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Katie McCloud started as the condo’s elaborate electronic locks buzzed to indicate they were disengaging. Her heart leaped in nervous anticipation. Alex was home.

Finally. After a year away.

She’d barely recovered from the trauma of nearly dying overseas and coming home only to be kidnapped when the man who’d kept her safe through it all, Alex Peters, was whisked off into some super-secret CIA training program.

As if he needed to learn how to be a spy. He could already teach the class.

He had just started to let down his emotional walls with her, and she’d finally realized she loved him, when he’d been yanked away from her.

But now he was back, and their life together could start...

…assuming a year of intensive instruction in all the skills he’d been trying so desperately to leave behind—leaning into that whole part of himself he despised so deeply—hadn’t pushed him right back into his emotional shell and turned him back into the silent, dangerous stranger he’d been when they met.

His CIA handler, André Fortinay, had briefed her not to assume anything about her relationship with him when he gothome. Was she going to have to start from square one with Alex? Teach him all over again was love was, how to love himself, and how to let her love him?

What if it turns out differently this time? What if I fail?

Fortinay also said to let Alex set the tone and pace of their reunion.Meaning what?She’d gotten the distinct impression André was hinting the CIA had done something terrible to him.

If they’d broken Alex in some way, she was going to have a serious problem with the CIA.

What exactlyhadthey done to him in his “training”?

All of her questions and fears spun around maddeningly in her head as she rose to her feet cautiously. She sent up a quick, fervent prayer that the man she loved and not the stranger she’d feared would walk through that door.

Alex stepped into the living room, and her heart lurched.

God, he was even more beautiful than she remembered. Tall. Dark. And if possible, radiating even more danger than before.

His coffee brown hair was a little lighter, his skin darkly bronzed. He was leaner through the waist and bigger across the shoulders. But those changes weren’t what really arrested her.

Something intangible had changed about him. His natural confidence had been replaced by something else, something more…powerful. Now, he quietly exuded utter belief in himself. He’d always had a lethal quality, but it was sharply focused, now, a cold reserve that oozed don’t-screw-with-me-in-a-dark-alley.

Crud. She’d planned to stay seated, arranged sexily on his white leather sofa when he walked in, not standing here wringing her hands nervously.

Oh, well. So much for pretending to be calm, cool, and sophisticated. She was and would always be a hot mess. To heck with André Fortinay’s dos and don’ts for Alex’s homecoming.

“Alex!” she cried joyfully. She started forward and managed to catch the edge of the area rug with her toe, slam her shin intothe edge of the glass coffee table, and pitch headlong into Alex’s arms as he jumped forward to catch her.

“Been working on your coordination in my absence, I see.”

Embarrassed heat bloomed across her face. With her fair skin, she must look like a ripe tomato. “I’m such a clutz?—”

“You’re perfect. Thank God you didn’t change,” he murmured as he drew her up against his body.

His mouth closed on hers and wild magic exploded between them like it always did. His dark desires and her naïve romanticism collided and melded into something entirely unique, a mix of naughty and sweet, hot and tender, lustful and loving.

His lips slashed across hers as her mouth opened eagerly for him, and he inhaled her like he couldn’t get enough of her. At least that hadn’t changed about him. Relief that he still craved her crept through her nervousness.

Her arms slid around his waist. He was more muscular, harder, than before. But then, so was she. She’d been working out like crazy while he was gone. Some of it had been boredom, and frankly some had been a remedy for horniness.

That, and insecurity over how a small-town girl like her was ever going to hold the attention of a worldly, sophisticated man like him. He was James Bond, and she was the girl next door.

He came up for air long enough to murmur against her lips, “Where’s Dawn?”

“Asleep. Would you like to peek in and see her?”