“Of course not! I just didn’t tell my father I was coming down to the beach house.”
“Your father?” His voice was deadly quiet.
She exhaled hard. “Yeah. My father. Richard Hollingsworth.”
He pounced immediately. “I thought you said your name was Kinsey Pierpont.”
“It is. Kinsey Pierpont Hollingsworth.”
He absorbed that one in silence. So much for anonymity on this little retreat of hers. This guy would brag to someone in a bar about running into Kinsey Hollingsworth, and someone would overhear him. Before she knew it, the local paparazzi would mob her. And any chance at hiding in peace would be blown.
“Your middle name is really Pierpont?”
He didn’t have to sound so bloody amused about it. “What’s yours?” she challenged.
“Edgar,” he admitted.
She suppressed a spurt of laughter. “And you’re giving me grief about Pierpont?”
“I’m named after my grandfather,” he said defensively.
“So am I,” she retorted.
Laughter danced in his eyes, transforming their dangerous depths to a warm, inviting amber. Belatedly, she shook herself free of their spell.
She sighed. “Since you’re the reason I’ve apparently run afoul of the guy in the boat, what do you suggest I do about it?”
He clammed up on her again. It figured. Honestly, the whole idea of some killer tracking her down and offing her was too preposterous. She faced her impromptu companion squarely and said resolutely, “Please leave.”
His shoulders bunched up in annoyance, followed by a grimace of pain, but his voice was a low, steady rumble that made her want to curl up in it. “Ma’am, I’m not kidding. That bastard’s gonna kill you.”
“He doesn’t even know who I am.”
“And two minutes on the Internet running the name of this boat or a couple quick phone calls wouldn’t produce your identity and enough information to find you and kill you? With all due respect, you’re not exactly a low-profile kind of girl.”
“Low-profile?” she repeated ominously.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Your dad’s famous, and besides, you look…rich. With that lightbulb-blond hair and those legs—” he broke off.
She got the idea. Why the sour note in his voice when he described her, though? She studied him, and he glared back inscrutably. Something primitive deep inside her rose to the challenge of this man, relishing sparring with him.
What the heck was she supposed to do now? Pretend the shooting had never happened and take the Baby Doll back to Daddy’s place? Run and hide? The pure insanity of such ruminations yanked her rudely back to reality. He was just trying to scare her. Perovski didn’t want her to toss him off the boat and was probably making up the whole business of the other shooter coming after her.
He subsided into brooding silence, staring sphinxlike at the sunset’s splendor. The moods of the sky were many, and at the moment the evening was quiet. Soft. Contemplative. Streaks of peach and lavender reached toward the east, where the distant horizon was darkening into a blue nearly as deep and unfathomable as the sea around them. Night would come soon. She got the distinct feeling the man beside her was a creature of the dark. An errant desire to walk in that world flashed through her. It might be a more interesting place than the gilded media microscope she lived under.
At least he hadn’t threatened her. And his gun was put away. As armed and dangerous night stalkers went, he could’ve been worse.
St. John, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, wasn’t far away. She could duck into Cruz Bay—the U.S. Coast Guard guys there were on the ball. If she signaled them for help, they’d nab this man and his gun and get them off her boat. And after all, she’d only promised not to call the police. She hadn’t said anything about not contacting the Coast Guard. She set course for St. John. Now all she had to do was keep this guy calm until she got there.
She glanced over at him. He slouched in the passenger seat, far too sexy for his own good. She almost missed having not been born in the good old days before AIDS and other nasty STDs, when a girl could casually jump a guy’s bones without any thought to consequences. This guy just begged to be bedded.
He leaned his head back against the leather headrest. His eyes drifted closed. For an instant, he looked utterly exhausted. She shifted weight the slightest bit, and his eyes snapped open, alert and intelligent. His gaze traveled briefly up and down the length of her. “Are you done panicking yet?”
She blinked. Retorted with light sarcasm, “Why, yes, I’m perfectly fine. Thank you for asking. Lovely weather we’re having, aren’t we?”
A rusty sound escaped him. It took her a moment to identify it. That was a laugh—from a man who apparently didn’t do it very often.
“Jeez, that was close,” he mumbled.
Keep him talking. Make a human connection with him. So he wouldn’t view her as an object to be kidnapped or killed at will. “And just what was that?”
“A hit. Or rather an attempted hit, since I’m still alive.”
“Why were they trying to kill you?”
He shrugged. “The list of people who’d like to see me dead is long and distinguished.”
“Were those old enemies or new ones?”
He shot her a speculative look. “A perceptive question. And one to which I don’t know the answer.”
Why would someone hire assassins to take this man out? What line of work was he in? “You’re not a drug dealer, are you? Because I don’t mess with drugs, regardless of what the tabloids say. And I certainly won’t run them on this boat.”
He made a wry face at her. “Trust me. My life would be a helluva lot simpler if I were a drug runner.”
“So how do you know my father?”
“I don’t.”
“And he let you borrow his boat because…”
“Because my boss asked him for a favor. And no, I’m not going to tell you who my boss is.”
“Did my father know you were running from hit men when he agreed to this favor?”
Mitch’s lips twitched. “He probably surmised as much.”
“Why?” She didn’t waste her breath asking again what he did, but the question hung heavy in the air between them. Silence stretched out while she waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. She probed a little more. “Surely you’re exaggerating the threat to me. I vaguely saw two men from a distance and one of them has a giant hole in his chest now. I certainly wasn’t close enough to make out their faces.”
“You saw more than you know.”
“Like what?”
“You can accurately estimate their height and weight. Identify hair color. Skin color. Give a rough description of their clothing. Of how they ran. Their shooting stances. Tell that they used handguns and a shotgun. And if you know anything about firearms, you might be able to tell the police they used large caliber, hollow-point slugs from the sounds of the shots.”
She was tempted to swear under her breath. He was right. Darn it. She’d just wanted some peace and quiet. To be left alone. Was that too much to ask for? She fiddled with the GPS navigation system, checked the coordinates for St. John, and made a course correction to point more directly at the island and its Coast Guard contingent. They’d remove this guy from her boat and her life, and then, if she was lucky, paradise would settle back