An Unforgettable Rogue by Annette Blair

again, they fell into a rather uneasy silence, Hawk dividing his time between trying not to stare at the agreeable sight of his wife, and gazing out the window. He no longer took any of the sights for granted, however, given the fact that he never expected to see her, or the town where they grew up, again.
    “Nothing changes here,” Alex said, cutting the tension, as they drove through the center of St. Albans. “The old curfew tower stands yet.”
    “As it has for centuries.”  He almost felt welcome just seeing it.
    Alex chuckled.  “Remember the day I talked you into following that poor, keening sheepdog up to the top?”
    “I remember every one of those ninety-three steps,” Hawk said, with a grimace, “I remember that somehow I got locked in at the top with her while she delivered six squealing pups.”
    “Well, I went for help.”
    “The pups were amazing,” Hawk admitted. “Though I still shudder over the scrapes you got me into.”
    “I?” Alex said, using the same innocent tone that saved her satin skin that very day, though back then, he had not pondered her skin’s texture with such morbid and single-minded preoccupation as he had been wont to do today, Hawk mused.
    “And there,” she said, with the excitement of a first-time visitor, “is a piece of the old Roman wall. My father said every other generation wanted to clean up those ruins.”
    “Destroy them more like.”
    “But somebody always managed to save the old city enclosure for succeeding generations.”
    “I clearly recall the day a certain brat climbed that particular section, when she ought not, me at the bottom shouting for her to come down.”
    “I told you there was a mewling kitten up there, and it was stuck, and I saved it, but you were such a scold, you made me fall.”
    Hawk scoffed. “Did I also force you to tell your father that nothing hurt, until your wrist swelled like a hot air balloon, so a doctor must be fetched?”
    Alex grinned.
    Hawk shook his head. “As always happened, you charmed a chuckle from your father, while mine thrashed me with a birch cane for encouraging you.”
    Drawn by the combination of sympathy and mischief in her eyes, Hawk was shocked anew by the desirable woman his bride had become, and discomfited anew by the tension churning in the pit of his belly because of it. Which made it doubly surprising to him, that any of the old ease in her presence existed, particularly with a war and two weddings now standing between them—never mind an annulment, if she but knew it.
    This burgeoning physical awareness, however, was something new and as enticing as it was frightening. “How old were we?” he asked, “the first time you lured me into trouble?”
    “I was three and stuck at the bottom of the Dyke. You were eight and tried to rescue me.”
    “Slipping down a forty-foot slope of mud was easy, as I recall, getting back up, impossible.” When he spotted her, his clothes had been, as always, pristine. Her knees had been scraped bloody, her dress torn, and mud caked her short, curly hair.
    When they were rescued, after the most fun ever, they were in the same sorry state. That had been the first time his father warned him away from Alexandra Huntington.
    “It only took being stranded together that day for us to become fast friends,” she said. “If I remember correctly, we were inseparable after that.”
    “Because, no matter how hard I tried, I could not shake my tenacious shadow, a bit of a sprite, but more of a spitfire. So small, I thought you might break, though I soon discovered that you were sturdy as a tree trunk, and thrice as stubborn as its roots.”
    “And I made you laugh, you said. You loved having me around. Do not pretend otherwise. Stubborn, did you say? Me?”
    Hawk shook his head, looking back. “In my arrogant maleness, I did not, for the most part, mind keeping in tow, a female who venerated the ground upon which I walked, until I learned that you had been warning