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asked.
    Glancing across the table, he watched the flickering candlelight wash over Savannah. A soft glow highlighted the mass of chestnut curls she was not capable of controlling. Long lashes brushed her fine-boned cheeks as she blinked slowly, watching him watch her.
    With those looks, it was no wonder the men in town were buzzing about her.
    "I was happy," he said, letting the wine trickle down his throat, hoping it would dull his heartache.
    "What was she like?"
    Zach closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the chair, remembering. The crash of waves in the distance and the rustle of pine branches in the breeze soothed him. A little. "She was fragile. Like an angel made of glass. The kind they blow until it's so thin you think it'll break if you touch it."
    He had often been afraid to touch her, to hug her with even half his strength, but that was far too personal a memory to share. "There wasn't a cross bone in her body or an evil thought in her head. She was good... kind." He blinked, refocused. Savannah had moved forward in her chair, her arms propped on the table, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight. "But she wasn't strong. I knew when I asked her to marry me that I would have to take care of her, that it wouldn't be the other way around. I accepted that, I wanted it."
    "You wanted her."
    Yes . He had wanted Hannah, had loved her intensely—something he had not felt for a woman since. But as the years of their marriage passed, and she seemed to wither under his care, he had often questioned whether he was the right man for her. If any man could be the right man for her. At the very end, he had almost decided that staying in the nurturing care of her family would have been best. He was a man, and he had needed certain things.
    Things Hannah had given freely but without genuine interest. Without fire or enthusiasm.
    It horrified him, made him feel guilty as hell, to think he'd loved a woman so completely, yet had very little in common with her in bed.
    Conversely, the woman sitting across from him—uppity, proud, and sassy—was everything Hannah had not been. He sure as heck didn't like her... but he liked watching her. Watching swift, joyful smiles cross her face, hearing her gusts of uninhibited laughter, and the way her mirth pressed her bosom against her crisp shirtwaist.
    She enjoyed life, or so it looked to him.
    He even imagined she might be an entertaining companion, maybe even pleasant on a good day. And just when he felt safe thinking that, she would turn and deliver a crushing line of superiority and irritate him so bad he wanted to spit.
    On her.
    But she was intriguing, all right. That, he could not deny.
    "What about you, Miss Connor? Never felt the urge to shackle yourself to a man?"
    She straightened in her chair, her spine locking one vertebrae at a time until she sat as rigid as a dried-up schoolmarm. "Me?" With a scant laugh, she took a hasty sip of wine.
    Zach smiled, sinking low in his chair, balancing his glass on his stomach. So, she doesn't want to talk about herself . "It's a customary question, isn't it? I thought most women wanted marriage."
    She sniffed. "I'm not most women, Constable."
    No kidding , he wanted to say, eyeing her over the rim of his glass.
    "Furthermore, I have a calling which keeps me decisively engaged for most of my waking—"
    "Busy."
    She started, sliding forward a bit. "Pardon me?"
    "Busy. Your calling keeps you busy . 'Actively engaged' sounds so"—he took a thoughtful sip—"frosty."
    "Frosty?"
    "Cool."
    "Cool?" If he could see her well enough, he'd bet money her cheeks were blazing. "Constable, I'm neither frosty nor cool, nor—"
    "Frigid."
    Flattening her palms on the table, she rose to her feet, her shadow washing over him. "I'm not frigid."
    He paused, felt an undeniable urge to challenge her. But, no, he couldn't do that. Could he?
    "Prove it," he said, confirming that wine had indeed distorted his reasoning.
    "Okay," she whispered. "I will."
    He