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start sucking him while he slept. Sometimes he wouldn’t wake until the instant before orgasm, and his expression when he’d told Laurel about this said all she needed to know about how much he enjoyed this little ritual. Once or twice she had thought of trying it herself, but in the end she decided it was better not to compete with Starlette at her game; better to stick to her own bedroom tricks or invent some new ones—and she had.
    “We’re broken up,” Laurel said. “She’s your wife. I just assumed…”
    Danny shook his head. “No. What about you?”
    “No,” Laurel lied, hating herself for it, but too afraid of giving him an excuse to make love with Starlette to tell him the truth. Besides…if she admitted to sleeping with Warren—even just twice, which was the truth—the pregnancy would become a nightmare of doubt for Danny.
    Danny was watching her closely. Then, as he so often did (and Warren almost never), he read her mind and did exactly what she wanted him to do. He marched up to her and smothered her in his arms. His scent enfolded her, and the strength in his arms surprised her, as it always did. When he lifted her off her feet, she felt herself melting from the outside in. The note stayed clenched in her hand, for until he let go, there was no way to slip it into his pocket. When he finally let her down, she would squeeze his behind, then slide the folded square into his back pocket. She could text him later and tell him to look in his pocket.
    He was murmuring in her ear,
“I miss you…Jesus, I miss you,”
but she felt only the moist rush of air, which sent bright arcs of arousal through her body. As he lowered her to the floor, he slid her crotch along his hard thigh, and a shiver went through her. She would be wet in the time it took him to slide his hand past her waistband. She was thinking of helping him do just that when she saw a dark flash at the window in the door, as though someone had looked in and then jerked suddenly out of sight. She clutched Danny’s arm with her right hand and dragged it away from her stomach.
    “Keep hugging me,” she told him. “You’re an upset parent.”
    “What?” he groaned.
    “There’s someone at the door. I think they saw us.”
    Danny’s body went limp, and Laurel patted his back as though comforting him. Then she pulled away and assured him that everything was going to work out eventually, that Michael might make surprising progress before the school year ended. Danny stared back like a lovesick teenager, deaf to her words, his eyes trying to drink in every atom of her being.
    “I love you,” he said under his breath. “I think about you every minute. I fly over your house every day, just hoping to get a glimpse of you.”
    “I know.” She had seen the Cessna he taught lessons in buzzing over Avalon several times in the past five weeks. The sight had lifted her heart every time, in spite of her vows to forget him. “Please shut up.”
    “It’s better that you know than not. I don’t want you thinking there’s anything between me and Starlette other than the kids.”
    She felt a surge of brutal honesty. “But what’s the
point
? Either you talk some sense into your wife, or you may as well start sleeping with her again. This is the last hug we’ll ever have. I mean it.”
    He nodded soberly.
    “Danny?” she said, realizing that she had not yet given him the note.
    “What?”
    She moved forward, but now there was a face at the door, and this time it did not retreat. It belonged to Ann Mayer, mother of Carl, the severe ADD case. Ann was staring at Danny with undisguised curiosity.
    “To hell with her,” Danny whispered, stepping between Laurel and the door. “What were you going to say?”
    “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
    “It was important. I could tell.”
    Laurel waved Mrs. Mayer in, and the door opened immediately. “Michael’s going to be fine, Major McDavitt,” Laurel said, using Danny’s retired rank to put