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A little too aware of how much she wanted to wrap her hands around those shiny strands and tug him into her, she trapped her hands between her lower back and the tree.

“You must be freezing,” she finally said, even though she wasn’t wearing much herself.

He shrugged a broad shoulder, one dusted with a delectable scatter of freckles. She hadn’t noticed those during the madness. “Funny, I didn’t figure you for a smoker. The jogging and all.”

He slid her a narrow, backward glance. “This is the second cigarette I’ve had in two years. The first was”—he smiled thinly—“fifteen minutes ago.”

Not knowing what to make of that, she floundered. “Um…they’re Jaime’s.”

“Virginia Slims? Figures.” Campbell tipped his head back and blew a vaporous stream into the air. She recognized the smoldering look in his eyes when they found their way back to her. “Binges aplenty in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Possibly. I suppose.” Leaning back, the bark bit into her palms. “I mean, three times was almost a third of my total, so I couldn’t really say.”

His insouciant expression collapsed in on itself. Smoke hit him wrong, and he bent at the waist, choking. She started to push off the tree, but he raised an arm, holding her back. “Do you always have to be so…damned honest?”

She frowned, not sure how to be anything but.

It was enough to keep her gaze from sliding over his half-naked body the way her hands had the night before—forget worrying about what she was saying.

Tanned and lean, his hair streaked from sunlight three thousand miles away, he looked like something magical that had stepped from her dreams and into her garden, a delicious apparition set to drift away at any moment, like the smoke from Jaime’s Virginia Slim.

“My self-control has limits, Fontana.” He spoke around the dangling cigarette, which only added to his appeal, something she recognized as feckless and silly.

But her eyes wouldn’t stray from his plump bottom lip, memories of devastating pleasure flooding her as she recalled what he’d done to her with his mouth. Each vivid image sent a hard twist through her belly, a pinch of longing settling between her legs.

She must have made a sound because he growled low in his throat, the cigarette dipping. “I’m trying here, I really am,” he whispered.

She shoved off the tree, the hem of his T-shirt brushing her thighs as she moved closer.

He held up the hand holding the camera and stepped back. “If you touch me right now, we’ll end up christening your pristine gazebo. And you’ll have to worry about the neighbors hearing us. Count on it.”

She halted, her gaze flicking to the gazebo, lips rounding in delight.

“You ever?” he asked softly.

Blood pumping in her ears, she shook her head. The gazebo . The planks would be cool and slick with dew. Campbell’s skin would be hot and slick?—

He pitched his cigarette to the ground. “Quit looking at me like that.” Her gaze followed the smoking nub, and he snarled, grinding it out before pocketing it.

“Like what?” She sounded breathless. Aroused.

Who was she kidding ?

“Eating me up with those sparkling sapphires, that’s what. I know you only wanted one night to prove…whatever it is you wanted to prove. So, you got your night. We both got a night.” He paced to a row of pansies in full bloom, then turned to face her. “Why is this stuff sprouting in the fall?”

“Crystal bowl pansies. They bloom until spring.”

He grunted but leaned in, trailing a finger lightly across a pastel petal. Lifting his camera, he seemed to forget she stood there as he aimed. “You’re over this whim, right?” he asked without looking back, adjusting the aperture as he clicked away. “You learned enough?”

“Sure.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I could last another year or two now.”

The shutter sounded in rapid succession. “Great.”

“Yes...well, it is.”

“I need to spend my time with Kit anyway.”

“You seem to be doing better with him.”

Freezing in place, he lowered the camera. “You sound surprised.”

“I guess I am.” She lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “It’s not like you were part of his life until a week ago.”

“Thanks one helluva lot, Quinn.” Stalking past her, he took the gravel path at a furious lope.

Rubbing her arms to keep warm—but mostly to keep her hands occupied—she sprinted alongside him.

Fontana had the sneaking impression she’d hurt his feelings, something she’d thought was impossible.

“Listen, let’s not muck this up by arguing about a subject we’ll never agree on.

You’re here for him now, that’s what has to count. ”

“ Has to count,” he muttered, not breaking his livid stride .

“If you could only see the advantage of staying in Promise, where Kit has friends, a school, family. Can’t you take pictures anywhere? Moving will rip the rug out from under him, destroy any structure, any routine, he has.”

Campbell kicked a pinecone from his path, muddy bootlaces whipping his ankles.

“I got structure in spades—out the wazoo—until my childhood felt like a goddamn timetable. Football practice at five. Baseball at six-thirty. Dinner at eight, sharp. Bedtime at ten. Homework in between. In the winter, I practiced in a gym. On Saturdays, my father had the coach come over for private batting lessons. A tutor each Sunday after church. No affection was mixed into that assortment, either, I’ll guarantee you.

” He shot her a vengeful glare. “Besides, my farcical picture-taking is stationed in Atlanta.”

“Uprooting Kit to compensate for your exacting childhood isn’t the answer.”

Blocking her path, he caged her between his body and the scant section of post and board she and Jaime had fenced last May.

Waves of fury radiated from him, tensing the muscles in his arms, tightening the jaw darkened by a day’s growth of whiskers.

“What do you know about raising a child?” he asked, his lips chapped from overuse, his teeth a brutal flash of white around the words.

“And why are you so sure I’ll do a shitty job of it? ”

Holding Campbell’s stunning, golden gaze didn’t help her gain strength of purpose. It only summoned an image of him moving inside her, his eyes darkening before he tumbled over the edge.

Her quickly drawn inhalation only served to remind her that he hadn’t taken a shower. The scent of them was thick on his skin—and on hers.

A traitorous lick of excitement threatened to diffuse her sanity. Without thinking, she pressed a hand to his chest and shoved, only to realize too late that she’d overlooked his lack of clothing. And his resistance.

If her fingers curled into him, seeking, it was beyond her control.

“Why are you so sure tearing him away from everything he’s ever known is the solution? I don’t, and I refuse to let you think I do. Maybe everyone else is, but I’m not scared to tell you the truth, Campbell True.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Even after what we shared.”

“Do you mean to fight me on this?” His labored breaths brushed her brow, the faint scent of smoke oddly appealing.

His heartbeat drummed beneath her palm, his hair crisp torture as it coiled around her fingers. A maelstrom of emotion seized her—excitement, allure, apprehension, skepticism. “Fight you?” she asked, certain she’d lost her train of thought.

His hand cradled her face, guiding her to his heavy-lidded gaze.

“You’ve got me practically on my knees when my good sense tells me to run in the other direction.

One minute you look at me like I’m the devil, the next like I’m the answer to your prayers.

You tell me you have no need of me, yet you draw me closer.

” Leaning in, his mouth halted a hairbreadth from hers.

“I think you’re anything but through with me, Hellcat. ”

“I’m done.” She tugged him off balance, against her. “ Finished .”

She was losing her mind. Making, for the first time in years, an impulsive, glorious error in judgment.

She wanted him back in her bed. On these steps. In the gazebo.

She wanted to understand what made him tick. She wanted to know .

And she wanted it now .

“Tonight, we can continue where we left off.” His tongue traced her lower lip, halting at the corner of her mouth.

Before she could respond, he kissed her—softly at first, a teasing but very deliberate sweep that left no room for misinterpretation.

His lips parted hers, the heat of him sinking in like a promise.

When he pulled back, his breath was uneven, his voice rough. “I’ll bring Kit. Pizza, a movie. After he falls asleep, I’ll take him home, then come back and show you that thing I mentioned. Remember? Silk ties, your bedposts.”

She hummed, agreeable to silk ties and bedposts. At the moment, agreeable to anything he wanted to do to her.

Or that he would let her do to him.

“It’ll be the perfect time to tell Kit about the move,” he said, his finger skimming the pulse point beneath her earlobe, his lips following right behind. “You can help me prepare him. He trusts you.”

Fontana shook her head, refocusing her mind. The sexy man leaning over her partially blocked a dreamy cobalt sky, dappled sunlight breaking through cotton clouds to drift across him.

A chill she couldn’t suppress rippled up her spine.

Crazy . That’s what she was. Letting a charmer seduce reason from her, then lying to herself about why she was allowing it.

Forgetting her promise to put a child’s needs above her own while giving him more credit than was his due.

A great lover— fantastic , actually—but the glimmer of hope she’d had that he was different only proved how far passion could carry you down the garden path.

And who knew garden paths better than she did? Fabricated creations were her career , for heaven’s sake.

When Fontana shoved Campbell this time, he was unprepared. Stumbling back, his feet crossed, and he landed neatly on his bottom in a bed of pine straw.