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market for romance, and that was just what Danya had in mind.
    It would take all his willpower to treat her as a friend, when he really wanted to make love with her. He scanned thecurved line of her body beneath the sheet, his hand aching to skim that warmth.
    Very little kept him from carrying her to his bed, where she belonged; very little kept him from holding her safe and warm, to cherish her.
    To move into a relationship with this brusque, but caring woman, would be no easy task. She’d been wounded by a former lover and was wary of men, but Danya intended to be very patient and he intended to have her as his own….
     

    Sidney awoke to the scent of coffee and the sight of Danya, holding a cup and staring off into the morning rain battering the cabin’s window. He wore only his jeans, his back broad and tanned in the dim light. The pose, the blend of shadow and light would have been wonderful for a photograph, that waving hair softening his hard profile, that jaw darkened by stubble. He looked thoughtful, grim and fierce.
    “So how’s it going, buddy?” Sidney asked after yawning and stretching. “Feeling better?”
    Apparently still deep in thought, he nodded. Sidney rose to her feet, shuffled to the kitchenette to pour herself a cup of coffee. She took a sweet roll from the plastic container, and walked to stand beside him. “Thanks for last night…letting me crash here, I mean.”
    “Sure.”
    Rain pounded the windows, the dim light outside casting shadows on Danya’s hard face; his mood seemed to match the elements outside. “Are you going to be okay today?”
    “Yes. Alexi and I are remodeling, adding a family room onto a house. You can stay here, if you want, Sid. I mean, you can move in with me, if you want, to escape those models. It’s up to you. But there could be gossip. People might think that we were lovers.”
    She studied the shadows beneath his eyes, the look of a man who had been through hell, who had been on some invisible edge, fighting the tethers that bound him. “I’ve bunked with men before.”
    Danya inhaled suddenly, then released his breath slowly. He looked at her and his eyes were the color of blue ice. “This is different. I don’t want you to have problems.”
    She’d heard that the Stepanov males were very gallant, but manners and female-male role playing weren’t for her; they just cluttered up life and took time she didn’t have. “The only problem I am going to have is that darned windup dance and social thingie at the end of this shoot. Marvelous Calendars insists on it. All the bigwigs are going to come down and I’ve got orders to look like a woman—put on a dress and makeup and everything. I’m supposed to bring a date.”
    “That is rough.”
    “Real rough. You’d think if I do a good job—and I do—that would be all that was required, but oh, no. I have to mix with the brass and schmooze with the models and be one of the girls. I am going to have to dance with the execs—in dress shoes, not boots.”
    “Torture,” he agreed softly.
    “You know it. If the weather clears, we’ve got about two, three days fast shooting and then I’m doomed.” Sidney yawned and stretched and settled into enjoy her momentary reprieve from the models. She ate the sweet roll and sipped her coffee, then she licked her fingers. Danya had been studying her intensely and his body was tense next to hers; his breathing seemed to be controlled, rather than natural. She’d been remiss not to offer him a bite; she was used to sharing whatever was at hand. “Want some?” she asked, holding up her sweet roll to him.
    His hand wrapped around her wrist as he bent to take a bite, but his eyes never left hers. They were vividly blue and shadowed with heavy lashes. He straightened, still studying her, his thumb caressing her inner wrist. “About Ben. You loved him?”
    Sidney was uncomfortable with that slow caress, but if the guy needed contact, she could give him that. “I