Oh, Juliana thought as he moved his arm around her, it's like dancing. She had never particularly cared for dancing, preferring conversation when she was forced to attend social events, but she knew some young women were crazy for dancing. Maybe those women were also the sorts of women who kissed people. Or — did women kiss people, or was it always men starting these things off? She tried to picture doing to same things to Lachlan that he had done to her, but it seemed ridiculous. Was that just because he was so much bigger than her? She thought if she were to put her hand on his back and another on his neck it wouldn't have at all the same feeling.

So where would her hands go, then? Presumably somewhere different. She glanced down at his chest, his shoulders, his arms, trying to figure out if she had any instinct for this buried within her somewhere. Before she could make a decision, however, he said something that surprised her.

"You do?" Juliana asked, looking up at his face again. It wasn't just that it was a compliment. The specific word he'd used — respect — had a bigger connotation than any of the things he'd said during their last conversation. "You hardly know me."