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Emma laughed. "Nope. Chemicals."

Beth sighed. "I always knew that I'd better put out on a regular basis if I didn't want Ty to stray."

"I hope there's more to his fidelity than that," Emma said. "I hope there's more to any guy's fidelity. We can't all be the same to them."

Beth speared a mushroom with her fork. "Just a hole to put it in. That's all we are."

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I feel like all I am to Ty is that woman who does his laundry and cooks his di

"But you know he loves you."

"Does he? Maybe it's the path of least resistance for him to stay with me. He hates confrontation. He'd rather endure misery in silence than fight."

"But I think that's true of most guys," Emma protested. "Have you talked to him? Let him know how you're feeling?"

Beth snorted. "Oh, yeah, that will go over well. The last thing a guy wants to hear from any woman is, 'We need to talk.' No, I think your plan to seduce your cute landlord is better than I first thought: sex without attachment, where you can take what you need and leave the rest of the relationship mess behind. Everything will be on your own terms."

"That's what I'm hoping," Emma said, but found herself plagued by a niggling sense of doubt.

Chapter Eight

What's all this?" Russ asked. Emma looked up from where she was pouring the juices out of the roasting pan into a small bowl. "Don't look at those!" How could she have forgotten to hide her dismal sketches for the train station?

"What are they?" he asked again, a glass of Chianti in one hand, the other hand moving the sketches around her drafting table.

Emma slammed down the pan and scampered around the breakfast bar to the living room. "Don't look! They're terrible!" She grabbed the papers and flipped them over.

"I didn't see anything terrible. What are they drawings of?"

"They're designs for a train station," she admitted. "For the King Street Station, actually. There's a contest."

"That's right, I heard about that. So you're going to enter?"

"Not if I can't think up anything better than this," she said.

"If I can offer a piece of advice?"

She stiffened, wary of criticism. "What?"

"I don't know anything about architecture, but I know a little about committees. Whatever key words or phrases they use in describing the objective of the contest, be sure to repeat those same words and phrases back to them in the description of your entry. They love that."

"Oh," she said, and blinked in surprise. "That's very helpful."

He laughed. "You didn't think I was going to try to give you advice on the design, did you?" He gestured at the photos on the wall. "With an eye like yours, I have no doubt you'll come up with something stu

She smiled crookedly. "Thanks for the confidence. I wish I shared it."

"If you keep working at it, I'm sure you'll surprise yourself with what you can create."

Emma headed back to the kitchen, hoping that was true. Everything she drew felt hopelessly pedestrian. No hint of flair, no nod to the uniqueness of Seattle beyond the tired attempt to throw salmon and fir trees into the design.

Over the weekend she'd found herself abandoning her drawings in favor of preparing for tonight; it was more entertaining to plan a complex di

Tonight's sexual extravagance was number 64 from 101 Ways to Shock His Rocks, a piece of fine literature she'd purchased at a sex shop. Personally, she thought that number 64 was treading into disturbing territory, but the description promised to draw a night of unforgettable, primitive passion from her man. Who was she to argue? She'd thought that most of the stuff in the sex shop was icky, but it wouldn't be such a profitable business if it didn't deliver what it promised.

At least, that's what she'd told herself as she handed her Visa to the cashier and slunk out of the store with a big plastic bag of obscene treasures.