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elaborate on his answer, which she guessed had nothing to do with her coffee.
    “Yes, and cream, too.”
    That was another surprise. Sarah would have bet this man took his coffee with gunpowder and nails. She placed the sugar and milk on a small round table beside a window. She broke two eggs into a bowl and whipped them with her fork. “How?”
    “How what?”
    She dropped bread into the toaster, and poured the eggs into a skillet. “How do you find a way to live with things?”
    “It’s mental. I’m not sure that I can explain. I go over a situation again and again, until I understand. Then, once I have it straight in my mind, I deal with it.”
    “Not me,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “I make my decision instantly, then worry it to death. I took an art class once. We were drawing with charcoal. The teacher thought my simple sketch of an old woman was nice. Then I kept going over it, adding, smearing, until it was awful.… If you’re not going to clean up you might as well sit down. You’re making me nervous again, standing over me.”
    Asa hadn’t realized that he’d gradually moved nearer and nearer as Sarah talked. “I guess I’m trying to understand. What’s the connection, Sarah, between your art class and my anger?”
    “By the time I finished, my drawing had turned into a real muddle. The instructor said I worried it to death. After that I decided that I’m better suited to physical expression than artistic.”
    “Yes,” he agreed, taking in the smooth long lines of her body and remembering the gym downstairs. “That works for you, but I’ve never had much time for physical outlets for my emotions.”
    “Not even with Jeanie?”
    This time he didn’t even make an attempt to hold back his laughter. “Sarah Wilson, believe it or not, without a camera in her hand, Jeanie was as physical as a dress mannequin in a department store window.”
    “But your affair? Didn’t you ever? I mean, surely—” Sarah cut off her own question. She didn’t want to know about their relationship.
    “Sarah, the affair I was referring to wasn’t between Jeanie and me. She’d been with some journalist for over a year when they broke up. I never even kissed her. Well, that’s not exactly right. She kissed me once, when she suffered her first broken heart. Shocked the hell out of us both. She was twenty and had too much wine. I wasn’t the man she wanted to be kissing and neither of us evermentioned it again. Shows you what an impression my kisses make.”
    Sarah slid the skillet from the burner and looked at Asa. “Oh, how awful. I’m so sorry.”
    “Well, let’s face it, Sarah. I’d make a terrible husband.” Asa was confused by the depth of Sarah’s concern. He didn’t normally open up to a woman, but she seemed so determined to share his great disappointment that he found himself responding in a way he never had before.
    “Oh, but you’re wrong. I mean you kiss wonderfully well. Of course I don’t have much to compare it to, but I thought it was … sweet.”
    “Sweet?” He gripped the countertop with his fingers. “Sarah, no man wants his kisses to be sweet. If you’re going to try to make me feel better about what happened tonight, at least use a passionate term to describe my kiss.”
    “Like what? I’m afraid that I’m not very well versed in love talk.”
    “Like exciting, or hot.”
    Sarah knew that in spite of what he was saying, the stern man staring at her was only using her to take the brunt of his anger. She was the one who ought to be angry. She wanted him to see her, instead of someone she was substituting for. Someone who, in Sarah’s personal opinion, was an idiot when it came to Asa Canyon. Any woman who’d willingly give up his kisses must be an idiot. She herself was having trouble remaining calm just because he wasstanding near her. Thinking of how he’d kissed her made her situation even worse. Her emotions scrambled in forty different directions.
    The kiss