When she hung up, Jenna didn’t know if she felt better or worse. It was good to know her sons were fine, but Maxie’s words kept rattling around in her brain. Yes, her sister was prejudiced against wealthy men, but she had a point, too. Jenna had been nearly destroyed after she and Nick had split apart a year ago.

This time, though, she had the distinct feeling that the pain of losing him was going to be much, much worse.

Nick had never thought of himself as a coward.

Hell, he’d fought his way to the top of the financial world. He’d carved out an empire with nothing more than his guts and a dream. He’d created a world that was everything he’d ever wanted.

And yet…a couple of hours ago, he’d slipped out of bed and left Jenna sleeping alone in his room because he hadn’t wanted to talk to her.

“Women,” he muttered, leaning on the railing at the bow of the Splendor Deck, letting his gaze slide over the shoreline of Acapulco, “always want to talk the morning after. Always have to analyze and pick apart everything you’d done and said the night before.”

But there was nothing to analyze, he reminded himself. He’d had her, just as he’d planned, and now he was through-also as he’d planned.

Of course his body tightened and his stomach fisted at the thought, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he’d had Jenna under him, over him, around him, and now he could let her go completely. No more haunted dreams. No more thinking about her at stray moments.

It was finished.

Scowling, he watched as surfers rode the waves into shore while tourists on towels baked themselves to a cherry-red color on the beach. Brightly striped umbrellas were unfurled at intervals along the sand, and waiters dressed in white moved among the crowd delivering tropical drinks.

So if it was finished, why the hell was he still thinking about her?

Because, he silently acknowledged, that night with her had been unlike anything he’d experienced since the last time they’d been together. Nick wasn’t a monk. And since he was single, he saw no problem in indulging himself with as many women as he wanted. But no woman had ever gotten to him the way Jenna had.

She made him feel things he had no interest in. Made him want more than he should. That thought both intrigued and bothered him. He wasn’t looking for anything more than casual sex with a willing woman. And nothing about Jenna was casual. He already knew that.

So the best thing he could do was stay the hell away from her.

Better for both of them. He pushed away from the railing in disgust. But damned if he’d hide out on his own blasted ship. He’d find Jenna, tell her that he wasn’t interested in a replay of last night-and now who was lying? Turning, he was in time to see Jenna walking toward him, and everything in him tightened uncomfortably.

In the late-morning sunlight, she looked beautiful. Her blond hair hung loose about her shoulders. Her tank top clung to her breasts-no bra-and his mouth went dry. Her white shorts made her lightly tanned skin look the color of warmed honey. Her dark blue eyes were locked on him, and Nick had to force himself to stand still. To not go to her, pull her up close to him and taste that delectable mouth of hers again.

She hitched her purse a little higher on one bare shoulder and tightened her grip on the strap when she stopped directly in front of him. Whipping her hair back out of her eyes, she looked up at him and said, “I wondered where you disappeared to.”

“I had some things to take care of,” Nick told her and it was partially true. He’d already fired the band that had refused to clean up their act, hired another one and was expected at a meeting with the harbormaster in a half hour.

But he’d still been avoiding her.

“Look, Nick-”

“Jenna-” he said at the same time, wanting to cut off any attempt by her to romanticize the night before. Bad enough he’d done too much thinking about it already.

“Me first, okay?” she spoke up quickly, before he had a chance to continue. She gave him a half smile, and Nick braced himself for the whole what-do-I-mean-to-you, question-and-answer session. This was why he normally went only for the women who, like him, were looking for nothing more complex than one night of fun. Women like Jenna just weren’t on his radar, usually. For good reason.

“I just want to say,” she started, then paused for a quick look around to make sure they were alone. They were, since this end of the Splendor Deck was attached to his suite and not accessible to passengers. “Last night was a mistake.”

“What?” Not what he’d been expecting.

“We shouldn’t have,” she said, shaking her head. “Sex with you was not why I came here. It wasn’t part of my plan, and right now, I’m really regretting that it happened at all.”

Instantly outrage pumped through him. She regretted being with him? How the hell was that possible? He’d been there. He’d heard her whimpers, moans and screams. He’d felt her surrender. He’d trembled with the force of her climaxes and knew damn well she’d had as good a time as he had. So how the hell could she be regretting it?

More, how could he dump her as per the plan if she was dumping him first?

“Is that right?” he managed to say through gritted teeth.

“Oh, come on, Nick,” she said, frowning a bit. “You know as well as I do that it shouldn’t have happened. You’re only interested in relationships that last the length of a cruise, and I’m a single mom. I’m in no position to be anybody’s babe of the month.”

“Babe of the month?” He was insulted, and the fact that he’d been about to tell her almost exactly what she was saying to him wasn’t lost on him.

She blew out a breath and tightened the already death grip she had on the strap of her purse. “I’m just saying that it won’t happen again. I mean, what happened last night. With us. You and me. Not again.”

“Yeah, I get it.” And now that she’d said that, he wanted her more than ever. Wasn’t that a bitch of a thing to admit? Not that he’d give her the satisfaction of knowing what he was thinking. “Probably best that way.”

“It is,” she said, but her voice sounded a little wistful. Or was he hearing what he wanted to hear?

Strange, a few minutes ago, he’d been thinking of ways to let her go. To tell her they were done. Now that she’d beaten him to the punch, he felt different. What the hell was happening to him, anyway?

Whatever it was, Nick told himself firmly, it was time to nip it in the bud. No way was he going to be tripping on his own heartstrings. Not over a woman he already knew to be an accomplished liar.

Besides, she hadn’t come on this trip for him, he told himself sternly, but for what he could give her. She’d booked passage on his ship with the sole purpose of getting money out of him. Sure, it was for child support. But she still wanted money. So what made her different from any other woman he’d known?

“I’m attracted to you,” she was saying, and it looked like admitting that was costing her, “but then I guess you already figured that out.”

Was she blushing? Did women still do that?

“But I’m not going to let my hormones be in the driver’s seat,” she told him and met his gaze with a steely determination. “Pretty soon, you’ll be back sailing the world with a brunette or a redhead on your arm and I’ll be back in Seal Beach taking care of my sons.”

The babies.

Hers? His?

He wasn’t going there until he knew for sure. Instead, he decided to turn the tables on her. Remind her just whose ship she was on. Remind her that he hadn’t come to her, it had been the other way around.

“Don’t get yourself tied up in knots over this, Jenna,” he said, reaching out to chuck her under the chin with his fingertips. “It was one night. A blip on the radar screen.”

She blinked at him.

“We had a good time,” he said lightly, letting none of the tension he felt coiled inside show. “Now it’s over. End of story.”

He watched as his words slapped at her, and just for a minute he wished he could take them back. Yet as that feeling rushed over him, he wondered where it had come from.

“Okay, then,” Jenna said, her voice nearly lost in the rush and swell of the sea below them, tumbling against the ship’s hull. “So now we know where we stand.”

“We do.”

“Well, then,” she said, forcing a smile that looked brittle, “maybe I should just fly home early. I can catch a flight out of Acapulco easily enough. I talked to my sister earlier and she’s going a little nuts-”

He cut her off instantly. “Are the babies all right?”

She stopped, looked at him quizzically and said slowly, “Yes, of course. The boys are fine, but Maxie’s not used to dealing with them twenty-four hours a day and they can be exhausting, so-”

“I’d rather you didn’t leave yet,” he blurted.

“Why not?”

Because he wasn’t ready for her to be gone. But since admitting that even to himself was too lowering, he said, “I want you here until we get the results from the DNA test.”

Her gaze dropped briefly, then lifted to meet his again. “You said we’d probably hear sometime today, anyway.”

“Then there’s no problem with you waiting.”

“What’s this really about, Nick?” she asked.

“Just what I said,” he told her, taking her arm in a firm grip and turning her around. Heat bled up from the spot where his hand rested on her arm. He fought the urge to pull her into him, to dip his head and kiss the pulse beat at the base of her throat. To pull the hem of her shirt up so he could fill his hands with her breasts.

Damn, he was hard and hot and really irritated by that simple fact.

Leading her along the wide walkway, he started for his suite. “We’ve got unfinished business together, Jenna. And until it’s done and over, you’re staying.”