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for such a little word.
    “So, I’m not sure now is the right time.”
    “I seem to remember wondering that myself at some point in the last month. In fact I distinctly remember asking you if you’d completely lost your mind when you spent two hundred dollars on makeup.”
    Kacie Jo remembered, too. And she remembered her answer. She’d been in love with Donovan Nelson for as long as she could remember. Yes, she knew it wasn’t real love. How could you possibly love someone you hadn’t seen in six years? But how could she not love the larger than life, cool under pressure reporter he’d become? How could she not love the boy who’d become a man while she watched? How could she not love someone who sent her presents and made calls from spectacular locations like Bahrain and Egypt and Lebanon?
    Okay, it wasn’t love. It was hero worship and lust all rolled into one.
    When her friends had tried alcohol and drugs, she’d pushed herself to do better at school and earn scholarships. When they had one fling after another because the Cosmo Astrologer said it was written in their stars, she’d settled for chaste kisses and a few dates here and there.
    And it wasn’t because she didn’t want to, as Cosmo put it, find her erogenous zone. She’d just always known she wanted Donovan and no one else could compare. Certainly not the boys her age. And not the men who asked her out now.
    If she honestly believed Donovan would ever be the marrying kind, she’d go for that ultimate goal.
    But one thing Donovan Nelson would never be was the marrying kind. Actually, that fact added to his mystique. To his charm. To his very sexy, off the charts heat level.
    She couldn’t share any of those thoughts with Eliza. Actually, when she really considered her reasons for spending that much money on cosmetics she’d never worn before, they seemed a little ridiculous.  
    So she answered the only way she could. “I remember, too. And now, I think you’re right.”
    Eliza started in obvious surprise. “Don’t be silly. You had him right where you wanted him.”
    Kacie Jo shook her head. “I don’t think so. He needs a friend not a lover.”
    “You’re crazy.” Eliza pointed to the gift box that now lay on Kacie Jo’s coffee table. “I realize you were lost in your own little world when he gave you that scarf, but he was totally, completely putty in your hands when you picked it up. I don’t care what he said.”
    “It’s a veil, and I don’t know about putty. But I do know something about that black lace bothered him. I wish I…”
    Eliza cut her off. “Stop it right there. If you’re out to seduce the man you can’t go deciding to try to fix him. I know you and I know that tone of voice. What bothered him was the idea of you and black lace in one room.”
    Eliza might be right, but it didn't change the fact that Donovan didn't want her like that.
    If only she could get beyond the long dark hair, the small diamond earring, the way his face was scruffy, unshaven for a couple days. The blue eyes that reminded her of one of his Mediterranean post cards.
    He’d been her fantasy for so long, she wasn’t sure she could let it go.

    When Donovan heard the knock on the door, he wasn’t surprised. The empty living room mocked him.
    Opening the door would set a series of events in motion that could never be taken back. Kacie Jo’d been a spark of innocence in the drudgery of his life for so long. He didn’t want to lose her.
    With that thought, he opened the door and came face to face with the girl he’d imagined for months instead of the temptress who’d stopped by earlier.
    Relief surged through him. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail much as she’d worn it as the teenaged basketball champion, the way he remembered before he left. Her face was scrubbed clean of all but mascara. The way her jeans and shirt fit snug against her body made it clear she was all grown up, but this outfit didn’t scream come and get