and began to take their order. He wasn’t going to find out yet. He relaxed. He had another few moments to watch her.
And she was definitely good to look at. She moved with style and grace, and a certain languor that evoked sensuality. She seemed to belong to these islands, like a natural part of the landscape of paradise. Just watching her move made his male instincts sizzle.
But there was no recognition triggered. None at all.
He’d thought just coming back might remove the roadblocks and trigger his memories. So far, that hadn’t happened. Once he’d found the picture, he’d been certain, that if he could find the woman again, that would do it. There was no getting around the fact that this woman was not the sort a man would easily forget.
He watched her weave her way among the tables in the outdoor café. She was coming closer. In another moment, she would see him. The moment of truth.
There was a smile on her lips as she turned. It froze as she caught sight of him. Those blue eyes were even more hypnotic in person, but right now they were filled with shock and then went cold as ice. Turning on her heel, she fled.
It took him another beat to realize she really was running from him. He hadn’t expected that. Rising, he started after her, but a table full of young people had just begun to leave and they filled the aisle, talking and laughing back and forth and blocking his path. By the time he’d made it around the corner she’d taken, he’d lost her. He looked up and down the rutted street, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Damn,” he swore softly, frowning. Now what?
Shayna Pierce stopped herself short, gulping in air, and looked at her little Vespa. Her impulse had been to hop on and head for the hills. The only trouble was, there were no real hills—not that kind, anyway. What the heck was she doing? It was a small island. She couldn’t hide from him if she tried.
She could always wait for dark and take her motor boat out into the ocean, heading for the even smaller island of Coco where she’d been hanging out for the last month or so, just in case. But in the meantime, what was she going to do? Stay concealed in this dusty lean-to? Hardly.
She sighed, wheeling out her little Vespa. She was pretty sure he would be in the road, looking for her. She was surprised he hadn’t followed her right into the shed. He knew where she parked it when she worked at Kimo’s Café. Stopping, she took a deep breath before stepping out into the sunlight again.
Why was he back? Her emotions buzzed like a swarm of angry bees, making her dizzy. She had to admit just seeing him made her heart stutter and her stomach feel as if she’d just started off on a roller-coaster ride. What could you do when your feelings turned traitor like that?
Fight them. That was all that was left to do. But running wasn’t going to change all that. She had to face him and have it out. There was no other way, now that he was here. With a soft groan of regret, she pushed the double doors open and wheeled her Vespa out into the road.
There he was, facing out of town, hand shading his eyes, looking in the wrong direction. She kick-started the engine on her scooter and he whipped around, staring at her. With as haughty a look as she could manage, she settled into the seat and drove forward, pulling up next to him.
“Hop on,” she said. “We need to talk.”
Pulling off his sunglasses, he looked directly into her eyes. He seemed to be searching for something he didn’t find. There was no warmth in his gaze, no evidence of shared memories, of past intimacy. Her heart sank. He really did despise her now, didn’t he? Probably had from the beginning. Well, in many ways, the feeling was mutual.
Oh, brother—whom was she trying to kid? Just looking at him made her heart thump like a bass drum and the rest of her innards go all warm and gooey inside. He was such a beautiful man with his Roman profile, his huge dark eyes shaded by eyelashes thicker than any male should be allowed to have. And then there was that long, gorgeous body and those wonderful hands…
No! She looked away. She had to stop before she fell off the Vespa in an old-fashioned fainting spell.
“Come on,” she said impatiently. “We’ll go to my place. We can talk there.” She threw him a quick glare, just to keep her spirits up. “Unless you’re too busy,” she added, ready to be defensive if he gave her reason to be.
He didn’t say a word. Instead, he swung his leg over the seat behind her, grabbed the edge for balance, and held on as she started off.
Her heart thumped hard and her mind was in chaos. She’d really thought she would never see him again, and now, here he was. There were a hundred reasons why she wished he hadn’t come back. And there was one very clear reason why she was holding off a big, embarrassing swoon. She was crazy about him.
Or at least, she had been before she realized they had a connection she hadn’t known about. An ugly, painful connection that made a relationship between the two of them impossible.
Still, here he was, and what had been between them, and what had destroyed that, had to be dealt with. They were both reasonable people. They had to come to terms with things.
She raced down the dirt road at full speed, the wind in her hair. She had a lot of questions. Was he going to answer any of them? First, she wanted to know if he’d ever really cared for her at all, but that was one she was never actually going to ask. All signs pointed toward a negative.
Then she wanted to know how much her father had paid him to come find her. And last—and the most puzzling one—why hadn’t her father contacted her yet? She’d been so sure, once she realized Marco was working for her father, that someone would show up to drag her back to New York. That was why she’d gone to hide out on Coco Island for the last month.
But no one had appeared. There had been no word of anyone coming. So what had happened? Had Marco decided not to tell her father where she was after all? Had he had second thoughts? If so, his demeanor didn’t show it.
Still, she was hoping, deep in her heart, that his return meant…No, she wouldn’t put it into words. She couldn’t let herself get her hopes up. She wasn’t that naive.
Pulling the scooter to a stop in the little clearing near her tiny house, she turned off the engine. Marco got off and she followed, looking at him, trying to be as cool as he was acting.
But then a funny thing happened. He stopped and scanned the area, as though he’d never been there before. That was odd. Ordinarily, he would be striding toward her house by now.
“Go on,” she said, gesturing with a jerk of her head, but he turned to eye her warily.
“You go first,” he said.
She frowned. There was something way off center about all this. Was he sick? Was something seriously wrong? Suddenly filled with a wave of worry and compassion, she stepped toward him.
“What is it, Marco?” she asked. “Is something the matter? Do you feel all right?”
The panes of his dark glasses flashed at her mockingly, as though he were sneering at what he perceived as her attempt to get closer. “I’m fine,” he said shortly. “Let’s go. You lead the way.”
She hesitated. He sounded the same. He looked the same, except for that coldness she’d seen in his eyes. But something wasn’t right. He didn’t seem like the same person at all.
She remembered the first time she’d seen him, not two months ago. She’d just come back hot and tired from a hike along the far side of the island and she’d been going into her cabin when she heard the shout from out in the water. Shading her eyes, she’d seen someone struggling just inside the reef. Teenage lifeguard training kicked into gear and she dashed toward her little outboard motor-equipped dinghy.
Shayna to the rescue! She’d felt like a real contributing member of society—she was going to save a life.
Cranking on her motor, she’d raced out to where she’d seen the man struggling. He was still thrashing around in the water.