There were times when reality didn't come anywhere near fantasy.

Being kissed by Liam McDonald wasn't one of them.

The man knew how to do things with his tongue and lips and hands that had a gal practically singing -- or singeing. And his beard stubble. OMIGOD! Who knew that facial hair abrasion could be such a turn on?

J.C. willingly flopped her neck like a docile rag doll as Liam threaded his fingers through her hair and turned her head to a new angle, having thoroughly explored her mouth from the previous vantage point. She hadn't been kissed with this degree of attention to detail since...well...since never. Maybe because she preferred to be the one in control? She always led during the slow dances.

Or maybe it had to do with the type of men she'd kissed in the past, including her ex-husband, whose idea of foreplay was emptying his pockets before taking off his pants. There were times, most of the time, in fact, when Stan had seemed more concerned about his loose change than getting her to come.

"Oh, rats!" Liam suddenly jumped back.

Did people still say things like rats? J.C. wondered. How sweet. She pulled his lips back to hers.

He gave her a quick, searing kiss before staring at the side of her head, or more accurately, at his wrist, which was sticking out next to her tangled hair. "The time. My watch." He held his watch up for her to see.

J.C. squinted. "Six, ah, six-forty, no, fifty. I can't quite read the exact time because of the way you've got your arm."

"Oh, sorry." Liam brought it down and looked at it himself. "I was supposed to be some place more than a half hour ago."

"Oh." J.C. told herself not to be disappointed. She'd had her fantasy moment kissing Liam McDonald.

"I really don't want to leave now, you know?"

She brightened up. "You don't?"

"Of course not. Besides, what if you've really got a concussion? You shouldn't be alone."

OMIGOD again! Not only was Liam McDonald keen on exploring her body in new and different ways, he actually cared about her health and well being.

"It's all right," she reassured him. "I can call a friend, a girlfriend-" yes, it was important to emphasize that "-and, really, you don't need to watch me dial her number."

Liam mulled over her response. "All right. I'll trust you." He rescued the bag of frozen peas and handed it to her. "But meanwhile, keep this on your head."

She squashed the bag against her forehead. "I'll just see you out," she offered and walked him to the front hallway. She placed her hand on the doorknob and twisted it, waiting...

This is when he was supposed to say, "As soon as I can get away from my meeting with the family retainer, the governor, the Pope, whoever, I will rush back to ravish you, bringing French champagne and dispersing rose petals in my wake."

She opened the door...

"I don't believe it." The rest of Liam's words degenerated into phrases that were definitely not French.

J.C. peered out. She might have been clocked on the head, but she could have sworn something was missing. "Hey, where's Red Dog?" Then she saw Liam's eyes open wide as he focused on the front yard.

The dog was waiting -- but not on the stoop.

There he sat, very erect, very proud, in the middle of the bed of daffodils. Or what had once been a bed of daffodils. Sherman's Army couldn't have perpetrated more destruction if it had wanted to.

"Red Dog," Liam called out harshly, ignoring the steps and bounding off the front stoop in one leap. The dog wagged his tail, smashing yet another flower before bending his head. The corners of his mouth somehow sagged and rose in unison.

"Forget it," Liam said sternly. "No amount of acting cute can save your hide. Bad dog. Go to the car." He pointed in the direction of the car. The dog slinked away.

Liam turned to J.C. "I'm so sorry. He must have gotten bored waiting around." He shook his head. "And from the looks of things, the mutt must have ruined hundreds of flowers."

J.C. joined him and surveyed the damage. "No, actually, it's only about a hundred and forty."

He glanced over his shoulder. "You've counted them already?"

The soil was cold and squishy under her bare feet. J.C. hopped back and forth. With the bag of peas hiding half her head and her clothes muddy and disheveled, she must have made an interesting sight. No doubt her neighbor Mrs. Dibenski was already on the phone, spreading the news: "You know Rose Schubach's daughter? Why back in high school, she was the one my late brother Vic -- God rest his soul even if he never worked a decent day in his life -- Vic swore he saw her doing the dirty with Carl Levy in the front seat of his father's Grand Marquis. I always had this premonition that she would come to no good, and I told Rose just that, many times. And, I hate to say I was right, but just today, I saw her hopping and holding peas to her head -- a store brand, no less..."

Never mind that J.C. had dutifully uprooted herself to come home to tend to her dying mother, and that she volunteered to do Mrs. Dibenski's taxes for free, discovering in the process how her accountant had charged her an exorbitant sum, and which J.C. had managed to recoup in small claims courts. Despite all -- she would always be the loose teenager.

J.C. shook her head, trying not to look at the broken flowers. How to explain? "To answer your question, I didn't count them -- not exactly. It's more like I eyeballed the size of the flowerbed, estimated how far apart the flowers were planted, and then after that, came up with hundred and forty, give or take two or three."

She settled the arm that wasn't holding the peas against her hipbone and tried to explain the unexplainable. "You see, I don't know a thing about gardening, but I know numbers. All the women in my family tend to. It's kind of a gift, like second-sight. Only we have this number-vision thing."

Liam whistled. "That's amazing. You're the first woman I've ever met who could do that?"

Great, he probably thought she was one of those people who made regular trips to Roswell, as well, looking for alien spacecraft.

Except he wasn't looking at her like she was some kind of voodoo weirdo. Instead, if anything, he seemed, well, at a loss for a better word, impressed.

"What I said doesn't freak you out?" she asked tentatively.

"On the contrary, you have nothing but my profound admiration. My only question is with a talent like that, why aren't you in Vegas?"

"I was." She saw his eyebrows rise. "But not the way you're thinking. I was a dealer at the Bellagio. And let me tell you, the House always won when I worked."

Liam nodded. "I bet. So why'd you leave?"

J.C. looked pensively around the yard with its trodden flowers. She worked at holding her sudden sadness in check. "The siren call of New Jersey."

He looked at her askance.

"Would you believe family obligations?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, I know the feeling." Frowning, he drifted off in into a reverie fueled by memory and guilt. "Anyway-" he snapped back out of it "-as your amazing powers of arithmetic have observed, my dog has wrecked your garden."

"Don't fret about it. Like I said, gardening is not my thing. They were my mother's flowers."

"Were?" He tended to pick up on the little things, even if he was a man.

"Yeah, she died last year." Just before Christmas: three months, two weeks, three days -- J.C. glanced down at her watch -- and forty-seven minutes ago. She sighed. That was the problem with numbers. They never went away.

"Then I feel infinitely worse. I'm so sorry."

"It's not a big deal." Except it was, more than she would have thought. Somehow, staring at all the trampled mess brought home the finality, far more than the frozen tuna casseroles and baked ziti, which neighbors had brought after the funeral and which were now gathering layers of freezer burn.

Not that she expected him to understand.

"What do you mean, No big deal? Of course, it bothers you." Liam reached out and gently squeezed her upper arm.

Okay, so he wasn't your average male. This much was becoming increasingly clear. J.C. inhaled deeply, fearful that tears were about to come. In front of Liam McDonald of all people.

She had been defiantly sob-free throughout the terrible ordeal of her mother's lingering illness. And one thing was for sure, she wasn't about to ball her eyes out in front of Mrs. Dibenski or the other neighborhood ladies in their purple pantsuits and Easy Spirit shoes. Her memories of the wake, when Mrs. D. had confided, "The coffee and Danish will fortify us for the pre-holiday sales at Quakerbridge Mall -- you don't have any Sweet 'N Low, do you dear?" were still all to fresh.

Only after the funeral, when her childhood friend, Phoebe Freeman, had put her arm around her had J.C. let the tears flow.

And now, right when J.C. would have wished that she appeared more the alluring vixen -- a tall order with a bag of peas on her forehead -- she felt like the floodgates were starting to open up again. She gulped and tried to pull away.

But he wouldn't let her. "No, it's all right. It's my fault that all this happened."

"It's nobody's fault. Sometimes things just happen." Isn't that what she had been telling herself every evening since she'd come home?

Liam pulled her around to face him. "Let me do something to make it better. How about I replace all the flowers?"

J.C. sniffed. "You can't. I mean, I may not know much about gardening, but I'm pretty sure these are bulbs. That means you plant them in the fall."

"Well, maybe there's something else I could do? Like get you two more pints of ice cream?"

So he had noticed the multiple containers in her freezer. J.C. removed the bag of peas and raised her eyes. What a hunk. What a dream. A hunky dream holding her no less. "I'm not sure my waistline could take it," she said nobly. "Besides, don't you have to be somewhere?"

"You're right. But you know, sometimes..." He pulled her closer and tipped her chin upwards. "I can't leave things like this." He pulled her into an embrace.

And she wasn't disappointed. J.C. sank into the full-blown, Technicolor, eye-popping, lip-numbing kiss. Nothing slobbery or with too much teeth rubbing -- more responsive, playful, thorough. Definitely thorough.

It left J.C. speechless, brainless and incapable of shutting her jaw.

He massaged the shell of her ear. The man was dangerous. "Make no mistake," he murmured. "I'll be back. And I mean that -- even if we McDonalds may have a history of falling short."

As far as J.C. was concerned, if his kiss was any indication of the way the McDonalds fell short, the rest of the world had a lot of catching up to do.

On feet that barely touched the ground, she floated to the driveway while Liam corralled Red Dog into the back seat of the car, muttering all sorts of things about the dog's pitiful behavior. From every indication, the dog took no notice. Liam circled the car. "Call your girlfriend, you hear," he reminded J.C. "Make sure she comes over, pronto."

"I promise." J.C. had no doubts that as soon as Phoebe heard about this latest saga, wild horses or a season-ending sale at Barney's wouldn't stop her from landing on J.C.'s doorstep.

Liam slapped the roof and got in the car. "Good, because I can't have anything untoward happening now that I've found you," he said through the open window. Then with a wave, he drove off, Red Dog cramming his nose out the back window.

What a line. What a guy. And, like, who uses words like untoward? Only someone really classy. J.C. held up her hand, finally dropping it to her side when the car turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

So her feet were frozen. Her flowers were ruined. And she had bumps on her head the size of potato dumplings. But she'd also experienced one fabulous, heart-stopping kiss. Make that two heart-stopping kisses. An idiotic grin spread across her face, the kind associated with the criminally insane or the insanely besotted.

And that's when she realized what she'd done.