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  “Really?”

  He blinked. “Okay, maybe not here, and not like a wolf, which was a strange thing for me to say, but I want you with a need so strong it scares me. But it’s not just that, Annie, it’s the way you smile. The way you crook your head when you’re thinking. The way you stare longingly at Spencer when you think no one is looking. It’s your stubbornness, your scent, your taste. It’s everything. And all that combined tells me you were made for me.”

  “I—” She closed her mouth because his descended.

  His hands slid up to cup her face, not gently, but possessively. She felt every word in his kiss and she welcomed it, felt passion stir and rise within her body.

  He broke the kiss, but kept her face cupped in his warm hands. “So I’m going to say this once, Annie.”

  She nodded.

  “I love you, or at least I think this is love. I’ve never felt it before.”

  She nodded again.

  “Stay with me and be my partner, in all ways.”

  She felt her heart thud, hard and heavy, and it felt as if it might burst from her chest. Or was it already clogging her throat? She wasn’t sure. Then the panic came again.

  “Can I have a little time to think this through?”

  He dropped his hands, took a step back and then started laughing. “That’s your answer?”

  She slumped. “It’s who I am. I have to think. You said you’ve thought, but I haven’t. I’ve been briefing Ace, watching Barney with a too-quiet Spencer, consoling your mother on Della leaving. All those things have crowded my mind and I’m all cloudy. I—”

  “If you have to think about it, what does that say?” he asked, finally ceasing his somewhat profane laughter among the departed.

  “It says I want to be sure. I mean, I think I feel the same way, but I have to give my mind the same credence I’ve given my heart. It’s only fair.”

  Nate folded his arms, shook his head and watched her with a tinge of amusement in his gaze. “See? Another reason why we suit.”

  “You’re okay with it?”

  He smiled. “I think I’d prefer it.”

  “Right now at this very second, my heart says yes. So this is a risk.”

  “But one worth taking. I want you beside me, mind, heart and soul. Anything less would be unacceptable. So, think. Think hard.” He turned back toward the house where he’d grown into a man.

  Annie felt the vise in her throat loosen. This was a man not accustomed to handing a decision to someone else. This man usually got what he wanted, so she knew it was a rare gift. He’d given her power over his fate. “Hey, Nate?”

  He turned.

  “You’re nothing like your father.”

  She couldn’t see his expression in the shadows. “Oh, but I am. I go after what I want, and what I want most in this world is you.”

  * * *

  NATE DIDN’T SLEEP WELL for the next two nights as the mirror attested early Monday morning. He looked like an extra in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Pale, tense, with luggage under each eye. He may or may not have lost a body part.

  Specifically, his heart.

  “Hell,” he said to himself before scrubbing the fuzz from his teeth. Afterward, he rubbed his scruffy jaw thoughtfully, turning right then left. He wouldn’t look too bad with a beard. Hunting season was around the bend. Maybe he’d visit the old salt lick and see if any deer had sniffed around, providing him a store of venison he’d not had in many years. Of course, he didn’t really hunt much and, outside of Lucille’s summer sausage, wasn’t a big fan of the sometimes too gamey meat. Never mind.

  It had been two days since he’d seen Annie and already he was going Grizzly Adams. Or crazy.

  The peal of the doorbell interrupted his contemplation of beards, hunting and wallowing in sorrow. He slid on the wrinkled pajama pants lying over the hamper and padded out to the living room.

  Probably his mother. He’d called in sick, something he so rarely did he had stockpiled months of vacation. She’d likely made gumbo—her one good soup recipe she pulled out for all people under the weather.

  But it was Annie.

  She wrinkled her nose. “You look terrible.”

  “And you don’t,” he replied, meaning it. She looked great. Her hair curled around clear gray eyes and a pretty pink mouth. His heart played a game of hopscotch in his chest. He swung the door wider. “Come inside?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Should I? You look like that wolf you mentioned a few nights ago.”

  “Well, then, by all means come in.”

  She slid past him and he inhaled her sweet scent. Definitely baby powder. Then he stopped because it was quite wolfish behavior.

  “You weren’t lying,” she said, turning a circle in his living space. “There are a lot of cases here.”

  He closed the door and turned to her. “Too many.”

  “Should we get started right away? Is this going to be our office?”

  He spoke before he registered her words. “It will… Wait, are you staying?”

  She leaned against the arm of an overstuffed chair. Her gaze dropped to his bare chest, and he felt the pilot light go on deep in his pelvis. He wanted her, but this was greater than lust. She redirected her gaze. “Yeah, against all better judgment, I am.”

  He stood for a moment, allowing the information to filter through his fuzzy brain. Did this mean only as a business partner? He’d wanted more. “So…”

  She folded her arms. “You know what convinced me to stay? Henry and Emily Ann.”

  “Who?”

  “Your great-great-aunt and -uncle.”

  He tried to connect the dots but failed. His face must have shown as much because she sighed and shook her head. “The cemetery. Two hearts interlocked. Good food and a good woman. Remember?”

  “Yeah, and you said, ‘What about love?’”

  She stared at him for a moment. “You know what single women everywhere want?”

  He shook his head. He really, really didn’t know that one.

  “We don’t want to be found one day dead in our apartments with a cat eating our faces off.”

  “What?”

  “Stay with me,” she said. He eased himself on the couch because, though he knew Annie to be quite logical, he had no clue where she was going with this.

  “I tried over a year ago to circumvent the whole spinster dead on her couch surrounded by hungry cats thing. I forced myself into a relationship thinking I didn’t have to have love. I could have a husband, a kid, a dog and a life not spent alone watching reruns of Titanic while eating Lean Cuisines. I tried to squeeze my foot into that slipper thinking love didn’t matter because I wouldn’t be alone on Christmas. Thing is, when you try and do that, you get blisters and bunions and you don’t want to even walk around.”

  Now he followed her. She’d tried to force something and it didn’t work.

  “So I didn’t want to put on the slipper anymore. It was easier that way.”

  “We’re talking about relationships, right?”

  She blinked. “Yeah.”

  He clasped his hands between his spread knees and nodded. “Go on.”

  “So I spent the last day and a half doing some thinking, which seems contrary to what you should do when you are in love, but this is important, you know?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I thought about what I thought I wanted, that whole pretty-packaged life, and then I thought about what you said. Or what I said. About love. See, that’s what I lacked all along, and when I started feeling like I was falling for you, it scared me and I threw up all kinds of barriers. The case was an important barrier. We’re talking about saving a life here, so that wasn’t necessarily a barrier. But still, I convinced myself that it couldn’t be real. It was lust. Or the damn heat. Or whatever straw I could grasp, but the deal was—”

  “We fell in love despite common sense.”

  “Yeah,” she said, finally smiling. “We did, and it’s c
razy, but it’s true.”

  His heart expanded in his chest, but he didn’t move toward her. Not yet.

  “So what it boils down to is I want to lie beside you every night, and when we’ve passed into the great beyond, I want our hearts still overlapping. I want to be next to you in that cemetery at Beau Soleil as your loving wife, Anna Maria Dufrene. I want that more than a career or California sunshine.”

  He almost cried. Almost. “I want that, too.”

  “I’ll have to go back to California for a week or so. I have to make arrangements for my dad, have to meet with Ace and deal with my grandmother’s house and the stupid condo I bought. I know you haven’t said anything about marriage, and that’s okay for now because we’ve not even gone on a date. Unless you count Madame Jacqueline’s.”

  “I don’t count that.”

  Annie’s eyes were damp. Sweet, damp gray eyes, shining with a new beginning for him. “Oh, good, because I was hoping to get another opportunity at that doberg cake.”

  He rose. “Whatever you want.”

  She stood, toe to toe with him. “I like the sound of that.”

  And then she smiled up at him. Not Annie the competent undercover nanny, but Anna, slightly unsure, possibly scared but wonderful in so many ways he couldn’t possibly begin to list.

  “It may be rough. I’m not an easy man to deal with.”

  “Then you’ll understand when I’m as difficult.”

  He twined a curl around his finger. “We are much alike.”

  She rubbed a finger over his bottom lip. “We are. So it might get…passionate at times. I’m stubborn.”

  He tugged her T-shirt from the waistband of her jeans. Sliding his hands over her tight stomach, up her ribs to just under her breast. She gasped, her eyes widening, as he murmured, “I’m planning on passion. Lots and lots of passion.”

  She watched his mouth. Hungrily. “Oh, good. That’s a nice side benefit of being in a partnership.”

  He couldn’t stop the smile at his lips. “You’ve made me a very happy man, you know that?”

  “I hope you still feel that way next week.”

  He lowered his mouth and kissed her. She tasted like toothpaste and sweet, sweet Annie. She rose on her toes and wrapped her arms around him. Fireworks went off and he knew this was what had been intended for him.

  “Anna, I will forever be a happy man because you chose me with both your heart and mind.”

  “Call me Annie. My mother always called me that, and I like who I am as Annie.” She looked up at him. “Besides, my body chose you long ago.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, our bodies knew exactly what was right for us, so let’s go to my room and give them an opportunity to have their way again.”

  She smiled. “You don’t want to work on cases? Get our new business, Mendes and her Wolf Investigations, off on the right foot?”

  He gave her a smoldering look, the only wolfish one he had in his arsenal, and then snatched her hard against his body. “I’d rather play the big, bad wolf and you can be Little Red Riding Hood.”

  She slid her hands around to his ass and wiggled against him. He couldn’t stop the groan or the surge of hot liquid pouring into him, heating him. She peeked up. “Okay, but I refuse to tell you how big your…um…teeth are.”

  “You’re definitely suited for me. Too much alike.”

  She turned and pulled him toward the back of the house. She didn’t know where she was going, but it didn’t seem to matter. “I know one way we are way different. I’m a woman. And you’re a man.”

  “You are a good detective.”

  She laughed and pure joy flooded his soul. “Yeah, but I’m going to need to rediscover those difference for myself.”

  “Lead on, partner.”

  * * * * *

  There’s more to be told about the Dufrene family and Beau Soleil!

  Look for Abram’s story,

  UNDER THE AUTUMN SKY,

  book two of THE BOYS OF BAYOU BRIDGE series.

  Available in July 2012 wherever

  Harlequin Superromance books are sold.

  ISBN: 9781459227736

  Copyright © 2012 by Amy R. Talley

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