“But even as she told herself that, she remembered the way Cal had looked today with his shirt off while he’d stood on the ladder and scraped the side of Annie’s house. Watching those muscles bunch and flex every time he moved had made her crazy and she’d finally grabbed his shirt, thrown it at him, and delivered a stern lecture on the depletion of the ozone layer and skin cancer.”

“She felt hot, strong, alive against him, and he found he had this crazy urge to move his mouth down to the side of her neck, to press it against her, to taste her skin. He wanted to feel her breasts, wanted to pull her T-shirt up and feel her hot skin against his. Damn, he wanted her.”

“He knew he loved her in February: steam leaving the mug of coffee in her hands in thick curls; her hair a snarled mess around her shoulders; the morning on the other side of the window bitter and windswept; her face lovely, pale, and lonely in a way he didn’t understand. She sat in the chair in his bedroom, in his shirt and a pair of socks that went up to her knees, gooseflesh on her slender legs. A copy of Oliver Twist had been open across the arm of the chair. “I think it might snow today,” she’d said, and he’d been completely in love with her.He thought she might have loved him back in March: in from the rain; his clothes stuck to his skin; the umbrella showering the hardwood of her entry hall; the dinner she’d planned forgotten when he’d helped her out of her jacket and she’d been shivering with cold. That day, when she’d pushed his wet shirt back off his shoulders and stretched up on her toes to kiss him, he was sure there was something new shining deep down in her coffee-colored eyes. “You’re so cute,” she’d said, and he’d known: she loved him.”

“He stilled at her laughter. It was rich and sexy, dark and playful. Something he’d never heard out of her mouth. His vision blurred for a second when she dragged his shirt up enough for their skin to touch. Then she gave up on getting the shirt off and latched on to his mouth again. He groaned as the heat of her skin blazed against his.”

“When everyone just shook their heads, he unbuttoned his shirt and,oh good Lord, shrugged out of it, bunching it up to slip beneath herhead like a pillow.Don’t look at him, she told herself. Don’t look—She looked.Sweet Jesus.”

“Even now her body yearned to be closer to him. She wanted to press her nose into his skin and inhale hungrily—he always smelled as if he’d just taken a walk across a sunny meadow. She wanted to rub her palm against his jaw to feel the beginning of stubbles. She wanted to slide her hands underneath his shirt and learn every single shape and texture, with the fierce dedication she’d once put into mastering the Grandes Études.”