The man was beautiful—dark hair, sculpted features, perfectly shaped lips that any woman would have killed for, yet on him they were sinfully masculine. He was beyond handsome.
Elizabeth had seen many handsome men in her life, but her body had never reacted like this. Moisture pooled between her thighs, dampening her panties. Her nipples hardened, rasping the cotton of her camisole. Her mouth watered.
She swallowed.
Control yourself! What was she doing?
But instead of walking back to her bar stool like her brain ordered her to, she took another step toward the table of friends. Then another. She sauntered slowly past the man’s chair, not getting too close, not drawing attention to herself—not just yet. She had to assess, she had to watch. Stalking her prey.
She lifted her head to breathe in his scent. The hint of woodsy cologne, the freshness of soap and shampoo, the minty traces of toothpaste. And a warm, rich scent—a scent that made her want to tip back her head and howl.
She continued around the table until he was directly in her line of sight—then she sat down at an empty table. Eyes trained on him, she studied him. Oh yeah, she wanted him.
For just a moment, she closed her eyes as her rational mind took tenuous control. Why was this happening? It was as if the wolf was in control. But that didn’t happen. She didn’t stay in human form and think like the wolf. She didn’t allow that. Some werewolves did. Brody did. He was more wolf than man at all times. She didn’t allow that. She didn’t.
Her eyes snapped open. The man was looking at her. She’d felt his gaze before she’d actually seen it. Their gazes met, and even in the dim light, she could see his eyes were a mixture somewhere between brown and green.
Again her body told her this was what she needed. This was what she’d been wanting.
He
was what she wanted. She continued to stare, meeting his gaze, until he looked away. Still she watched him. Unable to do otherwise. The need was in control now.
She was acting like a bitch in heat. And she didn’t care.
Chapter 3
J
ensen only half-listened to the conversation going on around him. He’d thought tonight would be okay. The bar was a place he’d never been, so it shouldn’t conjure memories. But location wasn’t the issue. Oh, it definitely was at other times, but tonight, it was the company.
He glanced at the man sitting to his right. Brian Lewis, his best friend growing up. Brian had changed very little, maybe a bit thicker in the middle, broader in the shoulders. But he still had the same easygoing nature and dry sense of humor. And he still had Jill.
He glanced to Jill, Brian’s wife for... was it five years already? Jill looked the same, too. Maybe a little more mature, more refined.
An image of Jill and Katie immediately appeared in his mind. One brunette, the other blond, both in ponytails. They’d been as inseparable as he and Brian had once been. As all four of them had been. They’d always assumed they’d stay friends, no matter where their lives took them.
But sometimes it only takes one event to change the tide of a man’s whole future. Jensen had ended up in a direction far, far different from anything he’d ever imagined. Too far to get back to the person he’d been when Brian and Jill had known him.
He hadn’t seen either Brian or Jill for over three years—not until his recent return to West Pines. And even then, he’d avoided them.
But after Brian had called him nearly a dozen times, he’d realized he couldn’t sidestep them forever. Not in a town the size of West Pines. So they’d gotten together a few times. Even though Jensen quickly realized he still liked his old friends, very much, it had been difficult—so many memories revolved around these two people. Memories of...
“Oh, please sing, Jill.”
Jensen blinked, pulled out of his thoughts by the pale blonde to his right. Melanie was the woman who Brian and Jill had invited along as his date. Although no one had said that, exactly.
Jill shook her head. “No. Not tonight.”
“That’s what you think,” Brian said, wiggling his eyebrows. A gesture Jensen remembered well.
“What have you done, Brian Andrew Lewis?” Jill demanded.
“Nothing,” he assured her, his grin in direct opposition to his denial.
“You put in a song request while I was in the ladies’ room, didn’t you?” Jill drilled her husband with a look that would have crumbled a weaker man.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Did he, Jensen? I know I can get the truth from you.” She gave a pointed look to her husband. “Jensen was always the more upfront one of the two of you.”
Jensen forced himself to swallow the sip of club soda he’d just taken, the carbonation hurting his throat. Upfront? Yeah, that showed how little they knew him now.
Fortunately, he was saved from having to respond by one of the bar employees announcing that Jill Lewis would be the next to sing.
“You,” Jill growled at Brian, although there was no real anger in her eyes. Her cheeks did flush a bright red.
Suddenly Jensen was seeing Jill as she’d looked right before the senior talent show their high school had held every winter. She’d blushed a bright red just before taking the stage.
Katie had been nervous, too, although no one would have guessed it. She’d had a way of remaining so calm, so composed. Only Jensen had known, because when he’d held her hand before she took the stage, her fingers had been ice cold and trembling.
Ice cold, trembling. He paused, his memory wandering off for a moment, to a dark place, a place he didn’t want to go. He forced his memories back to that senior show. Katie had walked up onto that stage with Jill, looking like she hadn’t a fear in the world. They’d sung “Everything Changes” by Kathy Troccoli. They’d won. And now, that song seemed strangely prophetic.
“Go on,” Brian urged, his voice distant, becoming a part of Jensen’s memory. “You know how I love to hear you sing.”
Jensen recalled how he and Brian had cheered and whistled for Katie and Jill that night.
Jill stood, her movement pulling Jensen’s attention back to the present. Her cheeks were an even brighter shade of pink, but she assented, walking up to the microphone with only a little trepidation in her steps.
Jensen forced a smile and applauded with the rest of the room, but it was only a reflexive reaction. In his head he was back with Katie, remembering her voice rather than Jill’s.
“She’s just as good as she always was, isn’t she?” Brian said.
Jensen blinked, again torn from his own memories. He glanced around, for a moment almost confused by where he was.
“Yeah, she is,” he agreed.
Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, his spine straightening. He started to glance over his shoulder, expecting to see Katie right there behind him. She’d had that effect on him, bringing his body to attention just by walking into a room. But he stopped himself. She wasn’t there. He was obviously reacting to all the memories being dredged up by seeing his old friends and watching Jill sing. This was why he’d avoided them. The memories were too much.
A hint of something spicy, like an exotic mixture of vanilla and cinnamon, wafted around him, growing more and more intense until it was nearly overwhelming. He shot a look at Brian to see if he smelled the scent, but Brian’s attention was locked on his wife.
Jensen then looked at Melanie—she also watched Jill until she noticed him staring at her. She smiled, nothing in the gesture indicating she smelled the heady scent surrounding them.
He was obviously hallucinating. His memories became far too real, far too tangible, although the perfume lacing the air wasn’t something Katie would have worn. She’d liked light scents, floral scents. This smell was rich and earthy, reminding him again of dark, ground spices. Wild, exotic.
Suddenly Brian and Melanie were on their feet, cheering and applauding, and Jensen realized that Jill had finished her song. He rose, too, automatically clapping along with them. Still the scent enveloped him. What was it?
Jensen heard the others compliment Jill as she returned to the table. He even murmured his own praise, although he couldn’t have said what his words had actually been. Obviously coming here was a bad idea—he just felt weird tonight.
“I say this calls for another round of drinks,” Brian said, clapping Jensen on the back.
Jensen started at the affectionate tap.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think maybe I should call it a night.”
“Man, it’s still early,” Brian said. He sounded truly disappointed. “Hell, we have the babysitter until midnight.”
Another surreal detail. Brian and Jill had children. A boy and a girl. The perfect family.
Again, Katie appeared in his mind, as they’d lazed in the grass on his grandfather’s lawn, young kids planning a big future.
“I want a boy and a girl,” Katie had stated, as if it was a given certainty.
“What if we get two boys or two girls?” Jensen had said. “It could happen, you know. I’m not a doctor, but I know about this type of thing.”
Katie had grinned. “That would be fine, too. But I know we will have one of each.”
“Jensen,” Jill said, drawing him back to the present. “Please stay. We’ve barely seen you since you moved back.”
Jensen’s first instinct was to simply tell them that he had to go. This was too much. He was overwhelmed by memories tonight. He thought he could handle it, but—he just couldn’t. But that might lead to topics he really didn’t want to talk about.
In the brief moments he’d seen his old friend, Brian had made it clear that he thought Jensen needed to move on. But Brian didn’t have all the facts. He never would.
Maybe if Jensen just stayed for one more drink, then he could escape without talking about anything too personal.
“Okay. One more.”
“Sit,” Brian urged him with a pleased smile. “This one is on me. Are you still sticking with club soda?”
Jensen nodded.
“I’ll go with you,” Jill said, joining her husband. “Wine—right, Melanie?”
“Yes,” the woman at his left answered.
As Brian and Jill headed to the bar, Jensen again wished he’d just said he was calling it a night. Said he wasn’t feeling well. That wouldn’t be a lie. Instead he was left here with the woman they had hand-selected for him to move on with.
“So, Jill tells me that you grew up in West Pines,” Melanie said, drawing his attention to her.
He nodded. “Yes.”
Melanie smiled. She was a pretty woman with shoulder-length, honey-blond hair, gray-blue eyes, and a smattering of golden freckles across the bridge of her nose. It wasn’t hard to tell why Brian and Jill had introduced him to her. Blond hair and fresh-faced beauty. Just like Katie. The type he would be attracted to, except he felt nothing looking at Melanie. Not a twinge of attraction.
He’d have to tell Brian that he appreciated his concern, but he wasn’t interested in meeting anyone. No more setups. Period.
“And you are a veterinarian?”
He nodded again.
“Jill said that you are taking over your grandfather’s business. That he was also a vet.”
“Still is—although he’s getting too old for some of the work. He doesn’t seem to know it, though.”
Melanie laughed. A nice laugh, but again he felt nothing at the sound.
He forced a smile, but the strained curve dissolved as he had that sensation again, the feeling someone was watching him. Again, he told himself to ignore it.
“I’m not from around here,” she volunteered, and he realized he probably should have asked.
“I grew up in Chicago, so this was a big change for me,” she continued. “But I really love it here. The area is so beautiful. The people are very warm. I teach third grade, and I enjoy my job. The children are a lot of fun.”
The strange feeling persisted as he tried to follow Melanie’s words. Tingles ran over his body like whispering fingers on his warmed skin. He flicked a look around the room, half expecting to see a pale blonde with wide sky-blue eyes. Instead his gaze landed on a woman seated at the table facing them, his eyes drawn right to her as if she were a lodestone.
Her head was tilted back just slightly, exposing a long, elegant neck and a billow of dark hair. A delicately pointed chin and full lips, the bottom one lusher than the top. Her eyes were closed, and those wide lips parted. For all the world, she looked like a woman right at the point of rapture.
Instantly, his cock hardened, desire coursing through him that matched the look on the woman’s face.
Then her chin lowered and her eyes opened. She met his gaze unerringly as if she’d known he’d been watching her. Their eyes met. Attraction, need tightened his muscles; his penis pressed against the unforgiving material of his jeans. Stunned, he looked away, facing Melanie, not seeing her.
A wave of something akin to nausea joined the desire in his body. What the hell? Here he was, telling himself that he wasn’t interested in meeting anyone. And he wasn’t. His libido had been on hiatus for a long time. But then, in the span of an instant, he was getting rock-hard over a total stranger.
“Did you like it?”
Jensen blinked, realizing that Melanie was still talking to him.
“I’m sorry,” he blinked again, trying to focus, “what did you say?”
She smiled, not seeming to sense his distraction. “Jill said you went to college in New York. Did you like it there?”
“I did,” he managed to say, even though he could still feel the other woman’s eyes on him. His excitement spiked.
He slid a glance in her direction. She was watching him, her light blue eyes, almost eerily pale, direct and unblinking.
Who was she? Why was she staring at him?
“... I didn’t know how I’d like it here, because it’s so small-town. And aside from the occasional bout of loneliness, I have really liked the change. Small towns are all that people say. Everyone knows each other. And people care about each other, help each other. It’s nice.”
Jensen nodded again, realizing that Melanie probably thought bobbing his head up and down was the extent of his communication abilities. And at the moment, it was. Again, he caught a glimpse of the pale-eyed woman in his peripheral vision. A man approached her, and he tried to feel relief. Her boyfriend or husband—that was good. But instead he felt oddly irritated.
“Of course,” Melanie said with a small, rather shy smile that still managed to show she could be interested in him, “it’s always nice to have a new face in town.”
He forced another smile back. This was too damned weird. Yet he couldn’t stop glancing again at the stranger. She sat, perfectly still, her attention trained on him. She didn’t even seem to register the man beside her. Jensen shifted, his body reacting to that steady gaze as if it was a touch, stroking over him, teasing his burning skin.
“Here we are,” Brian said, setting down another soda water in front of him. Both Brian and Jill took their seats, and the other woman was mostly blocked from his view.
Good, Jensen told himself. His reaction to the woman had to be an aberration, a response brought on by too many memories. He just wanted to have another quick drink and then go home.