Her mother was the only one who hadn't found that strange, although as Sloan neared thirty with no man in her life, even Kimberly began to hint that she ought to date more often. Kimberly had little ground to stand on in that regard; men asked her out all the time, and she almost never went. "I'm just not attracted to him," she would tell Sloan. "I'd rather stay home or go out with friends."
As Sloan was discovering, she was more like her mother than she'd imagined. The two of them simply weren't attracted to just any attractive, eligible man; they were attracted rarely, but when it happened, it was evidently a life-altering experience. The phrase "one-man woman" ran through Sloan's mind as she wandered out onto her bedroom balcony and looked out at the moonlight on the water.
Sloan glanced at her watch and decided to go for a walk on the beach. It was nearly ten and a walk on the beach would soothe her so that she'd be able to sleep. She put on a pair of jeans and sneakers and pulled a bulky pale pink cotton sweater over her head; then she pulled her hair up into a ponytail and headed downstairs.
When she got to the beach, she decided to turn left, away from Noah's house, so that she wouldn't see it and use it as a landmark. She needed to stop dwelling on him this way. She needed to think about her future, when he wasn't going to be around. She needed to, but she couldn't make herself do it. It was so much sweeter to think instead about the things he did and said when they were together. He was brilliant and witty and willing to talk about anything that interested her—anything, that is, except his feelings for her. Never, not even in the heat of passion, did he ever use the word "love" or talk about the future after she left Palm Beach. He never even used an endearment or called her by an affectionate nickname. In Bell Harbor, Jess called her "Short Stuff," and when he was in his Humphrey Bogart mood, he called her "Hey, sweetheart." Half the guys on the police force had nicknames for her, but the man she made love with for hours at a time called her "Sloan."
Rather than worry about all that, Sloan decided to think about all the glorious fun she'd had with him.
She was still doing that an hour later when she neared Carter's house again on her return trip. With her hands shoved into her back pockets, she gazed out across the water, smiling at the thought of how he looked sailing a boat with the wind ruffling his hair. He was as relaxed and competent at the helm of that demanding sailboat as he was driving a car, and he'd volunteered to teach her to sail it, too. As a teacher, he'd had a tendency to expect too much at first, calling out orders she didn't understand more quickly than she could follow them. She'd broken him of that during the second lesson by addressing him as "Captain Bligh" in a semiserious voice.
Sloan was so absorbed in her memory of that day that when she heard his voice, she thought for a moment she was imagining it. "Sloan!"
She looked away from the water and scanned the beach ahead; then she looked to the right. She stopped walking and stared, unable to believe her eyes. Noah was in Miami on business… Noah was walking toward her from the back lawn of her father's house wearing jeans and a knit polo shirt. She started walking again, and he stepped up his pace. "Going anywhere in particular?" he asked with a boyish grin, stopping in front of her.
Sloan shook her head.
"By any chance, have you been feeling sort of lost and lonely and unable to concentrate today?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact I have," she said, overjoyed because he evidently felt that way, too. "I think it must be some sort of flu!"
"A flu? Does that make you irritable and impossible to please?"
In the last week, Sloan had noticed that he had a temper and that when displeased, he could be curt and even harsh, but he never showed that side of himself to his family or to her. She gave him a look of jaunty superiority. "I wouldn't know about that. My disposition is always sweet."
He laughed and opened his arms. "Then come and share it with me."
Sloan rushed forward, and his arms closed around her with stunning force. "I missed you," he whispered. "You're addictive." His mouth seized hers in a ravenous kiss, forcing her lips to part for his probing tongue. When he was satisfied, he turned and put his arm around her waist and started walking with her toward his house.
"Where are you taking me?"
"To the place I love to see you in the most."
It was late, and Sloan made a wild guess. "The kitchen?"
"How did you know?" he teased. "I came back tonight instead of waiting until morning because I wanted to see you. I haven't eaten since breakfast, and Claudine has already gone to bed. Courtney incinerates anything she touches, and Douglas won't touch anything in the kitchen that he doesn't plan to put directly in his mouth. Do you think you could whip up one of those omelettes like the one you made me last week?"
Sloan smothered a laugh. "It breaks my heart to think you'd have to go to bed hungry if you couldn't find a woman on the beach who can figure out how to turn on a stove. It's so sad."
Noah glanced at her face. "You don't look sad," he noted.
"You are not only handsome, brilliant, and incredibly sexy," Sloan said, trying to make a joke of what she really felt, "but you are also perceptive. I don't look sad because I have a solution."
"Am I going to like it?"
Courtney rushed into her father's study and grabbed Douglas's hand, pulling him out of his chair. "What are you doing?" he protested as the book he was reading slid to the floor.
"You have to come downstairs. Sloan is here, and you aren't going to believe this unless you see it."
"See what?"
"Noah is cooking!"
"You mean 'cooking'—as in 'angry'?" Douglas speculated, walking swiftly beside her.
"No, I mean 'cooking'—as in 'kitchen.' "
As they neared the kitchen, they stopped talking and walked softly, anxious to witness this unprecedented event without being seen.
Noah was standing in the center of the kitchen watching Sloan, who was gathering the ingredients for an omelette. "I have a philosophy about cooking," he announced in the professional tone of one who is about to expound on a theoretical analysis of a topic on which he is an expert.
Sloan grinned at him as she took an onion, a couple of tomatoes, and a red and a green pepper from the produce drawer and put them on the counter to be chopped. "Does your philosophy go something like—'I paid for the food; let someone else figure out what to do with it'?"