inky-black hair was still damp from the sea, and had caught on his sharply etched cheekbones thanks to the thick shading of black stubble that suggested he hadn’t shaved today. Tough enough to be a roustabout from the docks, she guessed he might be a local fisherman. Deeply bronzed by the elements, his body could have been sculpted by Michelangelo.
‘You found it,’ she said lamely, finding her voice.
‘Evidently,’ he confirmed.
‘But I don’t understand.’ She frowned. ‘I just flung it out to sea.’
‘And the tide brought it straight back again. I thought you’d want to know,’ he remarked in perfect English. His voice was deep and husky, and only faintly accented—Greek, she thought, having recognised the familiar intonation. So he was a well-travelled roustabout.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, shading her eyes to stare up at him.
‘And now you’d like me to throw it back again,’ he guessed with an amused quirk of his brow.
‘Would you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you make sure it doesn’t come back again?’
‘It won’t ever come back,’ he assured her, glancing at her hand on his arm.
What was she thinking?
She wasn’t thinking, Kimmie concluded as she snatched her hand away from his arm. Shock had sent her reeling this morning, and stunned amazement at seeing this man had halted her recovery stone dead.
But he was as good as his word. She watched as he fired the ring so far out to sea she was confident it would never be seen again. Her gaze strayed to the formidable width of his shoulders. He was as stunning from the back as he was from his front.
‘So something went wrong for you today,’ he said as he swung around.
She almost jumped out of her skin, embarrassed to think he might have caught her staring at him. ‘You could say that,’ she admitted sparingly.
‘Everyone has bad days.’ His magnificent shoulders eased in a shrug.
‘This one was extremely bad,’ she admitted.
‘Yet it prompted a party?’ he queried.
‘It’s more of a wake,’ she explained, turning to glance at her friends, who were already dancing on the flat, damp sand at the edge of the beach. They seemed to be having a good time, which was all she wanted.
‘A wake?’ the Titan prompted.
‘I don’t want to answer any more questions,’ she said bluntly. Walking into Janey’s room that morning had been quite enough. Staring into the mirror later, and realising she could never compete with Janey’s polish, wasn’t something she wanted to relive either.
‘Fair enough. Glad to be of service,’ the Titan drawled.
As she filled her eyes with him, her mind raced to work out how she’d reached this point. She’d been a scholarship girl, which was how she’d first met Mike’s sister. Jocelyn had taken Kimmie home for the holidays, which was where she’d met Mike. It was no wonder suave, sophisticated Mike had ultimately grown bored with Kimmie and looked elsewhere. She just wished he’d done that before asking her to marry him.
‘Don’t let me keep you,’ she said to the Titan.
One satanic brow lifted and she guessed he didn’t make a habit of doing other people’s bidding. And that posed another question. Why had he approached her now? Why Kimmie? She couldn’t bear it if he felt sorry for her...if anyone felt sorry for her. She’d sort this out herself.
Lifting her chin, she said, ‘Can I offer you a drink to say thank you?’ In her peripheral vision she could see her friends setting out the picnic they’d brought with them. Their landlady, Kyria Demetriou, had prepared the most wonderful wedding breakfast, and Kimmie was determined it wouldn’t go to waste.
‘I appreciate your offer,’ he said, ‘but I won’t be able to accept as you and your friends must leave.’
‘I’m sorry?’ She gazed up, uncomprehending.
‘This is a private beach,’ he explained, ‘and you don’t have the necessary permission to be here.’
‘And you do?’ she challenged. It might have been a hell of a day, but she wasn’t on the canvas yet, and she had no intention of going down without a fight. Her guests had travelled a long way, only to have the wedding cancelled at the eleventh hour. The least she could offer them was a party on the beach.
‘Look,’ she reasoned when the man remained stony-faced, ‘we’re not doing any harm, and we’ll clear everything up when we leave.’
‘Read the notice,’ he rapped.
She followed his stare to a huge red sign proclaiming the beach off-limits to the general public.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see it,’ she admitted. ‘Are you some sort of ranger?’ Her heart thumped wildly as she stared him up and down.
‘Let’s just say I’m an interested party.’
‘Perhaps you can show me a letter of authority?’ She realised how foolish that request was even as she said it. More proof, if she had needed it, that she was only firing on half-cylinders.
The man seemed to find this amusing and flicked a glance down his half-naked frame. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have anything on me at the moment.’
She refused to look at his bronzed perfection, and wasn’t in the mood to back down. ‘With no proof of your authority, we’re not going anywhere.’
The temperature rose between them. ‘Just pack up this circus and leave.’
‘Is that the type of welcome you’d like me to associate with Kaimos?’
‘You’ll have plenty to remember,’ he flashed back.
‘How nice of you to remind me.’
His expression remained unchanged.
‘It would be nice to have some good memories to mix in with the bad, but if you can’t help me...’ She shrugged. ‘Can’t I say anything to change your mind?’
The man remained silent.
‘Are you a member of the crew from that mega-yacht out there?’ she asked, trying another tack. ‘Did you swim to the beach from that...?’ She could only be pleasant for so long under this sort of pressure. ‘That floating office block?’ The huge vessel had been moored up in the bay since first thing that morning. It was the type of eye-popping craft favoured by billionaires and potentates. If he worked for someone like that, she could understand that he’d want to clear the beach before his boss came on shore.
‘Crew?’ he queried, frowning. ‘Floating office block?’
‘That boat out there,’ she said, pointing.
If only her pulse would slow down and her wits would speed up, she thought as he replied in a clipped tone, ‘I’m not crew. And the vessel you refer to is the Spirit of Kaimos.’
‘Well, I’m very sorry, but I’ve never heard of it. And you still haven’t answered my question. Where are you from?’
‘Why is that so important?’
‘It isn’t. I’m just curious.’
‘As am I,’ he shot back.
His lazy gaze stripped her bare and, while her wilful body applauded, her mind sensibly screamed, This isn’t right... I need recovery time... What am I doing here, trading insults with a sexy stranger?
All Kimmie had wanted when she came to the seashore was to dance all the bad stuff out of her head. Instead she was getting deeper into