The click-click-click of toenails on fiberglass drew his attention to the starboard gunnel. That pain-in-the-butt dog moved toward him, probably wanting a rematch of their staring contest. The sun caught on the silver spikes on his collar as he came to sit by the engine room hatch. They were on eye level with each other, and Max wondered if he could get the little rat to chase an imaginary stick off the side of the yacht. Splash. Good-bye.

Baby Doll Carlyle again assumed a position like he was freeze-dried, definitely spoiling for another pissing match. The dog had won the previous stare-down, and Max told himself it was only out of sheer boredom that he locked eyes with the poor excuse now.

A good ten minutes later, Max saw one of the dog’s brows twitch, and he figured he was wearing him down. “I crap bigger than you-boy,” he growled in his best impression of a SEAL instructor.

“Charming.”

Max glanced up at Lola standing above him, up past her feet and calves and the red wrap she’d pinned around her waist. Up the buttons of her white blouse, past her breasts to the hollow of her throat. The blue Caribbean sky framed her face and matched the blue-tinted lenses of her sunglasses. All traces of the makeup she’d worn the night before were gone. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat and sun, strands of her hair were stuck to the side of her neck, the rest pulled back in a limp ponytail. She was absolutely gorgeous, and the dip at the corners of her mouth told him she thought he was an idiot. Which was better than the way she’d looked at him that morning, like he was a rapist.

“I told you, I’m a charming guy.”

“So was Ted Bundy.”

He hadn’t been far off in his assumption of her opinion of him. Not that he cared-not even a little. But the way she jumped when he did nothing more than look at her, the fact that she stepped back or sank deeper into her seat and her eyes got big as if she were waiting for him to attack her, did bug the hell out of him.

“The generators and engines are working,” he said, and climbed up out of the engine room. He ignored the pain in his side as he shut the hatch. “We have to conserve fuel, so I’m only going to turn them on at night for a couple of hours, or during the day only if you have to use the head.”

She didn’t say a word and he turned toward her. Her gaze was directed at the bandage around his ribs and the deep red and blue bruises the wrap didn’t cover.

“Someone beat you up pretty good,” she said. “What were you caught doing, raping and pillaging?”

“Nothing that much fun, I’m afraid. I just overstayed my welcome.” When she raised her gaze back to his, he added, “A case of bad timing and lousy luck.”

“I know what you mean,” she uttered, and he figured she did. “Where were you that you had such bad timing?”

He looked past the lenses of her blue sunglasses, into the sexy-as-hell tilt of her famous eyes. The rich brown color reminded him of a bottle of Macallan scotch, smooth, slightly smoky, and very expensive. A taste to be savored all the way down, and old enough to warm him up inside.

Old enough to know what she was involved in, too, and looking at her, he changed his mind about keeping her in the dark. He decided to fill her in, not all of it, but enough. “Have you ever heard of Andre Cosella?”

“No.”

“He’s the head of the Cosella drug cartel and has been smuggling cocaine into the United States through the Bahamas.”

“Are you a member of a drug cartel?”

He studied her face, and damn if she wasn’t serious. “Hell, no.”

“Are these drug people looking for you?”

“It’s likely.”

She folded her arms beneath her breasts and cocked her head to one side. “Why?”

Max decided to give her the short version. “Because I was caught on their compound without a party invitation.”

“And?”

“And they didn’t appreciate my company.”

“I’m sure you’re used to that.” She licked her lips and drew Max’s attention to her full mouth. “But there has to be more.”

Sunlight caught on the moisture of her bottom lip and glistened for a few brief seconds. Max wondered what she’d taste like, right there on that tender spot. If she’d taste as soft and as sexy as she looked. He forced his gaze up and his mind off kissing Lola Carlyle. “Andre Cosella’s oldest son was killed.”

She unfolded her arms, and he expected her to ask him if he’d been the one to kill Jose. “Is there fresh water?” she asked instead. She was obviously smart enough to understand the situation without being told.

Either that or she was too dumb to catch on.

“I filled a pitcher earlier and put it in the refrigerator,” he told her. “It should still be cool.”

She turned to leave, then stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder, her big brown eyes staring at him through those blue lenses. “I suppose there isn’t enough water for showers.”

“Nope. You’ll have to bathe in the ocean.” He heard her long-suffering sigh and watched the sway of her hips as she moved into the galley, that red shawl brushing the backs of her knees.

Just like in all the magazines and billboards and television commercials he’d ever seen her in, everything from the top of her blond head to the polish on her toenails, teased and hinted of hot sweaty sex. As her dumb dog trailed after her, Max wondered if she’d be brave enough to strip off her clothes and jump in the ocean in front of him. It seemed the least she could do after starting the yacht on fire and stranding him in the Atlantic.

He sat on the bench seat where he’d seen Lola sleeping that morning and slowly leaned forward. He took as deep a breath as possible, then held it as he untied one boot and then the other. The night before, he’d wondered if there’d been some underhanded government plan to get rid of him. Now that he’d had time to think it over, he didn’t believe that to be the case. With every job, there were always a dozen or so things that could go wrong at any given time. It was Murphy’s Law, and last night, Murphy’s Law had ruled from the very beginning.

Max had first recognized it when his flight to Nassau had been delayed an hour and he’d missed his contact within the local DEA. No problem, he still had fresh intel, less than twenty-four hours old, locked away in his brain.

From the moment he’d set foot on Nassau the assignment had gone straight to hell, and he should have aborted right then, but he couldn’t.

He was Max Zamora, and the one thing that made him so good at what he did was the one thing that had almost cost him his life this time. He hated failure. He’d only failed once in his life, and he took it personally.

That hatred was also the one thing that made him the perfect government operative. That and the fact that he had no family, and when he wasn’t covert he lived a fairly normal life.

Lieutenant Commander Maximilian Javier Gunner Zamora was officially listed as retired from the United States Navy. He’d been a member of SEAL Team Six, and after the team had been disbanded in the mid-1990s, he’d been recruited by the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group.

Currently, he was self-employed as a security consultant. Max’s firm, Z Security, was very much a legitimate company and was more than something he did when he wasn’t covert. He’d built it from the ground up and employed retired SEALs to work for him. He and his men instructed major corporations on how to tighten their security against guys like them. Guys who found ways to walk into secure installations.

He unpinned the elastic bandage around his abdomen and took it off. He pressed his fingers against his sixth and seventh ribs and sucked in his breath. Pain was good, he reminded himself. Pain let him know he was alive. Today he was very much alive, but he’d certainly lived through worse. Freezing his balls off and getting shot at in the North Sea while clinging to an ice-covered oil rig came to mind. Now, that was Max’s version of hell, and he was certain when he did eventually die, that was where he’d play out eternity. In comparison, sitting aboard a disabled forty-seven-foot yacht with a few cracked ribs, a pain-in-the-ass underwear model and her pain-in-the-ass dog wasn’t so bad. In fact, a little Caribbean vacation might be just what he needed.

Chapter 3

Wearing nothing but her patented Cleavage Clicker bra, Lola stuck her head out of the bathroom and looked around. Her gaze moved from the locked stateroom door to the blue dress lying on the king-sized bed. She’d forgotten to bring the dress into the bathroom with her, and she glanced up at the tinted porthole. When she didn’t see a set of black and blue eyes peering back at her, she rushed to the side of the bed and quickly threaded her arms through the short sleeves. The nightmare of a dress was covered with bunches of red cherries, yellow bananas, and green grapes. It looked like it had been hit by a fruit stand, or with ambrosia salad, the stuff her grandmother always took to the families of those whose loved ones had “passed over.”

She pulled the front closed and buttoned the material over her breasts and her pink bra. The Cleavage Clicker had been one of her first designs, and at that time a revolution in comfort and support. First-year sales had beaten projection by twenty-six percent, and it was still her biggest moneymaker. Embroidered lace over soft stretch satin, with delicately scalloped edges, it was not only comfortable, it gave the wearer three different cleavage-enhancing options. Of course, shortly after it had appeared in her first catalog, the bra had been copied by just about everyone.

At the moment, though, enhancing her cleavage was the absolute last thing she wanted, but with the dress so tight across her breasts, it couldn’t be avoided. When she was through with the buttons, she reached into her purse and pulled out her brush. She carefully removed the tangles from her hair, then raised her arms and wove it into a single braid. It was coated with salty sea air and felt like straw. She would have killed for a bath. A real dunking with soap and water, but she didn’t dare. Not with “good old Max” aboard.