“Oh.” She moved a little closer, hesitant but determined. “Wouldn’t you like to be part of a family?” she asked, sounding more plaintive than she realized. “I’ve only ever had my grandmother, really, and she only kept me because she had to. My mother died when I was just little. Dad…” She shrugged. “Dad was never much of a family person. So I’ve really got nobody. And…I’m sorry…but it seems as if now you haven’t got anybody, either.” She clasped her hands tightly at her waist. “We could be each other’s family.”

His face had gone hard, and his eyes glittered at her. “I don’t want a family,” he said deliberately. “Least of all, you!”

“I might grow on you,” she said, and smiled to hide the hurt caused by his words. Of course he didn’t want her. Nobody ever really had.

He hadn’t said anything else. He’d tried ignoring her, but she wouldn’t go away. She came every single day, bringing books for him to read, tapes for him to listen to. She cooked for him and sat with him and talked to him, argued with him and encouraged him, and despite his hostility and lack of encouragement, she very quietly fell in love with him.

She didn’t realize that her love for him was so obvious. It was impossible not to notice how she felt, when her face was radiant with it. Neither had she known that Dane noticed her without wanting to, his dark eyes growing more covetous by the day as his recovery brought her close and kept her there. He became used to her, enjoyed her, wanted her. She was so different from all the women he’d had in his life. Tess was loving and gentle, and there was an odd kind of vulnerability about her. He thrived on her attentions. He began to look forward to her company.

But even so, he eventually grew uneasy when he began to realize how attached he was becoming to her. He was afraid of involvement, terrified of it, after the disaster of his marriage. Even if he’d married Jane to spite his hard-hearted mother, who didn’t approve of her, he’d been attracted to Jane at first, and she’d pretended to be in love with him. Then had come marriage and her distaste of intimacy with him. The crowning touch had been her reckless affair with his old partner on the Houston police force. That had been revenge, he knew, and she’d left him more crippled than the shooting had. Tess was a woman. She could very easily be deceiving him, too, overcome with compassion and what was probably physical infatuation.

His doubts led to a return of his former moodiness, and then to open hostility. He pushed Tess away at every opportunity, but she was stubborn and refused to believe that he really didn’t want her around.

He got back on his feet and grew strong much more quickly than anyone thought he would. With good health came a revived male vitality that responded suddenly, and with devastating results, to Tess’s femininity….

With her blond hair around her shoulders and wearing a white peasant dress with a colorful belt, she danced into his apartment at lunchtime one day carrying a homemade cake. Dane was in jeans and barefoot, his white T-shirt over his muscular chest damp with sweat from the workout he’d been having in his improvised gym. He limped a little because of his wounds, but he could walk. Now he was intent on walking without the limp, getting fit. But Tess was making him vulnerable all over again, draining him of strength.

He wanted her desperately, even if it was totally against his will. He’d been without a woman for a long time, and he needed someone. Tess was tempting him beyond bearing. She looked at him with eyes that wanted him, and the need had smoldered so long that it got away from him.

She hadn’t seen the calculating look he’d given her as she deposited the cake on the counter in the kitchen, or the warning glitter of his black eyes.

“What’s this?” he asked in a sensual tone he’d never used with her before, moving close.

“Just a pound cake,” she said breathlessly, her eyes shyly glancing off his as she registered the devastating impact of his nearness on her pulse rate. Her eyes adored him. “I thought you might have a sweet tooth. How do you feel? You look…much better.” Her eyes had dropped, as if the sight of him delighted her, embarrassed her.

He hadn’t thought about her love life, or lack of it, or it might have prevented what happened next. His only intent at the time had been to ease the ache devouring him, in the quickest possible way.

“I’ve got a sweet tooth, all right,” he’d said softly as he backed her up against the counter and leaned his body into hers. “You must have one, too. You spend half your life devouring me with those sultry eyes. I’d have to be blind not to know what you feel for me. Is this what you want, Tess?” he asked huskily, and moved his hips blatantly against hers, letting her feel the stark evidence of his desire for her. She blushed, but he wasn’t looking. His eyes were on her parted lips. “God knows, I want you beyond bearing!”

Her mind had stopped working, shock mingling with fear. Before she could find the words to protest, his hard, hungry mouth covered hers, his hips pushing her against the counter behind her. His hands lifted her into the stark aroused curve of his body, and his tongue went into her mouth with enough lust to make even a virgin aware of his intent.

Tess had only been kissed once or twice, always by men who knew how sheltered her life was. Now she was being subjected to an embrace that only an experienced woman could have responded to, and it scared her to death.

She stiffened and pushed at his chest frantically, but her actions didn’t penetrate the haze in his mind. One lean hand possessed her breast roughly while his leg suddenly stabbed between hers in an explicit movement that made her panic.

“Dane…no!” she panted, wild-eyed.

He barely heard her. “Yes,” he groaned unsteadily. “Oh, God, yes, yes…!” His powerful arm contracted. “You want me, don’t you, baby?” he’d asked blindly, his body shuddering as his mouth burned over her bare shoulders and throat, only to return, hot and heavy and rough on hers. “Don’t you? Right here.” He groaned harshly, his hands moving under her skirt, holding her bare thighs as he shifted her so that she could feel the blatant need of his body pressing hungrily at the threshold of her innocence.

She gasped, her heart shaking at the sensations the contact aroused. She moaned under his mouth, frightened.

“Here,” he growled. “Right here, baby, standing up,” he said shakily. His hands were on bare skin, touching her as no man ever had, as if his own need was paramount, as if she were simply a vessel for that need, to be used.

Then all at once, still breathing harshly, he let her slide to the floor and his head lifted briefly. His eyes were glazed, his body trembling faintly, like the strong, lean hands that smoothed roughly over her breasts as he crushed her mouth under his and groaned harshly. “This is too much for my back,” he’d whispered. “We’ll have to do it in bed, so that I can lie down….”

She knew it was the only chance she’d have to get away. She ducked and tore out of his arms. Her fear of him was so evident that it managed to penetrate the glaze in his eyes, the raging, headlong helplessness of his need. The threat of intimacy without emotion made her panic. She wept, her sobs loud in the room as she backed away from him, her gray eyes tragic and wide.

“Get away…from me!” she cried as he came toward her, his intentions written in his dark eyes. “Leave me alone!”

It registered, finally, that she was afraid of him. He’d been too drunk on her softness to realize it until he saw the wide, helpless terror in her eyes. He fought to breathe normally. He’d lost control. That was a first.

He stared at her, his expression slowly reverting to its usual impassivity, his eyes startlingly black. “That’s what you’ve been asking for,” he said in a cutting, harsh tone as he fought for sanity.