Finally he glanced up and tossed the bandage on the seat next to her. “The next time you hyperventilate, I’m just going to let you pass out.”

Yep, she’d insulted him and hurt his feelings. Or rather, what passed for his feelings, because she wasn’t certain he had normal human emotions. She lowered her hand and looked down at the wool blanket pooled in her lap. She didn’t want to think of Max as having normal human emotions. She didn’t want to think of him as a person. He was responsible for the current situation, and he was responsible for putting her and Baby into danger. If it wasn’t for Max, Baby wouldn’t be on the Dora Mae, and he wouldn’t have fallen overboard.

The dog wiggled out of Lola’s grasp and fought his way through the folds of the blanket. He jumped to the deck, shook once, then moved to stand by Max’s left foot. For once, he didn’t bark.

As she’d lain beneath Max on the swimming platform, trying to catch her breath, Lola had been so sure he’d been about to kiss her. She’d felt the heat of his lips and seen the desire in his eyes, and she was old enough, and been around too many men, not to know the signs.

Okay, maybe she’d been wrong this time. He’d obviously been trying to help her breathe, and she felt a little silly and embarrassed for misunderstanding him. She raised her gaze up Max’s long legs to his fingers tugging at his button fly. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his pants and shoved them down his hips and thighs. “I’m sorry I misunderstood what you were trying to do. I don’t know what was-”

“Forget about it,” he interrupted, his wet boxer briefs clinging to him like a second skin. Lola turned her gaze away, but not before getting an eyeful. A big eyeful that almost had her doing a double-take. “Tell me something. What were you doing vacationing all by yourself on Dolphin Cay?” he asked, and she got the feeling he wanted the subject changed as badly as she did.

“Why?”

He hung his wet pants over the side of the boat. “Just curious.”

“I wanted to get away for a few days,” she said, which was basically the truth.

“To Dolphin Cay?”

She quickly looked up into his eyes and kept her gaze there, afraid to look below his shoulders. Afraid he’d whip off those boxers. “Right.”

“I’d have thought a girl like you would rather spend time at Club Med, or…” He paused and ran his hands over his head from front to back, pushing water from his black hair. Clear droplets slid down the sides of his neck. “What is that other swank place there on Nassau?”

“The Ocean Club,” she provided. She’d spent a few weeks there a few summers ago.

“Yeah, that’s it. So what were you doing on a tiny island with just your dog for company?”

“I didn’t want to be around people.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want people pointing and staring at me.”

“Aren’t you used to that by now? A famous model like you, I bet you get stared at a lot.”

This was different. “It’s been different since those photographs appeared on the net.”

“What photographs?”

Was it possible that there was someone on the planet who hadn’t seen those embarrassing photos of her on the Internet? Hadn’t heard about them? Beyond the tabloids, the court case had made national news.

“What photographs?” he asked again.

She didn’t want to talk about it with Max. This morning she didn’t hate him as she had the night before, and he’d probably say something to make her mad, like she’d been an idiot to let Sam take the pictures and she deserved what she got. Which might be true, but she’d been very much in love with Sam, and she’d trusted him. Or Max might say that she was only upset because she hadn’t been paid for the photographs. The last opinion had been floated about by Sam’s attorney and made her see red when she heard it.

Max grabbed the fishing chair and took a seat. He folded his arms across his chest and slouched a little as if he were prepared to wait all day for her answer.

Black stubble shadowed the lower half of his face where it wasn’t bruised. The strips closing the cut on his forehead appeared very white against his tan skin, and he looked like such a disreputable pirate, she decided it didn’t matter what she told him because he’d probably done a lot worse than trust someone with naked photos.

“Because of Sam’s Internet site,” she said.

“Who’s Sam?”

“My ex-fiancé.” She pushed the itchy blanket off her shoulders and it pooled at her hips. “He set up an Internet site with some very embarrassing photographs of me.”

“Naked photos?”

“Yes.”

“Close-ups?”

“Close enough.” The ocean breeze ruffled the front of her dress and brushed across her chest and stomach. She glanced down at the material, open to her navel, and began the work of buttoning it back up.

“What was so embarrassing?”

“Never mind.”

“Were you doing the mattress mambo?”

“The what?”

“Getting it on. Doing the nasty. Having sex.”

She glanced up into his blue eyes looking back into hers, then she returned her attention to the buttons. “No.” Her fingers were cold and getting the buttons through the wet material was difficult.

“Were you flying solo?”

It took her a few seconds to figure out what he was asking. “No,” she answered.

“Giving him-”

“No!” she interrupted before his one-track mind traveled any deeper into the gutter. “I was riding a bike and kissing a Tootsie Roll.”

He was silent, and when he spoke, he sounded very disappointed. “That’s it?”

“Yes.” She glanced up into his face once more, and this time caught him watching the progress of her fingers as she pushed the last button through the last hole. She quickly dropped her hand to her side. Then as if he had all day, he raised his gaze up her throat, past her chin and mouth, to her eyes.

His voice dropped lower when he asked, “Alone or with your fiancé?”

“Alone.” She reached for the ends of the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, shielding herself from his gaze. Again, she was surprised that his gaze didn’t feel as creepy or repulsive as she thought it should have been. In fact, she didn’t feel repulsed at all. More in the neighborhood of unnerved. Unnerved by the intense blue and the glimpse of hunger she saw in his eyes. Unnerved that it tightened her chest a little. Then he blinked, and the desire was gone as if it had never been there at all.

“That doesn’t sound so terrible,” he said as if he’d hadn’t been caught staring at her breasts.

He acted so nonchalant, she wondered why she suddenly felt a little flustered. It wasn’t as if this were the first time a man had seen her bra, for goodness’ sakes. At one time, she’d had the most photographed cleavage in the world. “It was a king-sized Tootsie Roll,” she explained.

He raised a brow as if to say, So what?

“And I wasn’t really kissing it.”

“What were you really doing?”

She told him because, while it was embarrassing, it wasn’t exactly a secret. And if he was dying to know, he could pay twenty-five bucks like the rest of the world and see it on the Internet, anyway. Once they were rescued, that is. “My Linda Lovelace impression.”

The corners of his mouth slid into a purely masculine smile that reached his blue eyes. “You do a Linda Lovelace impression?”

“Don’t tell me. You want the details?”

“God, yes,” he said on a rush of air.

She laughed. “Forget it.”

“What if I ask real nice?”

“No.”

“You’re no fun, Lolita,” he said, using the Spanish form of her name.

Baby jumped up on the seat next to her, and she took his soaked collar from around his neck.

“What’s the name of this website?”

“Why, are you going to pay twenty-five bucks to see those pictures?”

“You’ve got me curious about the Tootsie Roll.” He shrugged. “Would it bother you if I did?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

She couldn’t believe he was asking such an obvious question. “Well, duh. I’m naked.”

“You’ve posed naked before.”

“Not completely.” The closest she’d come was during her days working for a major line of cosmetics. She’d been hired to endorse their skin-care products. In the straight-on shot, she’d worn nothing but scented body oil. She’d posed against a red background, her ankles crossed and her knees raised just enough to hide her pubic area. From behind, a pair of male hands covered her breasts. She’d starved herself for a week before that shoot. When it had wrapped, she’d hit the Wendy’s drive-through window and ordered a number two Biggie-sized.

“I’d say getting photographed in lacy bras and panties is pretty damn close.”

It wasn’t the same thing, and she didn’t know why she should explain it to him, but she tried anyway. “Whenever I agreed to do any shoot, I had control of my image. It was always my choice. Lolarevealed.com was not my choice. It is a violation not only of my body, but of my trust. I never would have chosen to have those pictures published anywhere, especially on a porno site on the Internet. My parents were mortified.” And she never would have chosen to see her image at the height of her sickness. When she’d been out of control, and every single waking and sleeping moment had been consumed with thoughts of food and guilt. Of obsessively clipping recipes she never tried and buying cookbooks she never used. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

He grasped his side, took a deep breath, and stood. “I understand a little about having no control.” He grabbed the fishing pole he’d used yesterday. “No control over what happens in your life or how others see you. And I also know a bit about broken trust and getting screwed.”

“By who?” Perhaps he did understand, but it was hard to see the overpowering man standing at such ease in front of her in his boxer briefs upset by anything. Looking at him, with his big neck and broad shoulders, she couldn’t imagine anyone brave enough to cross him. “Who, Max?” she prompted.