Man Overboard

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All right, so maybe Harrison hadn’t tried all that hard, especially when Aurora seemed to be having such a good time with the doctor. “Don’t worry, she’ll invite me in.”

“You know, we could use a passkey. If we knew where the necklace was ahead of time—”

“Forget it,” Harrison said, cutting him off. “I work strictly by the book. We can’t search without the captain’s say-so, and he won’t give us that without stronger evidence. So Aurora has to invite me in.”

James laughed without humor. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Harrison. I’d be willing to bet I can get into Paige’s bed before you get into Aurora’s.”

Harrison’s hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. He longed to punch that self-satisfied smirk off James’s face. God, how he hated the other man’s attitude. At least Harrison had a halfway defensible reason for romancing Aurora. But James’s only motivation for putting the moves on Paige was so he could chalk up another conquest.

“Yeah, the more I think about it,” James continued, oblivious to Harrison’s suppressed anger, “the more I believe it’s essential for me to keep Paige occupied and safely out of the way. Aurora’s more likely to tip her hand if she doesn’t have to worry about her daughter. Not that Paige is really my type, but she’s not half-bad.”

Not half-bad? Harrison had to exert excruciating self-control not to lunge for James’s throat. Paige Stovall was the sweetest combination of strength and vulnerability Harrison had ever encountered, demurely feminine one minute and fierce as any lioness the next, especially when it came to protecting her mother. Fire and ice. How could anyone think she was less than magnificent?

With a jolt, Harrison realized he was jealous. That’s what he’d felt last night, all the way to his gut, when he’d watched Paige dancing with James, laughing with him, touching him. And when Aurora had unwittingly answered his fantasies by practically thrusting Paige into his arms, he’d felt as if the angels had smiled on him. Even though she’d danced with him under protest, he’d enjoyed staring down into those luminous eyes, watching the sparkling night-club lights play against her auburn hair, feeling the firm flesh at the small of her back beneath her silk dress.

She had enchanted him, and he’d completely forgotten himself. It had seemed as natural as breathing to caress her as they danced. It had also been a near-fatal blow to his investigation. He’d have to do a lot of fence mending if he wanted to salvage the operation.

He hadn’t confessed that blunder to James. He might still be able to pick up the pieces.

He allowed his hands to relax. It wasn’t worth getting thrown off this case just for the satisfaction of breaking James’s nose. Besides, there was no reason for him to worry about James getting to Paige. She might be an innocent, but she wasn’t stupid.

“Say, speak of the devil, look who’s in the buffet line,” James said.

Harrison looked, scanning the crowd, uncomfortably eager to catch a glimpse of Paige. There she was, wearing sunglasses and a bulky terry robe that hid her curves, her sun-bright hair tucked beneath a floppy hat. A huge canvas beach bag hung from one shoulder. She was trying to be inconspicuous, no doubt, but he would have recognized those legs anywhere. They might not be terribly long, but they were trim and shapely. For an instant his imagination conjured up an image of those legs wrapped around— No, no, no. He had to stop thinking along those lines.

Aurora, he noticed, was nowhere around.

“Why don’t you leave Paige alone?” he said, when he noticed James smoothing his hair and flicking an invisible speck of lint from his razor-creased trousers. “She doesn’t deserve this.” But as always, James didn’t listen. He quickly made his move, swooping down on Paige like a dive-bomber, picking up her tray from beneath her nose and carrying it back to their table despite her protests.

She had little choice but to follow her breakfast.

“Oh, good morning,” she said coolly when she spotted Harrison. “You’re up early for having been out so late.”

James drew back in surprise. “And just how do you know how late Harrison stayed up?” he asked. Although he appeared to be teasing, there was a hard edge to his question.

“My aunt got back to her cabin after two,” she said. “I just assumed she was still with Harrison.”

Although she was answering James, she looked straight at Harrison as she spoke. Was she challenging him, daring him to contradict her? Getting into her good graces wasn’t going to be easy. Of course, he’d already known that.

“I don’t need much sleep,” he said pleasantly.

“Would you like me to get you some coffee?” James asked solicitously, helping her remove the plates of fruit, yogurt and muffins from her tray.

“Yes, please,’ she said, her voice resigned. “Decaf, black.”

James scurried to do her bidding, pausing to tuck her cumbersome beach bag under the table—probably so there would be more room for him to sit close to her.

“Where’s Aurora this morning?” Harrison asked.

“I’m afraid she’s not feeling well,” Paige replied as she reluctantly settled onto the bench opposite him. She spread margarine onto a blueberry muffin, her eyes impossible to read behind the dark glasses.

“That’s terrible,” Harrison said. “Has she been to see the ship’s doctor?”

“Oh, it’s nothing so serious,” Paige said. “She’s just a little woozy.”

A few minutes ago Harrison could have easily believed Aurora was hung over. Last night she’d seemed pretty tipsy when he’d followed her back to her cabin. But that must have been an act, he realized. She would have needed all her wits about her to carry off the theft of the necklace.

The gears in his mind turned furiously. Here was the perfect opportunity to get into Aurora’s cabin. “Maybe I should pay her a visit. Does she like flowers? Would that cheer her up?”

He saw the negative answer on Paige’s face. But before she could deliver some scathing comment, her expression abruptly softened. “You know, that’s really sweet of you. Aurora loves flowers, roses in fact. And chocolates, the kind with nuts in the center. Yes, I think some attention from you would make her feel lots better.”

Harrison was skeptical of Paige’s sudden change of heart. He would have liked to think he had swayed her with his show of concern, but somehow he didn’t think it was that easy.

“You’re not just trying to get rid of me, are you?” he asked, snitching a strawberry from her plate despite the fact that he’d hardly touched his own breakfast of eggs and toast.

She surprised him by flashing a mischievous smile and peeking over the top of her sunglasses at him, giving him a heart-stopping glimpse of those amazingly clear green eyes. “Of course not. But if you’re going to persist in throwing yourself at Aurora, you might as well do it right.”

Had she really decided he wasn’t so bad for Aurora? Somehow, that thought didn’t cheer him very much.

He was reluctant to leave the table when Paige was feeling more charitable toward him. Especially if James was around. But duty called. He gulped down the last of his coffee, bade her a jaunty good morning and set out on his mission.

Amazingly, he found roses and chocolates, the kind with nuts in the center, in the well-stocked gift shop. Whistling tunelessly, he headed down to the Marlin Deck, acknowledging the smiles of passersby who recognized that he was on a romantic errand.

Suddenly feeling like a complete fraud, he stopped whistling as thoughts of an unpleasant chapter from his past assaulted him. He’d once worked as a criminal defense attorney, and there had been a client, a woman named Kitty Cirello, accused of embezzlement. Kitty had lured him into her bed and convinced him of her love, knowing that if she won him over, he would trade his soul to get her acquitted in court.

That was exactly what he’d done. Afterward, Kitty had admitted her guilt, deliberately making him feel like a fool. The way she’d used him, playing on his emotions to get what she’d wanted, had left a bad taste in his mouth. Right now was he behaving any better?

But I’m the good guy, he tried to convince himself. He was on the side of law and order, and Kitty had been a criminal, just like Aurora.

Did that excuse his behavior?

By the time he knocked on Aurora’s door, he was pretty disgusted with himself. Once this assignment was over, he was lowering the boom on his boss—no more undercover work. There was already too much deception in this world without his adding to it.

After what seemed a long time, the door cracked open and one red-rimmed eye peered out at him. “Oh, Lord,” Aurora said in a gravelly voice, as she shoved a pair of sunglasses onto her face. “What are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”

“Paige said you weren’t feeling well. I thought flowers and candy would cheer you up.”

She opened the door another inch to peer at the bouquet of roses and the candy he held. “Dear boy,” she said, “there is nothing wrong with me that a few more hours of sleep won’t cure. For future reference, I don’t socialize before noon. I’m allergic to roses, and I despise chocolate with nuts.”

She started to close the door, then paused. “I’m sorry you wasted your money. Don’t throw away the candy, though. Paige likes the kind with nuts.” She slammed the door, leaving Harrison standing in the passageway feeling like a ninny.

He’d known Paige’s sudden affability was too good to be true. He should have smelled the trap. What had happened to his instincts, which his boss had so eloquently bragged about to James Blair?

The only other time he’d lost his ability to think clearly was when he’d been a young, eager attorney, defending Kitty Cirello against what he thought was a gross miscarriage of justice. He had been so wrong about her.

Not that he was wrong about Paige. Oh, she might have a little streak of wickedness in her soul. At least, she wasn’t above putting a well-deserved prank over on him. But she wasn’t in the same league as Kitty...or her own mother. Still, he resolved to do a better job of keeping his wits about him.

He gave the roses to an elderly woman on the elevator, but he kept the chocolates. Hell, he liked the kind with nuts. And he would choke down the entire pound box before he would let Paige have even one.

* * *

Paige’s morning plans had been shot to hell. First there was her encounter with Harrison, about which she was feeling slightly guilty. Aurora would chew him up and spit him out. Then there was breakfast with James, who had hovered over her like a nervous waiter on his first day while she ate—or tried to eat—her meal. He had stuck to her like lint, just as annoying and just as impossible to shake loose.

She now sat in a deck chair under an umbrella, paperback in hand, but she hadn’t made it through a single page. James seemed determined to converse with her, regardless of her broad hints that she wanted to be left alone. She even had to slap his hands away from her beach bag when he tried to dig into it for her sun block, offering to rub some on her back. The prospect gave her more shivers than Stephen King.