Yet there was more to it than even that, she knew. She also wanted to avoid the profound emotions that would only lead to getting hurt again, and Wes could give her that. Someone so temporary would allow her breathing room from the anguish she’d just about recovered from with William.

But there Madame Karma was, telling Erin that Wes was “the one.” God, it was the last thing she wanted to hear.

Cheryl, who had her own long-term boyfriend, was a big supporter of Erin’s new crusade. “See, Madame Karma,” she’d said, leaning over the fortune-teller’s table, “Erin here is in transition.”

Erin had smiled and nodded.

“What can I tell you, then,” the fortune-teller had said. “Your transition man is the one you’re meant to be with.”

At that, Erin had made a sound that smacked somewhere between disbelief and panic. Didn’t Madame Karma know how much she needed Wes to be insignificant?

The psychic had sighed and risen from her chair, her gypsy skirt swishing around her legs as she began moving away from the table. “I guess you’re going to give fate a hard time, too.”

Cheryl and Erin had exchanged puzzled glances.

Madame Karma had gestured toward the sexy coffee shop, Constant Cravings, where Erin and Cheryl got their daily doses of caffeine. A creamy latte called Goes Down Easy was Erin’s current addiction.

“That woman in there…” the fortune-teller had begun.

“Lacey?” Cheryl asked.

The fortune-teller nodded. “She and her boyfriend were the first to scoff.”

Erin and Cheryl mouthed, “Boyfriend?” to each other. Lacey Perkins was as single as they came. Sure, Evan Sawyer, the building manager, seemed to enjoy harassing Lacey about her window displays a little too much, but…

“And,” Madame Karma had added, “then came the next nonbeliever, the accountant.”

Accountant, accountant…

“Oh,” Erin said, gesturing toward the fourth floor. “You must mean Chloe Cooper-”

Madame Karma was on a roll. “Let me tell you something, just so you can avoid the trouble they’ll be having…” Here, the fortune-teller leaned forward. “If you don’t go with what’s supposed to be, each and every one of you will jinx your own fate. You reject what love has in store for you, and you twist karma around until it comes right back at you with negative energy.”

Cheryl, always up for a lively discussion, had raised a finger to offer her own point of view on the matter, but Madame Karma left in a rush of patchouli before Miss Debate Team could say anything.

That hadn’t stopped Erin, though. “But Wes is just a transition man,” she’d repeated to no one in particular, staring at the fountain burbling in the courtyard, yet not really seeing it.

Now, as Erin watched the harbor come into focus outside the car’s window, she knew she really shouldn’t tell Wes any of this. Truthfully, there was no reason to bring it up since their future was limited anyway. Those were the established parameters of this fling; she’d been absolutely honest about it with him. Sure, they laughed a lot and even enjoyed a few heated makeout sessions in which she’d always needed to put on the brakes. Yet it was all good: he was giving her the confidence to build up to a relationship again someday and, in return, she provided him with…well, she guessed companionship. She didn’t think he minded though, because he wasn’t built for the long-term.

As he guided the car into a parking structure, easing it along the curb where porters waited to collect luggage, Erin told herself that all she knew about him were superficial details anyway: at thirty, he was a successful day trader who’d branched out into real estate these past few years. That made him a slightly older man with the kind of experienced joie de vivre she craved. And he’d proven it with surprises like a picnic at the Hollywood Bowl one night-not your average date. He lived well and played hard, and she lapped that up, enthralled by this new way of experiencing life. This wonderfully carefree way.

After Wes cut the engine, they got out of the car and unloaded. He handed their baggage over to a porter. As Erin watched him move-boy, she really liked to do that-she shivered, and it wasn’t just because the weather was sullen.

No, not at all. It was because the porter had piled their bags on top of each other, just as if they belonged together. That luggage would be going to the same room, where Erin and Wes would finally be sleeping in the same bed.

She closed her cashmere sweater around her. What was she doing here again? To her, sex had always been entwined with what she thought was love. Sex was revealing yourself to someone else, lying next to them with your skin bare. Vulnerable. Open and offered to them. But she was working on changing that, too-serious philosophy. It only led to heartbreak, and she didn’t need any more of that.

As Wes parked the car nearby, Erin waited, the wind chuffing at her.

But, minutes later, when she saw him sauntering toward her-all tall, muscled, athletic grace-that ache between her legs swelled, twisted, throbbed.

She wanted him, period. And, really, there was nothing wrong with giving in to what her body needed, just as long as it didn’t include anything like a commitment. She’d save all that serious stuff for “the one” when he actually came along.

Wes grinned, and she held out her hand to take his.

“Ready?” he asked.

No.

Erin wanted to smack herself. Fun. Enjoy. Come on.

“Yup, let’s get on board,” she said instead, brushing against his leather jacket and taking in the musky, rugged scent.

As they left to embark, the wind seemed to carry the fortune-teller’s words of warning: You reject what love has in store for you, and you twist karma around until it comes right back at you with negative energy…

2

DURING WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN endless check-in process, Wes had tried to think of everything but what would happen once they finally did get to their cabin.

First case in point: as his and Erin’s ID cards were issued, he wondered where he’d be able to access the Internet just as soon as they disembarked back in Long Beach Monday morning. There was a certain blue-chip stock he wanted to jump on, and business waited for no man-not even on the tail of a pleasure cruise.

That got his attention off of Erin for about, oh, fifteen seconds.

Try again.

As they waited to board, organized into schoolyard lines under the huge terminal dome, he decided to focus on the frat boys in their see-how-wacky-I-am hats and Hawaiian shirts, ready for a booze cruise.

And that ate up about ten seconds.

The rest of the time, his mind and body were all Erin’s.

Hell, he’d been a goner ever since laying eyes on her at Caleb’s party. Caleb Dougherty, Esq. was Wes’s lawyer and friend, and the party had been the first time the Esquire and his new girlfriend had gotten all their pals together in one place.

Erin had been talking near the food table with a couple of other women, and the minute she’d thrown back her head to laugh at a joke, Wes’s gut had clutched into itself, his veins fizzing from a blast of lust and energy. There was something about the way she smiled, something he couldn’t get a grip on, something that urged him to look away before it was too late. But he couldn’t look away-not for the life of him.

From that point on, he knew he wasn’t ever going to take no as an answer from her. So, as usual, he’d set his sights on what he wanted, then had charmed her-because that’s what guys like him did best-and had made her laugh and glow the rest of the night. Afterward, no other woman had existed for him, because he’d become just short of obsessed with having her.

When she’d finally said yes to a date, she’d made it clear that he’d be just some sort of rebound fling, and he’d accepted that. Yet, afterward, her casual definition of what they were to each other started to eat away at him. But why did it bother him? Hadn’t he earned his reputation? Hadn’t he even reveled in it for years?

Gradually, he realized that, this time, it wasn’t just about sex. There was…What? He didn’t know. Hell, maybe he did, but he wasn’t ready to face the niggling “something” that’d been hovering at the edges of his conscience for a while now. “Something” about the way he’d been wasting his life away night after night, never moving ahead while the world evolved around him.

“Something” that made Wes want to convince Erin that everyone was wrong about him.

After Erin ran up to the spa to make a massage appointment for later that day, they arrived at their stateroom. He used his ID card to unlock it, opening the door for her and closing his eyes as he caught a whiff of her scent.

Sweet, he thought. Like raspberries, but with a little bit of something kicky, like lime. She smelled like a sorbet of mixed flavors.

“Wow,” she said, moving around the bed to peek out the long porthole window. It offered a view of the dock, the gray of the afternoon. “This room’s bigger than I thought it would be.”

“You expected a cell?”

“Sort of. I had these visions of bunkbeds chained to the walls and a blue Porta Potti.”

“That shows zero trust in my taste.”

“And I should definitely know better.”

There it was-that glowing smile. It lit up her skin with a blush, gave her gray eyes sparkle. But that was just the beginning of her appeal, really. She had blond hair chopped into layers that came to just below her chin; brown streaks made the style hip and sultry. Then came the cuteness: a button nose and a heart-shaped face that reminded him she wasn’t like a lot of the women he usually dated. His type was supposed to be sleeker, like a sports car that took curves instead of created them. But maybe that was part of Erin’s draw: her insistence on taking things slowly made him want her that much more with every ticking, shuddering second.