She pressed her fingers to his lips, then stroked them gently. “I could say the same to you.”
He smiled crookedly. “So why don’t you?”
“Because you know how I feel.”
“Tell me anyway. My ego needs boosting, since the rest of me is totally deflated.”
She grinned, but the grin mellowed into a tender smile as she spoke. “You’re warm and compassionate, incredibly intelligent and sensitive. And you’re sexy as hell.”
“Not right now.”
“Yes, right now.” She raked the hair from his brow and let her fingers tangle in its thickness. “Naked and sweaty and positively gorgeous, you’d bring out the animal in me—” she gave a rueful chuckle “—if I had the strength.”
“S’okay,” he murmured, rolling to his back and drawing her against him, “a soft, purring kitten is all I can handle right about now. You exhaust me, sunshine, inside and out.”
“The feeling’s mutual, Brian Webster,” she sighed, but it was a happy sigh, in keeping with the moment.
They lay quietly for a time, listening to the beat of each other’s heart, the lazy cadence of their breathing, the crackling of the fire behind them.
“It’s funny, hearing you call me that,” he mused, rubbing his chin against her hair. “Brian. It sounds so formal.”
“Not formal, just … strange. I keep trying to picture your mother calling you that when you were a little boy. ‘Brian! Come in the house this minute, Brian!’ When did they start calling you Web?”
“My mother never did, or my stepfather, for that matter. But the kids in school—you know how kids are, trying to act tough calling each other by their last names, then when they’re a little older finding nicknames that fit. Web just seemed to fit. By the time I’d graduated from high school, I really thought of myself as Web.”
“Did you consciously decide to revert to Brian when you got into photography?”
“It was more a practical thing at that point. I had to sign my name to legal forms—model releases, magazine contracts, that kind of thing. People started calling me Brian.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “So Brian I became. Again.”
“We’ll call our son Brian.”
He jerked his head up and stared at her. “Our son?”
She put her fingers back on his lips. “Shhh. Don’t say another word. This is a dream weekend, and I’m going to say whatever I feel like saying without even thinking of ‘why’ or ‘if or ‘how.’ I intend to give due consideration to every impulse that crosses my mind, and the impulse on my mind at this particular moment is what we’ll name our son. Brian. I do like it.”
Once over the initial shock of Marni’s blithe reference to “our son,” Web found that he liked her impulsiveness. He grinned. “You’re a nut. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“No. No one. I’m not usually prone to nuttiness. You do something to my mind, Web. Or maybe log cabins do something to me. Or mountains.”
He propped himself on an elbow and smiled down at her. “Tell me more. What other impulses would you like to give due consideration to?”
“Dinner. I’m starved. Maybethat’swhy I’m momentarily prone to nuttiness. I didn’t eat lunch so I could leave the office that much earlier, and I can’t remember breakfast, it was that long ago. I think I’m running on fumes.”
Web nuzzled her neck. “I love these fumes. Mmmm, do I love these fumes.”
Light-headed and laughing, Marni clung to him until, with a final nip at her neck, he hauled himself to his feet and gave her a hand up. He cleared his throat. “Dinner. I think I could use it, too.” He ran his eyes the length of her flushed and slender body. “Did you bring a robe?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Think you could get it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“… Well?”
She hadn’t moved. Her eyes were on his leanly muscled frame. “Haveyougot one?”
“Uh-huh.”
