On a long breath, he stared hard into the mirror. When a man was going down for the third time, he recognized the signs.

Don’t be an idiot, Muldoon, he told his reflection. Keep it steady as she goes. The lady wants to keep it simple, and so do you.

It wouldn’t do to forget it.

“Hot date?” Feigning disinterest, Nick slouched against the doorjamb. He’d been passing and had caught the way Zack was staring blindly into the mirror.

“Huh? Yeah, I guess you could say that.” Zack dragged a hand through his wet hair and scattered drops of water. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“I’m on at six.” For reasons Nick couldn’t understand, he was swamped by the memory of the times he’d stood in the bathroom watching Zack shave. How it had made him feel when Zack slapped shaving cream on his face. “Rio’s got beef stew on special tonight. Too bad you’ll miss it.”

Zack grabbed a shirt. “You take my share or Rio’ll make me eat it for breakfast.”

Nick grinned, then remembered himself and smirked. “You take a lot of crap from him.”

“He’s bigger than I am.”

“Yeah, right.”

Watching Nick in the mirror, Zack buttoned his shirt. “He likes to think he’s looking out for me. It doesn’t cost me anything to let him. He ever tell you about how he got that scar down the side of his face?”

“He said something about a broken bottle and a drunk marine.”

“The drunk marine was going for my throat with that broken bottle. Rio got in his way. The way I see it, I owe Rio a lot more than putting up with his nagging.” Tucking in his shirt, Zack turned, grinned. “And you’re getting paid to put up with it.”

“He’s okay.” Nick would have liked to ask more, like why a drunk marine had wanted to slice Zack’s throat, but he was afraid Zack would just shrug it off. “Listen, if you get lucky tonight, don’t worry about coming back.”

Zack’s fingers paused on the snap of his jeans. Tucking his tongue in his cheek, he wondered how Rachel would take his brother’s turn of phrase. “Thanks for the thought, but I’ll be home.”

“For bed check,” Nick muttered.

“Call it what you want,” Zack shot back, then bit off an oath. Come hell or high water, they were going to get through one conversation without raised voices. “Listen, I don’t figure you’re going to climb out the window. Hell, you could do that while I’m here. It could be the lady won’t want company overnight.”

Mollified, Nick hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “They didn’t teach you a hell of a lot in the navy, did they, bro?”

In an old gesture they’d both nearly forgotten, Zack rubbed his knuckles over Nick’s head. “Kiss my butt.” With his jacket slung over his shoulder, he headed out. “And don’t wait up. I’m feeling lucky.”

Long after the door shut behind Zack, Nick was still grinning.

Rachel was just unlocking the outside door when Zack strode up behind her. “Good timing,” he said, and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck.

“For you, maybe. Everything ran over today. I was hoping to get back and soak in the tub before you got here.”

“You want to soak?” The minute they were in the elevator, he had her against the wall. “Go ahead. I’ll scrub your back.”

“What a guy.” When his mouth closed over hers, it hurt, somewhere deep, reminding her just how much she’d wanted to be with him again. “You smell good.”

“Must be these.” He pulled a paper cone filled with roses from behind his back.

Her heart wanted to sigh, but she resisted. “Another bribe?” She couldn’t resist the urge to bury her face in the blooms.

“There was a guy selling them a couple of blocks down. He looked like he could use a couple bucks.”

“Softy.” She handed him her keys so that he could unlock her door and she could continue to sniff the roses.

“Keep it to yourself.”

“It’ll cost you.” After kicking the door closed with her foot, she dumped her briefcase and laid the spray of roses on a table. “Pay up, Muldoon,” she demanded, tossing her arms around him.

There was such joy in it. Heat, yes. And the sweet, sharp ache of need. But the joy was so unexpected, so fast and full, that she laughed against his mouth as he twirled her around.

“I missed you.” He continued to hold her, inches off the floor.

“Oh, yeah?” With her hands linked comfortably around his neck, she smiled. “Maybe I missed you, too. Some. How long are you going to hold me up here?”

“This way I can look right at you. You’re beautiful, Rachel.”

It wasn’t the words so much as the way he said them that brought a lump to her throat. “You don’t have to soften me up.”

“I don’t know how to tell you how beautiful—except that sometimes when I look at you, I remember how the sea looks, right at sunrise, when all that color spills out of the sky, kind of seeps over the horizon and falls into the water. Just for a few minutes, everything’s so vivid, so…I don’t know, special. When I look at you, it’s like that.”

Her eyes had darkened with an emotion she couldn’t begin to analyze. All she could do was rest her cheek against his. “Zack.” His name was a sigh, and she knew she would cry any minute if she didn’t lighten the mood. “Roses and poetry, all in one day. I don’t know what to say to you.”

Enchanted, he buried his face in her hair. “That’s a first.”

“We’re not going to get—”

“Sloppy,” he finished for her, laughing. “Us? Are you kidding?” But when he sat on the couch, he kept her cuddled in his lap. “Let me see that bruise.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, even as he tilted her head for a closer inspection. “The worst of it was that the word got out and I had to deal with all this sympathy and advice. If those cops had kept their mouths shut, I could have said I’d walked into a door.”

“Take off the jacket and sweater.”

She arched a brow. “You’re such a romantic, Muldoon.”

“Can it. I want to see your neck.”

“It’s fine.”