Free On Love's Own Terms by Fran Baker Page A

while he lithely climbed the stairs. “I can remember when you were so anxious to have me, you didn’t care who might know.”
    “You weren’t exactly averse to taking chances, either,” he challenged. “I’ll never forget that Saturday afternoon you dragged me out to the circle—”
    “Dragged you?” She feigned an insulted tone. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack running to keep up with you.”
    “All right,” he conceded, pausing in mid-stride to open the bedroom door. “You suggested we take a walk.” His laughter rumbled deeply. What a beautiful sound!
    “About ten minutes after we got there, your dad started mowing the meadow with that damned tractor—”
    “You jumped back into your jeans so fast, I figured you were snake-bit,” Bonnie recalled with a smile. “There I was, naked as a newborn, my father roaring up the hill on his riding mower—“
     “Talk about a narrow escape,” Luke reminisced wryly. “ If he’d caught us, he’d have made bone meal out of me in no time flat.”
    They laughed together, and Bonnie felt a soaring sense of freedom in their total accord. She’d never belonged to any man but Luke; she never would.
    “I don’t think we ever fooled my folks or your mother for a minute, though.” She rumpled his thick hair and thrilled to his flexing muscles as he let her feet slide slowly to the floor. “None of them acted the least bit surprised when we told them we’d eloped.”
    Unbidden tears stung her eyes then, and she lowered her lashes. Despite the circumstances prompting the marriage, her parents had readily, proudly accepted Luke as their son-in-law. Bonnie’s stomach fluttered and her fingers fumbled clumsily as she tried to unfasten the front button at the waistband of her skirt
    “Don’t rush it, darling.” Luke laid a steadying hand over hers, as if he sensed the reason for her sudden show of sadness. “I miss all of them, too. Your folks always treated me like one of their own, even after I gave them good cause not to.”
    He drew her into his arms and hugged her fiercely, shutting out the pain that threatened to intrude on their privacy. The smell of Cape jasmine spiced the breeze wafting through the window screen, and a cricket chirped for its mate in the night. Bonnie rested her tear-stained cheek against his solid chest, absorbing his strength and treasuring the fact that he was temporarily hers.
    “I wanted to kill that creep tonight.” A violent note edged his voice, but she wasn’t afraid. He cupped her face between his callused palms, holding her in a gentle grip. “But when you looked at me, something told me that if I so much as mussed a hair on his sweaty head, I’d wind up the loser.”
    “Welcome to my corner, champ,” she whispered.
    “I never left your corner, Bonnie,” he stated simply.
    She hushed him with a kiss. Talk like that only led to tears. “I’m going to take a bath,” she announced.
    “Can I wash your back?” His hands made mesmerizing circles along her spine.
    Bonnie nodded, hypnotized by his touch.
    Luke grinned wickedly. “Can I wash your front?”
    “Only if I can wash yours,” she answered coyly.
    “Lady, you just struck a deal,” he declared.
    Arm-in-arm, they walked into the connecting bathroom. She turned the faucets on full and poured a heaping capful of scented crystals into the warm, rushing water.
    Shyly, as if it were the first time, Bonnie undressed for him. Dropping her clothes where she stood, she was keenly aware of Luke’s velvety gaze on the skin she bared. Her pulse raced wildly; it mattered so much that she please him. She held her breath and raised her head. The volcanic passion in his eyes dissolved her doubts.
    “My memory didn’t serve me well enough,” he observed huskily. Luke had stripped to the waist, then stopped to watch her disrobe. “If you don’t get into that tub, pronto, you aren’t going to get a bath until sometime tomorrow.”
    She stepped over the