body trembled just remembering those words. While she waited for him to come, the memory of the way he’d made love to her over and over again made it difficult to breathe. It was her first intimate experience with a man, and had happened so naturally she felt as if she was living in a dream, one from which she never wanted to awaken.
In ten days’ time Stephanie had fallen so deeply in love, her whole world had changed. Throughout her dating years she’d had various boyfriends. Just last week she’d gone on a date with a guy named Rob Ferris, who ran an auto parts franchise, but she knew when he took her home after dinner that she really wasn’t interested in a second date.
Then she met Dev. The first time she’d seen him walking toward the boat with the dive master, her breath had caught. When their gazes collided, that was it. The feeling she’d been waiting for all her adult life.
Other relationships with past boyfriends had nothing to do with the profound kind of love she felt for the sophisticated thirty-two year-old bachelor, who’d told her he was in the international exporting business. He blew away every other man in existence.
Her three girlfriends who’d arranged their April vacations to come on this scuba diving trip with her fully agreed he was out-of-this-world gorgeous. Melinda thought he must be one of those frogmen from the military, the way he maneuvered under the water. He was certainly built like one.
Stephanie agreed with her friends, but there was more to Dev than his physical attributes and diving skills. Much more. Everything he said and did revealed that he was well-traveled and educated, making him exceptional, and so charismatic she could hardly breathe when she thought about him.
Where was he? By now it was quarter to nine. Obviously, he’d been held up. The only thing to do was go back to her room and call him on the hotel land line. His beachfront condo, where they’d spent last night, was located on the other side of the restaurant, but she thought she should phone him first.
Stephanie was on her way out when a waiter came toward her with a florist box in his hands. “Ms. Walsh? This is for you, with Mr. Harris’s compliments.”
Thrilled to have received it, she went back to the table to take off the lid. He was probably on his way to her now. Inside the tissue was a corsage of gardenias with a card.
Thank you for the most memorable ten days and nights of my life, Stephanie. Your sweetness is like these gardenias and I’ll never forget you. Unfortunately, I’ve had to leave the island because of an emergency at my work that couldn’t be handled by anyone else. Enjoy the rest of your trip and be safe flying back to Crystal River. I miss you already. Dev.
Stephanie sat there and felt the blood drain from her face.
Her spring idyll was over.
He’d already driven to the airport to catch his flight to New York. Of course he hadn’t left her a phone number or address, nor had he asked her for the same information. On purpose he hadn’t given her a shred of hope that they’d ever see each other again.
She had to be the biggest fool who’d ever lived.
No, there was one other person she knew who shared that honor. Her mother, who’d died from cancer after Stephanie had graduated from college. Twenty-four years ago Ruth Walsh had made the same mistake with an irresistible man. But whoever he was hadn’t stuck around once the fun was over, either. Stephanie didn’t know his name and had no memories of him, only that her mother had said he was good-looking, exciting and an excellent skier.
He and Dev were two of a kind.
Stephanie closed her eyes tightly. How many females went off on vacation and supposedly met their soul mate, who swept them off their feet, only to abandon them once the excitement wore off? It had to be in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions. Stephanie, like her mother, was one of those pathetic statistics who’d gotten caught up in the rapture.
White-hot with anger for being in her mid-twenties before learning the lesson she should have had memorized early in life, because of her birth father, Stephanie shot out of the chair. As she passed the waiter, she gave him a couple dollars and told him to get rid of the things she’d left on the table.
Stephanie didn’t know about her friends, but she couldn’t possibly stay on the island for the last four days of their trip. Tomorrow morning she’d be on the first plane back to Florida. If a man was too good to be true, then shame on the woman who believed she was the first female to beat the odds.
Dev was so attractive there had to be trails of broken-hearted females around the scuba diving world who knew exactly what it was like to lie in his arms and experience paradise, only to wake up and discover he’d moved on.
He’d told her that scuba diving was his favorite form of recreation. What he hadn’t mentioned was that womanizing went hand in hand with his favorite pastime. It was humiliating to think she was one of those imbeciles who didn’t have the sense to take one look at him and run far away as fast as possible.
Too furious for tears, she returned to the condo, thankful her roommates were still out. They’d probably gone into town to party with some of the other tourists staying at the resort. That gave Stephanie time to change her flight reservation and pack without them asking a lot of questions.
By tomorrow afternoon she’d be back on the job. Stephanie loved her work. Right now she was planning on it saving her life.
If she let herself think about those long walks with Dev, past the palms and Casuarina trees while they were entwined in each other’s arms, she’d go mad.
July 13
“Captain Vassalos?”
Nikos had just finished putting on the jacket of his uniform—the last time he would wear it. Steadying himself with his crutches, he looked around in time to see Vice Admiral Eugenio Prokopios of the Aegean Sea Naval Command in Piraeus, Greece, enter his hospital room and shut the door. The seasoned Greek naval hero was an old friend of his father and grandfather.
“This is an honor, sir.”
“Your parents are outside waiting for you. I told them I wanted to come in first to see you. After your last mission, we can be thankful the injury to your spine didn’t paralyze you, after all.”
Thankful?
Nikos cringed. His last covert operation with Special Forces had wiped out the target, but his best friend, Kon, had been killed. As for Nikos, his doctor told him he would never be the man he once was. His spine ought to heal in time, but he’d never be 100 percent again, and couldn’t stay in the Greek military as a SEAL, not when he would probably suffer episodes of PTSD for a long time, maybe even years.
He’d been getting counseling and was taking a serotonin reuptake inhibitor to help him feel less worried and sad, but he’d had several nightmares. They left him feeling out of control and depressed.
“Now that you’re being released from the hospital this morning, it won’t be long before you won’t need those crutches.”
Nikos hated the sight of them. “I’m planning on getting rid of them as soon as possible.”
“But not until you’ve had a good long rest after your ordeal.”
“A good long rest” was code for one reality. The part of his life that had brought challenge and purpose was finished. Only blackness remained.
“I don’t expect it to take that much time, sir.”
After a two and a half months’ hospitalization, Nikos knew exactly why the vice admiral had shown up. This was his father’s work. He’d been thwarted when Nikos had joined the military, and expected his son to return to the family business. Now that he was incapacitated, his father had sent his good friend Eugenio to wish him well with a pep talk about getting back in the family fold.
The older man eyed him solemnly. “Our navy is grateful for the heroic service you’ve rendered in Special Forces. You’re a credit to your