Yet there was something about her that made him feel this horrifying, embarrassing, stupid sense of belonging. She made him feel as if she needed him.

As if he needed her.

As if she wanted him-just him, not any man, not any guy, but only him.

He wanted her, only her-not just a woman to fill a sexual need or the lonely hours of the night, but something else, something more. Cameron kept getting the unnerving, frightening impression that he wanted her the way he’d wanted no other woman. That she alone could fill a hole inside him that he hadn’t even known was there.

The night kept coming, bringing the privacy of darkness, intensifying the scents of verdant earth and lavender. The ache inside him felt part of the night, lonely and dark, hot and urgent. He knew it was crazy, yet the drumbeat of his pulse kept thrumming the same message, that he’d lose something irretrievable if he didn’t love her, didn’t have her, now, right now.

She lay back against the cool sheet he’d brought as a picnic blanket, pulling him down to her, communicating how much she wanted the same thing. Him. Naked. Now. For whatever reasons, right or wrong, sane or crazy, this felt so right. She felt right.

His shirt peeled away as easily as her skirt. She made an exasperated sound, half sat up, peeled off a tangle of noisy jewelry from her wrists and ears, came back to him, damp soft skin intimately molding to his. He had to devour her with more kisses. Against the white sheet, her skin looked so golden dark, her eyes so shining, and all that wild silken hair kept tangling him closer. He thought she was naked, but it seemed she was still wearing see-through panties…panties he didn’t discover until his mouth had trailed an intense, tender path from her breast to the hollow in her navel, down to the sweet roundness of her abdomen and finally lower.

Even in the dark, he could see through those filmy panties. Even in the dark, he could see the urgent rise and fall of her breasts, the pulse drumming in her throat, the heat in her eyes. And when those panties were gone, when there was nothing between them but anticipation, she said suddenly, wildly, “Cam…Cameron, I need to tell you something-”

“Birth control. You’re not protected?”

For a millisecond she didn’t answer, but then she said with absolute sureness, “No. That’s not a problem.”

“Then you’d better give me a very fast, very serious reason to stop, chére, or else I’m going to be very sure you want this as much as I do.”

Again she hesitated for barely a millisecond, but once she answered him, her voice was strong and true. “I don’t want to stop, not tonight, not with you. Take me, Cam. Make everything else go away. Make this night belong just to us.”

Hell. That might just be an impossibly huge expectation to put on a lover…but a guy couldn’t win what he didn’t aspire to. So he tried. He concentrated five hundred percent of himself into every kiss, every caress. He tried tender, then rough. Tried an urgent, ardent rush, then the seductive frustration of slow hands and a lazy tongue.

Moonlight bathed her skin in silver. A nearby owl hooted, their only voyeur. And the scent of lavender kept seeping into his senses, into hers. When he finally swept her beneath him, his flesh seemed on fire, his muscles turgid and tight, drugged-crazy with her, for her.

She wrapped her long, slim legs around him even as he tested her soft center for moistness-as if she hadn’t already told him in a thousand ways she was ready for him. Lips met and clung as he eased inside her, initially trying to be gentle, determined to be gentle. But she hissed his name in a fierce, frantic call, wooing him into her deeper, harder.

He plunged in then, burying his hands in her hair, burying his lips in her lips, burying himself in the heart of her. It was crazy, totally crazy, but he had the sensation of belonging to her, belonging with her, in some emotional way he’d never even known existed before. This was about sex, he told himself. The best sex he’d ever had, but still, about sex.

The lie didn’t last any longer than it took his mind to try it out. This was so not about sex it was shaking his world.

Or she was. She matched him, stroke for stroke, slamming heartbeat for slamming heartbeat, her lithe slick body tightening exactly when his did. She owned him at that moment. Or he owned her. Damned if he knew the difference-damned if he cared. The sky opened up in a shower of stars, or that’s how he felt, as if he were flying over the moon with her, release pouring through him and into her.

For the briefest second he wished she hadn’t answered his question about birth control, because this insane feeling of longing, belonging, owning was so compelling. He wanted his seed inside her, a child that came from the two of them. But that thought, like every other coherent thought, fled faster than moonbeams. They rode the crest together, then sank, both spent, in each other’s arms.

Later…minutes later, hours later, Cameron opened his eyes. The moon was still up there, still framed in stars. The smells of earthy loam and lavender still pervaded his nostrils; somewhere a raccoon rustled and an owl hooted. He’d smelled the smells before, knew that moon. But he didn’t know her; how it would feel to have her warm, vibrant body in his arms, still half-wrapped around him, her cheek nestled in the arch of his neck, her silky hair tickling his chin.

“Damn,” he said.

She leaned back her head. “Uh-oh. That sounds like a man in the throes of regrets.”

“Try again. I couldn’t regret what just happened between us if my life were at stake.” He bussed the top of her head, which made Charlie pop to attention again. He was too old to have Charlie pop to attention again this fast. It was her. Making him feel things, do things, want things that weren’t normal for him.

He couldn’t be in love with her. Not just because he barely knew the woman, but because his pull for her made no sense. She’d almost cried twice that day. Did he need a weepy woman? Did he need all those cats? For that matter, he’d seen Alps and ocean, so how could he possibly be drawn to some rocky land with red barns and stone fences and winding roads?

Perhaps more directly to the point, if he’d lost his mind, where the hell had it gone?

Was there a chance it could find its way home again?

“Cameron?” She twisted in his arms, not moving far away from him, just pushing back far enough that she could tilt her head and look at him face-to-face. Below, her fingers reached over and gently, playfully, entwined with his. “Tell me about your daughters.”

He glanced down and watched their two hands blend together. Hell. Double hell. Teenagers held hands like this, not fully grown adults who were lying naked in the moonlight. But she didn’t seem willing to sever all closeness yet, and neither was he.

The question about his daughters seemed to come from nowhere, but he was more than willing to answer it. Talk was better than the alternative-which was lying there, drinking in the scent of lavender and moonlight and wanting to make love to her again. So he talked. “Miranda’s fifteen. Kate’s sixteen.” He hesitated. “For a long time it was totally clear cut that they belonged with their mom. It’s not that I didn’t want to be an active dad. I’ve always wanted that, always tried to be. I just traveled so much. Over the years, I always talked to them twice a week. We spend time together every holiday and school break. And I usually hang there at least a month every year to just be around them, part of their routine. Only lately…”

“Lately what?”

“Well, lately, they’re fighting all the time with their mom. Most of it seems to be pretty standard teenage girl, mother stuff. Rules. Roles. But sometimes she’s had it, and then I think…”

“You think what?”

“That if I lived in a more settled way, I could have them with me for a while. Most parents don’t seem to like the teenage years, but for some strange reason, it doesn’t bother me that they’re being difficult and impossible. If anything, I feel like now I could be a better parent to them.” Okay. He’d stripped naked some of his heart to tell her that. And left him hanging besides, so it was her turn now, he figured. “What about your ex?”

Her hand dropped away from his. She lay back, facing the stars. “Well…his name is Ed. Simpson, I always called him. Back in college, I took one look and just knew he was my first and only true love. He was a warm, family kind of guy, good sense of humor. Fun. I quit my last year of school to help him finish faster-he got his social work degree. He was always one to reach out to help someone else.”

“Sounds like a saint,” Cam said, and was briefly tempted to spit and paw the earth-but naturally he was too mature.

“Not exactly,” she said wryly. “He’s married to someone else now. In fact, they had their first child five months after the wedding. And he called me this morning to tell me about their newborn son.”

“I don’t understand why he’d call you.” It wasn’t hard for Cam to deduce that the creep had cheated on her, judging from the age of the first kid.

“Who would? I wouldn’t take him back for a fortune, am over him in every way a woman can get over a man. For some reason he seems to still think I’m his friend. That we’re still good friends.”

“So, are you?”

“No.”

“Then why on earth do you let him keep calling?”

“Because.” She lifted a hand to the moonlight. “Oh, cripes, I don’t know why. In the beginning, I acted friendly out of pride because I never wanted to let on how much he’d hurt me. And then I just didn’t seem to know how to cut him off. I know they’ve really been struggling to afford their growing family.”

“Struggling? I thought your ex was wealthy.”