“Come here, Anne.”

His voice was a husky, seductive tenor. A call from the north woods, a low, primitive mating call that echoed through wind and night and silence…and had nothing at all to do with a brightly lit, spotless kitchen in an affluent suburb. A drop of coffee splashed on Anne’s wrist as she set down her cup and stood up.

“All right. I’ll put your suitcase on the porch,” she said reasonably.

She moved swiftly, so swiftly that she almost made it to the doorway before his fingers curled around her wrist and tugged, very gently. Just as gently, the rest of the room suddenly went out of focus. Her meticulous kitchen with its bright porcelains and immaculate chrome all blurred; Jake’s face was the only thing in focus. She took in the fan of character lines around his eyes and the grainy texture of his sun-weathered skin, the shaggy brows… A helpless murmur escaped her throat as his lips touched hers, once, soothingly, his mouth soft and smooth, the taste of him something she’d never been able to forget. “God, I’ve missed you, Anne. God, I’ve missed you…”

Her hands hung limply at her sides as she fought the rush of a thousand memories. The smell of Jake, the look of the long, curling hairs on his chest, his Adam’s apple and the cords of his neck, the feel of being wrapped up in a world of senses where nothing else mattered… His fingers combed back her hair, clenching and unclenching in the long, silken strands as they had done so many times before.

Their relationship had never worked, and never would work except on this one level. She knew that far too well, far too painfully…but his lips were so warm, brushing over and over on hers until they trembled, until they parted and his mouth molded itself to hers and his tongue slipped inside. God, she’d missed him. No one had ever even come close to filling the emptiness but Jake. Love, hate, frustration, laughter and sheer wild passion…a thousand emotions were involved in her feelings for her roguish wolf, only half of them pleasant, none of them comfortable, not one of them having the least thing to do with the well-ordered life in which she took such pride and satisfaction.