ax wasn’t sure how long he’d slept before his eyes snapped open, and he came instantly awake. The morning sun bounced off the waves and the chrome handholds on the yacht. Without turning, he was aware of movement behind him. He didn’t have to look to know that it was Lola. Not just because she was the only other person on the boat, but by now he’d learned the unique sound of her light footsteps. She paused by the galley door before proceeding inside, her little dog following close behind.

Slowly Max rose and moved his head from side to side, working out the kinks. The yacht rocked within a foot-high chop, and the ache in his ribs felt worse than when he’d first been kicked; his muscles were stiff from the cramped position he’d slept in. Max was thirty-six and had spent the last fifteen years pushing the limits of his body. When he’d been younger, he’d been able to sleep on his head without so much as a twinge the next morning. Not now. Now the older he got, the more his body pushed back. He rolled his shoulders and heard Lola and her dog exit the galley. He cast a backward glance as they moved down the gunnel to the bow of the boat. The bottom of her fruity dress brushed the backs of her thighs, and she held her binoculars in one hand and a granola bar in the other.

Since she hadn’t said one word to him, he figured she was still ticked off about the toothbrush. He looked up at the cloudless sky and stretched his arms over his head. She was obviously one of those women who liked to hang on to her anger, and he figured he’d let her. No need to disrupt the peace just to hear her bitch at him. And now that she was up and manning her post at the bow of the yacht, he figured he’d slip into the stateroom and catch a few.

An ear-piercing scream split the still Caribbean morning, and he turned so fast, pain stabbed his ribs like a stiletto. He sucked air into the top of his lungs and moved toward the gunnel just in time to see Lola go over the side, her dress flying up past her butt. She hit the water, and quick as a cork, she popped back up within the waves, sputtering and sobbing almost incoherently.

“Baby!” she cried, and frantically looked about her in the water. “Baby, where are you?”

The dog bobbed up once, then went down again, a brown spot of fur in the blue sea.

“Shit,” Max swore as he tore off his T-shirt. With his ribs throbbing and his muscles protesting, he dove into the Atlantic Ocean after Baby Doll Carlyle. The cool salt water hit his face and rushed over his chest. He dove just deep enough to come up under the dog, and he grabbed him in one hand. When his head cleared the water, he glanced around for Lola, but he didn’t see her. The dog coughed and hacked and immediately started to shake. Max was just about to chuck the dog and dive for Lola when the back of her head surfaced.

“Baby!” she coughed on a mouthful of ocean.

“I have him,” Max called to her as he easily treaded water.

She turned and splashed toward him. Not only was she a lousy warrior, she couldn’t swim worth a damn, either. Her brown eyes were huge and she sucked in quick, shallow gasps of oxygen. If she wasn’t careful, she’d hyperventilate, but it didn’t look like she was going to be careful anytime soon. She grabbed Max’s shoulder and nearly pushed him under. At the height of his SEAL team days, Max had been able to hold his breath for three minutes underwater, bob back up, and swim for hours. He wasn’t worried that either of them, or the dumb dog, would drown. He was only concerned that she’d make getting to the back of the boat harder than need be.

“Is baby o-okay?” she managed, and reached for her dog. A wave washed over their heads and she pulled them under this time. Down they went in a tangle of legs and arms. One of her knees smashed into his side, and he sucked in half a mouthful of salt water. The dog’s toenails scratched Max’s neck as Lola got him into a head-lock, smashing the side of his face into the tops of her breasts, and clinging to him as if he were a buoy. He pried Lola’s arm from around his head, kicked to the surface, and spit out the water in his mouth. “Relax,” he said into her panic-stricken face so close to his own. Their noses touched and they shared the same breath. “Relax or you’ll drown.”

Her mouth opened and shut, working to get the words out, but only a sob came from her chest.

“I can get us all to the back of the boat, but you have to relax and let me do the work. No more grabbing me and pushing me under. And keep your knee out of my chest.” He thought a second, then added, “If you knee my cojones, you’re on your own.”

She nodded and he handed her the dog. She held Baby’s head next to hers as Max wrapped his arm over her shoulder and across her breasts. He towed them toward the swimming platform, but she didn’t make it easy for him. She kicked him twice in the shins when she should have done as he’d said and let him do all the work. She twisted her head around to see where they were going and the top of her head bumped his bruised cheek. He pulled her back tight against his chest as he scissor-kicked in the water. This was the absolute last time, Max vowed as he reached a hand for the swimming deck, that he would jump into the Atlantic to save an underwear model and her worthless dog.

He hoisted Baby onto the back of the yacht, grabbed the boarding ladder from the platform, and pulled it down into the water. Getting up those steps was going to hurt like a son of a bitch, which was why he’d rigged the bucket and rope to bathe the day before. Lola started up first, her muscles sluggish, her grasp on the rail weak as if her hands were numb, which Max figured they were because she was hyperventilating real bad now. Her dress clung to her thighs and water ran down her smooth legs and the backs of her knees. He placed one of his hands on the curve of her wet behind and pushed.

Max went up after her, and he’d been right. Climbing the ladder hurt like hellfire. He lay on the platform, his pants soggy, and concentrated on slowing his breathing and controlling the pain in his side.

Lola sat next to him, clutching Baby to her chest, crying and gasping for air. If she wasn’t careful, she would pass out cold, which was one way to cure hyperventilation, he supposed. But there were other, less dramatic ways.

“Concentrate on taking slow easy breaths through your nose.” He wiped salt water from his face and he pushed himself to a sitting position. Other than a paper bag or passing out, taking slow breaths through your nose was the only way he knew to ease hyperventilation.

She looked at him as if he were speaking a mystery language, her brown eyes were wide with fear. “I can-can-can’t catch my br-breath.”

“Lay down with your arms above your head,” he instructed, and moved to give her room. When she stretched out, he told her again, “Close your mouth and breathe slowly through your nose.”

As her dog licked her face, she nodded and sucked a huge breath into her lungs through her mouth. Max had only hyperventilated once in his life, and he knew it wasn’t all that easy to control your breathing when you felt like you couldn’t get enough air. Ocean water lapped at the platform as he straddled her hips and shoved the wet dog out of his way. The buttons on her dress had popped open to her navel and droplets of water slid from the pink lace of her bra and pooled in her deep cleavage. Her breasts heaved with each breath, and Max placed his hands on both sides of her face. Ocean water clung to her lashes, and he stared deep into her eyes.

“Close your mouth,” he reminded her, and he had to give her credit for trying.

“I’m—I’m going to—to pass out,” she gasped.

“Concentrate on breathing only through your nose.”

“Ca-can’t.”

He thought about putting his hand over her mouth, but he figured she’d accuse him of trying to kill her. “Then concentrate on this instead,” he whispered, and, against his better judgment, lowered his face to hers. He told himself this wasn’t a kiss. He was helping her, forcing her to breathe through her nose so she wouldn’t pass out.

Beneath the pressure of his mouth, he felt her tense. She sucked in one last breath and held it as he lightly pressed his lips into hers. He brushed his thumbs across her smooth cheeks. “Relax now,” he whispered against her mouth. She put her hands on his shoulders and he thought she would push him away, but she didn’t. Her big brown eyes stared into his, and in a flash, the warmth of her palms spread across his bare skin. Pure lust sped like a wildfire through his blood and tighten his groin.

Whether it was for the taste of food or drugs or rum, Max hated weakness of any kind. He didn’t like to admit to having any weakness at all, but if he did have one, this was it. He had a weakness for the taste of a woman’s mouth and the feel of her face held within his hands. The catch in her voice, and the smell of her skin and hair.

Her lips parted as if she would speak.

“Breathe through your nose,” he reminded her, and his lips brushed against hers as he spoke. She tasted of sunshine and salt water and pure heaven. Women were such a mystery to him. They were illogical and often contrary to the point of being irrational, and yet there were times he craved the sound of their twisted logic. Just as there were times that he definitely craved the touch of their flesh beneath his hands and mouth and body. No doubt about it, a woman’s satiny places and warm curves were an intoxicating weakness, but one he’d always managed to control. He would control it this time, too.

“Max?”

“Hmm.”

“You’re not kissing me, are you?”

Max lifted his head and looked down into Lola’s face. He saw confusion in the slant of her brow, and alarm in her clear brown eyes, but not a trace of the same lust that beat low in his belly and had turned him half hard.

“No,” he said as he sat back on his heels. “If I were kissing you, you’d know it.”

“Good, because I don’t want you to get any ideas about me and you.”

“What ideas are those?” he asked, even though he guessed he already knew.

She sat up and pulled her feet beneath her. An ocean breeze picked up several strands of her drying hair. “I appreciate you saving Baby, but you and I will never become romantically involved.” She shook her head. “Never.”

There it was. A cold slap that cooled the warmth in his blood. The reminder that good old Max was good enough to save her butt, but not good enough to kiss her lips. At least Lola was honest about it.

“Honey, don’t flatter yourself,” he said as he put his hands on his thighs and stood. His ribs ached, and the cut on his forehead stung. “I don’t get romantically involved with anyone. Not even for you.”

* * *

Jumping in after Baby, Lola had lost her binoculars and signaling mirror in the Atlantic. And she wasn’t sure, but she thought she may have hurt Max’s feelings, too. She sat on the aft deck, huddled beneath a wool blanket he’d thrown at her. Waves slapped against the sides of the yacht as it rode the ocean current. The morning sun touched her cheeks and bounced off the white walls of the Dora Mae.

“I am grateful to you for saving Baby,” she said as she raised one hand to shield her eyes. Her dog’s wet fur tickled her chest and she hugged his shaking little body.

Without acknowledging her in any way, Max unpinned the wet Ace bandages around his chest.

“And me, too.” She’d never been a strong swimmer. Though, under normal circumstances, she was certainly competent enough to have made it to the back of the boat, but the thought of Baby drowning, scared and helpless, of him sliding beneath the waves as his little lungs filled with water, had stolen her breath, and she wasn’t so certain that she wouldn’t have drowned right along with her dog. And even if she had managed to get back to the swimming platform, Baby would certainly be dead if Max hadn’t dived in and saved him. She was pretty sure she’d insulted him, and after what he’d just done for her, she owed him more than that. “I’m sorry I insinuated that you were using the situation to kiss me.”

Finally he glanced up and tossed the bandage on the seat next to her. “The next time you hyperventilate, I’m just going to let you pass out.”

Yep, she’d insulted him and hurt his feelings. Or rather, what passed for his feelings, because she wasn’t certain he had normal human emotions. She lowered her hand and looked down at the wool blanket pooled in her lap. She didn’t want to think of Max as having normal human emotions. She didn’t want to think of him as a person. He was responsible for the current situation, and he was responsible for putting her and Baby into danger. If it wasn’t for Max, Baby wouldn’t be on the Dora Mae, and he wouldn’t have fallen overboard.

The dog wiggled out of Lola’s grasp and fought his way through the folds of the blanket. He jumped to the deck, shook once, then moved to stand by Max’s left foot. For once, he didn’t bark.

As she’d lain beneath Max on the swimming platform, trying to catch her breath, Lola had been so sure he’d been about to kiss her. She’d felt the heat of his lips and seen the desire in his eyes, and she was old enough, and been around too many men, not to know the signs.

Okay, maybe she’d been wrong this time. He’d obviously been trying to help her breathe, and she felt a little silly and embarrassed for misunderstanding him. She raised her gaze up Max’s long legs to his fingers tugging at his button fly. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his pants and shoved them down his hips and thighs. “I’m sorry I misunderstood what you were trying to do. I don’t know what was—”

“Forget about it,” he interrupted, his wet boxer briefs clinging to him like a second skin. Lola turned her gaze away, but not before getting an eyeful. A big eyeful that almost had her doing a double-take. “Tell me something. What were you doing vacationing all by yourself on Dolphin Cay?” he asked, and she got the feeling he wanted the subject changed as badly as she did.

“Why?”

He hung his wet pants over the side of the boat. “Just curious.”

“I wanted to get away for a few days,” she said, which was basically the truth.

“To Dolphin Cay?”

She quickly looked up into his eyes and kept her gaze there, afraid to look below his shoulders. Afraid he’d whip off those boxers. “Right.”

“I’d have thought a girl like you would rather spend time at Club Med, or...” He paused and ran his hands over his head from front to back, pushing water from his black hair. Clear droplets slid down the sides of his neck. “What is that other swank place there on Nassau?”

“The Ocean Club,” she provided. She’d spent a few weeks there a few summers ago.

“Yeah, that’s it. So what were you doing on a tiny island with just your dog for company?”

“I didn’t want to be around people.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want people pointing and staring at me.”

“Aren’t you used to that by now? A famous model like you, I bet you get stared at a lot.”

This was different. “It’s been different since those photographs appeared on the net.”

“What photographs?”

Was it possible that there was someone on the planet who hadn’t seen those embarrassing photos of her on the Internet? Hadn’t heard about them? Beyond the tabloids, the court case had made national news.

“What photographs?” he asked again.

She didn’t want to talk about it with Max. This morning she didn’t hate him as she had the night before, and he’d probably say something to make her mad, like she’d been an idiot to let Sam take the pictures and she deserved what she got. Which might be true, but she’d been very much in love with Sam, and she’d trusted him. Or Max might say that she was only upset because she hadn’t been paid for the photographs. The last opinion had been floated about by Sam’s attorney and made her see red when she heard it.

Max grabbed the fishing chair and took a seat. He folded his arms across his chest and slouched a little as if he were prepared to wait all day for her answer.

Black stubble shadowed the lower half of his face where it wasn’t bruised. The strips closing the cut on his forehead appeared very white against his tan skin, and he looked like such a disreputable pirate, she decided it didn’t matter what she told him because he’d probably done a lot worse than trust someone with naked photos.

“Because of Sam’s Internet site,” she said.

“Who’s Sam?”

“My ex-fiancé.” She pushed the itchy blanket off her shoulders and it pooled at her hips. “He set up an Internet site with some very embarrassing photographs of me.”

“Naked photos?”

“Yes.”

“Close-ups?”

“Close enough.” The ocean breeze ruffled the front of her dress and brushed across her chest and stomach. She glanced down at the material, open to her navel, and began the work of buttoning it back up.

“What was so embarrassing?”

“Never mind.”

“Were you doing the mattress mambo?”

“The what?”

“Getting it on. Doing the nasty. Having sex.”

She glanced up into his blue eyes looking back into hers, then she returned her attention to the buttons. “No.” Her fingers were cold and getting the buttons through the wet material was difficult.

“Were you flying solo?”

It took her a few seconds to figure out what he was asking. “No,” she answered.

“Giving him—”

“No!” she interrupted before his one-track mind traveled any deeper into the gutter. “I was riding a bike and kissing a Tootsie Roll.”

He was silent, and when he spoke, he sounded very disappointed. “That’s it?”

“Yes.” She glanced up into his face once more, and this time caught him watching the progress of her fingers as she pushed the last button through the last hole. She quickly dropped her hand to her side. Then as if he had all day, he raised his gaze up her throat, past her chin and mouth, to her eyes.

His voice dropped lower when he asked, “Alone or with your fiancé?”

“Alone.” She reached for the ends of the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, shielding herself from his gaze. Again, she was surprised that his gaze didn’t feel as creepy or repulsive as she thought it should have been. In fact, she didn’t feel repulsed at all. More in the neighborhood of unnerved. Unnerved by the intense blue and the glimpse of hunger she saw in his eyes. Unnerved that it tightened her chest a little. Then he blinked, and the desire was gone as if it had never been there at all.

“That doesn’t sound so terrible,” he said as if he’d hadn’t been caught staring at her breasts.

He acted so nonchalant, she wondered why she suddenly felt a little flustered. It wasn’t as if this were the first time a man had seen her bra, for goodness’ sakes. At one time, she’d had the most photographed cleavage in the world. “It was a king-sized Tootsie Roll,” she explained.

He raised a brow as if to say, So what?

“And I wasn’t really kissing it.”

“What were you really doing?”

She told him because, while it was embarrassing, it wasn’t exactly a secret. And if he was dying to know, he could pay twenty-five bucks like the rest of the world and see it on the Internet, anyway. Once they were rescued, that is. “My Linda Lovelace impression.”

The corners of his mouth slid into a purely masculine smile that reached his blue eyes. “You do a Linda Lovelace impression?”

“Don’t tell me. You want the details?”

“God, yes,” he said on a rush of air.

She laughed. “Forget it.”

“What if I ask real nice?”

“No.”

“You’re no fun, Lolita,” he said, using the Spanish form of her name.

Baby jumped up on the seat next to her, and she took his soaked collar from around his neck.

“What’s the name of this website?”

“Why, are you going to pay twenty-five bucks to see those pictures?”

“You’ve got me curious about the Tootsie Roll.” He shrugged. “Would it bother you if I did?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

She couldn’t believe he was asking such an obvious question. “Well, duh. I’m naked.”

“You’ve posed naked before.”

“Not completely.” The closest she’d come was during her days working for a major line of cosmetics. She’d been hired to endorse their skin-care products. In the straight-on shot, she’d worn nothing but scented body oil. She’d posed against a red background, her ankles crossed and her knees raised just enough to hide her pubic area. From behind, a pair of male hands covered her breasts. She’d starved herself for a week before that shoot. When it had wrapped, she’d hit the Wendy’s drive-through window and ordered a number two Biggie-sized.

“I’d say getting photographed in lacy bras and panties is pretty damn close.”

It wasn’t the same thing, and she didn’t know why she should explain it to him, but she tried anyway. “Whenever I agreed to do any shoot, I had control of my image. It was always my choice. Lolarevealed.com was not my choice. It is a violation not only of my body, but of my trust. I never would have chosen to have those pictures published anywhere, especially on a porno site on the Internet. My parents were mortified.” And she never would have chosen to see her image at the height of her sickness. When she’d been out of control, and every single waking and sleeping moment had been consumed with thoughts of food and guilt. Of obsessively clipping recipes she never tried and buying cookbooks she never used. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

He grasped his side, took a deep breath, and stood. “I understand a little about having no control.” He grabbed the fishing pole he’d used yesterday. “No control over what happens in your life or how others see you. And I also know a bit about broken trust and getting screwed.”

“By who?” Perhaps he did understand, but it was hard to see the overpowering man standing at such ease in front of her in his boxer briefs upset by anything. Looking at him, with his big neck and broad shoulders, she couldn’t imagine anyone brave enough to cross him. “Who, Max?” she prompted.

“Not a who.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, then returned his gaze to the tangled line in his hands. “A what.”

She could have told him he had the wrong kind of tackle for drift fishing, but at the moment she was more interested in what he had to say than in what he was doing. When he didn’t provide anything further, she asked, “Then what?” When he still didn’t expand, she sighed. “Come on, Max. I told you about the Tootsie Roll incident.”

He glanced at her, then returned his gaze to his lure. “Several years ago I was ‘retired’ from the Navy,” he began as he untangled line from the barbed hooks. “During my career, I’d pissed off a few high-ranking officials, and when one of them was appointed secretary of the Navy, he wanted me gone. So it was sayonara, Max.”

“What did you do?”

He shrugged his bare shoulders. “I didn’t always play by the rules,” he said, which told her nothing. “I did what it took to complete a mission, and for that I had a choice of retirement or federal prison.”

Okay, not exactly nothing. “Prison? What was the charge?”

“Conspiracy. At that time, I was part of the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group.” He paused and looked at her as if she might have a clue what that meant, she didn’t. “DEVGRU is a counterterrorism, intelligence, and national security unit. We also created and tested weapons, and it seems I conspired with a private contractor to defraud the United States government out of thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“How?”

“By charging them for bogus assault weapons.”

Since she was dying to know, she decided there was no harm in asking, “Did you do it?”

“Right,” he snorted, and dropped the lure in his hands. “If I wanted to hang my ass out there for the government to chew on, I’d make sure it was for a hell of a lot more money than thirty-five grand.” He moved to the side of the yacht, brought the tip of the pole behind him, and snapped it forward. He cast so far out, Lola lost sight of the lure before it dropped into the Atlantic. “All thirty-five grand will get you these days is a decent car, and a decent car isn’t worth prison time.”

“What would be worth prison time? A Ferrari?”

He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah.”

She smiled. “What took you so long to answer?”

“A Ferrari deserves some serious consideration.”

“That’s true,” she laughed. “Did you get a lawyer and fight it?”

“Yes, but when the evidence the government has against you is classified and you and your lawyer don’t have the proper clearance to view the material, you’re screwed, blued, and tattooed.”

Standing with his profile to her, his eyelids lowered against the bright Caribbean sunlight, the carved line of his jaw and chin softened with black stubble, he almost seemed like a real person with real problems. And it almost felt as if they were having a real conversation, too, and since they seemed to be communicating with each other like real people, she figured he’d want to know he was fishing with the wrong lure. “You’re not going to catch anything with that tackle,” she told him.

He glanced across his shoulder at her, the breeze drying the ends of his hair. “I think I will.”

The blanket itched the backs of her thighs and she stood. “Whoever used that pole before you rigged it with a spinner. You’ll need a jig. Something that will attract deepwater fish. You might get lucky, but I don’t think you will.”

He stared at her for several seconds before he said, “Is that right?”

Okay, maybe he didn’t want to know. Or perhaps he was like a lot of men when it came to taking any sort of advice from a woman. “Yes.”

His black brows lowered over his eyes and he shoved the end of the pole into the holder on the arm of the chair. “Maybe you should stick to what you know. Modeling undies.”

Yep, he was like a lot of men. So much for conversing like real people. “You’d be surprised at all the things I know. Before my grandfather died, he owned a fishing charter business in Charleston, and when I went to see him in the summers, I’d go out with him sometimes.” She tossed the blanket onto the seat. “And I don’t model anymore. I design lingerie. Have you ever heard of Lola Wear, Inc.?”

“Nope,” he said as he sat.

“It’s my company,” she informed him with no small measure of pride. His gaze was perfectly bland and so she elaborated a bit. “I started it with a few bras I designed myself, and now I employ hundreds of people.”

“So now you make undies instead of modeling them?”

“That’s right. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of my business.”

He laced his hands behind his head and yawned. The muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched, and dark hair shadowed his armpits. “You make anything edible?”

“No!”

“Then it’s not so surprising,” he said. “I wouldn’t know a designer label unless I choked on it.”