was something a friend would know. He was going to have to take care not to sound like a stranger.
“Why not?” he responded lightly.
Why not, indeed.
She bristled, one hand on her hip. He was still looking around as if he didn’t recognize the place. She would like to think that he was opening his eyes to what he’d lost when he’d destroyed their relationship. That he was re-evaluating some of his actions. Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite buy it.
“We’re a little beyond that, don’t you think?” she muttered, shaking her head. “Come on,” she added, starting off down her path at last. “Let’s go inside. I’m dying for some iced tea.”
“Sounds good to me,” he agreed, following her. His gazed dropped to her cute bottom and he quickly looked away. Until he found out what the problem was between them, he wasn’t going there.
Her house was tiny, set on stilts and surrounded by riotously flowering plants. It was exactly what a beautiful young woman who lived in the tropics should have for a house, he decided, but that was just what made him wary. It was all too perfect, too lush, too sensual—like a trap. Was that what had happened before? He’d probably fallen for her like a ton of bricks, right from the start. He was going to be more careful this time.
He followed her up the wooden steps and across the wide lanai, pulling off his dark glasses as he did so. Inside, she had an open floor plan tastefully decorated in pastels and rattan furniture. He glanced around the room but didn’t see any sign of anything personal that would tell him anything. There was one framed photograph high on a shelf, but not much else, no mementoes of trips or triumphs. She didn’t seem to reveal much easily.
She went into the little kitchenette and opened a small refrigerator, pulling out a pitcher of iced tea and reaching into a cupboard for two tall glasses. He took his gratefully and drank most of it down. It was a hot day.
“So,” she said, leaning on the counter between them and gazing at him levelly, “you’re back. I assume there’s a reason?”
He leaned on the counter, too, just to keep things even. “I came back to find you.”
Something flashed in her eyes. It wasn’t particularly friendly, but there was a wary question behind the guardedness. She was angry and resentful about something, but she was ready to be coaxed back into friendliness. If he could just figure out what that would take, he would do it.
“Well, here I am,” she said, trying to be flip. “Though I didn’t know I was missing.”
Their gazes met and held. There was a hesitant question in her beautiful eyes, along with that touch of resentment. He frowned. This was a mystery he was going to have to get to the bottom of.
“Look, Shayna, I don’t know why you’re so angry with me,” he said, putting his glass down on the counter. “I don’t know what I did.” And he leaned back a little, expecting a vigorous response.
And that was pretty much what he got.
“You don’t know?” She stared at him as though flabbergasted. “Marco Smith—” She stopped. “Oops, I forgot. It’s really Marco DiSanto, isn’t it?” Her startlingly blue eyes were glaring at him now. “What are you doing, having memory lapses now? Don’t know what you did! Please.”
Whatever his mistake had been, she didn’t like it. That much was evident. He watched her anger, wishing he knew how to quench it.
“But I guess you are forgetting things,” she said crisply, waving a hand at him. “Look, you’ve only been gone a few weeks and already you’ve forgotten how we live in the tropics.” She shook her head. “Don’t you feel overdressed in that suit?”
“I had a meeting with a client in Singapore just before I caught the plane out here,” he explained, looking down.
She shrugged.
“At least get rid of that suit coat.”
“I’d like to,” he admitted, shrugging out of it. “With your kind permission,” he added, exaggerating his manners.
She hesitated and he could tell she had the impulse to come around the counter and take it from him in order to hang it up somewhere. But she was reminding herself that she was angry and an angry woman didn’t do things like that for the object of her anger. So she stayed put, but it was obviously an effort.
“Just hang it on the back of that stool,” she muttered, and her cheeks reddened a bit.
Marco’s instincts were right on the money. Shayna was a mass of conflicting emotions right now and that made life more uncomfortable than she was used to. She watched him take care of his jacket and loosen the knot in his tie. He tugged open the top three buttons on his silky white shirt, unbuttoned his cuffs, and shoved one sleeve up to his elbow. She was fascinated as he began a transformation. With each adjustment, he seemed to lose a bit of his reserve. He was sloughing away a more formal civilization and sinking into island life and, for some crazy reason, that made her heart beat faster.
“Stop it!” she said aloud before she realized what she was doing.
“What?” he said, looking up in surprise, the second sleeve only beginning to be pushed up.
“N…nothing,” she said quickly, flushing. “I wasn’t talking to you, I was just…” Her voice trailed off. There was no way to explain.
But she could take this as a warning. She was still vulnerable to his charms and she had to beware.
All she had to do was remember how easily she’d fallen under his spell a few weeks ago. He’d looked very different that first day. There had been no business suit then. In fact, there had been very little covering his beautiful body after she’d rescued him from the little blue men-of-war.
Once back on the shore, she’d gone against her better instincts and invited him in for iced tea that day, too.
“My name is Shayna Pierce,” she’d said once they’d settled at this same counter that day.
There was just the slightest hesitation before he’d answered. She should have paid more attention to that.
“Marco,” he said at last. “Marco Smith.”
She’d gaped at him. He was so obviously Italian, from his dashing dark looks to his very sexy accent. The name seemed like a fake from the start.
“Smith! Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
His dark eyes had gazed at her levelly, just a touch of humor in their cloudy recesses.
“You doubt me?”
She’d flushed. Doubt him? Not at all. Here in the islands, everyone was entitled to whatever name they wanted to use. Who was she to judge him? Her own name was as phony as…well, as a three-dollar bill. She’d made it up and now that she was used to it, she found that the name she was hiding under suited her much better than her old name. “No, of course not.”
But he’d been so gorgeous that day. As she remembered it, after a few minutes of sipping and
