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breakfast?”
    He blinked. “You want to let me inside your house?”
    “It seems only fair since you made me breakfast recently. And, to be honest, I’m a way better cook than you are.”
    “But I scared you.”
    She took his hand. “ Not you.”
    “Jenny.” His voice was hoarse.
    “Look, I freaked out and nearly flashed the neighborhood. You stopped me.”
    “I… Yeah.”
    “So thanks.”
    He got up very slowly, as if he was as stiff and sore as she was from their wild night. “I think you need a shower,” she said.
    “So do you. Your hair looks like witchella.”
    She laughed and squeezed his hand. “Come inside. It’ll be okay… Just come inside now.”

Chapter Five
    Taz showered in Jenny’s little guest bathroom. He felt too large and masculine in the pretty floral space, which about summed up the way he felt in her entire house. Delicate wallpaper and pretty chairs with gilt legs that looked like they’d crumble under his weight.
    But at least the water was hot, taking away some of the aches in his shoulders. What the hell had he been doing, sleeping on a porch swing all night?
    Except he hadn’t been able to leave her. No way. What if she’d run out into the street again? He’d had to be there to keep her safe.
    His shorts were thick with mud. He decided he was better off wearing one of her mauve towels around his waist and taking them home to his washing machine.
    When he went downstairs, Jenny was already in her kitchen and she was singing.
    She had an off-key voice, but it had a sultry quality as she sang along with a female country singer. And the fact that she was singing when last night she’d been terrified, when he’d terrified her, made some of the strung tension in his shoulders loosen.
    “We’re having crêpes,” she told him. “Do you want to pour yourself some coffee?”
    He wasted no time in doing it. “Are you having some?”
    She shook her head. “I have coconut oolong in the morning.”
    He grimaced. “Sounds like one of those brands they used to sell at Coffee Dreams.”
    “ Female type tea, you mean?” she asked so sweetly but he knew better than to step into her baited trap by agreeing with her. Though he had thought it, of course. “I miss that place.”
    “Me too. They had great espresso.”
    “Very manly.” Her moss agate eyes laughed at him and just then a ray of sunlight shot through her window through the clouds, illuminating her profile. She looked pure. Like a dancer before she goes out on stage, like an artist before she paints at her easel.
    He memorized how she looked so he could call it up later, feeling himself sinking even further.
    “That’s as good a segue as any I could come up with,” he said. “They’re having a kind of barn raising at Coffee Dreams tonight. I want you to come with me.”
    She froze, but then her jaw tightened stubbornly. “All right.”
    He knew it was the last thing she wanted to do, that her instincts were screaming at her to stay safe, especially after the fallout last night, but she wasn’t going to let herself give in.
    “You’re a hell of a woman.”
    Her eyes widened. “You must really want your crêpes.”
    “What kind?”
    She talked about herbs and berries picked fresh from her garden, but he barely heard her. His attention was not focused on the food but on the competent way she moved around her kitchen, with the wet shine of her clean braid and her small shapely body shown off in shorts and a T-shirt.
    Remembering those hot kisses in her garden, he had to drop his gaze. He wanted to do it again. Even knowing that he’d terrified her, he wanted to press his lips to hers, share her breath, feel her urgency.
    More, he found himself wondering how she’d react if he took her to bed. Would that wonderful laughter be in her eyes, that softness only for him?
    His throat tight, he gulped more scalding coffee. It couldn’t happen, no matter what his body yearned for. He couldn’t hide who he was from her.