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around the dog’s neck.
    “Oh, I’ve missed you, sweetie. How’ve you been?”
    She didn’t seem to mind Belle’s slobbery greeting or the dog’s enthusiastic licking of her face, or the hair she was undoubtedly depositing on Kate’s gray sweater.
    He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised by their happy reunion. While he had been locked up, Belle had lived with his sister and her roommate and best friend. Kate.
    In truth, Belle had probably spent more time with Kate than she had with him. She was really more theirs than his. Belle had only been a few years old at the time he had been arrested.
    His dog certainly hadn’t suffered at all under their care. By the looks of things, the Irish setter adored Kate as much as him.
    He let Belle work out a little of her energy by dancing around Kate a few times, then opened the door of her crate.
    “Belle. Kennel.”
    With one last enthusiastic lick of Kate’s hand, the dog leaped into her travel crate and settled in.
    “It’s safer for her to ride back here,” he explained. “For her sake and for the driver’s. Belle’s a good traveler but she can be a distraction.”
    “I know. Once she tried to attack the rear windshield wiper in Taylor’s Subaru—from the inside of the vehicle, of course. She spent about ten minutes trying to figure out why she couldn’t wrap her teeth around the thing.”
    Her smile looked more natural, a little less forced, and he had forced himself to look away, focusing instead on the clouds hanging heavy and dark in the December sky.
    “We’d better get going,” he said brusquely.
    “Right,” she said after an awkward moment, then headed for the passenger door of the SUV.
    He beat her to it and held it open for her, earning himself an odd look, as if she weren’t quite sure how to react to that small courtesy.
    As he walked around the Jeep, he couldn’t help thinking about the somewhat old-fashioned lessons his father had constantly drilled into his head about how to treat a woman. With respect and civility and basic human courtesy.
    He and his father had certainly had their differences but he could never fault the Judge in that regard. His father’s example had been lesson enough. Even when his mother had been at her most difficult—days when she had been barely coherent and had raged at everything in sight—Hunter never saw his father treat her with anything but dignity.
    He doubted the Judge would find anything courteous about the thoughts he was entertaining about this particular woman. Like how the ivory December morning light gave her skin the soft delectability of a bowl of fresh apricots and how that full mouth begged to be devoured.
    He paused outside the driver’s side for one more last-minute lecture to himself. He had to send those kinds of thoughts right out of his head.
    Okay, so he’d been a long time without a woman. He could have remedied that anytime these last six weeks if he’d chosen, but he hadn’t and now it was too late. It was his own damn fault if he found himself in a near-constant state of arousal for the next few days.
    With a heavy sigh, he opened the driver’s side door and immediately wished he hadn’t. He felt invaded. Overwhelmed. Instead of the comfortably male scent of leather and new car he expected, he smelled Kate —that subtle, alluring scent of shampoo and woman and the vanilla sugar that always clung to her. The smell seemed to slide over him like silk and he wanted to close his eyes and sink into it.
    He gritted his teeth and climbed into the SUV.
    They drove in silence for a block or so before he dared unclench his teeth to speak. “Your apartment seems comfortable.”
    She looked a little nonplussed by his comment coming out of nowhere. Okay, so he was a little rusty at making small talk. His companions for the past two years had been the other inmates on death row, who weren’t exactly big on social chitchat. He was going to have to work on it, though, or this trip with