Double Booked

Elizabeth Bevarly

One

Amanda Bingham climbed atop her canvas carry-on and bore down with all her weight, struggling to zip the damned thing shut before it sprang open and sent her newly purchased—and not even worn yet—vacation wardrobe flying. After four minutes, three changes of position, two puffs of chestnut curls from her eyes, and one very bad word, she managed—barely—to succeed. Then she carefully climbed down and held her breath, waiting to make sure it would stay that way.

She wasn’t a fan of flying in the first place, and not just because her luggage was always, without fail, the last to arrive on the carousel. She’d learned a long time ago how to pack efficiently, but normally when she traveled, it was for only a few days, and she never had to take more than a garment bag. Packing for a vacation instead of business, she was discovering for the first time in her adult working life, was a whole ’nother ball game.

One week, she reminded herself. She would be gone for only a week. Some people could go away for that amount of time with a suitcase the size of an electron and do quite nicely. And it wasn’t like she was going to Outer Boondoggle, where there wouldn’t be any creature comforts. She’d be on Captiva Island off the Gulf coast of Florida, in a luxury condo her friends Kate and Marshall had been trying to convince her to take advantage of since they bought it five years ago.

A bikini and no worries, Kate had said. That’s all you’ll need to pack. She’d assured Amanda the condo would have everything else she’d need, right down to the sunscreen and beach towels.

Ha, Amanda thought now. Spoken like the hedonistic bon vivant Kate was. The hedonistic bon vivant with perfect skin and perfect hair and perfect everything else, who didn’t need special skin and hair care products if she didn’t want to break out in hives, and SPF 492 if she didn’t want to spontaneously combust. Kate didn’t have seasonal allergies that required antihistamines, or insomnia that necessitated sleep aids, or dry eyes that demanded artificial tears. And her vision was perfect, so she didn’t have to pack things like saline solution and cleaning chemicals for her contact lenses, not to mention eyeglasses—and a spare pair, should her first pair break—or prescription sunglasses—and a spare pair, should the first pair break.

Oh, sure, Amanda probably could have bought most of those things in Florida, but who knew if the stores down there carried the same brands they did here in Indianapolis? It had taken her a long time to find products that didn’t irritate her highly irritable body parts. No way was she going to risk spending the only vacation she’d probably have this decade broken out in some abominable reaction to something new. Hence the additional stuff stuffed into her bag.

Nor did Kate—or her husband, for that matter—need to stay in touch with the rest of the world when they took personal time, the way Amanda did. Kate was a painter and sculptor who did her best work in isolation, and Marshall was a tech wiz who could work from any place that had wireless access. Amanda was the assistant to the CEO of Hoberman Securities, and the only reason she was able to take this week off was because her boss was on vacation too.

As it was, she would still be on call for the next seven days, since Mr. Hoberman was never actually on vacation when he went on vacation. He’d expect her to call in daily with her usual reports on developments in the financial and business worlds and keep him apprised of what was going on. So she’d also had to pack her laptop and assorted other gizmos for staying in touch with the world—and Mr. Hoberman—along with any paperwork she might need to consult about projects on which her boss was currently working.

Okay, okay, so maybe her vacation wasn’t going to be much of a vacation. At least she’d be at the beach. Alone. During January, a time when Indianapolis was already covered with two inches of snow and being threatened with more. With only half the work she normally had because, in addition to being Mr. Hoberman’s assistant, she was also, evidently, the only person at Hoberman Securities who knew the answers to really vital questions like “Where do we keep the microwave popcorn?” and “Whose turn is it to stock up on paper clips?”

She hoped the company didn’t collapse without her around to take care of such potentially catastrophic crises.

And speaking of catastrophic crises, she eyed her carry-on again, noting that the zipper was straining along its seam, and the buckles of the outer pockets looked about to blow. Always prepared, she thought. Just like the Coast Guard. Or was it the Boy Scouts? Campfire Girls? Well, anyway, Amanda Bingham wasn’t the type to go off half-cocked—or with a potentially explosive suitcase. So she hefted it from the bed, carried it to the stairs leading down to the first floor of her condo, and hurled it to the bottom. It bumped and thumped to the foyer without a single stitch coming undone.

She smiled, thinking her suitcase was a lot like her. Sturdy, no-frills, under stress and pushed to the limit, but not undone. Oh, no. Amanda Bingham was never undone. She approached every challenge that life presented fully prepared for any mishap. And for that reason, mishaps rarely—if ever—occurred in her life.

Vacation, here I come, she thought. She closed her eyes and envisioned herself seated on the sun-drenched deck of a beachside restaurant—in the shade, of course—a pile of peel-and-eat shrimp before her bookended by a bowl of cocktail sauce and a bottle of ice-cold beer, sweaty from the heat. In the distance, the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico sparkled beneath a crisp blue sky, a windsurfer clinging to a bright, rainbow-streaked sail skimming across its surface, and—

The chirping of her cell phone made the image dissolve, since she hadn’t planned on including it in her fantasy. Then she realized it wasn’t a part of her fantasy. Her cell phone was actually ringing. She snatched it from the nightstand, checking the number in spite of the fact that she knew perfectly well who it was. No one else ever called her.

She sighed, pushed the Answer button, and said, “Hello, Mr. Hoberman. . . . No, of course you’re not bothering me. . . . No, I don’t have to leave for another hour. . . . Sure, I can check on that for you and call you back tonight. Will you be at this number?”

She nodded in response to his orders, reached for the pad and pencil that were never more than an arm’s length away, and bit back another sigh.

Vacation, here I come. . . . Just as soon as I finish this call . . .

It went without saying that the flight to Fort Myers was, like everything else that day, a nightmare. The call from Mr. Hoberman had led to a half dozen more, thereby using up all the extra time Amanda had allotted herself just in case, because she always allotted extra time for herself just in case. As a result, she’d had to rush to finish dressing, rush to water her plants, rush to ensure she’d locked all the windows and doors, rush out to the cab honking its horn in her driveway, rush to the airport, rush to check in, rush to the gate, and rush to the plane.

Not that she was unaccustomed to rushing—being an assistant to a powerful CEO often required it—but once she was in rush mode, it was always difficult to slow down again. And being strapped into a tiny seat between a woman for whom it became immediately obvious that personal hygiene was an afterthought and a man who had brought aboard a meal that included what was clearly an animal long dead and never actually cooked was not conducive to the deep-breathing exercises she normally used to calm herself. Add to it the small child seated behind her who alternated between kicking her seat and screaming at the top of his lungs, and, well . . .

Suffice it to say that after all that, Amanda really needed a vacation.

She also really needed to remove her contacts because her eyes had become so irritated by the, ah, dry air—yeah, that was it; couldn’t have been her seatmates—which she did once the plane was safely at its gate. She also took a few minutes to change from the tweed trousers, cream shirt, and boots the Indy weather had necessitated and into a short denim skirt, red tank top, and flat sandals she’d tucked into her carry-on to allow her adjustment to the balmy Florida weather.

As she waited for her luggage to appear on the carousel, Amanda did her best to envision the white beaches and tranquil blue water of Captiva again. And she promised herself she would take herself out to dinner that very night for an ice-cold beer and peel-and-eat shrimp. But that vision evaporated when she saw her suitcase finally arrive on the carousel . . . spilling half its contents. This despite the fact that someone had tried—kind of—to put it all back together again. With duct tape. That hadn’t worked.

So much for the cult of the duct tape. Obviously there were some things even it couldn’t fix. She sighed inwardly and hoped nothing was missing. Especially her underwear and Benadryl.

The cab ride to the condo was only marginally less stressful, and cost nearly as much as it would have cost Amanda to rent a car for the week. But she had been determined to make this a vacation in every sense of the word, and do nothing except sit on the beach and watch the ocean, and visit only places within walking distance, and read all four of the books she’d brought along. Provided, of course, those books weren’t still circling the baggage area of some airport terminal along with her underwear and Benadryl. Oh, and of course she would also take any and all calls from Mr. Hoberman, which, she supposed, would necessitate that she work, something that rather countered the whole vacation-i n-every-sense-of-the-word-thing. But you couldn’t have everything, could you?

But other than the calls-from-Mr.-Hoberman part, it truly was going to be a vacation in every sense of the word. It was. Really. She meant it. She did.

Her disjointed thoughts scattered, however, when the cabbie came to a stop just below a row of gorgeous connected town houses, each painted a shade of barely-there color ranging from pearl pink to sky blue. They were perched on stilts over a row of connected parking spaces overwhelmingly populated by overpriced vehicles of some kind. Obviously, Kate hadn’t been kidding about the “luxury” aspect of her condo. Her temporary neighbors clearly had money to burn.

Amanda took in the rest of her surroundings as she climbed out of the cab, noting similar complexes scattered sparsely up and down the beach as far as she could see, as well as the complete absence of any of the tacky tourist traps one usually saw woven in between such structures. The sun was dipping low over the ocean by now, staining the sky with smudges of color as soft as those of the houses in front of it, spreading fingers of gold and copper and orange across the softly rippling water. The breeze kicked up, freeing a few errant curls from what had been a tightly contained braid until the fiasco of her trip, but somehow, suddenly, Amanda didn’t mind her state of disarray so much.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, dispelling all memory of stinky seatmates and expensive cab rides and employer’s phone calls, instead inhaling the sharp, savory scent of the sea. The wind whiffled through the palms arcing over the complex, making their broad fronds whisper something soft and senseless, something that soothed her frazzled nerves.

Oh, yes, she thought as she opened her eyes. She definitely needed this. She’d been running at full tilt for too long, and it was way past time for her to take a few days for herself. No one could do their job well if they didn’t take time to recharge. And what was the point of anything if one didn’t do her job well?

She paid the cabbie after deftly computing fifteen percent for a tip—not that he deserved it, since he’d tossed her taped suitcase onto the ground at her feet as if it had leprosy—then collected her bag and headed for the pale yellow condo at the very end of the row, which Kate had identified as hers. At the foot of the stairs, Amanda shifted the suitcase to her other hand so she could search in her purse for the key, and in doing so, lost her grip on the bag. That inevitably freed the tape on one side and made it spill its contents again. On the upside, she immediately saw her Benadryl and at least one pair of underwear. On the downside—

Well, she’d just chalk up the entire day—save the gorgeous view and lovely breeze—on the downside column.

Biting back a disgruntled sound, Amanda scooped up her belongings and stuffed everything back into the bag, wrapping one arm around the bundle as best she could. Then she made her way up the steps, battled the key into the uncooperative lock, shoved at the sticky front door in a few futile efforts to open it—okay, maybe the place wasn’t quite as luxurious, or at least as accommodating, as Kate had promised—until she finally managed to hurl herself against it with enough force to open it . . . and send both her suitcase and herself hurtling to the floor.

Okay, that was it, she decided as she gazed at the ceiling and did her best to ignore the pain in her shoulder that had taken the brunt of her fall. This was absolutely the last thing that would go wrong on her vacation. From here on out, she vowed, nothing was going to happen that would do anything to disrupt her R&R for the rest of the week. Nothing. Nada. Nil.

Zip. Zero. Zilch.

From here on out, everything was going to go according to plan. She would have nothing but peace and quiet and enjoy herself immensely and return to Indianapolis and her job fully refreshed and raring to go. The rest of the week was going to be perfect.

As if cued by the thought, a muffled bump sounded from the other side of the room, and Amanda’s stomach clenched tight. Before she had a chance to process what might have caused it, a second sound followed, this one the sound of a man’s voice. A man’s voice singing. Singing “At the Copa . . . Copa-cabaaa-naaa.” Badly.

She had managed to scramble onto her hands and knees by the time a door on the other side of the living room opened and the source of the man’s voice appeared. It was coming from a man. Imagine that. A man who was cloaked by little more than a puff of quickly dissolving steam and a damp, dangerously dipping bath towel.

But it wasn’t the fact that there was a half-naked man in the otherwise-deserted condo that stunned, confused, and horrified Amanda. It was the fact that she knew him. Too well.

Max Callahan, the sorriest excuse for a human being ever to come down the pike, so full of himself and his certainty that he was God’s gift to women that there wasn’t room in him for anything else. Anything like, oh, intelligence. Gentleness. Consideration for his fellow man. A work ethic. Stuff like that.

Or decency, either, as evidenced by the way he just stood there in the towel, his dark, wet hair falling arrogantly over his forehead, his blue eyes glittering with mischief, his broad shoulders spanning the doorway, his muscles bunching and flexing when he braced his arms against the jamb, his long, lean, torso dripping wet, sheening the taut bumps and valleys of his rock-hard abs and that mouthwateringly tantalizing curve of flesh just above his—

Uh . . . She meant . . . That is . . . um . . . ah . . .

She meant the way he stood there half naked, completely unconcerned about the fact that he was standing there half naked. Yeah, that was it.

Max Callahan, who had been a thorn in Amanda’s side since high school and who always made her feel like the girl at the dance who had to stand behind the punch bowl and pretend being on the refreshment committee made her way too busy for frivolous things like dancing. Not that anyone had ever asked Amanda to dance in the first place, so it was just as well she had been on the refreshment committee. For every single dance.

The man who still occasionally showed up at the same social functions Amanda did and who, to this day, still made her feel like that awkward teenager who could never say, do, or wear the right thing. The man who always made a thinly veiled mockery of her dedication to her job and her desire to do the right thing. The man who never took her seriously and drove her absolutely nuts.

The man her friend Kate had been telling Amanda for years was absolutely perfect for her.

Two

It didn’t surprise Max Callahan to find a woman in the condo his friends Marshall and Kate had loaned him for the week. In fact, he’d been planning on having a number of them in the condo this week. And by having them, he meant, you know, having them. But he hadn’t anticipated one being delivered right to his doorstep the very night he arrived. At least not this early in the evening.

Then again, she wasn’t exactly the sort of woman he normally ordered when he called Hottie Hut. Even through a thick veil of steam, he could tell she totally, uh . . . was not his type. There. That was a lot better than saying she was unattractive, right? Saying she wasn’t his type was even better than saying she had a great personality. Who said Max Callahan didn’t have a tactful bone in his body? Besides every woman he knew?

As the steam gradually began to clear, he could tell even better that she was pretty damned . . . loaded with good personality. Her hair was sticking straight up in places, her glasses were slightly askew, she was sprawled gracelessly on the floor on all fours—not that her position wouldn’t afford some measure of interest from him in different circumstances—and she . . .

Wait a minute, he thought when the steam cleared the rest of the way. She wasn’t just loaded with good personality; she was familiar. Too familiar. He knew her. And not in the biblical sense, which would have made this a lot less annoying.

“Amanda?” he said, not quite able to keep the disbelief—or distaste—out of his tone. But even without her answering, he already knew it was her scrambling up from the floor.

Ah, crap. So much for a vacation. Five minutes in a room with Amanda Bingham made a man want to spontaneously combust. It wasn’t just that she was loaded with good personality. It was that she had absolutely no personality. None. She was a corporate drone, plain and simple, a woman who lived to work and had no interests outside doing her job well. And it wasn’t like she had a job that benefited mankind or made the world a better place, like medical research or tech support or R&D for a major brewery or anything. Hell, she didn’t even dance in a strip club. She was the lackey for some corporate big shot whose business consisted of making rich, powerful people richer and more powerful, and paid his own employees bubkes.

Not that Max cared or anything. Kate just liked to bitch about it on Amanda’s behalf, since Amanda never bitched about it herself, being the corporate drone she was. And speaking of her job, what was she doing here? She never took time off from work. Not that Max cared about that, either, but it was something else Kate bitched about a lot. That and how Amanda never dated because her boss kept her hopping, and how all Amanda needed was some hot, fun guy to show her how much more life had to offer besides work. And hey, Max, why don’t you ask Amanda out sometime, since a guy like you is exactly the kind of guy Amanda needs, because you could make her laugh and show her a good time and take her mind off her work for a while and . . .

And that was when Max had always had to turn to Marshall and say, “Hey, how about them Colts?” Because there was no way in hell he was going to ask Amanda Bingham to do anything. Except keep her distance. The last thing he wanted was to be infected by her workaholic, no-fun, no-personality tendencies. Max embraced the opposite philosophy: work to live. He did only the minimal amount to get by, and working as a freelance whatever-he-felt-like-being-on-any-given-week, be it carpenter or painter or mason or pool cleaner, afforded him exactly that. His needs in life were few. A soft bed, a warm woman, and the occasional beer. Or was that a warm bed, a soft woman, and a frequent beer? Depended on the day, he guessed. And today . . .

He looked at Amanda again. Today was looking to be one that required way more than bed, woman, or beer. Thank God he’d had the foresight to pack that bottle of tequila.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Strangely, it wasn’t Max who asked the question, but Amanda. Funny, but he didn’t think he’d ever heard her swear before.

“What am I doing here?” he countered. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She straightened to her full height—which couldn’t have been more than five-four in the scrawny flats she was wearing. He wasn’t used to her being so short. Usually, she wore those power heels women wore to compensate in the workplace, but right now, she wouldn’t even come up to his chin. For the first time since realizing who she was, Max took in the complete package. The reason he hadn’t recognized her right off was because she was wearing glasses that made her eyes—clear green eyes he’d always thought were way too beautiful for a tightass like her—look even bigger than before. But instead of detracting from her looks, they somehow made her kind of appealing. In a sexy librarian porno kind of way. That was probably because she was also wearing a short denim skirt and skintight tank top, which was another departure from her usual corporate-drone attire. Usually, when he ran into her somewhere, she was wearing baggy, man-style trousers and baggy, man-style shirts, and her hair was always pulled back without a single strand out of place. And although it was pulled back now, too, there were plenty of strands out of place, curling riotously and making the sexy librarian look recently tumbled.

He’d never realized Amanda Bingham had such curly hair. Even in high school, she’d never worn it loose. So many mornings, he’d come to his locker, a half dozen or so down from hers, had seen that long braid hanging to the middle of her back, and had wondered what it would be like, just once, to free the band that held the woven strands together and loose the thick mass of strawberry blond.

Her hair was darker now. A rich, dark chestnut with threads of amber and ginger knit through it. It was shorter than it had been fifteen years ago, but still plaited the same way, and still long enough for her braid to have fallen forward over one shoulder. And damned if Max didn’t find himself wondering, even now, what it would be like to free her hair from the scrap of red wrapped around its end.

Not that he cared or anything. He’d just heard Kate go on and on about what great hair Amanda had and how she should wear it loose sometimes. Max had really never paid much attention.

“I’m here on vacation,” she told him.

He started to shake his head the minute she voiced the word vacation. But he echoed her sentiment nonetheless when he said, “That’s impossible. I’m here on vacation.”

She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “I’m here at Kate and Marshall’s invitation,” she said indignantly.

“You can’t be,” he countered. “I’m here at Marshall and Kate’s invitation.”

“They said I’d have the place to myself.”

“They said I’d have the place to myself.”

“They told me this was the only week it was available.”

“They told me this was the only week it was available.”

He started to say more, but then it hit him. Hit him like a good, solid blow to the back of the head.

“Ah, crap,” he said, speaking his earlier thought aloud. Why hadn’t he listened to those alarm bells that had started ringing the minute Marshall had offered him a free week at the beach? How many times had Max asked for exactly that, only to have his friends reply that A, the condo was booked for every week Max could make it; B, it was hurricane season; or C, the place was being (choose one) painted, cleaned, fumigated, roofed, or whatever other damned thing took their fancy to keep him from enjoying the place because they didn’t trust him not to trash it.

And, okay, maybe Max had a reputation for trashing places. It wasn’t like he didn’t clean up before he left. Or, you know, leave a check to cover the cost of replacing whatever he’d broken. But Marshall and Kate had always been adamant. Until now. Until they’d suddenly decided Max could use a week at the shore. And it was a week when they’d evidently offered their condo to Amanda too.

Funny, but he could usually smell a setup a mile away, giving him ample time to run screaming in the opposite direction. He’d just been too taken in by the prospect of a week at the beach in the dead of winter to let himself think too hard about what might be behind it.

He dropped his hands to his hips, remembered he was standing there in nothing but a towel, and realized he didn’t care. Hell, it wasn’t like he had anything to fear from Amanda. She hated his guts. “Did Kate tell you not to bother packing anything but your swimsuit since the condo would have everything you’d need?” he asked.

Amanda nodded.

“Yeah, Marshall told me that too.”

Amanda said nothing for a moment, obviously weighing the information carefully. Then, when she must have come to the same conclusion Max had, her eyes went wide. “Are you telling me Kate and Marshall set us up?”

This time Max was the one to nod. “In more ways than one.”

“Oh, no,” she said adamantly, shaking her head. “No, no, no, no, no. Kate knows how I feel about you. She knows I can’t st—” She halted abruptly, her eyes going even wider, two bright spots of color blooming on her cheeks.

Max smiled. He knew exactly what she was going to say. That she couldn’t stand him. Which was fine with him, because he couldn’t stand Amanda either. He’d never been able to understand why Kate kept harping on him to ask her out. Obviously, she must have talked to Amanda about the same thing at some point; otherwise, she wouldn’t have known how Amanda felt about him. So if he didn’t want to have anything to do with Amanda, and Amanda didn’t want to have anything to do with him, then why had Marshall and Kate arranged this week for them to be stuck here together?

Because it was a safe bet they were stuck here together. Not only could neither of them have budgeted for a hotel, but there probably wasn’t a hotel room to be had on the coast at this time of year anyway.

As if she’d read his thoughts, Amanda said, “They expect us to share this place for a week? Are they out of their minds?”

He started to say “Obviously,” but checked himself. It was a rhetorical question, after all. So instead he said, “Look, I know you’re no happier about this than I am, but there’s no reason why we can’t make it work. We’ll just divide the condo between us. I’ll stay out of your way if you’ll stay out of mine.”

“One problem,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“One,” she repeated. “That’s the problem.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s only one of everything,” she pointed out. “One kitchen, one living room, one balcony, one bathroom, one . . .”

She halted, but he already saw where this was heading. “One bedroom,” he finished for her.

She nodded. “Which means one . . .”

Again, she wasn’t quite able to finish. So Max finished for her. “One bed.”

She nodded again. “So who gets that?”

He smiled. “I’ll wrestle you for it, Amanda. Best two out of three falls.”

Three

Amanda felt the blood drain from her face. Wrestle Max? He was crazier than Kate if he thought she would go for that. Immediately, however, she realized he was only kidding. Because he started laughing irrepressibly enough to make the towel dip even lower on his hips. Just before it would have gone tumbling to the floor, he caught it, tucking it carelessly around his waist again. Though none too snugly, since it fell right back to the precarious position it had been in before, perfectly cradling that erotic curve of muscle between his navel and his—

“Hah! Gotcha,” he said when he could stop laughing long enough to catch his breath.

Thankfully, that jerked Amanda’s attention back to the matter at hand. Although maybe hand wasn’t the best word to use under the circumstances. Or jerk, for that matter. Not considering where her gaze had fallen and how much she had been admiring the way his towel so beautifully framed his . . . ah . . .

Where was she?

Oh, yeah. Max had been laughing at her. Not that that was anything new.

“Oh, man, if you could see the look on your face,” he added, punctuating the statement with a smug grin. “Relax, Amanda. I’m no more interested in wrestling or sharing the bed—or the bedroom, for that matter—with you than you are.”

Somehow, his reassurance did little to reassure her. Maybe because, suddenly, the thought of sharing the bedroom—or the bed, for that matter—or even wrestling with him didn’t bother her quite as much as it would have a few weeks ago. Or a few minutes ago. Or even a few seconds ago. Funny how a precariously placed towel could completely change the tone of a conversation.

Um, where was she?

Oh, yeah. Not getting along with Max. Not that that was anything new.

“How about we draw straws for it?” he asked. “The couch out here unfolds into a bed, and whoever draws the short straw takes the living room. How about that? That’s fair, right?”

She wanted to say something about how a gentleman would automatically offer to take the sofa and let the lady take the bedroom, but she knew it would be pointless. For one thing, it wasn’t unusual for her and Max to argue about women’s rights on those occasions when they were forced to talk to each other, and about how he had no respect for women or their rights and how everything between men and women should be equal. So it would look pretty lame if Amanda talked the talk but couldn’t walk the walk. For another thing, Max was no gentleman. So she only nodded her agreement. It did seem like the best way to resolve the problem.

He started to head for the kitchen to look for a couple of straws, but Amanda stopped him with a carefully worded “Don’t you want to, um . . . I mean, ah . . . Before we do that, wouldn’t you rather . . .”

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t carefully worded. Max didn’t seem to think so, either, because when he turned around to look at her, his expression was puzzled. Instead of finishing what she had been trying to say—since that would be even more difficult to do looking at his front side than it had been looking at his backside—she just turned her gaze away and waved a hand airily at the towel wrapped around his hips.

“Oh, that,” he said without concern.

Oh, that, she repeated to herself. With lots of concern. Then again, he would be unconcerned about it. He saw himself half naked and dripping wet and rippling with muscle and mouthwatering . . . ah . . . She meant he saw himself like this all the time. For Amanda, however, this was a first. Not her first half-naked man, of course. Or even dripping-wet man. Well, not quite the first, anyway. She had, after all, you know . . . Lots of times, in fact. Well, okay, not lots. But there had been more than one guy in her life. And one of them had even showered at her place. The rippling muscle, though, was definitely a first, since the guys she dated were more fluff than buff. More rut than cut. More dip than rip.

But they all had great personalities. And that was what was most important.

“Seriously, wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you were dressed?” she asked. Though, truth be told, it wasn’t Max’s comfort she was thinking about just then.

Really funny how the placement of a towel could change the tone of . . . oh, everything.

“This’ll just take a second,” he said with even less concern than before, continuing on his way.

She watched as he ducked behind the breakfast bar and started opening cabinets . . . then made herself look away again because she just couldn’t tear her gaze from the way the muscles in his bare back bunched and relaxed and bunched again with every move he made. She didn’t know why she was surprised that Max looked this good under his clothes. Of course a man as shallow and self-absorbed as he was would spend time at the gym. All he cared about was the physical. With himself and the women he dated.

Amanda pushed the thought away and took in the rest of her surroundings. Kate and Marshall had furnished the condo beautifully. Between the kitchen and the bathroom was a set of French doors that led out to a small balcony, and beyond that, nothing but sparkling white beach, glittering blue ocean, and luminous pink sunset. It was the perfect complement to the Caribbean theme of the decor. The walls were painted a brighter yellow than the exterior, and the furniture was whitewashed rattan. The accent pieces were plentiful, all splashes of dazzling color, from the charmingly primitive paintings of island houses and marketplaces to the irregularly shaped throw pillows to the thickly woven carpets scattered about the tile floor. Directly opposite the kitchen was a door that led to what must be the bedroom, and . . .

And, oh, who cares how Kate and Marshall furnished the place? Amanda thought as she turned to look at Max’s back . . . ah, she meant at Max, of course . . . again. By now he was facing her, doing something on the kitchen counter that didn’t seem to involve straws at all, but did rely heavily on a bottle of tequila.

“I couldn’t find any straws,” he said when he glanced up to find her looking at him. “So we’ll have to go with swizzle sticks. And it goes without saying that there’s no point in breaking out the swizzle sticks if you don’t have something to swizzle them with.”

“Is that a fact?” she asked dryly.

“Of course it’s a fact,” he assured her, continuing his task without looking up at her. “A fact you would have realized by now if you ever did anything besides work work work.”

She gaped at that. “I do more than work work work,” she denied hotly. “A lot more.”

“Oh?” he asked dubiously. This time he did look up, but it was only to toss a lime into the air with one hand and catch it deftly with the other. “Like what?”

She started to enumerate the many and myriad activities of her daily life, but all she could come up with at the moment were things that involved Mr. Hoberman. Things like picking up his half-caf skinny latte, light on the cinnamon, on her way to work, and spending her lunch hour picking out a gift for his wife’s birthday/son’s wedding/daughter’s promotion/mistress’s college graduation/whatever, and stopping on her way home to meet for drinks with a client he wasn’t able to meet himself because he had to meet with a more important client, which actually meant he was meeting his mistress. Or maybe his wife. Though Amanda doubted it.

But Max was standing there waiting for an answer, so she fudged. “I go out for coffee. And I go shopping. And I go for drinks with . . . people.” She couldn’t really say friends, because that would venture beyond the realm of fudging and into lying, since she never liked any of the clients Mr. Hoberman had her meet, and she always told the truth. Always. Except for when she fudged a little.

Max started putting things into a blender and grinned that smug grin again. “And what makes me think that all this coffee, shopping, and drinking relates directly to your job?”

She started to reply with something flip and cavalier—and hopefully honest—but he spared her having to do so by punching a button on the blender and creating a cacophony of crushing ice, lime, and tequila, thereby drowning out whatever she might say. So Amanda only mouthed a vehement, if silent, denial—It wasn’t lying if you didn’t say it out loud, right?—stopping the moment she saw his finger lifting from the blender button.

“So there,” she concluded haughtily. Let him make what he would of that.

What he made, it quickly became clear, was margaritas. Because after filling two glasses with his creation, he came out from behind the kitchen counter with two servings of something frosty and cold, each sporting a plastic swizzle stick that ended in the shape of a cactus. But he had arranged the sticks in such a way that both were protruding from the glasses at equal angles and equal lengths.

“Being a gentleman,” he said, “I’ll let you pick first. Short swizzle stick gets the couch.”

Amanda eyed each of the drinks carefully, but the concoction was too opaque for her to tell which glass might hold the shorter stick. She started to reach slowly for one glass, thinking maybe Max would offer some subtle body language as to whether that one held the shorter stick. But he only stood there unflinching—in his towel, damn him—holding the two drinks equidistant between himself and Amanda.

Without giving it too much thought, she reached for the glass she hadn’t initially aimed for and immediately pulled the cactus out. It was full length, as evidenced by the fact that it ended in the shape of a little plastic pot and hadn’t been broken at all.

“Hah,” she said, holding it up triumphantly. “I get the bedroom.”

Max shrugged. “Ah, well. At least I get a margarita out of it.” He held his glass up. “Cheers, Amanda.”

Wow. He was being a good sport. That seemed so unlike him. She touched the lip of her glass to his. “Back atcha.”

He hesitated just a fraction of a second before adding, “To a relaxing week at the beach.”

She hesitated, too, a bit longer than he had. “And just how are we supposed to manage that? Two people who do not get along—”

“To put it mildly.”

She ignored the interjection. It wasn’t like she disagreed with it. “—sharing such a tiny condo?” she finished.

He shrugged again. “We’ll figure it out. Who spends any time inside when they’re on vacation, anyway? I figure we’ll both be out on the beach most of the time. You head south, I’ll head north, and we’ll probably hardly ever see each other.”

Sounded like a reasonable enough plan to her. Still . . .

“Plus,” he added, “I bet you’re an early-to-bed-early-to-rise type, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” she replied automatically.

He grinned that smug grin again and repeated, “Of course.” Somehow, though, when he said it, it didn’t make her sound like the responsible, conscientious person it had when she said it. “I’m rarely up before noon myself,” he told her. “And never in bed before midnight. So we’ll probably hardly ever see each other here in the condo either.”

That, too, sounded reasonable, Amanda thought. So why did she suddenly feel kind of . . . disappointed? Oh, surely not. No way would she be disappointed to avoid Max Callahan. It just went to show what a rotten day she was having.

So, “To a relaxing week at the beach,” she echoed, clinking her glass softly against his.

And she ignored the little wiggle of apprehension that went up her spine as she completed the action.

It was only later, after she and Max had spent the rest of the evening avoiding each other and settling in, that Amanda saw he had, of course, left the dirty margarita glasses sitting in the sink. And when she went to rinse them out, she realized he hadn’t shortened the swizzle stick in either of them. Both plastic cacti ended in a little plastic pot. No matter which one she had chosen, she would have won the bedroom.

Max had been a gentleman, after all.

Four

The second day of Max’s vacation dawned with infinitely more promise than the first, and not just because he didn’t have to get up in what might as well have been the middle of the night so he could make the fourteen-hour—at least the way he drove—trip from Indianapolis to Captiva. No, it was because he awoke to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee instead of the reek of the Dumpster below his bedroom window, to the warmth of a slant of sunlight on his bare back instead of winter’s chill unabated by his busted radiator, and to the sound of the ocean beyond the window instead of his upstairs neighbors arguing about whatever was their conflict du jour.

And when he opened his eyes, he discovered yet another way this morning was different from any other in recent memory. Because what to his wondering eyes should appear but the sight of a gorgeous redhead in a satin kimono instead of some unremem bered woman he’d picked up the night before and he hoped would be gone by now.

Not quite able to believe his good fortune, he closed his eyes tight, then opened them again. Hold the phone. That was no gorgeous redhead. That was Amanda Bingham. So much for good fortune.

It all came rushing back to him then. The way Marshall and Kate had set the two of them up for the week by deliberately double booking them in an island condo at the height of the tourist season. The way Amanda had come tumbling so unexpectedly through the door just as he was coming out of the shower. The way she’d been looking at him in a way she’d never looked at him before, as if she weren’t A, repulsed by him; B, annoyed at him; C, disgusted with him; or D, all of the above.

Well, the joke was on Marshall and Kate. No way would Max and Amanda ever hook up. Not figuratively. Not literally. Not in any -lyway at all.

Then she turned, and he caught her in profile. She was talking to someone on the phone, and although her face was a study in contrition, the rest of her was flat-out . . . Well, he hesitated to use the word gorgeous again, now that he knew it was Amanda. But the morning sunlight spilled over her body in a way that was almost sacred, lighting tiny fires in the russet curls she’d piled loosely atop her head, infusing her ivory skin with an amber glow, turning her filmy robe almost translucent. And although he could tell by the silhouette beneath the fabric that she wasn’t naked beneath the garment, she might as well have been, because Max was just that good when it came to mentally undressing women.

Other women, he immediately reminded himself, squeezing his eyes shut tight again to eliminate the vision that was Amanda in the morning. But when he opened them again, she was still there, still looking . . . Okay, okay. Gorgeous. Damn. She had turned back around, but the breeze was whipping up the hem of her robe enough that he caught the merest glimpse of shorts beneath. The kind of shorts women slept in, not went to the beach in. The kind made of wispy, flowery fabric and trimmed in lace. The kind that were so wispy, in fact, that the breeze could whip them up a little, too, enough that a man who had voyeuristic tendencies—And come on, what man didn’t?—could also catch a glimpse of that very nice, very soft, very erotic lower curve of the wearer’s ass.

Max squeezed his eyes shut again. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking of Amanda Bingham’s ass as erotic. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking of her ass at all. Or any of her other body parts. The only time he thought about Amanda was during those unfortunate times they turned up at the same parties. And on those occasions, the only thought he gave to Amanda was to wonder what the hell she was thinking, dressing the way she did and acting the way she did and being the way she was, when any other woman who had her, ah, assets—Okay, okay, maybe he’d checked out her ass a time or two, so sue him—could be making a fortune appearing monthly in the center of a magazine with strategically placed staples. And then appearing indefinitely inside the lockers of auto mechanics, steelworkers, and frat boys all across America.

Was this a great country or what?

What it was, Max decided as he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, was a weird country, where two people who had been having a perfectly good adversarial relationship as recently as a couple of weeks ago were suddenly sneaking peeks at parts of each other they’d never cared about seeing before. Or maybe it was just him being weird. Vacations had a way of making people do and feel things they wouldn’t in the normal world.

He heard the soft slide of the French door accompanied by Amanda’s voice, and rolled over to look at her again. She was still on the phone, looking even more apologetic than she had before. Worse, she was groveling to whoever was on the other end of the line, in a voice he’d never heard from her before. Whenever he talked to Amanda, she was assertive to the point of belligerence, antagonistic to the point of militancy. Truth be told, he’d always kind of liked that about her. That she was so passionate about her beliefs—however misguided they were—and that she challenged him in a way no one else ever bothered with. Max realized that most people considered him to be . . . well, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you knew what he meant. And he supposed he hadn’t exactly ever tried to dissuade anyone of the idea. Life was simpler when everyone had low expectations of you. Made it easier to avoid responsibility if you could plead stupid to whatever crisis arose. And it was easier to be an observer of life instead of a participant, which Max liked a lot. Oh, he participated in the things he enjoyed—sipping a cold beer on a hot afternoon, carving a sinuous design out of a satiny block of mahogany, slow-dancing with a warm woman to the music of Keb’ Mo’—but he liked to watch how life played out for other people too. He liked watching the people even more.

Which brought him back to Amanda. Who was still talking apologetically on the phone. Who had barely noticed him as she’d walked to the breakfast bar to open her laptop. Who cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder as she began to type, something that caused her robe to fall open enough to reveal a wispy, flowered top that matched the wispy, flowered shorts. A top that was so wispy, in fact, that it was drooping nearly as much as the robe, offering Max an equally erotic hint of the dusky valley between her breasts.

And waking up a certain, very masculine, part of him in a big, big way.

Great. An early-morning boner. He hadn’t been thinking about how frequently he woke up in that condition when he gave Amanda the bedroom and took the sofa for himself. With her being an early riser and all—not that she was the only one, mind you . . . ahem— he was going to have no privacy. He should have acted like the jerk she thought he was and claimed the bedroom as his right for being the first person to arrive. Who knew how long it was going to take for his, ah, condition to, ah, diminish—not that it would diminish very much, by God—especially with her running around all wispy and lacy and flowery and sexy.

No, not sexy! he immediately corrected himself. This was Amanda, after all. That realization alone should have, ah, diminished him on the spot. Instead, when he looked at her again and saw her leaning over the laptop enough to allow him an even better view of her luscious—no, not luscious!—curves, he did just the opposite of diminish. Very much too.

Dammit!

“Certainly, Mr. Hoberman,” he heard her say ruefully. “No, I’m sorry I misunderstood the first time. Of course I should have realized you meant just the opposite of what you were saying. . . . What . . . ? No, sir, I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t know what you were . . . No, sir . . . I understand, sir. . . . Yes, sir . . . I’ll get right on it and be in touch later this morning. Will that be all right, sir?”

Max shook his head in disgust. Man, it must suck to be a lackey.

“Hey, Amanda!” he called out as loudly as he could, hoping her boss on the other end of the line would hear him and take the hint. “Come on back to bed, sweetheart! You shouldn’t be working! You’re on vacation!”

Her head had snapped up the moment she heard his voice, and now she glared at him, her eyes wide behind her glasses, her teeth gritted.

“Here, babe! Have another bloody Mary!” he shouted even louder. “You earned it after all that exertion last night!”

Her cheeks went pink with irritation, but instead of yelling back at him to shut his trap, she muttered, “No, Mr. Hoberman, that’s the television. One of those awful daytime talk shows . . . What . . . ? No, I don’t know how it got turned on. I never watch those. I must have bumped the television when I went past. . . .”

Then she did some more groveling, and Max shook his head again. After witnessing a few more minutes of her toadying, by the time Amanda finally hung up the phone, Max’s condition had indeed diminished—though not very much, by God. Because this was the Amanda Bingham he knew—the corporate kiss-ass. It didn’t matter how hot she looked in sexy sleepwear. She wasn’t his type. At all.

As if wanting to drive that fact home, after hanging up the phone, she clutched the neckline of her robe and pulled it closed to her neck, then grabbed the hem and tugged it down as far as she could. She straightened her glasses and tucked her hair primly behind her ears, then stammered, “I . . . I thought you were asleep.”

He pushed himself up on his elbows, mindless of the sheet that fell to his waist. Hell, it wasn’t like he was naked. In light of Amanda’s presence in the house, he had pulled on a pair of boxers before going to bed last night. Not that she cared. Not that he cared that she didn’t care. Because he didn’t. Care. At all. About Amanda. Or her opinion.

“Yeah, well, who can sleep with all that slurping going on?”

Her irritation turned to confusion. “Slurping? I wasn’t slurping. I haven’t even eaten breakfast yet.”

“Maybe not. But you’re the loudest suck-up I’ve ever heard.”

Now her irritation returned. “I wasn’t sucking up. I was doing my job.”

“News flash, Amanda. You’re on vacation. You’re supposed to be taking a break from sucking up.”

“I wasn’t sucking up,” she repeated more adamantly. “Mr. Hoberman is a very powerful man. You have to talk to him a certain way, otherwise he thinks . . .”

But Max had stopped listening. He lifted one hand and levered his thumb and fingers in the internationally recognized sign language for “blah blah blah,” and used the other to whip back the sheet. That, if nothing else, finally made Amanda shut up. Probably because his boxer shorts were spattered with dozens of garish colors, images of slot machines mingling with the word JACK-POT! in big red letters.

Well, he never said his underwear was tasteful. Besides, it had been a gift from a showgirl to commemorate an especially memorable night. Too bad he could barely remember it. Still, he did like the boxers.

He was about to make some flip comment—along the lines of You should be so lucky—but there was something in her face that stopped him. Amanda Bingham was—

“Holy crap, you’re blushing,” he said before he could stop himself.

That, of course, only made her blush even more. But she said nothing, only widened her eyes in panic and glanced away.

“You’re not going to tell me you’ve never seen a man in his underwear before.”

“Of course I’ve seen a man in his underwear,” she said, the words coming out hushed and patchy. “I’ve seen lots of men in their underwear.”

But she still wasn’t looking at him. Meaning the vast majority of the men she’d seen in their skivvies had probably been in the long johns section of the L.L.Bean catalog.

Then again, this was Amanda, he reminded himself. Again. Why did he have to keep doing that? Why did he keep forgetting who—and what—she was? She probably turned out the lights when she had sex. If she even had sex.

Which, if she didn’t, he thought, would explain a lot.

Biting back a frustrated sound, he reached for the khaki shorts he’d tossed on a nearby chair the night before and, with Amanda still gazing at the other side of the room—and still blushing furiously—he put them on, deliberately pulling up the zipper slowly to see if the soft, raspy sound would make her blush harder still.

Yep. It did.

Unbelievable. There was still a woman in the world who could be shy about something like a guy in his underwear. Amanda Bingham was an even bigger prude than he’d thought. And that was saying something.

So why did a warm, gooey ripple shudder through his stomach at the realization? Why did he find it kind of . . . erotic . . . that she was so unworldly?

Man, he really did need a vacation if he was reacting this way to Amanda Bingham.

“You can turn around now,” he said as he finished buttoning his fly. “I’m decent.”

She turned around, but she still didn’t look at him. “Hah,” she muttered. “That’s not a word I think anyone would use to describe you.”

He grinned at that. “Ah, come on, Amanda. Lighten up. You’re on vacation.” Before he realized what he was doing, he added, “Let me take you to breakfast. I saw a place up the road when I was driving in. Right on the beach. Bloody Marys on me.”

Her irritation disappeared at that, to be replaced by . . . something. Something Max was hard-pressed to identify. Mostly because her gaze ricocheted from his and zinged to every other object in the room. “I, uh . . . Thanks, but, um . . . I can’t.”

He was amazed at the depth of his disappointment. What was up with that? “Why not?”

“I, ah . . .” She looked at him again, only to have her gaze once again go flying off in another direction. Very softly, so softly he almost didn’t hear her, she said, “I have to work.”

“Work?” he echoed incredulously. “But you’re on vacation.”

“I know, but Mr. Hoberman—”

“You’re on vacation,” he repeated. “You can’t work when you’re on vacation. That violates the most basic law of nature. If you work while you’re on vacation, you throw the entire universe out of whack and we all get sucked into a black hole.”

“I really don’t think that’s going to hap—”

“C’mon,” he cajoled. “You have to eat. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, ya know.” Then he tossed her a crumb he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. Unfortunately. “You won’t be able to do your job effectively if you don’t eat breakfast.”

And why was he so adamant that she eat breakfast? With him, no less? What did he care if Amanda wanted to spend her vacation working? Hell, it would keep her out of his hair, something that would allow him to enjoy his vacation. Hey, just last night he’d told her how easy it would be for the two of them to avoid each other, hadn’t he? So why was he actively not just crossing their paths, but twining them together?

Before he could answer any of those questions—not that he had a clue how to answer them—she sighed heavily, took off her glasses to rub her eyes, and tossed them onto the countertop. Her glasses, not her eyes. That would have been really gross.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said wearily, sounding like someone who really needed a vacation. “But you don’t have to treat. I’ll pay my share.”

He started to tell her to forget it, that he’d been the one to invite her out, so he was going to treat, then stopped himself. Not just because Amanda seemed to think it was important to pay her own way, but because if he—or she, for that matter—paid for both of them, then the excursion would feel more like . . . you know . . . a . . . a date than breakfast—which it absolutely wouldn’t be, in any way, shape, or form. And that was all it was. Breakfast. People had to eat, for God’s sake.

Amanda hesitated—probably because she was trying to come up with an excuse to say no that didn’t involve work, Max thought—then, with clear reluctance, nodded. “Just let me get dressed.”

He started to tell her not to bother, that he’d never seen her looking better than she did wearing what she had on at the moment, but he managed—just in time—to keep his jaw clamped shut. First off, saying something like that would be sure to send this new side of Amanda back into her shell. Not that he cared, of course. And second, flirting with Amanda Bingham would be like flirting with Dwight Schrute.

So how come Max wasn’t gagging the way he would be if Dwight Schrute were in the room wearing wispy, flowery PJs? And then washing his eyes out with soap and water to remove what an image like that would involve?

He pushed all those thoughts away and said, halfheartedly, “Yeah, and I’ll throw on a shirt.”

But it wasn’t halfhearted because he regretted ever asking Amanda to join him for breakfast, which should have been the case. Instead, it was halfhearted because he didn’t want to throw on a shirt. On the contrary, he suddenly wanted to shed what clothes he had on and go back to bed. Only he didn’t want to go back to bed alone. He wanted to take Amanda with him. And he wanted to shed what clothes she had on too.

He told himself it was only because of his early-morning boner, that any woman would look good to a man who woke up aroused. Yeah, that must be it. No other explanation made sense. Especially the one that was suddenly trying to worm its way into his brain.

That maybe, just maybe, Kate had been right about him and Amanda.

Five

Why had he invited her to breakfast? Amanda wondered as she watched Max drag the last bite of his bacon through a puddle of leftover pancake syrup and tuck it into his mouth. And why had she accepted in the first place, when she should be scarfing down a muffin while huddled over her laptop keyboard, doing the work she promised Mr. Hoberman she’d have finished by this afternoon? Why was Max being nice to her? Why was she being nice to him? They’d actually managed to share an entire meal together without him calling her a corporate collective peon or her calling him a flag-waving jingoist from Macholand. And why had she put on a pale yellow sundress and taken care to brush and rebraid her hair just to go to breakfast, when she could have just thrown on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and left her hair sleep-scattered?

But more important than any of those things, why couldn’t she take her eyes off the tiny smudge of syrup at the corner of his mouth that he seemed to be completely unaware of? Why did she want so badly to reach across the table and wipe it away with her thumb or, even worse, some other body part—and maybe one of his body parts too? Maybe even more than one of his body parts. Maybe lots of his body parts. And lots of her body parts. All mingling together. In a tangle of hot, passionate . . . earthy, erotic . . . steamy, sweaty . . .

Uh . . . She meant . . . um . . .

Suddenly feeling the need to do something with her hands—something that didn’t involve any of Max’s body parts—she glanced surreptitiously at her watch. And she was surprised to realize it was the first time she’d even wondered about the time since the two of them left the condo. She was even more surprised to realize they’d been gone for more than two hours.

“Dammit,” she hissed when she saw the time.

“What?”

“I need to get back to—” She halted herself before finishing with the word work, and quickly amended, “—the condo.”

“Why?” he asked, grinning in a way that made a glint of sunlight wink off the speck of syrup. Thankfully, just as Amanda was about to lose her battle to reach across the table, he turned his head toward the ocean so that the syrup was out of sight. “I mean, look at this day. It’s gorgeous. Not a cloud in the sky.”

He turned to look at her again, his smile still sweet with syrup, and she made herself shove her hands under her thighs. But the victory was short-lived, because the breeze kicked up, blowing open the placket of his gaudy red Hawaiian shirt to reveal a tanned, luscious-looking collarbone beneath, and nudging a thick strand of mahogany hair over his forehead. The backdrop of cobalt ocean and sapphire sky made his blue eyes even more startling than before: clearer, deeper, more expressive. And when he grinned, it was one of those crooked, spontaneous grins Amanda had always reluctantly found charming, the ones that surfaced roguish dimples on each cheek . . .

Well. Suffice it to say her hands really wanted to be somewhere other than under her butt. Like maybe under his—

“Why don’t we take a walk on the beach?” he asked suddenly.

She wouldn’t have been more surprised if he’d suggested they build an atomic bomb. Walk along the beach? With Max? A man who, until forced into contact yesterday, had done his best to avoid her and whom she’d done her best to avoid? A man with whom she shared nothing in common save a double-booked condo for the week? A man who hadn’t had anything to say to her from the day she met him in freshman English except to tease her relentlessly because of her good grades, her conscientious work ethic, and her desire to get into an Ivy League college?

He wanted to walk along the beach with her? Just how much vodka did this place pour into their bloody Marys?

“Uh . . .” she began, stretching the word over several time zones in an effort to stall while she formed an answer. Not that she had an answer for a question like that at the moment. “I can’t,” she finally said.

She told herself she only imagined that he looked disappointed by her answer. “Why not?”

She sighed her surrender. There was no way around it. If she said it fast, maybe it wouldn’t sound like she needed to work. “There are some things I have to do for Mr. Hoberman by the end of the workday.”

Now Max was the one to sigh. Only his sounded more like exasperation than surrender. “Oh, come on, Amanda. At least take a morning for yourself. Haven’t you been having a nice time up ’til now? I know I have. We should take advantage of an armistice like this while we can. It doesn’t happen often.”

He sounded as surprised by their sudden camaraderie as she felt, but it was true. Although she never in a million years would have guessed that she and Max Callahan could get along for two minutes, let alone two hours, they had indeed been having a nice time. Oh, sure, there had been a couple of lively exchanges during breakfast, along with the occasional raised voice when they’d disagreed on some topic. But unlike those times when they disagreed at home, their words had been civil and thoughtful, and the voices hadn’t been shrill or exasperated. And they’d actually taken turns listening—listening!—to each other before offering a counterpoint to what was said.

“You can’t work like this all week,” he added. “You’re on vacation.”

“Why do you keep reminding me of that?” she demanded hotly.

“Because you keep forgetting,” he fired back.

“Yeah, well, like you always say, Max, I’m nothing but a corporate drone. I have no life because I’m so focused on my work. And I’m the loudest suck-up you’ve ever heard,” she concluded with more emphasis than was really necessary, since he’d been saying that just a couple of hours ago.

To hammer that point home, she lifted her bloody Mary—sans vodka, naturally, since she had to work—and slurped what little was left with as much gusto and noise as she could.

Instead of responding, Max only gazed at her in sullen silence. But then, what could he say? She’d only repeated, pretty much verbatim, what he’d always said to her before. So she stood, rifled through her purse for a handful of bills, and tossed them onto the table without even bothering to count them out.

“That’s to cover my share of breakfast,” she muttered. “I’ll take a cab back. You can take a walk. I’m sure you’ll find someone to keep you company.” Someone, she added to herself, who has about as much work ethic as you. Someone whose job doesn’t depend on being available to their boss 24/7.

As if cued by the thought, a curvy, bronzed blonde who was squeezed, just barely, into a teeny bikini and not-so-long sarong sauntered by their table, deliberately—Amanda was certain it was deliberate—brushing Max’s shoulder with her hip.

“Oh,excuseme,”shegiggled.Truly.Shegiggledthewords,something Amanda thought happened only in badly written novels.

“No problem,” Max said automatically. But he was looking at Amanda when he spoke, something that made her wonder if he was talking to the blonde or to her.

The blonde didn’t seem to realize, either, because she glanced back at Amanda, apparently expecting to see a worthy adversary with whom she would have to fight for Max’s attention. One look at Amanda’s face, however, and the blonde smiled a smug, victorious smile. Obviously, she didn’t think Amanda would be any competition at all.

But Amanda wasn’t competition, was she? Not only was she nowhere near as beautiful as the other woman, nor as curvy, and not only did she not have the know-how to deal with men that the blonde clearly had in abundance, Amanda wasn’t the sort of woman Max liked anyway. Which was good, because Max wasn’t her type either. It didn’t matter how well they’d gotten along over breakfast. It didn’t matter how much she still wanted to swipe away that syrup in an earthy, erotic . . . hot, sweaty—

The blonde made a soft tsking sound and bent over Max. Waaaaaay over, enough that her teeny bikini top became a gravitational necessity if she didn’t want to be arrested by the decency police. “You have a little smidgey of syrup on your mouth,” she said, giggling the words again. And then, as Amanda watched helplessly, she lifted a perfectly manicured hand to trace her thumb softly over the corner of Max’s mouth, making the swiping of syrup look like something from a pornographic movie.

Unbelievable, Amanda thought. If she’d tried to do that when she wanted to, she probably would have inadvertently poked Max in the eye.

The blonde’s touch finally got his attention, which was pretty amazing, considering the fact that the gravitational pull of her bikini top hadn’t. And when he moved his gaze from Amanda’s face to hers—her face, not the two things most men would have looked at first—he smiled and said, “Thanks, sweetheart. I appreciate it.” Then he looked at Amanda again—her face, too, alas, and not the two things most men would have looked at first . . . had she had two things men might want to look at. Alas. “I don’t know why no one else bothered to let me know.” Then he turned back to the blonde. “I hate it when people would rather let you look ridiculous than help you out.”

Hoo-kay, Amanda thought. Obviously whatever small armistice the two of them had managed to negotiate this morning was off. She wasn’t sure who had violated it first, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She and Max had never been allies. They were like those troops during World War I who had taken off Christmas Day to play soccer, but now, with the spirit of the season over, it was back to war.

“Oh, believe me, Max,” she said. “It would take more than wiping syrup off your face to keep you from looking ridiculous.”

And with that she spun on her heel and made her way toward the interior of the restaurant. She’d ask the hostess to call a cab for her. As for Max . . .

Well, she wouldn’t ask for anything from him. Not for the rest of the week. Not for the rest of her life. Except maybe to leave her alone. Once and for all.

Max watched Amanda until she disappeared into the restaurant’s dining room, willing her to look back, just once. But she didn’t. Not once.

Dammit, he thought. Things had been going so well between them all morning. They’d been able to make it through an entire meal without sniping at each other. Even better, they’d managed to actually engage in meaningful conversation. Best of all, they’d found things to laugh about. Being away from the recollections and assumptions and expectations of their everyday lives, they’d been able to . . . to . . . to communicate. They’d never done that before.

He wondered why not. And he wondered why he found it so important for them to do so now. For a long moment, he sat there trying to figure out just where and when and why he and Amanda had decided to dislike each other, until the sound of a clearing throat brought his attention back to the present. When he looked up, he saw a woman standing over him, looking at him expectantly, and it took him a few seconds to remember she was the one who had just wiped the syrup off his face. Why was she still here? Had he spilled something on his shirt too?

“Um, thank you?” he said, hoping that was the proper response.

Had she asked him a question that needed an answer? He honestly had no idea. He’d been so focused on watching Amanda—and the way the sunlight had filtered through her dress, leaving little to the imagination—that he hadn’t been aware of anything else. Though now that he was aware of the other woman, he realized her outfit left nothing to the imagination. It was all right there. At eye level. And there was a lot of it. Of them. Of her.

Oh, hell.

Normally, Max would have preferred a woman who left nothing to the imagination over a woman who made him work for it. But he’d actually kind of liked imagining that part of Amanda, even if it had been for only a few seconds. Now that he was faced with the flesh-and-blood-and-more-flesh object of what would have made a righteous fantasy, he discovered he’d rather close his eyes and think about the sunlight filtering through Amanda’s dress again.

The woman smiled at him in a way that he probably would have found sexy had he not just had breakfast with a woman he suddenly found, well, sexy. “I was hoping you’d invite me to breakfast,” she said.

Max gazed down at the remnants of the meal he’d just consumed, thinking it should be pretty obvious to even the most casual observer that he’d already had his breakfast. “Um, thanks?” he said again. He gestured toward the empty plate. “But I’ve already had breakfast.”

She smiled again, and he decided that her expression actually wasn’t all that sexy, regardless of whom he’d just shared a meal with. In fact, it was kind of vapid. “I haven’t,” she said. And then, for some reason, she bumped her hip against his shoulder. Again.

Obviously, she was a woman for whom the hip-shoulder thing and the vapid-sexy smile thing usually got results.

Then again, Max was a man who, until recently, wouldn’t have needed even that much to convince himself that what he needed more than anything in the world was a second breakfast. And then a day of whatever this woman was offering, followed by a night of whatever she was offering, hopefully with a friend of hers.

Then again, that sort of thing had never happened to Max. Not the friend thing. He’d had more than his fair share of meaningless couplings with women, including women he’d just met. There was no reason why he should turn this one down. Even if she wasn’t offering him more than chatty conversation over a mimosa and fruit cup, it was a damned sight better than what Miss Amanda Bingham was offering him, which was nothing but a day full of antagonism and dirty looks.

So why did he want to gracefully decline Blondie’s hospitality and head back to the condo for an afternoon of Amanda’s hostility? Why did he want to turn his back on this woman’s ample . . . ah, charms . . . in favor of Amanda’s, ah . . . less ample . . . charms? Why was he even thinking Amanda had charms in the first place?

The answer to that last question, at least, came right away, though not without a little amazement. Because Amanda did have charms, he realized. Not only did she look surprisingly good in wispy, flowered pajamas—even wearing glasses . . . especially wearing glasses—but she’d made him think and talk and laugh—a lot—during breakfast. For the first time Max could remember, he’d actually enjoyed doing something with a woman that didn’t involve sex, and he’d enjoyed doing it for a lot longer than sex lasted.

Naturally, that made him wonder if the sex with Amanda would last longer—and be better—than sex with other women. Not that she was going to let him anywhere near her after having parted the way they had. Not unless he did something really drastic. Like . . . gak . . . apologize. Or, even more radical, be nice to her. For more than just a morning.

Hmmm . . .

That throat-clearing sound muscled its way through his musing again, and he looked up to find the blonde still gazing expectantly at him. Obviously, she wasn’t going to go away until he bought her breakfast. So he gestured toward the chair Amanda had just vacated, signaled for their server, and, as the waiter cleared away the remnants of Amanda’s breakfast, instructed the woman to order whatever she wanted from the menu.

What she wanted turned out to be not much of a breakfast at all—a fruit cup, dry toast, and water—making Max wonder why she bothered. Another thing about Amanda: she ate like a man. Eggs, bacon, hash browns . . . the whole nine yards.

After she completed her order—such as it was—Max tossed a handful of bills onto the table to cover three breakfasts and a hefty tip, then told the woman, “Bon appétit. I’m sorry I can’t join you, but I have a full day ahead of me.”

And with that, Max pulled an Amanda and made his way toward the interior of the restaurant, never once turning to look back.

Six

“Do you realize you’ve been on vacation for three days, and I have yet to see you vacate?”

Amanda started at the sound of Max’s voice, her hands convulsing on the keyboard of her laptop, making her accidentally send an e-mail she hadn’t finished writing—or proofing—yet. Fortunately, it was to Mr. Hoberman’s secretary, Elise, not to Mr. Hoberman, so damage control shouldn’t be too difficult to manage. Except that Elise was a punctuation Nazi who would send the e-mail back to Amanda with her corrections and tell her to resend once she’d made them, and she always insisted on using commas where they absolutely did not belong and omitting them from the places where they were utterly essential. So, okay, okay, maybe Elise wasn’t the only punctuation Nazi working for Hoberman Securities.

“Of course,” Max added, “part of that could be the fact that I haven’t seen you for most of the past two days at all.”

Had Amanda had her way, he wouldn’t be seeing her right now either. Not just because she was wearing her flowery vacation jam mies again, but because she’d gone out of her way to avoid him since yesterday’s breakfast and had made it ’til almost tonight’s bedtime. Well, her bedtime, anyway. Probably, Max stayed up past ten. Fortunately, avoiding him hadn’t been difficult, because she’d simply holed up in the bedroom with her laptop and . . .

She bit back a sigh. And worked. Dammit. To her credit, she’d at least rearranged the furniture so that the desk was under the window, and she’d been able to look out at the ocean while she was working. That had sort of been like a vacation, since at work, all she had to look at was the enormous eighteen-month dry-erase calendar hanging over the desk in her cubicle outside Mr. Hoberman’s office.

And she’d slipped out of the bedroom a few times when she knew Max wasn’t around, after hearing the front door close and the sound of his V-8 roaring off into the distance, or hearing the door to the deck whoosh open and closed and seeing him through the window as he sauntered down the beach. With a beach towel tucked under his arm and his surf jams riding low on his hips beneath acres and acres of bronzed, muscled back. She’d had to venture out of the room if she wanted to eat, after all. Or answer the call of nature.

There had also been a couple of times when she’d ventured out of the room while Max was sleeping. And if she’d taken her time creeping past the couch to watch him, it was only because she hadn’t wanted to risk waking him. It hadn’t had anything to do with marveling at the sheer poetry of his sculpted, naked torso or having to fight the temptation to reach out and run her fingertips over the wisps of dark hair sprinkling his broad, naked chest.

It hadn’t. Really. Really.

Anyway, she would have thought he’d at least have the decency to knock before bothering her, but there he stood in the doorway in another one of his obnoxious Hawaiian shirts and his standard khaki shorts, his feet bare, his hands tucked behind his back, the very picture of innocence.

“Are you telling me you want me out of here?” she asked. “Why? Did you invite that hot little blonde from the restaurant yesterday up to see your etchings?”

He narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Why would I ask her to see my etchings? I don’t have any etchings.”

Amanda sighed with frustration. “It’s an old-fashioned term for . . . Never mind,” she immediately stopped herself. Not just because she suddenly realized Max would have no knowledge of anything that had happened more than fifteen minutes ago, but because the last thing she wanted to bring up after yesterday was a euphemism, however archaic, for sex.

He was still looking puzzled when he asked, “And why would I want you to leave?”

“You told me to vacate,” she reminded him.

“No, I didn’t. I said I hadn’t seen you vacating on your vacation. It was just an observation.”

She was about to interrupt him again and point out that vacating and vacation didn’t necessarily have anything to do with each other. But before she had a chance, he pulled his hands from behind his back, and she saw that he was holding two very luscious-looking beverages that she was going to go out on a limb and guess contained something alcoholic.

“You need a break,” he said with much conviction.

Not that she disagreed with him, but something about having Max point that out instead of realizing it herself rankled. So she lied, “I don’t have that much more to do.”

He took a few deliberate steps forward and set one of the frothy drinks—had he actually mixed up something that was pink?—on the desk, well within her reach. “The point is that you have anything to do,” he told her. “You’re on vacation. You’re supposed to be doing nothing.”

“You’ve obviously been doing enough for both of us,” she said crisply. “You made enough drinks to keep you busy for the rest of the evening.”

He smiled indulgently. “I made one of them for you. And making drinks, especially those that require the use of a blender, is an activity that has the full approval of the EPA.”

She arrowed her brows downward. “The Environmental Protection Agency?”

He grinned more broadly. “The Escapism Profligacy Agency.”

She bit back a smile and tried to look haughty instead. “Yeah, you need more escapism and profligacy in your life.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I have plenty. It’s you who needs this.” He dipped his head toward the drink. “I just didn’t want you to have to drink alone. That’s so . . . tragic.”

“Mm,” she said noncommittally.

He pointed to his watch. “It’s always five o’clock somewhere.”

She pointed at her watch. “It’s way past five here.”

He reached across the table, flattened his hand against the back of her laptop screen, and began to ease it down. “All the more reason. You have a lot of catching up to do. Just pretend happy hour is just beginning here.”

Oh, no, she thought. No way was she going to start pretending things. That way lay madness. She curled her fingers over the top of the computer screen and pushed it back open. “First, I have to fix a mistake you made me make.”

And how could something like that come out sounding almost portentous? she wondered. She just wasn’t getting enough rest this week, that was all. This week when she was on vacation. When she was supposed to be getting some rest.

Pushing the thought away, she reopened the unfinished e-mail and finished—and proofread—it, apologizing to Elise for sending an incomplete one the first time and changing the subject head to include a “Read Me First” admonition. Then she jammed her finger against the Send key—telling herself it was not with more force than was necessary—and started to open the next e-mail in the queue.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Max said, moving a lot closer than she was comfortable with having him. He started to reach for the laptop to close it again. “You’re done for the day.”

But she’d already opened the e-mail, one from a new hire at Hoberman Securities that was designated highest priority. Thank goodness she did, too, because it was indeed very important, a notice about possible SEC violations at one of their rival brokerage firms. It concluded with a link to an Associated Press story about the investigation, which Amanda naturally clicked on, even as Max told her to c’mon, take a break for God’s sake, and she countered that it would take only a minute.

But they both shut up when a new screen appeared on the computer depicting not an Associated Press story, but a YouTube video of a clean-cut young man in a black outfit with overcoat dancing and singing something about how he was never gonna give her up and never gonna let her down or run around or desert her. That was when Max started laughing. Hard.

“Oh, man,” he said when he found his breath. “You got Rickrolled.”

Still confused, Amanda turned to look at him. “I got what-rolled?”

“Rickrolled,” he repeated, still chuckling. He must have picked up on the confusion she was feeling, because he asked, “Don’t you know what Rickrolling is?”

She shook her head.

He smiled again. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I don’t know. Why are you not surprised?”

He ignored the question and instead explained. “It’s an Internet phenomenon whereby a prankster tells you they’re sending you to some legitimate site, then they send you to a Rick Astley video instead, thereby Rickrolling you. It’s been going on for a couple years now.”

He was still smiling broadly, but Amanda couldn’t figure out why. “Who’s Rick Astley?”

“The guy in the video. A one-hit wonder from the eighties.”

She thought about that for a minute, then said, “I don’t get it.”

He chuckled again. “I’m not surprised.”

“No, really,” she insisted. “Why is it supposed to be funny?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just is. It’s like an inside joke on the Web.”

“But I barely know the guy who sent this e-mail. They just hired him. Why would he . . . What’s it called again?”

“Rickrolling.”

“Why would he Rickroll me?”

Max shrugged again. “If he’s new, maybe he just wants to do something that will bring him into the crowd at work. The ability to make people laugh is a great icebreaker.”

“It didn’t make me laugh,” Amanda pointed out.

“That’s because you didn’t get it.”

“Which is exactly my point. And even after you explained it, I still don’t get it.”

He shook his head, but smiled again. “And I’m still not surprised.”

For some reason, his comment bothered her. “Why not?”

This time he sighed. But the sound was good-natured, not exasperated, something that surprised her. Usually when Max sighed at her, it was because he was frustrated. Right now, he just seemed to be amused.

“Because, Amanda, you never do anything that would put you in a position to be Rickrolled.”

To punctuate the remark, he pushed the pink drink closer to her hand, leaving a wet trail behind it. By now, moisture was beading on the sides, trickling down to the base, making it look very appealing. She had to admit that she was kind of thirsty. And she had been working all day. By now, everyone at work would be home enjoying their lives. Even Mr. Hoberman. Amanda was the only one who ever worked this late. She deserved a break for a refreshment.

As if cued by the thought, her cell phone rang, and she automatically reached for it. But Max beat her to it and, in one deft maneuver, switched it off and stuffed it into the side pocket of his shorts, immediately Velcroing it shut.

“Hey!” Amanda cried. “That could be an important call!”

He gazed at her flatly. “Do you work for a medical research team that’s on the verge of finding a cure for cancer?” he asked.

“What? No. Of course not. You know I—”

“Are you the world leader of a country on the brink of thermonuclear war?”

She made a face at him. “No, Max. I—”

“That’s right,” he said, feigning a sudden memory. “What you do is make rich, powerful people richer and more powerful, am I right?”

“Well, there’s a little more to it than—”

“Am I right?” he asked again. In the tone of voice a preschool teacher would use with a headstrong toddler.

Amanda said nothing, figuring it was a rhetorical question anyway.

“So you don’t have to be on call twenty-four hours a day,” Max said. “And you sure as hell don’t have to be on call when you’ve been granted a perfectly legitimate and well-deserved vacation.”

She reached toward him, needing her phone. Badly. He might as well have taken away her right arm. “But—”

He took a step in retreat. “I’m not giving the phone back to you until tomorrow,” he told her. “You’re off for the rest of the evening.”

She took a step forward. “But, Max, you don’t understand how impo rt—”

He took another step backward. “What I understand is that you need a break. More important, you’ve earned it, Amanda.”

She took another step toward him. “I know that,” she said softly.

“Then why won’t you take one?” Another step back.

By now, he was at the bedroom door. This time, Amanda took two steps forward, bringing herself to where her body was nearly touching his. “I need my phone, Max.”

He shook his head. Then he moved the drink he still held in front of her mouth. “Try this instead. It’s way better.”

She took the glass from him, set it on a table by the door, and repeated, “I need my phone, Max.” She held out her hand. “Give it back to me. Now.”

He dipped his head very close to hers and said, very softly, “Make me.”

Without even thinking about what she was doing, Amanda leaned forward and reached for the pocket into which he had pushed the purloined phone, and managed to get it un-Velcroed before he realized how fast she could move. But her move wasn’t quite fast enough, because he grabbed her wrist with confident fingers and jerked it back up, pinning her hand between his chest and hers. So Amanda threaded her other arm across her midsection and tried to snag the phone with that one. But, just as before, Max capably caught it, too, and pulled it up to join the first. Amanda tried to tug both hands free, but he held them firm, his grasp too tight . . . but somehow, in some weird way, not tight enough.

Out of nowhere, heat blossomed in the pit of Amanda’s stomach, seeping upward to make her heart beat faster, and downward to warm parts of her that hadn’t felt warm for too long.

“Max,” she said softly when she realized what was happening, “let me go.”

But he seemed to be aware of the sudden change in their postures, too, because his voice was a little ragged when he replied, “Don’t you want your phone?”

Amanda shook her head, suddenly not caring. All she knew was that she needed to get away from Max before she did something really stupid. “No, that’s okay.” She tried to pull her hands free again, but again he refused to let go. “Max . . .” she said again. But this time his name came out sounding thready and hoarse and . . . aroused.

But then he sounded kind of aroused, too, when he said, “Amanda . . .”

Before she realized what was happening, he lowered his head to hers and covered her mouth with his, brushing his lips gently over hers once, twice, three times, four, before she even realized what was happening. She started to pull away, but he followed her, dropping her hands to curl his fingers over her shoulders as he kissed her again, more deeply this time. Instinctively, she lifted her own hands to cup them around his neck, framing his jaw with one of them. His skin was warm beneath her fingertips, rough from a day’s growth of beard. He smelled of sunshine and ocean and something citrusy and sweet. He tasted sweet, too, and she realized he must have sampled the concoction he’d blended before bringing the glasses into the room.

Her last coherent thought was that this was something that had probably been coming for a long time, something the two of them had been fighting for years. Pure animal magnetism. They didn’t have to like each other to be turned on by each other. In many ways, a physical response to another person was even stronger and more irresistible than an emotional one. And that was all this was—all it would be. A physical response. But there was no reason why Amanda couldn’t lose herself to it completely.

She was, after all, on vacation.

Soon enough, she would have to return to the real world. But not tonight. Tonight she would do as Max had instructed, and take a break. A much-deserved, well-earned break. From her job. From her life. From her reality. From herself. Tomorrow . . .

Well, she’d just do like Scarlett O’Hara and think about that tomorrow.

Her decision made, she tangled her fingers in his silky hair and kissed him back, with all the heat, hunger, and desire that had been building forever, demanding satisfaction for them all.

She pulled her mouth away from his long enough to murmur, “It’s too bright in here,” then reached past him to brush her hand over the switch on the wall.

Thrown into darkness, they both seemed to lose whatever hesitation might be left. Max lowered his hand to the hem of her brief pajama top and tucked his fingers beneath it, skimming them along her lower ribs, dragging both heat and shivers in their wake. Then he hooked the waistband of her shorts and pushed them down over her hips, pulled her shirt over her head, and covered her naked breasts with both hands. Amanda fumbled with the buttons of his shirt as he gently kneaded her tender flesh, her breath catching in her throat with each new touch. He released her long enough for her to shove his shirt over his shoulders and arms, then captured her again when she moved her hands to the fly of his shorts.

Without thinking about what she was doing, she dropped to her knees before him, cupping one hand over the taut, hot flesh of his buttocks, the other curling around his hard cock. She thumbed the head gently, then dragged her fingertips down his shaft, closing her entire hand around its base. Then she moved her hand back up again, and pushed it slowly downward once more. Bathed in the pale lamplight from the living room behind him, his cock was long and shadowed, and for long moments, she only stroked him, palm ing the full head and dampening the rest of him with its product. When he growled his satisfaction with her touches, she moved her hand to the base again, guided him to her mouth, and pulled him deep inside.

“Oh, Amanda . . .” he murmured thickly. “Oh, baby. Oh, man . . .”

He tangled his fingers in her hair as she went down on him, circling him with her tongue, sucking him with her lips, quickening her pace a little with every long pull. She could feel him watching her as she moved her head backward and forward, felt him grow even harder whenever she took his cock deeper into her mouth. When she felt him begin to tremble, she released him, but before she could push herself to standing, Max was pulling her up and wrapping her in his arms, kissing her with a hunger unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

For a long time, he only kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. Then he took her hand in his and led her across the room to the unmade bed, sitting on its edge and pulling her into his lap astride him, her legs spread over his. This time Amanda was the one to kiss him, looping her arm around his neck and opening her mouth over his. As she did, he moved his hand to the scrap of fabric she’d tied at the end of her braid and freed it, then used both hands to free the thick mass from its confinement. For long moments, he grasped great fistfuls of it, moving it over her shoulders, atop her head, against her back. Then, still combing the fingers of one hand through it, he lowered the other hand between her legs and furrowed his fingers gently through the damp folds of flesh there, finding the soft, sensitive bud of her clitoris and thumbing it slowly.

When she murmured her satisfaction from somewhere deep inside, he moved over her again, this time dipping a finger inside her as he stroked her. She rose up on her hips when he did, but he followed her as he had before, his mouth still clinging to hers. When she lowered herself, he drove his finger in deeper, hastening his caresses until she felt ready to come apart. Just as she felt her climax beginning to coil inside her, he turned their bodies so that she was flat on her back and he was perched between her legs. Grasping a thigh in each hand, he opened her wider, then lowered his head to taste the part of her his fingers had brought to near madness.

Over and over he licked and laved her, drawing circles with the tip of his tongue on her the same way she had with him, thrusting his tongue deep inside her the way she had taken him. She clung to the pillow beneath her head and lifted her hips higher, closer to his mouth and the havoc it wreaked, crying out his name again and again and again. He must have sensed she was near her breaking point, because after tasting her deeply one final time, he turned their bodies again.

Amanda found herself with her face turned to the pillow, her shoulders on the mattress and her ass in the air. She felt his fingers splay open over her back, then one trace down the long line of her spine, pausing just below her waist. Then he moved both hands forward, capturing her breasts in each one, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over her stiff nipples, and eased himself—all of himself—into her slick canal.

He took his time to fill her, leaning his entire body over hers to whisper hot, profane promises into her ear. His words inflamed her even more, and she heard herself speaking a few explicit, steamy promises of her own. Never had she spoken to a man so frankly during sex. Never had a man spoken so erotically to her. There was such a profound lack of inhibition between them after years of staving off too many emotions to name. She could scarcely believe she was doing this with Max—Max! Never in her life had Amanda felt more comfortable with another human being. Nor had she ever felt so aroused.

And that arousal grew with each new movement, each new touch, each new word spoken. They opened to each other in ways they never had before. Amanda rode astride Max, lay beneath him, took him kneeling and sitting and standing. But they had collapsed back onto the bed by the time they finally surrendered to the climax they had barely been able to keep at bay. She felt the cool kiss of the sheet under her back and wrapped her legs around his waist as he pressed into her one last time. They came together, crying out as one, their bodies going rigid as they rode out the waves of their orgasms. Then they both went limp and eased back onto the mattress. All Amanda could do then was wonder what the hell had just happened.

Well, that, and what the hell was going to happen next.

Seven

What happened was that Max kissed her forehead, murmured something about how incredible she was, pulled her close, nuzzled her hair and . . .

. . . and fell asleep.

Her heart still pounding, her brain still frazzled, Amanda lay beside him, not sure whether to feel stunned, spurned, or satisfied. What she finally settled on was confused. But, strangely, her confusion wasn’t about what the two of them had just done. In fact, the more she thought about that, the less surprised she was by the development. It explained a lot, actually. She and Max probably should have realized a long time ago that they weren’t battling each other so much as they were battling an attraction to each other. Even though they hadn’t liked each other, they’d wanted each other. But neither had been willing—or maybe not even able—to admit that. Not until they were here, a thousand miles away from home, out of their usual comfort zones with their defenses down.

You couldn’t help who you were physically drawn to. That was a chemical reaction in the brain and libido that defied explanation. Sure there were biological studies about men wanting women who were fertile and women wanting men who were providers, but Amanda thought that was BS. People had evolved a lot since prehistoric times. Why should the assumption stand that they’d held on to their primitive reproductive/protector responses to the opposite sex when the protruding forehead and unibrow had disappeared?

As far as she was concerned, the world was full of all kinds of people to whom you responded—and who responded to you—differently. Some people evoked warm, fuzzy feelings inside. Some evoked instant animosity. Some evoked no feeling at all. Some took time to warm up to. Some you liked until you got to know them. With some, you were friends. With some, you were enemies. And with some, you were . . .

Well, what she and Max were. She just wished there was a convenient label to put on it. She wished even more that there was a good explanation for it.

Chemical reaction, she told herself again. Who knew why they’d gotten turned on the way they had when they had? Why did there even have to be a reason? They were on vacation. Living practically on top of each other. They’d responded to each other passionately for years—it had just been a different kind of passion. Or maybe it hadn’t.

Oh, why the hell does it matter? she demanded of herself again.

Maybe, she immediately realized, it was because she was beginning to think that, on some level—for her, anyway—there was a lot more to it than chemistry. A lot more to it than physical response. A lot more to it than passion. Maybe, just maybe, she had . . . feelings . . . for Max. Maybe, just maybe, she’d had them for a long time. Maybe, just maybe, that was why he’d always made her feel so edgy and antagonistic and fierce. Because she hadn’t wanted to admit she could have . . . feelings . . . for a guy who didn’t feel the same way about her.

Maybe, just maybe, what had happened tonight hadn’t been the result of her physical response to him, but her emotional one. How could she know, though, if for him what had happened had been nothing but physical?

She scooted a little away from him and turned her head to look at him. His face was only half revealed in a slant of lamplight from the other room, his dark hair tumbling over his forehead, his thick lashes lying like silk against his cheek. The hair at his temple was damp with perspiration and, unable to help herself, Amanda pushed back a handful of dark tresses so she could see him better. She held her breath to see if the motion would wake him, but he didn’t budge. She smiled at that. She never would have thought she could outlast Max Callahan at the game of sex.

God, what was he going to say when he woke up and remembered what they’d done? How was he going to feel about her now? How would he treat her for the rest of the week? Or when they got back to Indianapolis? What if he didn’t want to see her again? What if he stopped attending parties he knew she would be attending too? What if he told Kate and Marshall to give him a heads-up whenever she was around, so he wouldn’t have to see her?

Or worse, what if he acted like nothing had happened? Like nothing had changed? There was no way she’d ever be able to treat him the same way after what had happened tonight. There was no way she would feel about him the way she had felt before. There was too much . . . Well, just too much, that was all. And it was utterly different from what she’d felt for him before.

Very, very carefully, Amanda disentangled her body from his and scooted the rest of the way across the bed. Then, very, very carefully, she got up and searched for her clothes. She found them near the doorway and tried not to think about how they’d gotten there as she shimmied back into them. But memories washed over her of how she’d dropped to her knees so shamelessly before him and so hungrily consumed him. She hadn’t felt any shame in what she had done, however. She didn’t feel any now. In fact, she wanted to do it again. And she wanted Max to do all the things he’d done to her again. And she wanted to do them for—

For a long time.

Don’t think about it, Amanda. Just don’t think about it.

For some reason, she suddenly had a craving for one of those drinks Max had whipped up earlier. So after winding her hair atop her head and cinching it with a thick band, she made her way to the kitchen. All that was left, though, was a soupy, melted mixture in the blender and a sticky mess on the counter.

She tried not to view it as a metaphor for what her life was about to become.

Instead, she went to the wine rack and pulled out a lovely pinot noir she’d brought with her and opened it, then poured herself a generous glass and, with one more glance into the bedroom to make sure Max was still sleeping, crept to the sliding doors and—whoosh, whoosh—stepped out onto the deck.

Nighttime at the beach, she thought, was extraordinary. Almost surreal. Sounds seemed to carry down from the stars themselves, swirling around her ears, whispering the secrets of the universe just a little too softly to be understood. The wind whipped at her pajamas and hair, tugging loose dozens of strands to make them dance about her face and shoulders. She strode to the rail and rested her arms upon it, cradling the wineglass in both hands. Then she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the pungent ocean air. She tasted salt on the breeze, felt the soft spike of sand on her cheeks, and far, far off in the distance, heard what sounded very much like the Sirens’ call.

A-man-da, they sang, come join us. Live as we live here in the sea. Sing the Sirens’ song. Dance the Sirens’ dance. And then, after a moment—and a bit more incisively—they added, Stop being such a workaholic, you moron. Your job sucks. Your employer is a pinhead. You have no life. You didn’t even know what Rickrolling was. Leave your sorry existence behind. Go out and live. Live.

Li-i-iv e.

And then, as if the point hadn’t already been hammered home by the harpies . . . uh, she meant Sirens—whoosh, whoosh—the door opened and closed behind her.

She turned to see Max standing there, of course, his feet and chest bare, his shorts hanging low on his hips, a glass of wine poured as generously as her own in one hand. She steeled herself for what he would say, how he would act now, how he would treat her.

And then he smiled. Not the smile he’d smiled whenever she’d seen him before. That one had always been wary and tight. As if he were bracing himself to talk to her. But then, she’d always had to brace herself to talk to him, too, she recalled. Tonight, however . . .

Tonight, there was no wariness in his smile. There was no tightness. Tonight, Max’s face was full of easiness, warmth, and affection. He was smiling at her the way she wanted to smile at him. The way she did smile at him. The way she felt inside. Easy. Warm. Affectionate.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” she replied, just as quietly.

He took a few steps forward, then hesitated, as if he still wasn’t quite sure where he stood with her. “I woke up, and you were gone,” he said. “For a minute, I was afraid—” He halted abruptly, and she feared he might not finish whatever he’d intended to say. But he finished, even more softly, “I was afraid you’d gone.”

The knot that had been coiled tight in her belly since seeing him eased at his words, allowing the rest of her to relax too. “You say that as if you don’t want me to leave.”

“I don’t,” he said quickly. His dark brows arrowed downward under his windswept hair. “Are you planning to leave?”

“No.” She was surprised at how quickly the word left her mouth. At how quickly the decision was made. At how right it felt to make it. “Why would I leave?” she added with a grin. “I’m on vacation.”

Evidently, they were the very words he wanted to hear, because the crease in his brow disappeared, and he covered what little distance was left between them in three quick strides. Instead of pulling her into his arms and treating her to a long, languid kiss, however, he simply leaned forward and brushed his lips lightly over hers. Then he mirrored her earlier posture, leaning on the rail, fingers woven together beneath the bowl of the glass.

“I love it out here at night,” he said. “There’s just something about the ocean after dark, you know? Like it’s . . .”

“What?”

He turned to look at her. “You’ll laugh.”

Her? she thought. The woman who had just heard the Sirens call her a moron? “No, I won’t,” she assured him.

He expelled a soft sigh and looked back toward the whispering surf. “I don’t know. Like it’s . . . magic or something.”

When she didn’t say anything in response to that, he turned to look at her again, his expression sheepish. “You think I’m nuts, don’t you?”

She shook her head. “No, actually, I don’t. Just before you came out here, I thought the ocean and the stars were speaking to me.”

Now he grinned again. “Were they, now?”

This time she nodded. “Yup.”

“And what did the ocean and stars say to you?”

Now Amanda was the one to gaze out at the sea. She shrugged and sipped her wine, mostly because she wasn’t sure what to say, but also because she wanted to hold the moment suspended in time for as long as she could. Because she knew that, someday, she would look back on this moment as the one where everything changed. Where her old life alone fell away, and her new life with someone else—with Max—began.

“Mostly,” she began, “they told me I work too much.”

She heard Max chuckle at that. “And this is news to you? I’ve been telling you that for years.”

“Yeah, you have.”

“So now that it’s a consensus, are you going to listen?”

Was that a hopeful quality she heard in his voice? she wondered. How convenient if it was. Because she was feeling kind of hopeful too.

Without even realizing she meant to say it, she heard herself ask him, “Do you want to know why I was so focused on my grades and getting into a good college when I was in high school?”

When he didn’t answer right away, she turned to look at him and saw that he was looking at her now. “Why?” he asked, his voice softer than before. Though whether that was a result of the mellow evening or the mellow wine, Amanda couldn’t have said. Probably the former, since they hadn’t even finished their first glasses of the latter. Still, there was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“It was because of my father,” she said simply.

“Ah,” he said. “You have one of those fathers who instills a healthy work ethic from an early age.”

“Had,” she corrected. “My father died the summer before I started at Notre Dame.”

There was a moment of hesitation on Max’s part, then an even softer, “I’m sorry, Amanda. I didn’t know.”

“I know,” she said. “Few people do. It’s not something I really talk about.” Then she hurried on—hurried because she knew she wouldn’t be able to say it otherwise, not that she knew why she was saying it at all. “But it was just the opposite, actually. My father never worked an honest day in his life.”

There was another one of those brief pauses, then Max said, “Uh . . . what?”

Amanda sighed heavily. “He was a lot like you, Max.”

Max nodded, but his expression fell a little. “So that’s why I never made your A-list. Because I’m like your loser dad.”

She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t a loser. He was a lot of fun. Happy-go-lucky. Not a care in the world. Always smiling. Always laughing. Never met a stranger.” She smiled as she remembered. “He could always make me laugh. I’d come home from school feeling horrible because I got a B on a test, and he’d always say something like, ‘Mandy, it’s not the end of the world. There’s more to life than grades.’ Then he’d tell me to blow off my homework and go to a friend’s house.”

Max smiled too. “And would you?”

She shook her head again. “No. I didn’t have any friends close enough for me to invite myself over.”

Max sobered at that. For a moment. Then he smiled again. “You coulda come to my house.”

Something in her stomach kindled at his words, sputtering to life at the matter-of-factness with which he’d spoken them. Instead of replying—because she knew he was only teasing—she said, “Anyway, as nice a guy as my dad was, he couldn’t hold down a job. It was always a struggle for us. There were nights when my mom had to serve peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Sometimes all I had for breakfast was a piece of dry toast.”

“Aman da—”

But she held up a hand to cut him off. “I’m not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me. I’m telling you because I need you to know why I am the way I am. It sucked living like that as a kid. I didn’t want to live that way as an adult. I wanted to be more responsible than my dad. It was more important to me to know I could take care of myself than to . . . than to . . .”

“Than to what?”

“Than to be liked by other people,” she finished lamely.

He said nothing for a moment, then asked, “Why do you need me to know all that?”

Good question, she thought. She wished she had a good answer to go with. Since she didn’t, she only lifted her shoulders and let them drop in another quick shrug.

“Well, if I need to know that,” he said, “then there’s something you need to know too.”

“What?”

“That you’re well liked by plenty of people,” he said. He paused again, and looked as if he were weighing carefully what he wanted to say next. Then, evidently deciding, he added, “Including me.”

The spark in her belly leaped higher at that, warming her heart and making her pulse beat harder.

“But I wasn’t feeling sorry for you just now,” he hurried on. “A lot of people live the way your family lived. We never had much when I was growing up either. But I never felt like I was missing out on anything. Happiness is a state of mind, Amanda. So is contentment. I don’t require a lot when it comes to making me happy.”

She thought about that for a moment. As an adult, she had achieved and earned everything she’d thought she wanted. She had a secure position at a respected company, and she owned a home she could comfortably pay off. She lived without debt and was responsible for no one but herself. But even having reached those goals, she couldn’t say she was happy. Not really. She tried to remember the last time she had been happy. Truly, genuinely happy. And she realized it had been . . .

Wow. Not that long ago, actually. Mere minutes, in fact. It had been in that incandescent moment when she and Max had climaxed together, when the joy of their coupling was coursing through her, before the seeds of doubt had started creeping in. And that hadn’t come about because of her job. In fact, her job had almost prevented it from happening.

“So just what do you require to make you happy?” she asked him.

He wiggled his dark brows suggestively, snaked out a hand to tangle his fingers in her pajama top, then pulled her roughly against him for a long, deep-throated kiss. “That,” he said a little breathlessly when he pulled away. “A long taste of Amanda Bingham.”

She smiled at that. “You don’t taste so bad yourself.”

He smiled back, but there was something a little uncertain about it. “Yes, but am I enough for you to live on? I’m not exactly a well-balanced meal, chock-full of vitamins and minerals and fiber.”

“No, you’re not,” she agreed. “You’re like a box of Froot Loops.”

He narrowed his eyes at that.

“Sweet and colorful and fun. And yet, somehow still an excellent source of nutrition.”

Now he pulled her close again. “I can live with that,” he said before dropping a kiss at her temple. He nuzzled her hair, her ear, her jaw, her throat. “And I can live with this too.”

Oh, so can I, Amanda thought as she nuzzled him back. So can I.

She wasn’t sure, but as she twined her arms around him and kissed him deeply, she thought she could hear the Sirens cheering.

Epilogue

As the morning sunlight crept into the bedroom, Max lay on his side next to Amanda and watched her as she slept. He’d had no idea sex could be so good between two people. He’d had no idea he could care about one person so much. But if he had his way, he and Amanda would move in together as soon as they got back to Indianapolis. Her place, his place, a new place, he didn’t care. As long as he could be with her, that was the only thing that mattered. He didn’t expect her to give up her career, but he hoped she would at least pare down her hours. And demand a raise too. That jerk Hoberman didn’t realize how good he had it with her. If the guy didn’t start giving her some of the perks she deserved . . .

Well, maybe once Max started showing her how important she was to him, she’d realize how important she was to other people, too; that was all.

He lifted his hand to wrap an unruly curl around his finger, marveling at how silky was her hair and how soft was her skin. He hadn’t meant to disturb her sleep, but she stirred at even that small touch, smiling when she opened her eyes to find him gazing down at her.

“Good morning,” she murmured, lifting her hand to cradle his jaw in her fingertips.

“It is a very good morning,” he agreed. “Bloody Marys on the beach in thirty minutes,” he told her. “Which gives us just enough time to—”

“E-mail Mr. Hoberman,” she said.

His smile fell at that. She still planned to make this a working vacation? Hell, a no-vacation? After everything they’d discovered last night?

“Tell me you’re just kidding,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. I need to do it right away.”

“Aman da—”

But she was already pushing herself up from the mattress and reaching for the robe tossed on a nearby chair. “It’s really important, Max,” she said as she belted it.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” he muttered uncharitably.

She walked around the mattress and bent over him, thrusting out her lower lip in an over-exaggerated pout. “Oh, come on. It’ll only take a minute,” she said in a sulky Shirley Temple voice.

He rolled his eyes. He should have realized it would take more than one night of sexual gymnastics to change Amanda’s workaholic ways.

He said nothing as she strode to the desk and opened her laptop, raking her thumb across the mouse pad to bring it to life. He heard her type what probably amounted to a paragraph, then she turned around in the chair to look at him.

“How do I do that Rickroll thing?” she asked offhandedly.

Max’s eyebrows shot up at that. “You’re going to Rickroll your boss?”

She nodded.

“Really?”

She nodded again.

Max couldn’t get out of the bed fast enough. Stark naked, he strode over to stand behind her, reaching over her shoulders to copy and paste the necessary information from her coworker’s e-mail and disguise it as the link to what her e-mail had identified as a potentially explosive new investment opportunity that Hoberman should immediately forward to all his colleagues.

“He won’t even click on it,” Amanda said. “He’ll assume it’s legit and forward it to all his fat-cat pals.”

“So not only are you Rickrolling your boss, but he’ll be Rickrolling all his friends without realizing.”

“Yup,” she said. “He deserves it, that pinhead,” she added. “Serves him right for making me work on my vacation.” Then she powered down her computer, unplugged it, wrapped the cord securely around it, and shoved it into her bag. Her cell phone, still turned off from last night, quickly followed it.

Then she stood, turned to Max, and wrapped her arms around his naked waist. “Now, then, didn’t somebody promise me Bloody Marys on the beach . . . ?”