her car disappear around the corner behind the AAA tow truck she’d called for.
    She sighed. “I think I’d like that cup of coffee first.”
    * * * * *
    “I was angry,” she said, wrapping her hands around the coffee mug when he set it in front of her. “It’ll be a year next month since my parents were killed in a car accident.” She waved away the milk and sugar he offered. “It was icy, they were out late and some stupid sixteen-year-old girl texting during an ice storm lost control and hit them. They were in a little hybrid car, just trying to get home from one of their church friend’s birthday party. The girl was driving her father’s SUV and walked away with nothing more than a couple of stitches where her head hit the driver’s side window when she spun around and hit the guardrail.”
    “Jesus,” was all he could think to say. He took the stool next to her.
    She gave him a wan smile when she looked up. “Five months after that, my fiancé was killed when the Humvee he was riding in drove over a land mine in Iraq.” She looked away again and was quiet for a long minute. “All my life I’d grown up feeling like my life was going to go one way. I was going to meet my future husband through the church, we would have the same values and beliefs and raise our children with the same strength of faith.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I’d waited to find him. I’d saved myself for marriage. He was a virgin too.” A small smile touched her lips and she looked up at him shyly. “Can you imagine it, two twenty-something-year-old virgins in this day and age?”
    His stomach turned. “Don’t tell me you gave yourself to some stranger after…”
    “No, no.” She cut him off with a slight shake of the head, gave him another heartbreaking look with those big blue eyes and smiled. “We didn’t quite make it to marriage.”
    After all the things they’d done to each other, that made her blush.
    “You were supposed to be my last hurrah,” she said.
    His eyebrows went up. “Last hurrah?”
    “One last fling before I gave up the game and moved on with my life.” She lifted the cup to her lips, blew on it, sipped. “I realized I’d stopped being so angry a long time ago and that I was only hurting myself by doing what I was doing. But a big part of me wasn’t going to be able to just quit without satisfying one really big curiosity.” She slid him a look and the innocent, wounded girl ducked behind the vixen again.
    He was pretty sure he liked both sides of her.
    “Why me?”
    She hunched one shoulder. “Among other things, you being outrageously handsome not the least of them, you’ve always been kind to me, George, whether you realize it or not. You’ve never come across as passing judgment on me for what I was doing.”
    He took a drink of his coffee. Had he judged her? He supposed he hadn’t given her a whole lot of thought until she’d shown up naked with her sights on him that night.
    “There hasn’t been anyone since you,” she said without waiting for his response.
    He hated to admit it, but the relief he felt at hearing it again—without being coerced, not just something she thought he needed to hear in the heat of the moment—was enormous.
    “I wanted to just walk away. Be that girl one more time. Get my kicks and never look back.” She laughed, shaking her head again, this time at herself. “I had no idea how much I was going to like being with you.” When she looked at him, she was neither wounded nor seductive—just Sarah.
    Yep, he was starting to like the whole package. A lot.
    “I don’t think one hour has