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gone again. "You'll have to respect that."
    He nodded immediately. "All right. I promise I won't disturb you while you're working."
    "A cleaning service comes in once a week, but I expect you to do your share of work around the house."
    "Agreed." He smiled very slightly. "I'd better warn you, though, I'm no better at cooking now than I was ten years ago."
    Kelly refused to be charmed, but she couldn't help wondering how she could have forgotten how engaging his crooked half smile was. Keeping her voice dispassionate, she said, "There are cookbooks on the shelf by the pantry."
    "I'll remember that," he murmured.
    She remembered how he had been when announcing he would marry her—confident, assured, and never actually asking her about it. Not that she would have said no, but still, she knew now his kind of decisive—even masterful—attitude that had so intrigued her as a girl would run head-oninto her independence ten years later. He was going to find that out, no doubt, but she had to make one last thing clear.
    "And one more thing," she said quietly. "I've told you I'm different; you don't seem to want to accept it. I know that you see me as the only tie to those lost years, but—"
    "Kelly — "
    "Hear me out, Mitch." She held his gaze steadily. "If I've learned anything, it's that nothing is simple, I promised you an ending, but it may not be the one you want. If it isn't, don't think you can . . . can recreate the girl I used to be. No matter what happens, I won't be swallowed up by you. I've fought too hard to stand on my own two feet."
    He was frowning now. "Is that what you think would have happened before? That you'd have been swallowed up by me?"
    "It was already happening, before the accident." She conjured a faint, rueful smile. "You were strong, and I wasn't. You were so sure of yourself, so confident. Even arrogant." When he moved slightly, as if in protest, she nodded. "Oh, yes. But arrogance isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe your strength came from that. The problem was that there was so much of you and so little of me. And I never knew it. Until I was alone."
    In that last simple sentence, so quietly uttered, was a world of stark emotion.
    He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I see we have a lot to talk about."
    She knew that was true. What she didn't know was what would happen when the talking was done. And she already felt drained. She looked at their cold coffee on the counter and sighed. "That equipment I'm expecting should be here anytime.
    Why don't you get your suitcases out of the car, and you can unpack."
    He looked at her for a moment, and that crooked, engaging smile curved his lips. "You're that sure I came out here prepared to move in?"
    As she moved around the counter toward the door that led into the hallway, she said dryly, "Wasn't I supposed to guess? Arrogant, remember? That hasn't changed."
    Following her, Mitch felt a curious mixture of anxiety and fascination. Anxiety because he was beginning to realize she had changed a great deal— and fascination for the same reason. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was staying in the house only because Kelly had weighed the situation carefully and had decided to allow it; if she had decided against it, nothing he could have said would have budged her.
    She wasn't hard, but there was a toughness in her now that had not been evident ten years before. It was part stubbornness, he thought, and part hard-won self-knowledge. The impulsive, emotional, pliant girl he remembered had grown into this thoughtful, wary, strong-willed woman.
    It had been a shock to him, but not as great a shock as he had anticipated. Because even though he saw the changes in her, he felt a bond between them. He wasn't sure what that tie was composed of; right now the emotions were jumbled and confused. Pain and loss, guilt and bitterness, love and shared dreams, familiarity and strangeness, longing and regret. He felt it all, and he thought she did as