His feet bare, he moved up the stairs to the bridge. He took a few steps and looked down at her through the deep shadows of night. The running lights from the port and starboard sides still worked and shone in Lola’s hair. Her eyes were closed and her lips were slightly parted. Her breasts rose and fell on soft even breaths, the buttons on her dress still gapping and threatening to pop. One empty hand lay open across her abdomen, her other hung over the side of the chaise, the mirror clutched within her fingers.

The red shawl she’d worn earlier for a skirt was tangled about her legs. Max pulled it up over her, then reached for the binoculars on the floor. He looked out at the horizon, searching for buoys or any signs they might be nearing a coastline. He saw nothing but the reflection of the moon on the black surface of the ocean and the slight breaking of waves.

There was a real possibility that after Max was rescued, he would be arrested for theft and kidnapping. At the very least he would be detained, but he wasn’t real worried about that. One phone call and any charges would disappear.

The only thing that had him worried was sitting in the middle of the Atlantic without his vest of lethal goodies, namely his 9mm sidearm, two mags of subsonic ammunition, and his K-Bar assault knife. Without them, he felt naked and at the mercy of any passing vessel. Max trusted no one and nothing, least of all unknown elements.

He glanced at Lola, and at the fish knife that had slipped from her hand to the deck. As a warrior, she sucked. She slept through his intrusion of her space, and she couldn’t keep track of her weapon. He reached for the knife and slid it into the waistband of his jeans.

Moonlight caressed one side of her face and touched the bow of her top lip. No doubt about it, Lola was one beautiful woman. The kind of woman men fantasized about.

I will never be a willing participant in any of your warped fantasies, she’d told him as if she’d read his mind. Warped? His fantasies weren’t warped. Well, not as warped as some guys’ he knew.

He’d never been the kind of man to buy swim-suit calendars or flip through underwear ads, but he would have had to have lived on another planet not to know who she was, not have seen her on calendars, in bra commercials, on billboards and the covers of magazines. He would have to be dead below the waist not to have wondered what it would be like to have sex with her. To get all sweaty and mess up her hair and eat off her lipstick.

Max thought of the first time he remembered seeing her likeness. It had been in Times Square, probably about eight years ago. He’d been waiting for a cab outside the Hiatt when he’d looked up and seen her, staring back at him from a billboard, her blond hair scraped back from her face, her brown eyes heavy, as if she were gazing at her lover, her lush body clad in nothing but a pair of peekaboo lace panties and matching bra.

White. His favorite.

As he’d looked up at her that first time, he’d wondered who she was. And just like every other man looking up at her, picturing her naked, knowing he didn’t stand a chance with a woman like that, he’d told himself she was probably a lousy lay anyway. Too skinny and afraid of smudging her lipstick to be any good. Probably the type of girl who expected the guy to do all the work. Yeah, that’s what he told himself, only he’d never been a man opposed to work. Especially not that kind.

Looking at her now, he decided she didn’t appear too thin. In fact, she was just the sort of woman Max like to wrap his arms around. Full-breasted and enough behind to fill his big hands. When he held a woman, he liked to feel her soft, curvy body pressed against him. He didn’t want to feel bones. He didn’t want to worry she’d break.

He gazed at her softly parted lips, and unbidden, his thoughts turned to kissing Lola Carlyle. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick now, and he wondered what it would be like to sink slowly into a kiss and taste her lips. To feel her hesitation, the uncertain hitch, right before he felt her sigh. The ahhh that let him know she wanted him, too. The moment she turned soft and willing beneath his mouth. Beneath him, Max Zamora. Fidel Zamora’s boy. The dirty-faced kid whose father forgot about him whenever he fell into a bottle of rum. Which was most of the time.

Max hadn’t been born into money, he wasn’t a famous actor or rock star, the kind of guys women like Lola Carlyle usually went for, but that didn’t keep him from wondering what it would be like to touch a woman like her. To feel her soft breasts pressed tight against his chest as he tangled his fingers in her sweet-smelling hair.

Max sucked in a breath of cool salty air and let it out slowly. All that wondering was quickly taking him to a place he was better off not going. Someplace that had his battered body reacting as if there were something he could or would do about it. Someplace that spiked his blood and shot a burning ache straight to his groin. Someplace he would never go with a woman like Lola. Someplace she would never go with a man like him. He wasn’t rich and famous or a pretty-boy model.

She wasn’t the kind of woman who’d put up with a man who disappeared for days and weeks on end, never telling her when he’d be back or where he’d been. Hell, he’d never found any woman who’d put up with that for very long.

Max turned on his heels and walked from the bridge. It was best for them both if he didn’t think about her at all. Taking a seat in the folding chair he’d sat in earlier, he reached for the fishing pole and reeled in the line. He concentrated on the empty line instead of the sleeping underwear model on the bridge.

He figured he’d have more luck catching a fish if he had a better idea of what he was doing. Over the past several years, he’d fished a few times in lakes and streams, but he’d never been a real angler. Hell, he’d done most of his “fishing” in the front yard of the old house he and his father had rented in Galveston.

Thinking back on it, he figured he must have been about seven when the old man had bought him that Zebco reel mounted on a six-foot rod. He still had it hidden away in a closet, one of his few childhood possessions.

Even now, he could recall the weight of that rod and reel in his hands. His father had been on the wagon then, and he’d tied a sinker to the end of the line and had given Max casting lessons, the two of them side by side, standing in that yard as the sun set, aiming the sinkers at clumps of grass and talking about the fish they planned to catch someday. Max could still recall the touch of his father ‘s hands and the sound of his Cuban accent on the soft humid breeze.

Unfortunately, the old man spent most of his time off the wagon and he’d never managed to take Max fishing, but that hadn’t kept Max from waiting and practicing. After a few years, he’d become one hell of a caster. Overhead, sideways, and underhanded, he could hit any target dead on. He’d always figured all that practice had come in handy and was the reason he’d breezed through sniper training.

As he shifted positions in the chair, his ribs ached only slightly less sitting down than they did walking or standing. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and gazed out into the black ocean. The only complete relief he’d found from the pain in his side had been the few hours he’d managed to lay perfectly flat on his back the night before. He could use a few hours of sleep, but he wouldn’t get it tonight. Not when anyone could catch him off guard.

But Max hadn’t slept in over two days, and he drifted to sleep an hour before the sun rose above the eastern horizon.

Chapter 4

Max wasn’t sure how long he’d slept before his eyes snapped open, and he came instantly awake. The morning sun bounced off the waves and the chrome handholds on the yacht. Without turning, he was aware of movement behind him. He didn’t have to look to know that it was Lola. Not just because she was the only other person on the boat, but by now he’d learned the unique sound of her light footsteps. She paused by the galley door before proceeding inside, her little dog following close behind.

Slowly Max rose and moved his head from side to side, working out the kinks. The yacht rocked within a foot-high chop, and the ache in his ribs felt worse than when he’d first been kicked; his muscles were stiff from the cramped position he’d slept in. Max was thirty-six and had spent the last fifteen years pushing the limits of his body. When he’d been younger, he’d been able to sleep on his head without so much as a twinge the next morning. Not now. Now the older he got, the more his body pushed back. He rolled his shoulders and heard Lola and her dog exit the galley. He cast a backward glance as they moved down the gunnel to the bow of the boat. The bottom of her fruity dress brushed the backs of her thighs, and she held her binoculars in one hand and a granola bar in the other.

Since she hadn’t said one word to him, he figured she was still ticked off about the toothbrush. He looked up at the cloudless sky and stretched his arms over his head. She was obviously one of those women who liked to hang on to her anger, and he figured he’d let her. No need to disrupt the peace just to hear her bitch at him. And now that she was up and manning her post at the bow of the yacht, he figured he’d slip into the stateroom and catch a few.

An ear-piercing scream split the still Caribbean morning, and he turned so fast, pain stabbed his ribs like a stiletto. He sucked air into the top of his lungs and moved toward the gunnel just in time to see Lola go over the side, her dress flying up past her butt. She hit the water, and quick as a cork, she popped back up within the waves, sputtering and sobbing almost incoherently.