wrong with romance?’
For a long moment their gazes held. An unspoken, highly charged exchange flashed between them. Sam only just resisted an urge to lean forward and taste her soft, startled mouth.
He couldn’t be sure who looked away first but, eventually, they both stared back out through the windscreen at the stretch of lawn dotted with coconut palms.
He forced himself to remember that his family’s business was at stake. Which was why he was relaxing on a tropical island and deliberately misleading this lovely young woman. He definitely shouldn’t be planning to add seduction to his crime of deception.
He cleared his throat. ‘So this message in the bottle, was it a love letter?’
She nodded. ‘It’s beautiful. That man sure loved the woman he was writing to.’
‘He was writing to his wife, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but you can’t read her name. There’s some damage—from exposure to light we think.’
He repressed an angry sigh. If Tom Kirby’s wife wasn’t named, sorting out this will could be really messy. It was the worst possible news.
‘You’d better not ask me any more about it,’ Meg said with sudden briskness, ‘I can’t say anything else, not when the grandson of Thomas Kirby, the man who wrote the message, is coming here soon—tomorrow, I think.’
Sam’s stomach tightened guiltily.
Meg added, ‘He’s the American VIP I was telling you about.’
‘You don’t say?’ he murmured, and he switched his attention to a rainbow lorikeet as it settled in a nearby tree. After promising himself, again, to come clean very soon, he asked, ‘So this guy is coming all the way out here just to pick up a sixty-year-old letter? Why couldn’t you have posted it to him special delivery?’
Meg sighed loudly. ‘That would be too easy. My boss wouldn’t hear of it. He wants to get as much publicity mileage as he can out of this incident.’
He stopped studying the bird and turned to frown at her. ‘What kind of publicity?’
‘He sees this as a great opportunity to get media attention for the resort. Magnetic Rendezvous isn’t doing all that well. The competition for the tourist dollar is very stiff.’
So that was what this guy was after! ‘That’s cheeky.’
‘Oh, Fred’s cheeky all right. He wants shots of me and this bachelor millionaire with the bottle plastered in newspapers and on television screens all over the country. I’m not looking forward to it,’ she said with another sigh.
‘This man—this millionaire—’
‘Yes?’
‘He might—’ Sam hesitated, uncomfortably aware that if he kept on talking about himself, he was taking this whole subterfuge thing way too far.
To his relief, Meg didn’t wait for him to finish. She jumped out of the doorless Moke and grinned at him. ‘I prefer not to think about him until I have to. Now, you’re going to miss out on lunch if you don’t get moving.’
He hopped out of the car too, and strode around to the back where she had begun to sort out the tangle of snorkels and flippers. ‘There’s something I should explain.’
‘What’s that?’
His eyes rested her. Her beauty was as fresh and natural, as untouched as the island itself. Tell her, an inner voice urged and he drew in a breath, ready to confess. ‘There’s something I should tell you…something I should get off my chest about why I’m here on the island.’
Meg stopped counting flippers and looked up abruptly to frown at him. ‘Now you really have me intrigued.’ She touched his wrist lightly. ‘You’ll have to explain…Heavens! I’ve been rattling on to you and I can’t even remember your name. What did you say your name was again?’
‘Sam.’
‘OK, Sam.’ Her grey eyes looked directly into his. ‘Get it off your chest.’
Her gaze suddenly locked with his and, just as he had earlier, Sam felt another startling sense of connection zap between them.
Her warm hand was still lying on his wrist.
Neither of them moved.
Chemistry could play sneaky tricks on a guy. Sam would have liked to feel more in control of this situation. Getting to know a woman was usually a pleasant game where he called all the shots. Many considered him to be an expert.
But right now, he had no idea where he was heading.
Especially when, out of absolutely nowhere, the unmistakable idea of kissing hovered between them in the dappled sunlight.
As if prompted by a magnetic force, he dipped his head towards Meg ever so slightly and, to his surprise, she didn’t pull back. When he leaned lower, she raised her face a breathless fraction higher.
Their mouths met.
It was a hello kind of kiss. More than friendly, but not exactly the exchange of lovers. Apart from their mouths and her hand on his, they weren’t touching. He smiled down at her and she smiled back and he felt the warmth and softness of her linger on his lips and the blood rush through his pulse points.
Meg was looking at him in dazed alarm as if she was as startled as he was. Then she jumped back, glaring at him and she said shakily, ‘I make it a rule never to kiss guests.’
The flustered, breathless way she spoke sounded so sexy Sam stepped back too, in case he gave in to any more urges. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’
She grabbed a pile of flippers, as if she needed an armful of rubber to keep him at bay. ‘You said you wanted to tell me something important about why you’re here,’ she reminded him sharply. ‘What sort of work did you say you did?’
‘Er—don’t worry about my job. It’s boring,’ Sam replied hastily. ‘But my hobby is marine science. I haven’t studied it in depth, but I’d love to learn more about the life on the reef, underwater photography, salt-water aquariums—that sort of thing. We could make a great team. You could be my tutor.’
‘Bad idea.’ She scowled. And then, like a mother scolding a little boy, she added, ‘I suggest you go take a shower and have some lunch.’
She looked so mad that any thought of confessing his identity seemed ridiculous now. But it also seemed important to set things straight with Meg. For some inexplicable reason, Sam really cared what she thought of him.
A flipper dropped from the pile she was clutching and landed at his feet. He picked it up and held it for a moment, his fingers flexing the rubber. ‘Meg, what I meant to tell you was that this VIP you mentioned…’
He could sense her wariness, as if she’d pulled it on like protective armour. From beneath ash-blonde curls streaked with gold, her grey gaze darkened to a stormy charcoal. ‘Don’t tell me it’s you,’ she whispered.
‘Yeah,
