“How the hell am I going to fit all this in my car?”

“You’re not. We’re going to fit it into your car and mine.”

“Why didn’t you say something about me buying more than I could handle when I was loading up in there?”

“Because you were having fun. Where do you want to store all this stuff?”

“Jeez.” Baffled with herself, she scooped a hand through her hair. “I didn’t think about it. I got caught up.”

And, he thought, it had been a pleasure to watch her get caught up—and forget she hated him.

“I can’t store all this at my place, and I didn’t think to see if we could keep the keys and store it at the building. What the hell am I going to do with it?”

“Flynn’s got plenty of room at his place.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Yeah, he does. I guess that’s the way it’ll have to be. He can’t get pissed, because Malory will just bat her eyelashes and turn him into putty.”

They divvied up, loaded up. The drive back to Flynn’s gave her time to wonder how they’d managed to be in each other’s company for the best part of an hour without a fight.

He hadn’t been a jerk, which, she decided, was a rare thing.

And, she was forced to admit, she hadn’t been one either. Equally rare when Jordan was involved.

Maybe, just maybe, they could manage to coexist, even cooperate, for the short term. If, as everyone else insisted, he was part of the quest, she needed him around.

Added to that, he had a good brain and a fluid imagination. He could be more than an annoyance through this. He could be an actual asset.

When they arrived at Flynn’s, she had to concede that it helped to have a man around who was willing to play pack mule with a dozen gallons of paint and the supplies that went with it.

“Dining room,” she said, straining a little under the load she carried. “He never uses it.”

“He’s going to.” Jordan wound his way through the house, veered off into the dining room. “Malory has major plans.”

“She always does. She makes him happy.”

“No question about that.” He headed back out for the next load. “Lily put some serious holes in his ego,” he added, referring to Flynn’s ex-fiancée.

“It wasn’t just his ego.” She pulled out a bag loaded with extra paint rollers, brushes, shiny metal pans. “She hurt him. When somebody dumps you and runs off, it hurts.”

“Best thing that could’ve happened to him.”

“That isn’t the issue.” She could feel the resentment, the hurt, the anger starting to brew in her belly. Struggling to ignore it, she hauled out more cans. “The issue is pain, betrayal, and loss.”

He said nothing as they carried the rest of the supplies to the dining room. Nothing until they set them down, and he turned to face her. “I didn’t dump you.”

She could actually feel the hair on the back of her neck rise. “Not every statement I make involves you.”

“I had to go,” he continued. “You had to stay. You were still in college, for Christ’s sake.”

“That didn’t stop you from getting me into bed.”

“No, it didn’t. Nothing could have. I had a hunger for you, Dana. There were times I felt like I’d starve to death if I couldn’t get a bite of you.”

She stepped back, gave him an up-and-down study. “Looks like you’ve been eating well enough the last few years.”

“Doesn’t mean I stopped thinking about you. You meant something to me.”

“Oh, go to hell.” It didn’t explode out of her, but was said flatly, which gave it more power. “Meant something to you? A goddamn pair of shoes can mean something to you. I loved you.”

If she’d delivered a bare-knuckled punch to his face, he’d have been no less shocked. “You . . . you never said that. You never once said the L word to me.”

“Because you were supposed to say it first. The guy’s supposed to say it first.”

“Hold on just a minute. Is that a rule?” Panic was trickling down the back of his throat like acid. “Where’s it written down?”

“It just is, you stupid jerk. I loved you, and I’d have waited, or I’d’ve gone with you. But you just said, Listen, Stretch, I’m pulling up stakes and going to New York. It’s been fun, see you around.”

“That’s not true, Dana. It wasn’t like that.”

“Close enough. Nobody’s ever hurt me like that. You’ll never get the chance to do it again—and you know what, Hawke? I’d’ve made a man out of you.”

She turned on her heel and walked out.

Chapter Four

BEING alone was something Jordan did very well, under most circumstances. When he was working, thinking about working, thinking about not working, he liked to fold himself into the isolation of his SoHo loft.

Then, the life, the noise, the movement and color on the street outside his windows were a kind of film he could watch or ignore depending on his mood.

He liked seeing it all through the glass, more, very often more, than he liked being a part of it.

New York had saved him, in a very real way. It had forced him to survive, to become, to live like a man—not someone’s son, someone’s friend, another student, but a man who had only himself to rely on. It had pushed and prodded him with its impatient and sharp fingers, reminding him on a daily basis during that jittery first year that it didn’t really give a goddamn whether he sank or swam.

He’d learned to swim.

He’d learned to appreciate the noise, the action, the press of humanity.

He liked its selfishness and its generosity and its propensity for flipping the bird to the rest of the world.

And the more he’d learned, the more he’d observed and adjusted, the more he’d realized that at the core he was just a small-town boy.

He would forever be grateful to New York.

When work was upon him, he could drop into that world. Not the one outside his window, but the one inside his own head. Then it wasn’t like a film at all, but more like life than life itself for however many hours it gripped him.

He’d learned the difference between those worlds, had come to appreciate the subtleties and scopes of them in a way he knew he might never have done if he hadn’t stripped away the safety nets of the old and thrown himself headlong into the new.