Sean

“Just one good reason?”

“What, you have a list? Am I handling this that terribly?”

Her laugh was fuller this time. “Just badly enough to be endearing and to make me less self-conscious.”

“Thanks. I think.”

She smiled. “You just strike me as someone who is way too used to getting his own way.”

“Oh?”

“Rusty flirting skills notwithstanding, you have this…commanding way about you.”

Any other woman would have said that and it would have sounded suggestive as hell. Not with her. She’d simply sounded…honest. Maybe it was the quirky way her brows furrowed when she said it, as if she couldn’t quite decide if she liked commanding, rusty flirts or not.

So why his body reacted the way it did…he couldn’t say. Dinner. This was just about dinner.

“I take it you don’t respond well to commands,” he said when she let the silence spin out. He shoved his hands into his pockets. Mostly because he had this absurd need to reach out and snatch her sunglasses off to get a better look at her eyes…and what was going on behind those glasses. “What about a humble request?”

She laughed lightly. “Somehow I’m thinking you didn’t make it into the Marshals Service by being humble and unprepossessing.”

“I didn’t say anything about being unprepossessing.” He slid his hands out, then shifted a little as he realized the fit of his trousers was being compromised by more than just his hands stretching the confines of his pockets. “Just a nice simple rescue and dinner.”

“And if I just want to be rescued?”

“I’ll be forced to eat alone, which probably means I’ll end up working to pass the time.”

“Ah, so now I would be doing you a favor in return for helping me get rid of this junk heap. And given as how I’m not all that keen on finding myself in need of rescue in the first place, this does make your case stronger.”

“If you decide against me, is there any hope for an appeal?”

She grinned. “Oh, I think you have a very good case for appeal.”

His grin widened. Maybe charm came more easily with the right inspiration. “Do I?”

She smiled, lifting her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “The court finds in your favor, Deputy Marshal Gannon. You are awarded one dinner—in which both parties will make equal payment,” she added with emphasis. “And a rescue, to take place prior to said meal.” She lifted a finger when he began to argue. “You’ve already pleaded your case. In exchange for the rescue, you will be prevented from overwork and exhaustion, which should be against the law anyway in such a gorgeous tropical setting.”

“Thank you, Justice—?”

She stuck out her hand, her smile a bit smug now. “Justice Laurel Patrick, of the Ninth Judicial Court of Alexandria Parish.”

“And here I was only kidding.”

She sighed lightly. “Sometimes I wish I was.”

But before he could ask her to follow up on that interesting little comment, she had taken the Vespa by the handlebars and was rolling it toward the rear of his Jeep.

He managed to haul it into the open back and wedge it, albeit somewhat awkwardly, in between the rear spare tire and front seat back. He motioned to the passenger side. “I’d open your door for you…but there isn’t one.” He’d never owned a Jeep before and was definitely enjoying the free feel of it. Having her beside him would just make it perfect. Which was when it struck him that, for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, he was actually enjoying himself. And it had nothing whatsoever to do with work.

She got in as he slid back behind the wheel.

“Where to?” he asked.

She didn’t speak for a moment, then shook her head and, very quietly, almost too quietly for him to hear, said, “The Resort.”

He looked at her. “The Resort. As in…The Resort? The private club out on Flamingo Cay?”

“In my own defense, I didn’t pick it. My father did.”

“Your father? I have to meet this guy.”

“No. You don’t.”

She’d said it so emphatically, he had to laugh. “You’re only making me more curious, you know.”

She sighed. “He knew I needed a break. He probably had no idea about the resort’s…reputation. Neither did I, until I got here. The brochure looked totally tame.”

The Resort sat just off the south shore of St. Thomas on its own tiny spit of land. It was one of those private, all-inclusive clubs, like they had in Jamaica or Mexico, where certain rules of decorum were a bit more…relaxed. In this case, extremely relaxed, at least if the local island ads he’d spied in the morning paper were anything to go by.

He glanced at her and decided he didn’t want to risk losing his dinner companion. So he let the titillating subject of Flamingo Cay drop. For now, anyway. “Do you like seafood?”

“What?”

“Seafood? Stuff caught under water and cooked up for people to eat.”

She shot him a long-suffering look, which for some reason made him grin all the wider. “Yes, as it happens, I do. As long as someone else does the catching.” She wrinkled her nose. “And, for that matter, the cooking.”

“Fine, then we’ll go and ditch the Scooter of Death and head to a little place I heard about back closer to Charlotte Amalie.” He was already heading down the coast road as he spoke.

“Why do I get the feeling that I lost complete control the moment I got into this Jeep?”

Sean laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe the same reason that I feel like I lost all control the moment I swerved around that bend in the road…and found you.”

3

LAUREL LET THE WARM, early evening wind snatch and tug at her ponytail…and tried not to think too much about what she’d just agreed to do. A woman alone on an exotic island had no business standing on the side of the road talking to—okay, flirting with—a strange man…much less getting into his vehicle and riding off with him!

He’s a deputy marshal, for God’s sake, she reminded herself. He was hardly going to attack her. Yeah, but he’s still a man. And she knew quite well just how capable they were of causing a great deal of trouble, no matter their job description.

She shook that train of thought from her head. She’d given Alan far too much of her precious time back at home. She’d be damned if she’d let him ruin any part of her precious break. Break. She squelched the urge to laugh. So far she’d been on the island a grand total of twenty-four hours and this was the first time she’d felt remotely relaxed.

She’d wandered down to the pool just after checking in, but the sight of all that young, fit, taut and mostly naked skin—and dear Lord but there had been a never-ending sea of it—had dampened her enthusiasm for revealing her pasty-white, bench-sitting, thirty-two-year-old body. She’d spent her first evening in her room, sitting on her balcony with a glass of chilled wine, trying to pay more attention to the setting sun than to the somewhat startling goings-on in the club below. She didn’t consider herself a prude by any means but, for heaven’s sake, the nightclub in the center of the resort resembled something more of a Greek orgy than the open-air dance floor the brochure had purported it to be.

But not to be daunted, this morning she’d gamely pulled on her newly purchased vacation clothes and taken the water taxi over to the mainland, deciding to rent a scooter to see some of the island. And we all know how well that went, she thought wryly. From the engine conking out when she was miles from anywhere, to leaving the tags on her shirt, one would think she needed a keeper.

She skimmed a glance sideways, then hid the private little smile. Okay, so things were looking up. But she wasn’t sure, despite the badge and his claim to being a workaholic, that having Sean Gannon as her keeper was going to prevent her from getting into any more trouble. In fact, he made her think about all kinds of trouble she could get into. If she let herself go there. Which, of course, she would not.

It was just a nice dinner. And that alone was a heck of a lot better than the evening she’d envisioned just an hour earlier. Which had basically involved making it back to the resort, on her knees if necessary, showering off the road dust and sweat, then collapsing facedown on her bed. With maybe a room service meal later on, if she revived herself in time.