On Wings of Magic by Kay Hooper

behind him.
    Kendall stared at the closed door for a moment, absently releasing the grip on her dress and allowing the material to find its own level. She thought of laughter and romance, of fragile ideals and cherished illusions. She thought of paradise, and knights riding by on white chargers and moonlight. She thought of a bruised and weary heart with too many good-byes engraved on it, and an optimism bruised from too many head-on collisions with reality.
    She thought of charades and other games. Like this one—where romance was the key and the stakes were high—very high. And the joker was wild. Speaking to the man who could no longer hear her, she mused vaguely, “But in your game, Hawke … the
game
is wild.”
    She glanced absently at the balcony door to see Gypsy emerge and favor her with a disapproving stare. “Gypsy, we are
definitely
in trouble!”
    Muted thunder woke her up the next morning, and Kendall moaned sleepily and pulled the pillow around her ears to shut out the sound. It didn’t help, though, and she muttered irritably for someone to kill the noisy intruder. It was a moment before she identified the sound as someone pounding on her door.
    Still more than half asleep, she flung back the covers and pulled herself from the bed, feeling almost blindly around for her robe and slippers and finding neither. Deciding to hell with it, she made her way to the door, more by a terrific sense of direction than anything else, and flung it open. The glare on her face—sleepy though it was—should have curled somebody’s hair.
    Except that it didn’t.
    Hawke returned the glare as he leaned against the jamb, one hand holding an indignantly struggling Gypsy by the scruff of her neck. “It’s about time!” he snapped, obviously not in the best of moods.
    Kendall focused on the rather odd scene in front of her, and grasped one important fact. “What areyou doing with my cat?” she demanded with early-morning temper.
    “It isn’t love of her company, believe me.” His voice was carefully restrained. “In fact, I’ve been tempted to drown her. I just fished her out of the couple next door’s bathtub. They are not happy. And since they requested the honeymoon suite because they understandably wanted privacy, I don’t blame them.”
    “Gypsy likes water,” Kendall defended her pet, again grasping only the relevant fact.
    “She also likes chewing on various parts of the human anatomy, as one very unhappy hotel employee can attest to. Either put her in a cage, Kendall, or make damn sure she doesn’t get out of your room at night. The last thing I need is a lawsuit!”
    “I will not put Gypsy in a cage!” The logical part of Kendall’s mind realized that her cat must have loosened the leash and leapt from her balcony to the one next door. The same little compartment of her mind also noted that Hawke had apparently dressed in a hurry without taking the time to shave. But, having been rudely awakened after lying awake for most of the night, Kendall was in no mood to heed the logical voice warning her to be conciliatory.
    “Then put a leash on her.” Hawke ignored the cat’s attempts to scratch him. His glare faded suddenly as his gray eyes dropped to take in her petite figure, clothed only in baby-doll pajamas so sheer that it hardly seemed worth the effort.
    Unaware that his mood was rapidly changing, Kendall reached out to grab her pet. She held the cat against her breast securely, glaring at Hawke and totally unconscious of the fact that the wet animal wasbringing her pajamas one step closer to invisibility. “I did leash her!” she snapped.
    “Well … try to keep her in your room, then, and not on the balcony.” It was an almost absent request, delivered in a deepening voice as his eyes continued to rove almost hungrily over her. “Dammit, Kendall—do you own a single outfit that
isn’t
sexy?”
    The sudden demand startled Kendall, and woke her up with a vengeance. Clutching her cat, she