“Sonia, I’m sorry. I never, never meant to hurt you…” His lips pressed into her hair. “Come here, you,” he growled suddenly.

“I’m right here.”

“Not close enough.” His palms framed her face and forced her chin up. He claimed her mouth, hard, rough, insistent. By the time his lips lifted from hers, she felt a calm settling through her like riches. More than that his arms swept around her, warm and tender, in a hug so heartfelt and precious that she knew he really was home again. “Now, are you going to tell me why the hell you pulled that damn-fool stunt?” he murmured in her ear.

“So you could play hero. So you could swoop down out of the Western sky and play the cowboy claiming his woman.” She shifted in his arms, drawing her wrists up around his neck. There was a swift flash of disbelief and even anger in his eyes, but she pressed her finger to his lips before he could say anything. She hadn’t been playing games. Her laughter died as well as her tears; vibrant emotions played on her face. “Would you listen for a minute?” she whispered.

“I’m listening.”

“You were there. I knew you were there to catch me. And maybe it was a little foolish,” she admitted softly, “but I had to tell you-I had to show you…” She took a breath, trying to make the words somehow fit right. “Men have such strange ideas about heroes,” she said quietly. “Heroes aren’t pirates, and you can’t identify them by shining armor, and they never really slay dragons.”

When he tried to speak again, she pressed her finger firmly on his mouth.

“Being a man has nothing to do with using your fists or playing macho scenes,” she said firmly. “A real hero builds his life with strength and courage. He hurts, because he feels things so deeply. He’s vulnerable, and there’s a quality that men never have the sense to be proud of. And most of all,” she added, “a hero is there for his lady when she needs him. You were there, and I knew you would be. Now, if I have to spell out any further exactly what you are to me-”

“Sonia…” He was silent for a minute, and then his thumb brushed another tear from beneath her eye. Just one this time. “But if you ever pull a trick like that again, I swear I’ll…”

“I understand that,” she said gravely, but the soft shine of humor suddenly erased any last hint of tears.

“I’m not joking.”

“I know you’re not.” And she wasn’t smiling. “You want to protect me, Craig? Then do it. I need that from you. I need to feel free to be vulnerable with you, to show you my weaker side, to feel free just to take the risks we need to take day by day to grow together. That’s the kind of protection I need from you as a man, as my man, and I need it badly. It isn’t a showy kind of thing. It’s not as flamboyantly male as punching out some dude who looks at me sideways, or preventing me from falling off my horse.”

“Dammit, I love you. Now, would you kindly shut up?” He tugged her close. “You can quit lecturing now,” he growled in her ear, but his tone was loving.

“You’re sure you’ve got it?”

“You talk more than any woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.” The last image of the long-faced man with pale eyes dissolved in front of his eyes. Maybe that incident was always going to be more important to him than it was to her, but he now saw what an obsession he’d made of it. The woman in front of him filled his vision, a saucy shine to her eyes, a warmth and love radiating from her that cried out for him to swoop down for yet another kiss.

His lips found hers, coming home. She was trembling unaccountably. Sonia’s front was partially bravado, the saucy shine in her eyes only half real. The longer his arms stayed around her, the longer his mouth stayed on hers, the closer he rubbed his body to hers, the more her trembling intensified.

Sonia was vulnerable. His male instinct to protect her was never going to die. He’d just had a few things mixed up. She wanted his love to protect her.

She had it. For a lifetime.

About the Author

Jennifer sold her first book in 1980, and since then she has sold more than eighty books in the contemporary romance genre. Her first professional writing award came from RWA-a Silver Medallion in 1984-followed by more than twenty nominations and awards, including being honored in RWA’s Hall of Fame and presented with the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Jennifer has been on numerous bestseller lists, has written for Harlequin Books, Avon, Berkley and Dell, and has sold over the world in more than twenty languages. She has written under a number of pseudonyms, most recognizably Jennifer Greene, but also Jeanne Grant and Jessica Massey.