She tried to hang on to that observation, but her mind was no longer operating in any rational manner.
Feelings had become more important than thoughts. The feel of Craig Branson’s lips against her. The feel of his hands as they stroked up and down her back, then cupped her bottom, pulling her more tightly against the erection straining at the front of his jeans.
He was ready to make love with her. And she was just as ready, yet she knew in some part of her mind that this was going too fast. They had to stop, and she was the one who had to do it.
She wrenched her mouth away from his and pushed at his shoulders.
The move caught him by surprise, because in his mind he was already taking the heated contact to its logical conclusion.
She slipped out of his grasp and put several feet of space between them as she stood panting.
When he reached for her, she shook her head. “Not now.”
He was breathing hard, and his face looked like he’d just touched a live electric wire, but he managed to say, “Why not?”
Now she couldn’t meet his heated gaze. “Is this usually the way you act with a woman you don’t know?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“What happened between us just now?”
“I felt the connection to you. Like the connection to Sam.” He laughed. “Well, I never felt the sexual part with my brother.”
She nodded slowly.
“But you’ve never felt anything like that?” he asked.
“No. What does it mean?”
“You weren’t a twin?”
“No.”
“Then what in the hell just happened?” he asked, revealing he was just as perplexed as she was.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
It seemed he was still trying to come to a logical conclusion when she was sure there was no logic to what had happened. Or, at least, no logic that she had ever encountered.
“I . . .”
Before she could explain that to him, the bell over the shop door jingled, and her head jerked up. Claire stepped into the shop and gave the two of them an appraising look.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice going high and sharp.
“Two men came in here. I don’t know what they wanted, except that they were going to hurt me. Then Mr. . . .”
“Brady,” he supplied, and she knew when he said it that it wasn’t his real name. But for some reason he had decided to use it.
“Mr. Brady came in and fought with them. Then they ran away.”
Claire’s gaze swung to him, her eyes assessing. “That was lucky—your being here. But how did you know what was happening?”
“I was on my way to the poor-boy shop down the street,” the man who had rescued her said. “I noticed them on the street, and they looked out of place. When I saw them come in here, I didn’t think they were planning to buy dresses.”
Claire was still staring at Stephanie and Craig as though she didn’t believe a word of what they were saying. And Stephanie silently acknowledged that they were lying—by implication, at least, about what had happened after the men had left.
Craig turned away and came down on his knees under the rack of dresses. When he stood again, he was holding a gun. “They left this,” he said to Claire.
