CANNING THE SURFACE of the water for a sign of Mitchell, Kate absently brushed sand off her legs and reached for one of the robes they’d brought from their room. The night was balmy, but she was beginning to shiver in her wet bathing suit, more from alarm than cold.

When they left the casino, Mitchell had offered to take her to Maho Bay so she could spend her winnings in one of the high-fashion boutiques that stayed open to cater to the nightclub and casino crowd. Kate had suggested they go back to the hotel and go swimming instead. In her mind she’d envisioned lazily floating in four feet of buoyant salt water for a half hour. They’d done that, but when Kate was ready to get out, Mitchell said he was going to swim a little longer for some exercise.

As she discovered as soon as he kicked off, when Mitchell swam for exercise he did it with ferocious force, driving his body through the water at maximum speed, as if demons were closing in on him. At first, Kate watched him in admiration, but a few minutes after she lost sight of him completely, she began to worry about his safety.

Trying not to let her concern escalate to panic, Kate continued to search the moonlit water as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her robe and tied the belt. Finally, she made out a speck on the surface and sank onto a lounge chair, weak with relief.

Freed at last of her worry about Mitchell, she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Tipping her head back, she gazed at a black satin sky encrusted with shimmering stars while a profound sense of her father’s presence slowly swept over her. It wrapped around her, warm and strong, enfolding her in sweetness, as if it were a hug—a fierce celestial hug. Kate reveled in the sensation, clinging to it while tears stung her eyes and slid down her cheeks.

Finally she reached up to brush them away and glanced at the water to check on Mitchell. He was swimming in a straight line directly toward her, his shoulders and arms visible above the surface.

And in that moment, she suddenly understood. She understood it all, just as surely as if her father were sitting next to her on the chaise longue watching Mitchell, too, and smiling.

This was meant to be; they were meant to be. That’s why she’d felt such an inexplicable sense of magical closeness with him from the very first. Mitchell’s poignant admission came back to her: I felt all the same things you did last night. They had been destined to meet and fall in love, but capricious fate wasn’t pulling the strings.

Wiping away another tear, Kate looked up at the sky and whispered, “Thank you, Daddy. I miss you.”

The sensation of his nearness had lessened but was still there a few minutes later when Mitchell stood up in the water. Raking his hands through the sides of his hair, he waded out of the sea with water streaming from his powerful shoulders and long legs, his dark swimming trunks clinging to his muscular thighs. He was so outrageously beautiful that Kate shook her head. Smiling, she glanced back up at the stars and silently said, What on earth were you thinking when you decided I deserve someone this good-looking?

Mitchell reached for the towel she held out to him and suppressed the urge to rumple the springy wet curls framing her face and tumbling over her shoulders. With her hair like that, she looked delectable; in fact, she looked exactly the way she had when he first met her in the restaurant. “Hi,” he said with a smile.

She smiled back at him. “How was Jamaica? Did you pass any sharks on the way?”

Grinning at her quip, Mitchell started toweling off his chest and arms. “I’ve been lying around down here for a week,” he explained. “I needed the exercise.”

“Do you normally swim for exercise?”

He shook his head. “A man who works for me is a martial arts specialist. I get most of my exercise working out with him.”

“What sort of work does he do for you?”

“He’s my driver.”

“Your driver,” Kate repeated, thinking that over. “As well as your bodyguard?”

“He thinks he is,” Mitchell replied, bending over to dry his legs.

Kate waited until he tossed his towel aside and picked up a robe before she asked the question that was bothering her a little: “What sort of business are you in that you need a bodyguard?”

“In Europe, it’s fairly common for drivers to be bodyguards.”

Either by accident or intent, he hadn’t told her what sort of business he was in, Kate realized, and he hadn’t mentioned a word on that subject last night either. They were sleeping together and she was falling more in love with him every passing minute. She was dying to know more about him and to understand him better. As they strolled down the beach toward the terraced steps leading up to the hotel, she said, “What sort of business are you in?”

“I’m in the business of making money,” Mitchell replied, automatically giving her the same pat answer he gave to most people who asked him that question; then he felt bad for treating her as if she were a prying stranger.

“I don’t run a business,” he clarified. “Even if I had the inclination to run one, I doubt I’d have any talent for it. I invest money in the ideas and genius of other people who do have a talent for running businesses.”

Kate shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe and considered her next question.

“How do you decide which ideas and people you should invest in?”

“I rely partly on information and partly on instinct, which amounts to making an educated guess.”

He intended that to end the conversation, Kate realized from his tone. Careful to sound as if she was making a wry observation, rather than trying to keep him talking, she said, “When someone has an instinctive knack for doing something, I think it’s called talent.”

“In my case, it’s more of an acquired skill than an actual talent.”

“How did you acquire your skill?”

He stopped walking, turned, and studied her with a mildly impatient frown. “I had a mentor—Stavros Konstantatos.”

Kate’s eyes widened at the mention of the reclusive, self-made Greek tycoon who was reportedly one of the richest men in the world. “Are we talking about the man who lives on an island with armed guards posted everywhere and who had his yacht equipped with torpedoes?”

Mitchell’s resistance dissolved into amusement. “Not torpedoes, antiaircraft guns,” he said, lacing his fingers through hers and holding her hand as they started walking again. “His son, Alex, was my roommate at boarding school. One year, Alex begged me to spend the winter holiday with him on their island so that he wouldn’t ‘die of boredom alone’ while he listened to Stavros talk about business at every meal. Like most wealthy kids, Alex wasn’t interested in making money, he was interested in spending it.”

Kate noticed that Mitchell seemed to have excluded himself from the category of “wealthy kid,” but she didn’t attempt to pursue that observation. Instead she said conversationally, “Did Alex’s father really talk about business at every meal?”

“Stavros talked about business incessantly,” Mitchell said with a chuckle, “but I wasn’t bored, I was mesmerized. He realized it, of course, and I think he hoped my attitude would rub off on Alex. The next holiday, he insisted Alex bring me back to the island. I saw a lot of Stavros after that. Over the years, he took me under his wing and coached and prodded me until I grasped his concepts. When I finished college, he gave me a job working directly under him, so that he could ‘complete my education.’ Eventually he started letting me make my own deals and share in the profits—or losses.”

“What a wonderful man and what a lucky experience for you.”

Mitchell nodded in agreement. He didn’t mention that Stavros’s wife had repeatedly tried to seduce him from the time he was seventeen. Nor did he mention any of his earlier, less “wonderful” experiences with some of his classmates’ wealthy families—the pleasant, well-bred parents he met when their sons invited Mitchell home to spend a holiday with them. They asked him the same dreaded questions parents always asked—questions about where he was from and who his relatives were. Once they realized he was a total outsider without family or connections, they frequently treated him like an opportunist who was trying to insinuate himself into their sons’ lives for reasons they regarded as highly suspicious and undesirable.

Some of them went so far as to call the administrators of the boarding schools and complain about the questionable caliber of the boy their sons were associating with. In reply they were told that Mitchell was a “scholarship student” and a “gifted athlete” who was of special interest to a very influential American foundation. Mitchell learned about that from the sons of the complaining parents.

Walking beside Kate, he tried to recall how many times during his boarding school years he’d been asked by a classmate’s family if he was any relation to the “Chicago Wyatts.” How ironic that he’d answered no all those times. Which suddenly explained why he could barely force himself now to acknowledge that the answer was actually yes.