explanation to the clerk on the other end of the line, Tess gave up, thanked the woman for her help—which had, in fact, been no help at all—and hung up, feeling even more exasperated. If the call that had pulled Selena away from their table had come from the rental-car company, the person to whom Tess had spoken knew nothing about the matter.
When Tess glanced at the large clock on the wall behind the registration desk, she saw that it was nearly four-thirty. Selena had left their table almost forty-five minutes ago. Where was she?
Feeling someone’s eyes on her, Tess spun around, hoping to see Selena, only to find the man in the gaudy shirt staring at her again. She glared at the tourist and the man actually smiled, causing Tess to feel even more peevish as she pushed her way to the front desk.
After leaving a message for Selena, Tess left the lobby quickly with the eerie feeling that gaudy-shirt-man’s eyes were still on her back.
Once inside their room again, Tess set her mind to the task of unpacking and tried to tell herself that any moment Selena would come bursting through the door, smiling and apologetic with a breathless explanation for her strange disappearance. But soon another fifteen minutes had ticked by, and Selena hadn’t returned.
After her things were put away, Tess paced out onto the balcony and scanned the beach and squinted to see as far as she could in each direction.
Tess figured Selena’s bright pink dress and big floppy hat would have been easy to spot if she had been among the people wandering along the beach. But there was no pink dress. No floppy hat. No Selena. Something was dreadfully wrong, she was nearly certain.
When the phone finally rang, it startled her. Her heart pounded and she banged her knee on the nightstand hurrying back inside. The receiver was halfway to her ear when someone knocked on the door. “Just a minute,” she called out.
“Hello,” she answered hopefully into the receiver. “Hold on!” she shouted to the persistent knocker on the other side of the door. “Hello!” she said again into the phone.
“Miss Elliot, this is Guy from Premium Car Rental. I understand you’re having a problem with your car?”
“No, no, there’s nothing wrong with the car!” Tess felt her heart sink. “Yes, I did call earlier, but—” The knocking grew louder.
“Hang on a minute,” she told the car-rental clerk, dropping the phone on the bed and hurrying across the room to open the door.
Reaching for the door, Tess just knew it would be Selena’s pretty face she’d see on the other side.
She jerked the door open and every teasing word she’d prepared to fling at her cousin for losing her keys or forgetting the time or whatever froze on Tess’s lips as she stood staring and speechless at Reed McKenna, as tall, dark and startlingly handsome as ever, standing in her doorway.
With just one look, Tess knew her life was about to change forever.
Chapter Three
There were no words to express her shock; only his name emerged. “Reed?” It came out a whisper.
“Hello, Tess.”
Her heart was a jackhammer in her chest. “Wh-what—”
“What am I doing here?” he finished the question as he strode past her into the room. “I guess I could ask you the same thing, couldn’t I, Tess? Close the door, why don’t you?”
Numbly, she followed his instructions, the jolt of seeing Reed again, here in Grand Cayman, in her hotel room, had completely dumbfounded her. Rational thought told her he hadn’t materialized simply by her early thoughts of him, but then again, there was nothing rational about the way her heart raced at the sight of him.
“Nice,” he noted as he stepped deeper into the room, picked up the phone that was still lying on the bed and dropped it back onto its base.
Still thunderstruck by his presence, Tess could only stand and stare as he crossed to the balcony and peered outside. Her whole body seemed to be trembling and she couldn’t stop her thoughts from taking a jet-propelled trip back in time.
He’d been the town’s bad boy, the kind of young man mothers warned their daughters about while secretly harboring fantasies of their own involving the darkly handsome, street-smart kid from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. Quick-witted, handsome, cocky—all these were traits Reed McKenna possessed in abundance, traits that combined to give him that hypnotic magnetism that women couldn’t resist and men couldn’t help but admire.
Seeing him now, dressed in softly faded jeans and a white polo shirt and looking twice as handsome and even sexier, Tess couldn’t help remembering the way he’d stirred her passions. Seeing his faint blue-black beard shadow enhancing his rugged maleness, and his dark brown eyes as intensely seductive and compelling as ever, Tess felt the old familiar attraction drawing her to him again.
Get hold of yourself. You’re a grown woman, not some lovesick teenager! But even as that inner voice scolded, the years melted away and the sweat rose on her palms. Damn you, Reed McKenna! Damn your lean body and your thick, black hair and the wicked brown eyes that always seemed to be looking right into my very soul. And damn that smile of his that curled his perfect lips and drove dimples into his lean, tanned checks.
He turned and sent his smoky gaze sliding leisurely up and down the length of her. “Surprised to see me?” Another smile, and appealing lines winged out from the corners of his eyes.
“Surprised? Believe me, surprised doesn’t even come close. What are you doing here?” she asked him again.
“So that’s all you can say? Not even ‘how’s it going, Reed?’ or ‘Gee, but it’s damn good to see you after all this time’?”
It wasn’t damn good to see him, it was damn disturbing and damn perplexing, exasperating, wonderful and a host of other jumbled and conflicting emotions, all of which Tess despised.
She ran a hand carelessly through her hair, scrambling to collect her wits and raise her guard. “I see you haven’t changed. Still playing word games, still incapable of giving a straight answer.”
His look was one of practiced innocence that she recognized and responded to, despite herself. “Well, you know what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks,” he drawled.
She would not be drawn in, she promised herself, by the patented McKenna charm. “The last I heard you were some kind of federal cop in D.C.,” she said to change the subject.
His thick lashes dipped lazily. “And the last I heard you were back home running some kind of specialty bookstore.”
“Mysteries, Ltd.,” she informed him tersely, realizing too late that he’d deftly avoided answering her question by shifting the focus back on her. Just like the old Reed, she told herself, always a jump ahead of everyone. Always setting the rules.
“Mysteries, huh? Well, what do you know,” his voice held a note of mild indifference as his gaze swept the room before he sauntered toward the bathroom, opened the door and glanced in.
Tess was flabbergasted by his actions and inflamed by his arrogance. “Excuse me, but just what the hell are you doing?” she demanded, coming up behind him with her hands on her hips. He was giving the bathroom such intense scrutiny that she figured if the shower curtain had been drawn he’d have pushed it open to search the tub as well.
He turned away from the bathroom and glanced at the two queen-size beds separated by a standard hotel nightstand. “Nice room.”
“You said that before.”
His gaze wandered back to her and a bemused grin tugged at his mouth, making her feel suddenly exposed in the sundress that had seemed perfectly appropriate until now. “You always were the direct one, weren’t you, Tessa?”
She started at the sound