obin was dressed and pouring himself the evening’s first drink when someone knocked on his hotel-room door.

It probably wasn’t Dolphina or another of his handlers—there was still a solid hour before he had to leave for…whatever event was happening tonight.

Well, maybe it was Dolphina, who’d recently decided she no longer hated him and that she’d rather be his mother. Over the past few days, she’d made sure he ate right, found time to exercise, and if he drank a little too much, she got him safely back to his room—all without ending up in his bed.

Although, that might no longer be true. Last night he’d been particularly shit-faced, and as he’d stumbled over the seam between the suite’s living-room tile and the bedroom carpeting, she’d caught him and kept him from breaking his nose. He’d repaid her by dragging her back with him onto his bed, because she was not unattractive, and when he got skunked, sex of any kind seemed better than no sex at all.

As so often was the case with him when he drank too much, that was where his memory went from murky to dark.

So yes, it was probably Dolphina a-knockin’ on his door. She knocked again—louder this time.

Robin looked through the fish-eyed lens of the peephole and…

Holy dancing Jesus. He almost dropped his drink. He looked again.

He took off the chain and opened the door, and yes, it definitely was Jules Cassidy standing in the hotel corridor.

Dressed in eveningwear similar to the tuxedo that Robin himself had on.

Other than the tux, Jules hadn’t changed at all in the past few years. Same short dark hair, same trim, compact body, same handsome face, same warm brown eyes.

Same molten attraction in those eyes that didn’t fade even when he smiled.

The man had a ridiculously sweet smile, even when it was tentative, as it was now.

“Sorry to surprise you,” Jules said. “I called your cell, but you didn’t pick up.”

Robin didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He no longer spoke English—it had been flabbergasted out of him. Instead, he stepped back and gestured for Jules to come inside.

Jules, of course, hesitated. “I was actually thinking we could go down to the bar.”

A stiff drink would be great right about now. But then Robin realized he was holding a glass of rum in his hand. He hadn’t yet added the Coke, but what the hell. He took a healthy sip, and his ability to speak returned. “I’ll be mobbed. Down there. I can’t just go to a bar anymore. Well, I can, if I grunge up, but not on the opening night of a festival like this.”

Jules nodded. “I should’ve realized. I’m sorry, I’m…Congratulations. I’ve heard great things about the movie and…Your career’s really…Congratulations.”

He was as flustered as Robin was. Maybe even more so. And he’d known who was going to be on the other side of the door before it had opened.

“Please come in,” Robin managed.

Jules looked past him and into the suite. It was huge—and set up as a living room. Sofa and chairs, and even a full-size dining table. No king-size bed for them to have to pretend not to notice. That was on the other side of French doors that Robin kept tightly shut, mostly due to the fact that he was a slob.

“Thanks,” Jules said as he came inside, as Robin shut the door behind him, putting the chain back on—which Jules noticed. Of course, FBI agents tended to notice everything.

But God, he still smelled exactly the same. And suddenly Robin went from just barely able to speak to unable to shut the fuck up. “Jesus, I’ve missed you,” came spewing out just as Jules said, “I’m here on business.”

And that wasn’t just disappointing, it was also awkward as shit.

“I guess that means you don’t need a drink.” Robin filled the silence with social noise as he crossed to the bar, desperate for a refill. “How about a soda? Water? Juice?”

“I’m fine.” Of course, Jules being Jules, he was unable to ignore difficult things. He closed his eyes briefly. “So, okay, I’m not fine. I’m as thrown by this as you are, and I’m sorry that I came up here because seeing you is…You look good. You look…too good. So I should just say what I came to say, so I can leave.”

No doubt about it, this elephant-size attraction they once shared hadn’t died a natural death over the past careful years of zero contact. It was here in the room with them, looming large, as if absolutely no time had passed.

Except it had. A lot of time. “Am I allowed to ask how you are?” Robin found himself a bigger glass. “How you’ve been, what you’ve been up to?” He glanced over to where Jules was standing, still over by the door. “You still seeing what’s-his-name, the Marine?”

“Ben.” Jules supplied the man’s name, but no other information. “Look, I’m going to the party tonight—the same party you are. I checked on the Internet and saw you were in town and…I’m here because I didn’t want to do this in public—see you for the first time after so long. Especially not while I’m working undercover.”

“You’re undercover,” Robin repeated, bringing his drink over to the leather sofa. He’d first met Jules nearly two years earlier, when the FBI agent was part of a team protecting Robin’s sister. Janey had received death threats when they were filming American Hero, her award-winning biopic that outed a popular World War II hero. It was Robin’s portrayal of the gay war hero that had first put him on Hollywood’s map.

The death threats had turned out to be real, and people had gotten shot. Including Robin.

A woman—one of the bodyguards’ wives—had actually died.

“Undercover doing what?” Robin asked as he sat down.

“My job,” Jules told him.

No shit, Sherlock. “How dangerous is it this time? Is it—”

“I need you to pretend you don’t know me,” Jules interrupted. “I’m using a different name, but…Just keep your distance. Please. You have no reason to approach me, so…Don’t.”

“So on a scale from one to ten, where one is not at all, and ten is very, it’s a, what? Eight? Nine?” Robin sipped his drink, trying to act as if the idea of Jules putting his life on the line didn’t make him want to throw up. Of course, it wasn’t as if Jules had spent the past few years sitting behind a desk, out of harm’s way. In fact, Cosmo had told him—apparently the Spec Ops and Intel communities were closely knit—that Jules had been badly injured not too long ago. That was how he’d met Ben-the-Marine—in the sick bay of an aircraft carrier after helping to save the world.

Again.

“I’ll be there with several other people,” Jules told him now. “Stay far away from them, too. Plus, there’s a local man? Gordon Burns. He’s got a son, Gordie Junior. Stay away from both of them.”

When Jules was dealing with dangerous people, he was one serious son of a bitch. And right now his grimness level was off the scale.

“What have they done?” Robin asked. “Burns and son.”

Jules shook his head. “I’ve already told you too much.”

“What’s the name you’re using?”

Jules was getting pissed, but he wasn’t as good as Robin was at disguising it. His exasperation leaked out of him. Or maybe he just wasn’t trying to hide it.

“I’m curious. Do you go for something simple? Bob Smith? John Jones?” Robin said, because it was easier to talk about this than admit the truth—that if he could, he’d go back in time to that day when he’d let Jules walk out of his life. Because despite what Jules had said, he was not here merely on business. No. He was here because he couldn’t stay away. “Is it just a different name? Or do you create a whole backstory and character—”

“Don’t fuck this up for me, Robin. If you talk about this, with anyone…”

“I won’t,” Robin said. “I just—”

“Mine’s not the only life that’ll be in danger,” Jules finished. “It’s a ten, okay?”

Jesus. Robin had to swallow hard past the fear that was now securely lodged in his throat. “That’s pretty intense,” he said. “Are you sure you didn’t come here as some kind of…doomed man’s final wish?”

Jules laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

But when Robin stood up, he left his cool demeanor, his amusement, his act of calm nonchalance, his entire lifetime-perfected facade behind him on the sofa, and Jules’s smile faded.

“You didn’t ask me how I was,” Robin said quietly. “Sure, you’ve probably seen me in the tabloids. Now I’m dating Kristen Bell. Now I’m a threat to Sarah Michelle’s marriage. Now I’m clubbing with Susie McCoy. I would’ve at least expected something like Gee, Robin, are you still trying to fool yourself into believing that you’re relentlessly hetero? ” He answered his own question. “No. No, I’m not.”

The look on Jules’s face was one that Robin knew he would remember for the rest of his life. Wariness. Hope and defeat. Anger and yearning and weary despair. Hunger.

Hunger. God, yes. Robin knew it was reflected on his own face, in the way he was standing and breathing. It was in his voice as he spoke. “I think I probably said it best when I said, Jesus, I’ve missed you. ”

Jules looked over at the door, but he didn’t move. He just let Robin come closer. And closer. “I have to go.”

“Don’t,” Robin said. “Stay. We’ll both just…skip the party.”

“I can’t.” But he wanted to. One thing about Jules, he wasn’t afraid to let people know what he was feeling. When he wanted to hide it, he could, but when he didn’t…There it was. Of course it was still mixed with that despair. Disappointment. Hurt. Mistrust. Doubt.

“Duty calls, huh?” Robin said. All he had to do was keep talking, keep this conversation going. As soon as he got close enough to touch him, they would both just go up in flames.

“Yeah,” Jules said. “That one’s pretty high on my list of, oh, about five thousand reasons why I can’t do this.”

“You know, I’m supposed to mingle. Tonight. The festival crew will be introducing me to people. I assume you don’t want me to scream and run away if we come face-to-face.” Like they were right now.

Face.

To.

Face.

Jules was breathing hard, as if he’d just sprinted up twelve flights of stairs, as if his heart were pounding the way Robin’s was.

As if he, too, were remembering the too few times they’d taken their single-minded attraction out for a stroll and kissed.

Only kissed. Because at the time Robin had still been uncertain about his sexuality. Jules had been flatly honest about not wanting to be part of what he called Robin’s science experiment.

After two years, the experiments were over. And the results were in.

America’s hottest new sex symbol and Hollywood’s freshest young action-adventure star, Robin Chadwick, was undeniably gay.

A mere half a dozen people on the entire planet knew this career-flattening fact, Jules being one of them.

Of course, Jules had known the truth before Robin had.

Jules, whom Robin had fallen in love with, almost on first sight, even though, at the time, the idea of falling in love with another man would’ve made him laugh out loud.

Robin touched him. Just his arm, solid through the soft fabric of his jacket. That was all it took.

Jules met him more than halfway in a full body slam of a kiss that was ferocious. Frantic.

Fantastic.

How could they possibly have spent these past few minutes talking when this was what Robin had wanted—Jules, too—from that first moment he’d opened the door?

It was Jules. Jules. Robin wanted to weep—it felt so goddamn good, because it was finally Jules.

The sweetness of his mouth, the softness of his hair, the smoothness of his recently shaved chin, the steel of his arms wrapped tightly around Robin, the solidness of his body—his chest, his thighs—beneath the nuisance of clothing that he knew they both wished could be instantly gone…

Robin lost his balance, and they slammed into the wall right next to the door, hard enough to knock the air out of him, hard enough to dislodge a picture, some piece-of-crap artwork that hit the tile floor with a crash.

Jules had to catch his breath. Not Robin, though. He didn’t need oxygen to know what he wanted. He didn’t want Jules to have time to think, so he spun him around, Jules’s back to his chest, Jules’s head against his shoulder, his face against Robin’s, who reached around him and—

“God,” he breathed as he pressed himself against Jules, as he reached with his other hand, fumbling in his haste to unfasten Jules’s pants.

Knock, knock, knock!

Someone was knocking on Robin’s door.

It was twice as loud, twice as startling, because they were right there next to it, practically leaning against the damn thing.

They both froze, but when the knock came again, Jules made as if to move away from him.

Robin held him tightly, speaking almost silently into his ear. “Shhh. Only person in the entire world that I’m interested in seeing is already here.”

Jules closed his eyes. Spoke on a barely audible sigh. “Robin, I don’t think…”

“Shhh,” Robin said again. “It’s okay.” Don’t think…

Please God, don’t let this be only a dream.

“Robin?” Shit, it was Dolphina. “Are you all right in there?” she called through the door.

All they had to do was be quiet for a few more moments, and she would go away—assume he was in the shower.

Except she didn’t go away. She rattled the door handle, something beeped and—Jesus! The door opened.

Jules leaped away from him, damn near breaking Robin’s wrist before he caught him and pulled him back. The chain was on the door. And where they were standing, Dolphina couldn’t see them.

“Robin?” she called through the narrow opening. “Are you okay? Someone heard a loud noise…”

“I’m fine,” he called back. “I’m still getting dressed. I tripped over something. Where the hell did you get a key to my room?”

“You gave it to me,” she answered. “After last night you, well, thought I should have one.”

Shit. Ow. Robin let go of Jules. It was hard to hold on to someone when they elbowed you in the ribs. Hard.

“I’ll call you when I’m ready to head out to the party,” Robin told Dolphina, and she finally shut the door. He turned to Jules, who had his back to him as he fixed his clothes. “Please don’t—”

“Don’t say anything,” Jules cut him off. “It’s better if you just…don’t talk.” He headed for the door.

“Will you please just listen.” Robin grabbed his arm. “Just wait a sec. Just…” He exhaled. Because even though Jules’s body language was far from receptive, he’d stopped and was listening. “I don’t remember giving her my key.”

Jules pulled free. “That makes it so much less sleazy. You were too drunk to care who you were with, right? So you took advantage of this woman, who probably thinks—”

Robin lost his temper. “Yes,” he shot back. “I got drunk. I didn’t have the presence of mind to foresee the fucking future and know that the one person I do care about was going to do the one thing he said he’d never do—and walk through my door today.”

“Yeah, I gotta go,” Jules said.

“You should have called me—”

“Oh, so…what? It’s my fault?” Jules stopped himself, visibly trying to curb his emotions. But when he spoke his voice was still clipped. Tight. “Look, it’s late, I have to—”

Robin was not going to just roll over and die. “Is there a chance we can have dinner later or tomorrow or—”

“No.” Jules didn’t hesitate. “No chance. What happened before was a mistake.”

“It was not. ”

“Yeah.” Jules got in his face. “It was. This is not what I want. You are not what I want.”

And there it was. Robin’s heart on the floor. Smashed flat. With Jules’s shoe print clearly on it.

“Well,” he said in the silence that followed that news flash. “Before? When your tongue was in my mouth? You sure could’ve fooled me.”

“Just…go back to L.A.,” Jules told him, and walked out the door.