"A contract?" he said in a dangerously low tone. "You've got a contract to stay here? I don't have to ask whose idea this was."

Lily felt her good intentions slipping away. She didn't like his tone of voice, much less what he insinuated. It was particularly insulting in light of the fact that she'd come up with this idea as a way of teaching Glynnis a little financial accountability—something Mr. Commando here might have taken the time to do himself. But she held on to her temper with both hands. "I'm not sure I understand your objections," she said with hard-won equanimity. "As you can see, I'm paying a fair, market-value rent, not staying here for free."

He simply looked at her, and she said in exasperation, "You just read the contract—you must have seen for yourself that it doesn't favor my interests over those of your sister. And it's not as if I drew the thing up; Glynnis and I went to a perfectly reputable lawyer."

"And he was—what? Let me guess." His gaze took a leisurely up-and-down tour of her body, lingering over specific curves. "A very good 'friend' of yours?"

"I don't believe you! How can someone as sweet as Glynnis have such a pig of a brother?" And how could I have harbored even a momentary fantasy about this guy ? Lily concentrated the full force of her contempt on him, but he merely returned an expressionless stare. Expecting steam to come whistling out of her ears at any moment like some enraged cartoon character, she snatched the contract from his hand. "I've had it. I'm going to my room. You just stay the heck away from me."

She heard him sweep his bag up off the tiles as she stalked stiff-legged from the kitchen. And although he moved as quietly as a cat, she sensed him padding along in her wake and had to bite back the urge to scream. Fists clenched at her sides, she picked up her pace, eager to reach the haven of her own space.

She wasn't quite quick enough, however, to avoid hearing him snarl, "Oh, that just fucking figures. You've even got my room."

Mortification sent scalding heat up Lily's throat. She'd offered to take the smaller bedroom down the hall when she'd first moved in, but Glynnis wouldn't hear of it. She'd insisted that if Lily paid rent she ought to at least get her money's worth by having an ocean view. The younger woman hadn't once mentioned that the room she'd assigned Lily was her brother's.

Not wanting to see his expression, Lily refused to look around as she pushed open the door. "I'll have my stuff moved down the hall in five minutes."

"Forget it," he said sarcastically. "I wouldn't want to put you out. I'll crash in the guest room."

A disbelieving sound escaped her. "And let you add that to my list of supposed crimes? I don't think so." She stalked across the room to grab her big suitcase off the shelf in the closet, then pulled the clothes that hung from the rod below it off their hangers. Tossing them into the case, she then gathered a dozen pairs of shoes off the closet floor, and swept the highboy clear of her framed photographs and perfume bottles. Next she emptied the dresser drawers and added their contents to the mix. She stuffed her jewelry box into one corner, looked around to be sure she hadn't forgotten anything, then went into the attached bathroom to collect her makeup and toiletries.

When she came out it was to see Zach standing over her case staring down at its contents. Scorching heat settled in her cheeks. What was it, Murphy's Law or something, that the lacy, silky contents of her undies drawer had to be right on top? Shouldering him aside, she added her armload from the bathroom. Then she snatched the case up in both hands. She'd crammed enough stuff in it for three suitcases—much too much to ever close it.

"I think that's everything," she said with hard-won civility, and carefully holding the case level to prevent any liquids from leaking from the bottles within, carried it toward the door. "The room is officially all yours." So grown up , a little voice in her head commended her. And polite. Yes, indeed — you're nothing if not polite .

But she refrained from mentally issuing herself any self-congratulatory pats on the back for such mature handling of the situation. Because the sad truth was, had both of her hands not been fully occupied, she would have been hard pressed to keep from slamming the bedroom door so violently behind her it'd rattle the big goon's pearly white teeth.

Zach strung obscenities in creative combinations as he prowled the hacienda-style house, locking up as he went. Irritation rode him hard, and he decided that this was just one more crime he could lay at Lily Morrisette's dainty little feet—the fact that she had simply waltzed off without bothering to secure the house.

Then the absurdity of the notion brought him up short. Yeah, right . That was kind of like worrying that the fox hadn't locked up the hen house, wasn't it? Trouble from without was the least of his problems when it was already entrenched with a capital T right here inside the compound with him.

But he stood foursquare by the fox analogy, since that was exactly what she reminded him of. Wily, slick, and shrewd. Dangerously intelligent. All pink and gold and built like a —

He gave his head a furious shake and headed for his room. He wasn't going to accomplish anything tonight when he was so damn tired he could barely see straight. Might as well catch some zs and figure out in the morning how to get little Ms. Morrisette out of here.

That left him Glynnis to fret about. Where was she? And just when the hell did he get to quit worrying about her, anyway? It wasn't as if she were a kid. Or that he wasn't a liberated kind of guy—hey, he firmly believed that women were every bit as capable of looking out for themselves as men were. More so, many of them.

Only… Glynnie was different. There had always been something sort of sweet and innocent and a little bit clueless about his baby sister that made it just plain impossible not to worry. She'd been nineteen years old to his thirty when she'd come to live with him atCampLejeuneinNorth Carolina, where he'd been stationed at the time. She'd never known their parents. Grandfather had just died, and she'd been in need of someone to bolster her emotional fragility. Since he was all the family she had left, that job had fallen to him, and he'd been happy to oblige—when he was available. But he'd been in and out of the country on a pretty regular basis, so he'd had to leave her on her own quite a bit. She'd hardly been a child, though. Hell, she'd been a year older than he had been when he'd left that cold mausoleum of a mansion inPhiladelphiato join the Marines, so he refused to feel guilty about his inability to be there on a constant basis. He did sometimes wonder, though, if she might not have become a little more savvy during the past six years had he been around more to ride herd on her.

Especially when it came to money. Glynnis was dead hopeless in the finance department. He couldn't remember a single month since she'd moved in with him that she'd managed to live on the allowance from her trust fund. Maybe that was his fault for always bailing her out. He probably shouldn't have let her get away with "borrowing" from him, particularly when nine times out often she'd just turned right around and shelled out his money to one of her lost causes. She was too damn trusting for her own good.

Which brought Zach's thoughts swinging right back to the very curvy little Lily. Ruthlessly cutting them short, he ripped his clothes off and padded naked into the bathroom, ditty bag in hand. Don't even go there . He washed up and brushed his teeth, then headed back to the bedroom with the full intention of getting some much-needed rest.

But exhausted as he was, sleep was slow in coming. He had a month's leave, and his plan had been to use the time to catch up with his sister and figure out how to hang on to the only billet he'd ever cared to have for the final two years he had left in the service. Now Glynnis wasn't home, he was struggling with the fact that he needed to worry about his career at all, and to top it all off he was half hard from the scent on his pillow left by some Marilyn Monroe lookalike out to bilk his sister of her fortune. This wasn't the way he'd envisioned his homecoming.

He flipped over onto his back, cradled his head in his clasped hands, and stared up at the ceiling. Big deal, so he was suffering a random surge of lust—that would get the zero attention it deserved. And since he wasn't willing to go pound on Lily's door to demand his sister's whereabouts, there wasn't much he could do about Glynnis tonight. But the remainder of his military career was a subject he could devote some attention to.

Nothing was the same as it used to be. He was the only one left from his original unit, for starters. His closest friends, Coop Blackstock, whom he'd met his first day of boot camp, and John "the Rocket" Miglionni, whom he'd met not long after that, had both been out of the service for several years now. Since their discharge, Coop had gone on to become a best-selling author of military-techno thrillers and Rocket was a private detective with his own agency. And all the other grunts in their unit had either retired, transferred, or died.

Zach had somehow ended up as the old man in a new recon unit full of eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds. Jesus . He scrubbed his hands over his face. How the hell had that happened ? In any other business a thirty-six-year-old in his physical condition would be considered in his prime. But reconnaissance was a young man's game and the brass was beginning to hint he should think about giving up field work to teach the younger men its finer points. To teach, for crissake!