“You didn’t lose your piercing, did you?” he asked, crouching down next to me and offering me his handkerchief. God bless him, he carried a hankie.

“No, it’d take a lot for this sucker to come out,” I said, accepting what he offered and pressing it to the tip of my tongue where I’d bitten it.

“Did it hurt?” he asked.

“Well yeah, didn’t you hear me yell?”

“I meant the piercing. When you got it.”

“Why, you thinking about piercing something, Clark?” I asked with amusement.

“Good lord, no.”

I laughed out loud. He sat down next to me on the floor of the attic and looked carefully at me. “I just wondered how it felt.”

“It hurt, sure, but a good kind of hurt. And I was expecting it, unlike a moment ago. No biggie, I’m a tough girl. Five brothers, remember?”

He stared at me a moment, his eyes darting back down to my mouth. I poked the barbell out a little so he could see it, waggling my tongue at him. He breathed in hard. “Tough girl,” he echoed.

We sat in a patch of sunshine, staring at each other. Eventually I put his handkerchief back into my mouth, and his eyes blazed. And when finally a cloud passed overhead and interrupted the sunshine, we both sat back a bit, each looking away. Clark finally moved, standing and offering me his hand. He pulled me up harder than I expected and I overbalanced, knocking us into each other. We both laughed.

“Well, let’s see what’s so darn heavy in this trunk!” he exclaimed, and set about worrying the lock open. I sucked on his hankie while I watched him work.

There was dust in his hair, and I reached out without thinking and ran my fingers through it. His hands faltered. “Dust,” I murmured, stepping back and shaking my head.

“Mm-hmm,” he replied, and sprang the lock. Taking a step back, he opened the trunk and we peered inside. “Well would you look at that,” he said, admiring. I looked, and had no idea what I was seeing. Bronze, curved, looked like a . . . cornucopia?

“Is that a horn of plenty? Like people put on the table at Thanksgiving?”

“Oh no. That’s a speaker, Vivian,” he said, lifting it carefully from the trunk. The delight on his face was evident; it was like he’d found treasure. “It’s a gramophone. And in almost mint condition.”

“Very cool,” I breathed, looking past him into the trunk and seeing the base there, complete with needle.

“We should bring this downstairs, set it up in your living room.”

“Good idea. You never know when there might be a Johnny Mathis emergency,” I said.

His answering grin lit up the entire attic, even though the sun was still behind the clouds.

The gramophone was moved to the living room, and though Clark didn’t have time to tinker with it for too long, we did bust out a Mathis album to make sure it worked. Scratchy and tinny, not at all the sound quality this century was used to, it was a great addition to the room.

The house was definitely taking shape.

What was not falling into place was the cowboy. Hank continued to make me hot, but good God almighty, he was proving to be a tougher nut to crack than I’d anticipated. Every day he came to feed the animals. Every day he stood in the driveway next to his truck, peeling off his shirt like he was posing for a calendar. Every day he worked in the barn, pitching hay, feeding the chickens, caring for the horses. Every other day he rode one of them instead of just turning them out in the adjacent pasture, and I’d stop box sorting or pile sweeping to stand in the window watching him.

Watching him saddle up, drawing the leather tight and checking the straps. Watching him swing himself up with only his own strength. Watching him shake out his hair like he was on the cover of Two Scoops of Passion or Catalonian Sex Gods (now in paperback!) and literally ride off into the sunset.

And how many times did I get myself off while thinking of the cowboy? I’d lost count. The absolutely erotic and detailed dreams I’d been having about my lover, whose face was still hidden to me but was of course my cowboy’s, made me hornier than ever.

I’d awaken most nights, strung tighter than a bow, images of naked, sweaty, sexy times imprinted across the inside of my eyelids, and my hand would snake down down down to finish myself off, gasping and panting and coming so hard I’d see spots.

The onion peeling was slow going. God knows I tried, but Hank was not giving anything up. I thought back to all my favorite romance novels, where the hero was tough and unflinching in his beliefs. Where he guarded his dark secrets with the strength of a warrior and the stubbornness of a mule. But that was part of the journey, right? That was part of what the heroine had to push through and forward against all odds. She must never take no for an answer, she must fight back and use every feminine wile in her arsenal.

I wanted wild and wanton, but my arsenal was waning, whimpering, and wandering in the wah-wahs.

I tried every trick in the book. I waited until I knew Hank was heading toward his truck and could see me, then I walked past the windows in just my artfully draped towel. Once. Twice. Three times a weirdo.

I went out one morning still in my nightgown, a wispy cottony little bit of a thing, with a jar of peanut butter, saying that I simply couldn’t get the top off and could he please help me? He opened the jar, told me that Peter Pan was gross and that he preferred Jif, then went back to mucking the stalls.

I sunned myself one afternoon on the back porch, all greased up and shiny in my bikini. When he finally appeared, he took no notice of me—until I gave up and tried to get out of the vinyl lawn chair. I was so slippery I slid right through the strapping. He came out of the barn and found me a tangle of slick arms and legs poking out though the vinyl strips, my actual bottom on the porch floor. He’d had to hold the chair down so I could get out. Even then, he just shook his head and went and rode Paula. Stupid lucky horse.

I boob propped, I booty shook, I cheek pinched and hair tossed. I was turning into the kind of girl I couldn’t stand. I sucked lollipops, moaned in ecstasy when biting into a donut, and simpered like a fool while holding two avocados in the same hand while caressing an eggplant with the other. He’d asked if I was making a salad.

Not all still waters ran deep. Thank God these particular still waters ran gorgeous.

And while all this was going on, I was also getting ready to fly back to Philadelphia to pack up my things and officially move out to Mendocino.

The day before I left dawned clear and bright. I woke horny and frustrated. I’d spent another night being tortured/delighted by my faceless dark lover. The lover with the hands of a god and the mouth of a poet. With his mouth he told me the words I’d always longed to hear, but had never been told. He loved me, cherished me, would go to the ends of the earth to protect me, and would spend the rest of his life caring for me.