Jake seemed willing to take her up on the change of subject, a devilish gleam in his eyes. “We make very good lovers,” he growled softly, his large hands framing her face. “Which is one very small reason why I want an arrangement for life.”

“I’d rather take cyanide now. It would be much less painful in the long run.”

A chuckle rumbled in his throat. “You’re so convinced we have a problem with different lifestyles?”

“I know we do.”

“That we don’t share a single value that matters?”

“We don’t.”

“But how else are we going to get children for you, Anne? Who else would take you on but me?”

“Do you want a list of the offers I’ve had?” she demanded. But she was suddenly not feeling quite so lighthearted. Her perch on the car turned precarious when Jake leaned forward and buried his lips in her neck. The tickle of his breath made her shiver restlessly, like the leaves trembling in the night’s whispering wind. She tried to restrain his arms, but didn’t have any effect.

“So you’ve had offers,” he murmured. “But you’ve failed to make a commitment to a man in a gray flannel suit, Anne. You’ve run out of time. And I’m tired of talking.”

Obviously. Now he was into necking on deserted roads like two teenagers with no place to go. He slid his hands inside her jacket and around to the supple slope of her spine. Her troubled jade eyes met his silver ones as his came closer, suddenly holding no more humor than her own. “Jake, I’m not going to marry you,” she whispered desperately.

“We’re not going to talk any more about marriage,” he agreed. “Just violets, Anne. You smell exactly like violets…”

Anne was unwilling to discuss violets. She was unwilling to sit there on top of a car in the middle of nowhere on a night turned cold. His lips coaxed, trailing sweet, persuasive kisses along the line of her stubborn jaw, up to the furrowed frown on her forehead, down over her unhappy eyes. His mouth settled finally on the most difficult obstacle, her two lips pressed firmly together, at the same time that his hands were staging a subtle guerrilla war on her back.

Suddenly, she was sliding off the hood of the car. Her toes touched the gravel roadside; Jake cradled her legs between his. The assault of length to length was not one her heart had been expecting. Their shapes fit together with exquisite puzzlelike perfection. She needed air suddenly, a chance to regroup her scattered objections. “Jake…”

His mouth, hovering, sank down on her parted lips and wouldn’t let go. His tongue whispered over the back of her teeth, stole deeper into her warmth, a lonely tongue seeking company. His hand went to work, rearranging the crushed folds of his corduroy jacket and her velvet one; then he molded her soft, swelling breasts into the muscles of his chest.

He was so warm, so impossibly warm. When he raised his head, his eyes met hers, pure pewter. “All I had to do was see you again,” he murmured gruffly. “That was all, Anne. I didn’t even have to touch you. You, looking so proper at Link’s party, the respect you inspire in other people, your pride in the way you walk and move, all grace, all supple femininity…” A slash of a crooked smile touched his mouth. His hand brushed back a single lock of her ash-blond hair that had stolen loose. “Not always a lady, though.”

Never a “lady” for him… A wanton heart gave in, returning pressure for pressure of soft kisses turned fierce and hungry. She threaded her fingers through his hair, loving the feel of the thick mat curling around her fingers, her palms urging him closer. He smelled like the woods. His breathing grew huskier as his hands roamed with growing insistence over territory they had no business touching, not here, not in the open countryside on a lush, dark velvet night.

“Come with me,” he whispered. “Please come with me, Anne. Just for two short weeks.”

His lips caught hers again, not giving her a chance to answer. Devil hands splayed on her hips and then cupped their slim softness, driving her pelvis into the cradle of his thighs, burying his arousal between them like some sweet private secret. A moan escaped from her soul and echoed out into the night’s silence. “Come with me,” he whispered, a sorcerer’s call.

She buried her face in his throat, too weak to stand. “You knew all along I’d go with you,” she said helplessly. “I won’t marry you, Jake. But if you want two weeks…” A thousand objections promptly raced through her head; she ignored all of them. Jake’s eyes bored into hers, accurately taking in the yearning in her eyes, the soft flush of passion, the fear of the hurt that she was sure she had just left herself open to. The pads of his thumbs slowly smoothed the lines of her cheekbones; his features were stark and grave in the darkness. He waited; she didn’t understand why. “You really want to stand here all night?” she whispered.

“I was trying to give you sixty seconds to take it back, Anne. Because after that…”

She shook her head. “I won’t take it back.”

They drove home in silence. Anne, exhausted, leaned her head back against the seat and studied Jake wearily from under her eyelashes. How did one go about working love out of one’s system? Was it an answer, to live and breathe and survive together for two weeks, until Jake could finally see that they were at odds on the values that really counted? Was that what it would take? Was she going to have to go through another parting?

Halfway through the ride home, his hand captured hers. Her fingers explored the calluses on his palm, the feel of the firm brown flesh of his hand, so much stronger and larger than her own. I don’t care what I have to go through, her heart whispered. I don’t care that it will have to end again.

In the driveway, Jake tucked her into the warm hollow of his shoulder as he walked her to the door. She would have shivered without his warmth. The wind had picked up even more strength; leaves fluttered in the air and clouds had parted to uncover a bright, cold moon. Jake fitted her key in the lock, pushed open the door and stood there. Surprise flickered in her eyes as he planted a very firm, very quick kiss on her lips. “You’re so very sure all we have is sex, Anne,” he murmured. “Obviously, I’m going to have to make it very clear that we have more than that. Much more.”

He strode down the drive, leaving her gaping in the doorway, as unsettled as a kitten.

Only when his car was gone did Anne open the door and go inside, still unable to believe that he hadn’t come in with her. So he was going to show her they had much more than just sex. Principles were fine, but she could not remember a time Jake had been interested in principles once he’d touched her. Principles had never been a prime concern to Anne after she’d touched him, either.

She wandered into her bedroom, hung up her jacket, neatly lined up her shoes and unzipped the back of her dress. Then, on impulse, she checked the latch on the bedroom window. It was locked.

An hour later it was open, not only the latch but the window as well. Anne’s elbows were on the sill, her chin cupped in her hands, and she was staring blindly out at the three-quarter moon. And she was freezing. The night air was brisk, and her dress was still unzipped in back. Not that she was inclined to move.

There had been a time in Jake’s life when he had preferred entering through a window rather than a door. A whole summer, actually. It had started when she was eighteen, a night when she had been very much alone and terribly depressed. Her mother had died two weeks before. Anne had told herself a dozen times that she was not grieving, because there had never been much love between daughter and mother to grieve for. The reminders didn’t seem to help. The feeling of loss kept overwhelming her; she hadn’t been able to sleep…and she had had no idea Jake was even in town until she heard the rattle in the second-story window of her grandmother’s house.

Horrified, she’d unhooked the casement window before he killed himself. He had climbed up a shaky trellis, clinging to the stone wall of the house. Jake burst through the window like Errol Flynn, give or take the nose, the different hair color, the jeans and a completely different build. She’d switched on the light by her bed, smiling as she hadn’t smiled in weeks, trying to look perfectly scandalized.

“What on earth do you think you’re-”

“I heard about your mother.” His sweat shirt was neatly tucked into his jeans for some reason. She discovered why when he untucked it, and kings and queens and pawns bounced all over the carpet. The chessboard came from behind his back. “I figured you might enjoy a game of chess.”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning!”

“So? You weren’t sleeping.”

She’d given up trying to reason with him when she was three. It was very like Jake to do the unexpected. It was very like Jake to totally ignore the white cotton nightgown that barely covered her thighs, her mane of hair all tangled around her face. Somehow she felt self-conscious only about the faint violet shadows beneath her eyes, because that was where he kept looking, studying her. She lost the game, in seven moves, and set up the board again.

Somehow, they never played the second game. “Come here, Anne,” Jake said quietly.

The voice did not sound at all like Jake. It threw her, the tender intimacy in his tone. She simply went to him. He folded her up so fast in a huge, warm hug, holding her…holding her. In a moment, the light was off, and they were lying on her bed, and she didn’t object. Emotions were exploding inside her, a terrible, terrible pain that she didn’t know how to let go of. He kept smoothing back her hair, his touch so gentle. “You want to talk about her?”

His voice was rough, oddly fierce. Jake had never liked her mother. She didn’t want to talk, anyway. It hurt too much to talk. Jake was warm and vibrant and strong, and all she wanted was to hold on to him. Jake always understood. She didn’t have to talk. She had the frightening feeling that if he let her go, she would fall down a steep cliff, that tears would start and never stop. Unconsciously, she shifted even closer to him, her legs pressing between his, her arms wrapping around his waist. Jake held her still, his hand continuing to comb through her hair. “Don’t you dare hurt for her,” he murmured. “Don’t you dare, Anne.”