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the sky represents an answered prayer.  That’s why there are too many to count.  At night we’d stand on the pier and say which prayers of ours were answered that day.  Then we’d try to find the star for each one.”
    “You had a pier?”
    “A pier, a fishing boat, and an old pirogue.  My Uncle Jacques used to row us deep into the swamps along Bayou Gauche.  We’d see spiders as big as your fist and gators as long as the pirogue.”  Lou suddenly looked startled.  “I’m talking too much.”
    “Not at all.”  Kip hoped she would continue.  He wasn’t quite sure how to encourage it.  Lou’s voice was mesmerizing, as evocative and complex as the faraway place she described.  “I’ve been to Florida.”
    Lou dismissed his admission with a snort.  “Every Brit’s been to Florida.  Florida and New York.  That’s all I ever hear.  No one goes to New Orleans.”
    “Say that again.”
    “What?”  Her bashful look reappeared.  “ N’awlins ?”
    Kip drifted near enough for his arm to brush Lou’s.  “If I visit New Orleans, will you show me the town?”
    Instantly he knew he’d gone one question too far.  Lou pulled away with a tension he still couldn’t interpret.  Was it him?  His reputation?  Or something else?  He was used to being the prize, not the player.  Women tripped over themselves to win – not his love or his companionship but his money and his family’s influence and the security both seemingly brought.
    But Lou didn’t need his inheritance.  And she wasn’t pretending to chase him.
    Perhaps he wasn’t so different from Liam McGreevy.  Nothing irritated a cocksure man more than feeling forgotten.  And nothing irritated a coveted man more than being disregarded.
    Was he pursuing Lou because she wasn’t pursuing him?
    Kip hoped he wasn’t so shallow.  Lou clearly wasn’t.  What details she did share about her life showed it was rich with love and meaning.  Briefly he envied her childhood.  His own had been lonely and cold.
    “Sorry,” he said.  “I didn’t mean to impose.”
    “I should be getting home.”
    “Home?”
    “Back to my hotel.  I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”
    “One more drink,” Kip urged.  Somehow he refrained from grasping Lou’s hand.  “Then I promise to get you home safely.”
    “One more,” Lou conceded.  “Out here, where it’s just you and me.”
    Again, she gazed at the stars with unguarded affection – the way Kip hoped she’d someday gaze at him.



Chapter Five
    A s Lou climbed down the stairs of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, she felt like an ocean buoy in a summertime storm.  Was she the one tilting?  Or had the world around her turned to water?
    It had certainly turned upside down.  To keep from falling over, Lou clung to Kip Richmond.  Kip.  Richmond.  Who she’d kissed in plain view on the theatre terrace.  Not just kissed.  Snogged, as the Brits liked to say.
    Why had she kissed him?  Kisses to men were like green lights to racecars.  Or red flags to bulls.  Ready, set, grope.
    Lou wasn’t immune to them either.  She hadn’t so much as looked at a guy since Liam dumped her.  It was her fault for crushing on a prima donna, but the rest were almost as much trouble.  Men always wanted more than she could give – at least with how things were now.
    So why did she want to give everything to Kip Richmond?  The impulse was dangerous in all kinds of ways.  This must be what kept landing him in the tabloids.  Kip was nearly as intoxicating as the way-too-many glasses of champagne she’d drank in the last four hours.  Four hours of feeling out of place.  Then ambushed.  Then useful.  Then head over heels.
    Which she might literally be if she didn’t focus her attention on putting one foot in front of the other.  It was just after midnight.  The gala was over.  Time to turn into a pumpkin.
    Before they could start for the limousine, Lou pulled free of Kip’s grasp.  He had