"I have to go." Marek put it bluntly, his hands planted on his hips.
"Would it do any good to ask you not to?" Janney worked hard to keep the quaver out of her voice.
"It's my duty...and...I'm not ending my career with what happened." He was vehement, his lips tight, eyes hard, flashing with determination.
He was a proud man. It was part of why she loved him. Hell, she was proud, too. She'd repressed her fear of loss, of abandonment, ever since she was twelve and would not let him know how devastated she was.
"Janney, I won't be like your father. I will come back. This won't even be that dangerous." He moved toward her.
She held up her hand to stop him. Her mind went blank, and she couldn't think of what to do or say next.
Without a sound he was in front of her, gripped her shoulders, and gently pushed her down into a chair. She drew up her knees to hug her chest as he hunched down in front of her. She almost felt safe curled up in a ball like this.
Marek tipped her chin up with his forefinger. "You know I love you, and I'll come back for you."
She looked into his eyes, so deeply brown, warm, and confident. "What if I'm not here?" she whispered.
His warm hands covered her knees, slid down her thighs to rest on her hips. God, don't let me self-destruct like my mother. She would hold herself together for his sake, if not for her own.
"I'll find you."
She drew in a shaky breath. "But, Marek, I won't be in this time." Surely, he understood that.
"Come here," he urged, nudging her knees down and sliding her off the chair into his lap. Staring into her eyes, he trailed his hands up her arms and around her back like he was imprinting the feel of her body in his brain. "Trust me, Janney Forrester. I will find you."
Oh, how she wanted to believe him.
"Put your arms around me, my love." His lips grazed her cheek, tickled her ear. "Believe it," he said as if he could read her mind. "If you don't believe anything else in this life, believe that I love you and that you are mine." He rested his hands on her shoulders, brushed both thumbs along her jaw.
Her heart drummed loudly in her chest. "I love you, too."
He leaned back and removed the gold cuff bracelet from his wrist. Bouncing it as if weighing it, he said, "I want you to have this. It belonged to my father"
Janney gasped and started to shake her head. "Oh, no, Marek. I can't take that. It belongs to your son."
Marek took her hand and placed the cuff in her palm.
It was warm from his skin.
"I want you to keep it until I come back." They both stared at the bracelet. Then he opened the clasp and slid it on her arm. Heavy and too wide for her wrist, he pushed it up to just below her elbow. "There. It's perfect."

Meg piled the dishes into the sink, running warm water and a dab of soap into it to let them soak. Watching the bubbles foam, she floated a moment in the intoxication caused by Caleb's nearness throughout dinner. She hadn't once given consideration to the concerns that had plagued her on the ride home. Even now, she dismissed them as soon as they suggested themselves to her again. She felt warm and disconnected and light-as-air, like a balloon with only a slim tether of ribbon to gravity.
"Meg, you okay?"
Caleb was leaning against the counter beside her. He was heat and energy, hard muscle and warm blood, tendon and sinew and flesh. He felt solid, grounded.
"Absolutely," she said.
He grunted in response, nodding toward the sink.
"Why don't you show me how you want those done?"
Meg's brows arched. "The dishes? They can wait."
"Show me," he repeated. "I'll learn fast."
Shrugging, Meg rolled up her sleeves and reached for the sponge. Caleb pivoted on his heel so that he was directly behind her. She pressed a little closer to the sink.
"There's enough soap in here, but I like some extra directly on the sponge."
"Uh-huh," he said, an attentive student. Upending the bottle of dish detergent, Meg squirted lightly-scented liquid onto the center of the sponge, then squeezed the damp cellulose rapidly a few times to work up a lather. His hand closed around her own, imitating the movement of her fingers on the sponge, then he eased it out of her grasp.
"Let me."
She started to relinquish her position to him at the sink, but his other arm came down to her left, hand resting on the counter edge. "Don't go away. Keep teaching."
The whole scene suddenly reminded her of one she had seen in a movie, and she wondered if the same film was lurking somewhere in his subconscious. Dramatic and romantic, she remembered the outcome of that scene very well, and her tongue slipped out to moisten her lips.
Plunging her arm into the water, she brought out a plate, then slid her hand around the back of his, drawing it near to the dish. Foaming bubbles sluiced between her fingers and down her wrist.
"You scrub the dish like this, or I do anyway, in circles."
He leaned his arms alongside hers as he followed her instruction.
"The water's very warm," he commented. Suds, nearly amniotic in temperature, ran in runnels through the dark hair on his forearms and down over the downy blonde hair on hers. His breath moved across her nape, stirring tendrils loosened from the clasp of her ponytail. She thought with fleeting intensity of the night before.  Well, technically that morning. Her pulse quickened.
"Can't get them clean without it," she answered his comment about the water's temperature, sounding remarkably matter-of-fact. Turning the plate over, she had him repeat the process on the other side. "Set the dishes over there until we're ready to rinse them all."
He did as he was told, reaching into the water for the next item, performing the mechanics of the task with silent, superficial concentration. She suspected that his mind wasn't totally on the job. Hers certainly wasn't. She turned her head to glance at him. He did likewise, smiling down at her with a closed curve of his mouth. She threw her thoughts at him in a fervent desire for him to kiss her, but it had never worked that way before. She couldn't make anyone do a thing by thought process alone. However, she knew he'd gotten the signal, perhaps by some subtle or not so subtle body language more than any telepathic communique, when he smiled again, bending closer.
"This is enjoyable," he whispered near her mouth, then straightened and resumed his undertaking.
Her right knee jerked and struck the cabinet door.
She could sense the firmness of his chest close to her spine, the thudding of his heart beneath the surface of his flesh. She watched the newly familiar shape of his sarms from beneath her lashes as he squeezed excess soap from the sponge, the tendons in his wrist standing up, the muscles of his forearm tightening before release. Foam splattered onto her face and the neckline of her tank top beneath her open collar, water running down over the swell of her breast and into her bra in a warm, slow trail.
"Sorry," he apologized softly.
"Not a problem," she assured him.
He continued to wash and she continued to watch, fascinated by the confident action of his hands, the knowledge of his body close to hers, the humming vibration of his energy in the narrow space between them. He confined his activity to dishwashing, but there was a sultry promise in every move he made.  It seemed to her that he wasn't just laving a dish, the interior of a glass, the length of a knife, but demonstrating a technique of motion that when transferred at last to her body would cause her to lose all restraint. She had all she could do to keep from squirming where she stood, or slipping out from beneath his arms to stand safely on the other side of the kitchen.
As he neared the end of his task, searching out the last of the items in the water, he began to hum a tune above her head. She listened, recognizing with a start a wordless version of the refrain to an old Van Morrison tune. Obviously, a bit of memory was seeping through. Leaning forward, Meg drained the sink, humming along with him as a small smile curved her lips. She turned on the water to rinse the dishes and stack them in the drainboard. As soon as the last one was in place, Caleb reached past her to turn off the water and pulled her away from the counter, his wet hands on her shoulders, her waist, clutching her fingers as he began to lead her in a slow dance around the kitchen floor to the tune vibrating from his chest.
He held her close, the dampness seeping from his hands through her clothes. It took her a moment to realize the rumbling song from his unclear recollection had ended and he was just holding her, rocking slowly in the middle of the floor, his unshaven jaw turned against the top of her head.
"Are you remembering something?" she whispered.
"No," he answered, but his voice was strained. She pulled away from him to look up at him for the truth behind the word, but then he kissed her.
Startled, she sucked in her breath, sucked in the warm air of his lungs, and then she opened her mouth to meet the gentle exploration of his tongue. Her thoughts spun dizzily, her arms clinging across his back, his neck, to keep herself grounded.  His body was heated and lean and hard, while hers seemed to be losing all solid consistency.  He held her tighter, one hand in the small of her back, pushing her close against his hips.  She could feel him, erect and straining in the confines of his borrowed jeans. His other hand was open along her throat, fingers pressed to the battering pulse beneath her jaw. Curling her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, she drew him backwards across the floor until they were once more against the cabinets.
He pulled his head away slightly, looking a question into her eyes.
"Don't stop kissing me," she said. "Don't stop anything."
With his mouth on her own, he lifted her onto the counter top. His hands moved beneath her blouse, easing her bra straps down into her sleeves, thumbs sliding along the curve of her collar bone, then down into the soft cup of her undergarment to tease her nipples until they were standing erect against his finger tips.  Pressing his forehead against hers, he whispered, "May I take this off?"
"My bra?"
"All of it."
She nodded against him, and he did just that, fumbling with the catch on her bra before basic, unconscious recall kicked in and she found herself quickly naked from the waist up, her clothes in a heap beside her on the counter. He cupped her chilled breasts in his palms. She looked down at the contrast of his tanned fingers against the creamy hue of her skin, her nipples taut in yearning. He bent from the waist to take first one, then the other into his mouth, pulling with the edge of his teeth. The damp residue from his tongue across each rosy tip chilled in the air. Eagerly she thrust her breasts toward him, wanting more. The delicacy of his touch had been exquisite.
With his hands around her rib cage, he repeated his action, not once but many times, until Meg found her breath coming fast and shallow. Heat shimmered across her skin and flooded into her abdomen. If this was all it was going to take, she was in pretty sorry shape, but this was all it was going to take...
At the sound emerging from low in his throat, she knew that Caleb recognized her urgency, felt a similar one of his own, pulling her hips toward his as his head came up, his mouth fastening hard on hers. She wrapped her legs around his waist, the back of her head coming almost painlessly into contact with the cabinet behind as he drove against her, the rumble of her name vibrating around the hollow of her mouth. The pressure of his hips into the curve of her thighs, his denim-encased erection against the seam of her trousers, the soaked cotton of her panties, made her moan and tighten her arms around his neck. They rocked together with the motion of an intimacy thwarted by layers of fabric and she came anyway, hard and long and shuddering and wrapped in his embrace.  He whispered words against her face, her throat, the swell of her breasts, then he lifted her from the counter with her legs still around his waist and headed for the stairs.