"You have time before your bar opens?" Rosa's normally rich voice quivered.

Mo closed the door behind her. She wasn't the only one who was nervous. He felt like a kid again, which was normally a good thing. But not when he was about to have sex with a beautiful woman. A woman who he'd taken one look at and his heart felt like it grew too big for his chest.

The lower parts of his body had grown, too.

"More than enough time," he said.

"I hope that means more than five minutes."

He laughed until he noticed she wasn't laughing, her eyebrows down and her mouth pensive.

"You're serious?"

"Serious as if the oven in your restaurant kitchen stopped working."

"I guess the performance bar for good sex isn't high."

Laughter sparked in her eyes. "Do you need that bar low?"

He grinned, and the heaviness he'd carried with him every day for the last three years lightened. "Is that a challenge?"

She laughed. "Are you up for it?"

"I've been ready since the minute you told me to shut up and make love to you."

A frown crossed her forehead, and her smile wobbled, a flash of unease on her face. Just for one second, and then she smiled brilliantly. But her eyes...they lowered, avoiding his gaze.

He gestured to the couch in the living area, the joy slipping away. "Just talking is fine. We have a few hours. There's no need to rush into the bedroom. We don't have to do anything now or ever..."

She put her hands over her face. "No, no, you have it wrong. That's not it. I'm being too bossy."

The joy surged back. He held up his hands to the ceiling in an Italian gesture that meant from my lips to God's ears. "I love bossy women."

Her face opened into a grin. "No one likes bossy women. Even I don't. Bossy men, either."

She turned from him and stepped into the living area. It was a small room that overlooked Main Street. She gazed at his brown leather couch and leather recliner as if she were seeing his apartment for the first time.

He looked, too, trying to see his place through her eyes. Wondering what it said about him. The floor was wooden and old, and he'd stained and oiled it. He'd left the flaws in because they added authenticity. It gave him a sense of solidity. This place had survived a lot, and so had he.

There was a bookcase on two walls and a forty–inch TV he didn't have much time to watch. He'd always been a doer, not a watcher. But right now he was content to watch her in her black slacks and red sweater. Tall and shapely and emotional, with something that pulled him to her every time he saw her. Even when she and Mike had still been together. When he'd found out they'd split up, he'd smiled all day, everyone asking him if he won a lottery.

But, no, it was just that for so long it felt as if all happiness had been shut off to him... As if God looked down at him from heaven and shook his head and said, "Not you. No special reason. You didn't do anything wrong. But someone has to have bad things happen, and I chose you. That's just the way it goes."

As if for years life had been a dark cloud...

And that day a ray of light had broken through.

A ray of hope.