And she was simply too happy with Boone to hold a grudge. As the days passed, they moved slowly, cautiously, toward cementing their relationship. If she had come to trust him with her heart, with her body, she had not yet come to trust him with her secrets. Though his feelings for her had ripened, deepened into a love he had never expected to experience again, he was as wary as she of taking that final step that would join their lives. At the center was a child neither would have harmed by putting their own needs first. If they stole a few hours on bright afternoons or rainy mornings, they were theirs to steal. At night Ana would lie alone and wonder how long this magic interlude would last. As Halloween approached, she and Boone were caught up in their own preparations. Now and again her nerves would jump out at the idea of her lover meeting the whole of her family on the holiday. Then she would laugh at herself for acting like a girl on the point of introducing a first date. By noon on the thirty-first, she was already at Morgana’s, helping her now greatly pregnant cousin with preparations for the Halloween feast.
