THE WOMAN he loved was getting ready to walk out of his life forever. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop her.

How could he stop someone who was in essence a stranger, yet someone he knew right down to the innermost depths of her soul? How could he love someone who wouldn't even tell him her name? And refused to hear his?

Maybe he was crazy. Maybe his grief created something that wasn't there. But he didn't believe that. In one short weekend, he loved this woman with the flowing, cinnamon-colored hair and vulnerable-as-a-lamb eyes more than he'd ever loved Tawny in a year and a half of marriage. This woman understood him; she touched him deeper than anyone ever had. Anyone except Dakota. Somehow she'd even touched and eased that pain without words.

He loved her. He didn't want her to walk out of this cheap motel room and disappear from his life as if what happened between them meant nothing.

She was here tonight, and that meant there was still a chance to convince her they could have a life together, outside this room. He'd convinced her to stay an extra night, hadn't he?

Randy slid across the bed to where she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees. He'd found her like this, so lonely and huddled into herself, each time he awoke. He didn't think she slept at all.

Snaking his arms over her shoulders, he felt the cold of her bare skin. One lamp pierced the curtain-shrouded room. Her hair shone like fire in that dim light.

Brushing long silken strands back over her shoulder, Randy pressed a kiss into the curve of her neck while allowing one hand to trace the heart tattoo over her breast. She allowed his touch too.

The ease they both displayed in their intimacy still astonished him. He'd never felt this natural with Tawny or the few women he dated before her, especially in such a short time. The first time he touched this woman, he'd forgotten she was a total stranger.

"I know this great Chinese restaurant. You must be as sick of pizza as I am." He smiled toward the empty pizza delivery boxes on a tattered bistro table. "We could go--"

She turned her head toward him. For the first time, he wondered how old she was. In the half-light, she barely looked old enough to have a license to drive the car she'd met him here in. Then again, the kind of naked honesty she laid before him would leave anyone looking like a child.

"When I leave, I leave alone," she said, her tone husky, firm. "When I leave...this never happened."

She'd given him every reason for why she wanted that yesterday. Yesterday her objective hadn't been nearly as unequivocal.

He drew back from it, from her. If he left here alone...he'd go back to his home and he'd have to face Dakota was gone. Forever.

Something had died in this woman recently. She'd bared her heartache to him as if they needed a reason for meeting and coming together this way. Even if she didn't know it, something had died in him too. And, God help him, he didn't want to face the emptiness all alone. Not when they could heal each other.

"The hell if this never happened," he muttered. "It happened. We'll never forget it." Instinct took over, and he dragged her back toward him, turning her into his arms. He took her mouth, adding another layer of pain. Physical. God, emotional. She was his. Every part of her responded to him, crawled right into him like a caddis fly into its case.

"I'll forget you, you'll forget me."

As cruel as her words were, the way she said them only heated him. With anger. With passion. With the need to grab hold and possess. With the ache to forget so he could find something in life that mattered again.

"I'll never forget you, sweetheart. I--"

But she stopped his words with a kiss so desperate he couldn't deny her. "Don't. Don't kill me. Because this is all we can have. All I'll ever allow myself again."

Gentle eyes the color of whiskey strengthened his hope. She felt what he felt. This wasn't a casual fling. Strangers getting through a night or two. This was love. True love.

"I'll forget you," she whispered. "I have to. Because I don't want to hurt ever again."

She made love to him, at once cutting him and healing him. In the morning she was gone.

And the emptiness returned.

Copyright © 1999 by Karen Wiesner