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way.”
    â€œInvolved?” Tate repeated, his expression completely baffled. “You mean…?” His eyes widened as the implication finally registered. “Why on earth would she think that?”
    â€œYour jacket.”
    â€œMy jacket?” Tate was getting that spinning sensation in his head again.
    â€œYou left it in the kitchen. My mother, the protector of my virtue, found it there this morning. She’s assumed the worst.”
    Tate burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. “You’re kidding!”
    â€œI do not kid about matters such as marriage and murder, particularly when they’re my own.”
    â€œCan we expect to find your father on the front porch with a shotgun?”
    Victoria gave him a withering glance. “Okay,” she warned. “Make fun of me. But I’m telling you, before you know it, that woman in there is going to have you marching down the aisle.”
    â€œI’m a total stranger.”
    â€œShe doesn’t know that.”
    â€œShe would not try to marry her daughter off to someone she doesn’t even know.”
    â€œTate, my mother may seem quiet and unassuming to you, but in her heart lurks the soul of a desperate matchmaker.”
    â€œWhy should she be desperate? You’re hardly over the hill.”
    â€œThanks. But she seems to think I have all the characteristics of a woman who’s going to spend her whole life in trouble up to her eyebrows without some man to protect her.”
    â€œThat thought has crossed my mind, too.”
    â€œSee what I mean?” she said triumphantly. “You’re two of a kind. Once she finds that out, you and I will have no further say in this. You might as well go back to Cincinnati and start picking out silver patterns.”
    â€œActually, I saw one out front I thought was rather nice,” he taunted.
    Victoria groaned and buried her head in her arms. “I don’t believe this.”
    Tate was watching her closely, and something in the vulnerable curve of her neck got to him. Tentatively, he ran his fingers along the soft, tender skin. “I don’t believe it, either,” he said huskily.
    She gazed up at him with luminous blue eyes and wondered why on earth she’d been putting up such a fuss. It wasn’t as though Tate was some disgustingly ugly, boring toad. He was a handsome prince, if ever she’d seen one, but he was so blasted unsuitable. He would never pick daisies with her or wade barefoot in a stream or ride a merry-go-round, at least not without thinking twice about it.
    He leaned down and brushed a soft kiss across her lips, igniting a flame that first flickered weakly, then burst into a glorious heat. “Oh,” she sighed softly, as his lips captured hers again, this time more hungrily. Only their mouths touched, but it was a possessive branding.
    Then, just when Victoria started seeing an entire kaleidoscope of colors, Tate stood up, his expression thoroughly confused and somewhat horrified. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œWhy?” she asked curiously.
    â€œI shouldn’t have done that.”
    â€œDidn’t you enjoy it?” For some reason, she couldn’t resist teasing him. She knew exactly why he was so disturbed. His behavior had been both unpredictable and, from what she suspected about IRS regulations, unprofessional. Tate McAndrews did not strike her as the type to bend, much less break, the rules.
    â€œOf course, I enjoyed it.”
    â€œWell, then?”
    â€œIt’s just not…”
    â€œProper? I promise you I won’t charge you with sexual harassment.” She held up her hand solemnly, though her lips were twitching.
    â€œThat’s not the point.”
    â€œDon’t you ever do anything because it feels right at the moment?”
    â€œOf course,” he said stiffly, thinking of the majority of his relationships. They were all built on a flimsy base of such moments