“You are the sexiest date I’ve ever been out with, then,” she said, huskily.

“Hmm … but I thought you had a naughty past that probably involved lots and lots of dates,” I answered.  “No good-looking, pesky, gentleman callers I should lose sleep over, then?”

“Some women would call them good-looking,” she said, as she stopped her gentle, mesmerizing caresses, and picked up my idle hand resting on the table.  “Many would say they were hunky even. Not a bad face in the bunch, actually.”

I pretended to frown.

She kissed the tips of my hand. “Do you want names, Aerin?” she asked quietly.

I swallowed drily and looked away from her and then drank a big gulp from of wine. I swallowed slowly, playing for time. Did I? Just how much did I want to know, anyway?

Before I could say anything, she added, “I did most of that in the years after our world changed as a result of my father’s trial, and then his passing. I was working hard, but I was in a world of pain, too, and heaven knows there were lotsa guys who were always around me, more than willing to help me distract myself. Help me let out my stress and push away this hurt and confusion, at the same time.”

I bit my lip and asked, hesitatingly, almost not wanting to hear the answer, “Distract you, get your stress out — with sex, Harley? Was sex with them, any of them, that good?”

She drank from her wine, and interlaced our fingers. She swallowed her wine first, set the goblet down, and leaned forward, resting her chin on the palm of her other hand. “I thought so, at the time.”

She looked at me with that special openness we’d shared from the start, so that I could see how vulnerable she was making herself, and that she wanted me to know everything she had to share. “I didn’t sleep around indiscreetly, Aerin, but I did cheat on a couple of guys that I’d considered to be boyfriends. I’d been extremely sorry after, and the last time, the showdown with the last guy I cheated on, really woke me up.”

She continued as she combed back bangs that had fallen over half of her face, and tucked the hair behind her ear in one motion, “He was a decent-enough guy, and he’d felt really let down, considering that he thought that we would end up getting married. He felt he had a lot to offer, had money, looks, a powerful family, and a pretty good rep. He imagined we would eventually live in one of those big houses outside of Boston, raise a couple of golden-haired children — that whole bit.”