In Serena's Web by Kay Hooper

deliberation. “You, Brian, are in a rut. The chains of habit bind you. I’ll bet you haven’t taken an unplanned step since high school—and possibly not since elementary school.”
    Brian knew intellectually that she had glibly translated a disciplined nature into what sounded uncomfortably like a boring one; he reacted emotionally. “That’s—nonsense,” he said, having obviously changed his mind and substituted “nonsense” for a less polite word.
    “Is it?” Serena rose from the edge of the ornamental pool where they’d been sitting since the Bishops had reclaimed their offspring, and looked down at him, still smiling. In a tone that could not
quite
be called sympathetic, she said, “According to all the statistics, a single man in his mid-thirties is generally single out of sheer habit. Usually because he concentrated on building a career in his twenties. So he gets in a rut. Begins to believe he has this strong reason for staying single—when allthe time it’s just a habit. And habits are terribly hard to break, you know.”
    Brian rose slowly to his feet and stared at her. “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” he said, as though to a third person. Then, to Serena, he said pleasantly, “You’re trying to provoke me.”
    Serena glanced idly toward the setting sun, then back at him. “Am I? Why, Brian, I’m just making an observation.”
    “You’re trying to provoke me,” he repeated firmly. He was, at that moment, very sure that he was right. “You think I’m going to—It’s reverse psychology. You tell me I’m in a rut, so I immediately ‘break out’ of that rut by deciding to do something … reckless.”
    “That makes me sound very cunning,” she commented, thoughtful.
    “You are,” he told her. “And it won’t work.”
    Serena smiled. “What’re we going to do about dinner?”
    He blinked. “What do you want to do?”
    “Eat.”
    From his momentary position of certainty, Brian felt himself again falling into bewilderment.He had so completely accepted the reality of Serena’s plotting that he had found himself searching for motives behind every utterance. But was there motive behind every word she spoke? Could she possibly be that devious? Or was he imagining things?
    “And then?” he asked guardedly.
    “We could play poker,” she suggested gently, then turned and headed for the hotel.

SIX
    D URING THE NEXT two days Brian couldn’t decide if Serena had indeed abandoned her plotting or if she was playing a wonderful game of poker.
    She never again referred to his “rut” or to the habits of bachelors. Nor did she refer to her earlier decision to get him to the altar. But she did continue to go to dinner wearing evening gowns that turned heads and stopped conversations in mid-sentence.
    There was, however, a change in her behavior.
    From their first meeting, Serena had provenherself to be a woman who liked to touch. It was, he had thought then, part of her charm. She would slide her hand beneath his arm as they walked or touch his hand when they talked. Her gestures had seemed innocent, confiding.
    He would have been suspicious of such gestures now, had they been made. But they were not. Without being obvious about it, Serena refrained from touching him.
    And she had stopped flirting. No more provocative questions or remarks. No more slow Mona Lisa smiles. No more enigmatic glances from smoky gray eyes. She was casual and friendly, but not intimate. She made him laugh with comical stories of some of her past plots; she talked quietly, after a bald question from him, about her foster children. They played cards, alone and with Josh, who seemed secretly amused about something. They shared every meal, walked in the garden, played tennis and golf, went horseback riding, and talked.
    Brian found himself watching her warily at first, then with increasing intentness. He made a few provocative remarks of his own, and Serenaeither ignored them, missed them—impossible, he