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my congratulations.” He shifted in his chair, trying to get more comfortable. “Your future?”
    She flicked him a quick glance. “That’s to be determined as well.”
    Hmm. Something had sent her running from depreciation and derivatives, ledgers and line items. He opened his mouth to ask, but she slipped in her question first.
    “Are you planning to return to racing?” Then she waved a hand. “No, scratch that. If you’re planning on returning to racing, what would possess you to do something you obviously know to be dangerous…even life-threatening?”
    See? This was why he liked to keep busy. Navel-gazing was so not his thing. He dredged up his usual answer. “There’s explanations of that all over the internet. Danger triggers the fight-or-flight response which releases pleasure-generating compounds into the system.”
    Her frown indicated she wasn’t satisfied with his rehearsed, clinical response. “But why can’t you find pleasure another way?”
    He could have told her even a night with the Berry triplets didn’t give him a similar adrenaline high, but he didn’t want to bring them into the conversation. “What, you’re worried about me, Rose?” he asked, his tone teasing enough, he hoped, to divert her from the subject.
    Her head came up and there was something in her eyes that made his pulse jump. She swallowed, and he followed the movement of her slender neck, wanting, suddenly, to put his mouth to that tender skin.
    “I saw your scar,” she whispered.
    His belly tightened. Okay, so not diverted. “It’s ugly.”
    She shook her head, her gaze not leaving his. “It scared me.”
    And he was taken back a dozen years, when he’d looked into her big gray eyes and felt her warm body against his and a tide of tenderness had welled out of nowhere to combine with a potent spike of hungry lust. The first, unfamiliar. The second, inappropriate. You scare me , he almost said, then bit it back as he rose from his seat. “I’ve gotta go.”
    “I thought we had a third category of questions.”
    “Not now,” he said, dropping the yarn manacling his wrists so he could walk away from her. It was supposed to be Favorite Sex Acts, but he had to leave before he decided to ask Rose something else.
    About what it felt like to fall in love.
     
    Early Monday morning, Rose approached Payne’s house, telling herself it was bound to be a better day. Their intention was to put in a few hours at one or more of his businesses, which would mean—she hoped—no opportunity for another awkward heart-to-heart like the day before.
    Whatever had gotten into her, telling him his scar scared her?
    He was a reckless danger junkie who didn’t care a whit about her opinion of him and how he lived. The fact was this: Payne Colson was a burning star, all brilliant light and explosive energy, and staying emotionally clear of him was the only way a woman would keep herself from getting scorched.
    It should be easy to keep that distance. Though she might want to add a dash of excitement to her life that had been entirely too proscribed—by other people—an overindulged, unserious playboy was truly not her type.
    As she pulled into the driveway, he popped out the front door. Dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and running shoes, he was already sliding into the passenger seat before she came to a full stop. Impatience and the clean scent of soap wafted off him. “Let’s go.”
    She groaned. “What, no ‘good morning?’ No coffee for poor Rose?”
    He glanced over at her, then took a second, longer one. “Late night?”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Rose, you look a little…wilted.” He grinned at that last word.
    “So funny.”
    “Punny, more like,” he said, still smiling.
    His good humor rubbed her the wrong way. She hadn’t slept the night before, tossing and turning until baby Marcus began fussing sometime after midnight. With his daddy on a 24-hour shift at the fire station, Rose had gotten out of bed to