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"See ya," Jake said, and Jennifer waved. A moment later, he was driving back down the road they came on and disappeared into the trees.

Now that she and Mark were alone, a subtle warmth moved through her, a mixture of excitement and expectation of what would happen next. She bit her lip when she glanced back at him, finding him looking her up and down as if he liked what he saw. She felt exactly the same about him. Never had she met anyone so sexy before. Jake had been handsome, but compared to Mark ... it was like he was the perfect male specimen brought to life for her personal pleasure.

But Jennifer blinked away those kinds of thoughts for now. She couldn't deny how much she was attracted to him, how badly she wanted him right then and there. Right now, though, she had other concerns on her mind that were more important than sex ... like learning more about the man who was to be her husband.

Learning more about his body, and his skill at making love ... well, that would have to come in time, wouldn't it?

Mark offered her his arm, and she took it, carefully. His touch warmed her right to the core, and when she locked her arm through his, a sense of safety overcame her. As if, by being by his side, the universe promised that no harm would ever come to her again.

She smiled up at the mansion hidden in the trees—no, the mansion that looked like it was made to blend right into the forest. "Jake said you made this place?"

"I designed it and oversaw the creation, but I'm not exactly an artisan or builder," he said. "But I still have pride in its appearance as if it came from my own hands. I suppose youwere shocked to come here and find yourself in what looked like the middle of nowhere."

She smiled sheepishly. "Just a little. I thought maybe this had been a whole big joke ... and that Jake had driven me out here as a prank."

"It's nothing like that. Just a vision brought to life," Mark said. "The mansion is built to blend seamlessly into the environment ... for all intents and purposes, the exterioristhe environment."

Now that they were closer to the front door, it was easier to see that it was a structure, not a collection of oddly shaped trees. But it was the details that made it blend in perfectly: the stone steps to the front door that looked like a natural arrangement of rocks, the way the trees right next to the building were arranged to hide the walls with a natural landscape of leaves.

It made her wonder even more about Mark. Jake had mentioned something about this place being a fortress ... why had he gone through such effort to make a building that invariably must have taken months if not years of careful preparation and planning to get perfect?

Mark welcomed her inside, the front door opening into a house that looked far more like the type of home that she was familiar with: cabinets and chairs, tables and couches, even though the decorative accents on the interior were still natural themed, like leaves and wood.

And still, despite the familiarity, the fact that she was stepping into a mansion with an entranceway the size of her old apartment in Portland ... that was a wholly new experience to her.

It was like walking into a whole new world, and it was Mark who brought her here.

"It's beautiful," Jennifer said. They walked through the living area with front windows designed from smaller pieces of class, an amber, emerald, and crimson mosaic of individual leaves.

"This is your new home."

"What inspired you to build a house in such a remote locale?"

She wasn't going to say it out loud, but from her experience with wealthy people, a lot of them preferred living at least near the city so they could have anything and everything at their convenience. Jennifer supposed that some people were just rich enough that they could live wherever they wanted and not have to worry about trivialities such as where their food would come from.

Mark offered her a warm smile, one that heated her up inside her core. His lips called to her, wishing she would just place her mouth on his and forget about all of her worries. The troubles that brought her here in the first place.

"I admit, the forest has always called to me ... call me a country bumpkin, but I've never been one for big cities," he explained. "Too loud. I need to live somewhere that I can hear the wind whistling in the breeze, the wolves howling in the night, the uninterrupted music of the birds."

It was like he plucked the words right out of her heart and whispered them right back to her. "You don't want to be suffocated by cement skyscrapers or choke on vehicle fumes," she said. "You want to be in the wild, whereyoucan be wild and free, like the animal in your blood."

Something flickered in Mark's eyes. Excitement, maybe. Or uncertainty.

Maybe those were her feelings.

She bit her lip and looked down. "That's how I feel when I'm in the wilderness, at least. Born in the trees, my mom always said, though she definitely gave birth in a hospital."

They laughed together. "In that case, you really might be at home here. The grounds are lovely. You'll want to go for walks, I imagine."

"Grounds?" Jennifer laughed. "We're in the woods."

"The trees are a fence. You'll see when—"

Jennifer's phone started ringing, interrupting Mark. She was going to put it on silent, but then the high-pitched birdsong that was her mom's ringtone started to play. Crap. She was hoping to settle in, meet Mark, and get back to her mom when she had a better reading of her situation. Her mom was going to raise hell, and now Jennifer had to quell the flames. Her guilt over just up and leaving would demand with it.

She shook her phone with a sigh. "I'm sorry, I need to take this."

"Take all the time you need. You have no reason to rush with me," he said.