Early in the Morning

(SUMMER LOVE anthology)

“What do you think about sex therapists?” Chloe Dunn held her breath and frowned at the ten of clubs she’d just picked up.

But for the tap of Steven Early’s short, clean fingernails on the kitchen table, silence was absolute.

Chloe pulled nervously at the neck of her tank top. A sultry Seattle evening, the kind they weren’t supposed to have, stuck the cotton to her skin. “Steven?” She smiled so brilliantly her jaw hurt. “Tell me what you think.”

“About what?”

He hadn’t even heard her. “I’m discarding the ten of clubs,” she said irritably, and glanced at him. He glanced back. The bluest eyes in the world, they had to be.

Chloe sighed. She loved him. He loved her. But if they couldn’t deal with their differences they’d lose each other.

Steven retrieved her discarded card, but didn’t appear particularly triumphant. He was every woman’s dream—most women’s dream. Sensitive, kind, strong, and a slightly-crooked-nose short of being handsome. Dreamy, Steven was the kind of man a woman looked at, then started dreaming about.

And that the problem. In the ten months since Chloe had met Steven she’d done a great deal of dreaming—but very little else. In the physical sense, that was. In other words: sexually.

Tonight was the night.

Out of Print