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Something didn’t add up. J.T. wasn’t deterred. His company’s logo was a bloodhound—specifically, Tracker, the beloved dog he’d had as a boy. J.T. would figure it out. He was determined to rework the numbers until they did add up.
Marnie spied the lights at the house just up the beach, the place where she assumed J.T. now sat enjoying his evening. Was he renting it, too? If so, he’d gotten the better deal. It didn’t appear to be much larger than the one she was paying for, and it hardly looked more habitable, but it had electricity at this point, whereas she had nothing but a fire in the primitive hearth to roast hot dogs over.
God, she hated hot dogs. But she’d brought them with her in the small cooler she’d packed because they were easy. The perfect multipurpose food. No one knew better than the mother of a finicky four-year-old how quickly boiling water, a bon fire or a gas grill could turn pressed meat into a meal. And Noah loved them.
Truth be told, she wasn’t much of a cook. Never had been. In fact, Hal had prepared most of the meals during their marriage, for which she was eternally grateful. Still, surviving on her own cooking did have one nice side benefit. At least she never had to watch her weight.
She pulled the blackened dog from the fire and sighed. Nope. No calories to worry about here.
Marnie tossed her dinner into the fire, stood up and stretched. She really wasn’t that hungry anyway. Without bothering to locate the flashlight, she stumbled to the home’s only bedroom and felt her way along in the dark until her knee rapped smartly against the bed’s wooden footboard.
With a sigh of exhaustion, she flopped onto the lumpy, unmade mattress still wearing her clothes, too tired to bother to hunt up her toothbrush or take out her gritty-feeling contact lenses.
Sleep. When she didn’t have any of the disruptions or responsibilities of motherhood to intrude, Marnie Striker LaRue was remarkably good at it.
CHAPTER TWO
BRIGHT beams of light stretched through the unadorned window the following morning, rousing Marnie from sleep. She ignored them, or tried to, rolling over and reaching for the covers only to discover the small bed had none.
“So much for sleeping in,” she muttered.
Her eyelids fluttered opened, dried up contacts making her blink rapidly to clear the film over her vision, and then she glanced around the small, sparsely furnished room, perplexed. She had just two thoughts.
Where was she?
And, was there any coffee?
She stumbled to the window and smiled as her memory returned. Just yards away, the ocean rose up in gentle swells before spilling itself on the beach.
La Playa de la Pisada.
She supposed she should find a pay phone. Her cell didn’t work here. She needed to call her folks, check on her son. She knew he was in good care. Actually, she thought with a smile, it was her parents she worried about. Noah could be quite a handful when he wanted to get his own way, which tended to be all of the time.
Her stomach growled loudly, reminding her of the need for food and the fact that she had not eaten dinner the night before. But more than anything, she wanted a hot shower and that first glorious jolt of caffeine.
It was just her rotten luck, Marnie decided, that the electricity was still off and the water coming out of the faucet in the bathroom was a rusty brown color and cold to boot.
Well, no sense complaining about it, especially since she was alone and doing so wouldn’t accomplish anything. She settled for a glass of lukewarm juice and a slice of buttered bread. Then she pulled on the swimsuit she’d brought to Arizona for her parents’ pool and slathered on sunscreen.
As she passed the car parked just outside, she flipped on its stereo, sliding in a CD of Aretha Franklin’s greatest hits before heading down to the beach. A quick dip would clear the cobwebs, especially since the water was bound to be cool. But she’d grown up on Lake Superior, which was hypothermia-inducing even in August. She was no stranger to cold water, but that really wasn’t the main attraction anyway. Give her a beach, a towel and a block of free time, and she could sunbathe with the best of them. She figured she’d earned a couple hours of lazing around before she went into town. It had been ages since she’d last stretched out on sand with nothing more pressing to do than flip over every so often to keep her tan even.
Besides, hadn’t her own mother said she needed a vacation? Marnie planned to make the most of her break from responsibility.
The morning air was cool on her exposed skin, but the sun’s warmth was already promising. She was just spreading her towel out when J.T. startled her by saying, “If you’re planning to go in, I hope you’re a good swimmer. There can be a nasty undertow around here, and I’m not going to jump in and save you.”
As if she would accept his help anyway, she thought sourly, but when she turned to tell him so, the words died on her lips. Forget the sexy, wind-tossed blond hair, stubble of sandy beard and well-muscled arms. What really had her mouth watering was what he held in his hand.
“Is that coffee?”
He drank deeply before replying, apparently having noted the reverence in her tone.
“Yes it is.”
“Black? No sugar or flavored creamer or anything?”
“Why mess with a good thing?” he replied, and she agreed completely.
“You wouldn’t happen to have more of it?”
“An entire pot. Just made it before I came out for my morning walk.” He sipped it again and she swore her mouth began to water. “Ground the beans myself. Starbucks, French roast.”
She couldn’t help it. A soft moan escaped her lips. He raised his eyebrows when he heard it, but he made no comment.
“I don’t suppose you’re feeling…neighborly?”
He smiled, and Marnie told herself it was only the promise of caffeine that had her pulse shooting off like a bottle rocket. Certainly, it wasn’t the more than six feet of gorgeous man standing five yards in front of her, wearing tan cargo shorts and a wrinkled white T-shirt that appeared to be on inside out, as if it had been pulled on hastily.
“Is that a yes?” She tipped her head to one side and offered a slow, sensual smile in return. Two could play his game, she decided.
His gaze lingered on her lips before dipping lower, lower. She almost felt caressed by his thorough, frank appraisal. And she figured she had him.
Marnie didn’t believe in false modesty, so she would be the first to say she looked damned good in this swimsuit, great even. It hid the small tummy she’d gained since Noah, the little pouch that no amount of sit-ups seemed to eradicate. She’d come to grips with that and had decided to work around it. Accentuate the positive, as the saying went. And so she did. The neckline scooped low to show off her full breasts, and the bottom was cut high at the hip to reveal every inch of her long and slender—if a bit pale at this point—legs.
She’d planned to carry this suit and dozens of other flattering ones in her mail-order business in what she now thought of as her other life. And even though she’d purchased it three years ago, this was the first time she’d actually worn it outside the confines of a fitting room or in her bedroom, where she’d taken pleasure in modeling it for her husband just a month before the accident.
J.T.’s voice snapped her back to the present.
“Sorry, I’m not in a generous mood today.”
He didn’t bother to hide his smile after he took another satisfying gulp.
She scowled at him. All that flirting wasted.
“Just today? I got the feeling that was a permanent state for you,” she snapped.
“Why are you here?”
“Again with the questions,” she groused, sliding her feet out of her sandals and dumping her sunglasses onto the towel.
“I haven’t liked any of the answers so far,” he shot back.
“Your problem.”
The breeze tugged at her hair when she turned away from him and started toward the water.
“I meant it about the undertow,” he called after her.
She was hip deep in the chilly water before she replied, “Yes, but did you mean the part about not coming in to save me?”
J.T. watched her dive under the next wave. Her dark head emerged a few feet away and then went under again. He scanned the surf between large rock formations, anxious for a glimpse of her, but spotted nothing.
“Damn!” he muttered, setting his coffee down on one of the rocks and tugging the shirt he wore over his head.
He was in the water, swimming frantically toward the spot where he’d last spied her, when he heard laughter. Treading water, he turned and saw her standing on the beach.
Holding his coffee cup.
She raised it in mock salute before bringing it to her smiling lips. Afterward, she called, “You make a mean cup of joe, J.T.”
She was still laughing as he swam to shore. By the time he reached her towel, where she sat reclining on her elbows, wet skin glistening in the morning sun, his coffee cup had been drained and J.T. had worked his way past irritated to the upper end of irate.
“That stunt was incredibly low, not to mention stupid. If there had been an undertow, I could have drowned trying to save your sorry butt.”
“I beg to differ.”
“About the undertow?”
“No, about my butt. It is anything but sorry,” she said.
He opened his mouth, then snapped it back shut. He wanted to argue with her. Really, he wanted to. But she had a point. In fact, he’d spent several hours the night before lying in his bed thinking about the very butt in question as well as the rest of the package that, when put together, made up one mouthwatering woman.
Still, he wasn’t letting her off the hook, no matter how fine he found that derriere.
“I’d like an apology.”
She tipped down her sunglasses and regarded him over the top of the dark lenses. Even without a hint of makeup, she had the most incredible eyes. They made him think of molasses. They were that dark and rich, and when she blinked she did so slowly, as if it were an effort to close the lids.
“I’ll admit to being ruthless when it comes to my morning coffee, but you will recall that I asked you very nicely to share before resorting to trickery.”
“Trickery? Try thievery.”
She shrugged as if to concede the point. “Call the cops.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” he demanded.
“No. That’s not all.” She glanced at the hem of his soaking wet shorts. “You’re dripping on my towel.”
She had the audacity to slide the sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and lay back on the towel.
J.T.’s control was the stuff of legends. He never lost his cool, not during the most heated of board meetings, not even during his divorce settlement, when Terri’s team of lawyers had hovered like vultures over his self-made fortune and tried to pick off what they could.
But looking down at the smug raven-haired woman, he lost something. He didn’t think. He didn’t consider the consequences—something his attorney would ream him for were Richard Danton present. No, J.T. acted. Bending down, he scooped Marnie up from her towel and headed toward the ocean, intent on dumping her into the churning surf.
That’ll teach her to mess with me, he thought.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she cried.
Oh, he had her plenty surprised. She squirmed in arms, cool wet flesh sliding against cool wet flesh until the friction generated heat.
Lots and lots of heat.
And now she wasn’t the only one surprised. Beneath his anger, he felt it, that low tug of something he didn’t want to feel at all. But there it was, and there was no denying its existence.
Marnie wasn’t a small woman. Tall, long-limbed, nicely curved in all of the areas that counted. She filled up his arms almost as well as she filled out her bathing suit.
And, she had one hell of a right hook he realized too late.
It connected solidly with his jaw, staggered him so that they both wound up sprawled in the sand. A wave came up, cool water drenching the pair of them, but this was hardly like the scene in From Here to Eternity. Neither of the actors in that movie had taken one on the chin before going down.
“What was that for?”
“As if you need to ask,” she spat, disengaging her legs from his and then rolling to her feet.
She glared down at him, an angry Amazon. God, he’d never seen any woman look half as sexy. And that thought made him more determined to ignore his traitorous libido.
He didn’t have time for this distraction in his life right now. He had enough on his plate with the Justice Department breathing down his neck, interviewing disgruntled former employees of Tracker Operating Systems and subpoenaing records and assorted other company paperwork. That’s why he’d come to Mexico—to get away, to think, to plan. And then Marnie LaRue had sashayed into his life, listening to the same Motown music he preferred and muddling up his brain with her mile-long legs and lush sweep of lashes.
He’d be damned if he could get a bead on her. She was after something, had to be. But he still couldn’t figure out what. A job? An interview? A ring?
Still, he’d give her this: she certainly had a different approach than the others.
He rubbed his sore jaw and, though he berated himself for it, admired the view as she stalked away.
They steered clear of each other for the better part of the day, which was easy to do since Marnie spent most of it in town. She called her parents and talked to her son, who, as she’d suspected, had already renegotiated his bedtime and met his candy quota for the month.
The man from whom Marnie had rented the house apologized for the lack of electricity, but confirmed what she had suspected: it might well stay out for the remainder of her visit. So she purchased bottled water, some wine and more ice for the small cooler she’d brought with her from her parents’ house, determined to make the best of her brief holiday.
This time the man’s niece, who worked at a resort in Los Cabos, was in town to do the translating. She spoke English easily, with the side benefit of a lovely accent that lent a lyrical quality to even the most mundane words.
“My uncle wants to know if you’ve met the other American?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve met J.T.”
A few young women sitting at one of the tables in the cafе giggled at the mention of his name.
“Ignore them,” Marisa suggested. “All of the women around here have a little—how do you say?—crush on J.T.”
“He’s something, all right. I met him in here first, as a matter of fact, and we’ve run in to each other a couple of times since then. He still has electricity,” Marnie said. “Why is that?”
“Generator,” Marisa replied.
Her curiosity got the better of her. “Does he live here? Year-round, I mean.”
“Not year-round, no. He’s American, like you. He just comes for visits.”
“But does he own that place?”
“Yes. He has been coming to La Playa de la Pisada for a couple of years. Very mysterious.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Some say he is crazy.”
