“You had sex with me and you’re going to marry her.”

“Eventually,” he agreed as he walked past her and continued to the door. There, he threw the lock and turned around to look at her again. “Did you think I didn’t have a life before you showed up on my island?”

She scowled at him, still furious, but riding a much colder rage than she had been. “No, but-”

“Did you seriously believe there’d been no other women for me since you?”

“No. Of course not.” She folded her arms over her chest and tapped the toe of one sandal against the floor.

He tipped his head to one side and studied her. Objectively, he tried to figure out just what it was about this one particular woman that got to him like no other since her. Then he dismissed that thought because it didn’t matter. “Did you ever think that I didn’t much care for the idea of you sleeping with your bigamist?”

“I didn’t do it when I was having sex with you.”

Gabe shrugged and started toward her. “And I haven’t had sex with Grace in months.”

“And that’s supposed to make it all right?” Debbie backed up as he advanced but he caught the spark in her eyes. The hitch in her breath. She was as ripe as he was.

“I didn’t owe you an explanation, Deb. Still don’t,” he reminded her, and came around the edge of the desk to grab her. “But the truth is, Grace and I made a business decision to get married.”

“Business?”

He shrugged and tightened his grip on her upper arms so she couldn’t slip away from him. “Neither one of us is interested in ‘love’ and we’d both like a family. Her family owns a cruise line…good business to have a merger.”

“Well, that’s cold,” Debbie muttered.

“No, that’s business.”

“And what’re we?”

“Good question.”

She tried, briefly, to pull free again, but after a moment or two, she simply looked up at him. “You could have warned me that she was coming. That she existed.”

“Yeah. I could have.”

“Wow.” She sighed and shook her head even as she lifted both hands to his chest to try to push him away. “That’s such a great apology. You should have that sewn on a pillow.”

He laughed. Damn it, nobody else had ever been able to make him laugh in the middle of a fight.

“I’m not apologizing for how I live my life.”

“What about to Grace?” she demanded. “You going to apologize to her?”

“No,” he said, and lifted one hand to stroke the side of her face. “She wouldn’t expect an apology.”

Debbie sucked in a breath at his touch and held it for a long moment before exhaling again. Then she batted his hand away. “She’s a damned sight more understanding than I am.”

He laughed and touched her again, dipping one finger beneath the edge of her top to stroke her bare skin. “Honey, Genghis Khan is more understanding than you.”

“Funny.” She glanced down at his hand, sliding down to cup her breast and even when she inhaled sharply, she blurted, “No way are we going to have sex again. Not with your fiancée right upstairs in your suite, so if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you might as well-”

“Shut up, Deb,” he whispered, and leaned down to kiss her. It started off slow, soft, and quickly became a kiss of hunger so raw, so basic, it stole his breath. This Gabe hadn’t counted on. This he would have avoided if he could have. But damn if she didn’t touch him in places he’d thought long since closed off.

And damn if Grace’s arrival was going to make him stop wanting Debbie. What he and Grace had was more of a business arrangement. There was no love and therefore no cheating. And besides, they weren’t engaged yet.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she said when she tore her mouth from his a moment later.

“But we are.”

She looked up at him, cupped his face between her palms and said, “Oh, yeah. We are.”

Then Gabe stopped thinking. He pulled her tank top off and tossed it to one side. She was yanking his shirt up and over his head and at the same time, running her palms over his chest, his abdomen. His body was hard and tight and he knew if he didn’t have her in the next few seconds, he would simply explode. He’d never known such a ferocious need like he did with Debbie.

Quickly, they tore off the rest of their clothes and then Gabe was lifting her, sliding everything off of his desk and sitting her on the edge of it before moving in to tear her shorts off her body.

The desktop was cold on her skin, but she was hot everywhere else. He entered her and Debbie felt her heart stop. Felt her brain click. Thoughts slide into place and she knew, bone-deep, that this was where she belonged. With this man.

And that knowledge bloomed and died with an unspoken sigh, because she also knew that she couldn’t have him. That he didn’t love her anymore. That he never would. That the woman he was planning to marry for all the wrong reasons was upstairs and just what did that make Debbie to be down here, making love with a man who belonged to someone else?

She shut down her mind because the answer to that question was just too painful. Instead, she concentrated on the feel of Gabe’s body sliding in and out of hers. On the hush of his breath, on the raging hunger ensnaring them both. Because she knew this would be the last time she would be with him. She couldn’t make love with him again, knowing that there was nothing more than lust fueling it. Couldn’t have him and know she would lose him.

“You’re thinking again,” he said, cupping one of her breasts in his palm. His thumb and forefinger tweaked her nipple and she sucked in air greedily.

“I’m stopping now,” she swore as his body plunged into hers, jolting her with a pleasure so rich, so deep, it nearly brought tears to her eyes.

“Good idea,” he whispered, and kissed her, taking her mouth with a fierce passion that wrapped itself around her in a silken net of desire.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted her legs to hook around his hips and held on while the man of her dreams, the man from her past, made her present dissolve into a mass of shimmering light and color.

Nine

“This has got to stop happening,” Debbie muttered as she snatched up her panties and stepped into them.

“Yeah?” Gabe laughed, reached over to slap her behind and laughed again when she shouted at him. “Why’s that?”

She swung her hair back and out of her eyes and fixed him with a glare that should have set fire to him-if he’d had the slightest sense of decency! Naturally, he didn’t.

Grabbing her shorts, she tugged them on, then looked around for her bra. While she searched, she sent a quick glance at Gabe. “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Pretend everything’s great. Normal. That we’re just an average couple and you don’t have an almost-fiancée right upstairs.”

His features went cold and stiff as he picked up her bra off the back of his desk chair and tossed it to her. “We’re not a normal couple, Deb. And the fact that Grace is here has nothing to do with what’s between us.”

She slipped into the bra and tried to understand how he could go from blazing hot to Arctic ice in a heartbeat. Tossing her hair back from her face, she grabbed her tank top and didn’t speak again until she was wearing it. “That’s just so much bull, Gabe. You know it and so do I. Something’s going on here between us and-”

“The only thing going on between us is sex. Amazingly good sex, but that’s it.”

His words slapped at her and stung like tiny darts tossed at her heart. How was this possible? How could he look right at her and lie so easily. Because he was lying. She knew it. She felt it. There was more between them than he wanted to admit. Otherwise, she never would have fallen in love with him all over again.

But if he didn’t acknowledge their connection, she had nothing.

“I can’t do this, Gabe. I can’t stay with you, sleep with you all the time knowing that it means nothing to you.”

“I didn’t say that,” he allowed quietly. “What I’m saying is that what we’ve got in bed together has nothing to do with my life.”

“Oh, well then. Okay.” She staggered back a step and stared at him as though she’d never seen him before. And this Gabe, she really hadn’t seen. Didn’t know. “As long as your life doesn’t get disturbed then all is right with the world?” While she talked, her temper spiked and burned as though her chest was on fire.

“Pretty much,” he said, and had the nerve to smile at her.

“You really are a bastard, aren’t you?”

“Just figuring that out?” he said with a smile.

She took a long, deep breath and counted to ten-okay, five-before trusting herself to speak again. If all that they had was what she was feeling, then Debbie was finished.

“That does it, Mr. Island-Owner-King-of-the-World. I want you to give me back my passport and get me the hell off this island.”

He looked at her for a long minute and Debbie realized she couldn’t read any of what he was feeling in his eyes. And that hurt more than anything.

“You don’t always get what you want, Deb. You should know that. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get back to work.”

Dismissing her, he bent to pick up the papers and things he’d tossed off his desktop.

Debbie, though, wasn’t going to be ignored anymore. She stomped around to the far side of his desk, bent and grabbed up a stack of papers and slammed them down onto his desk with a slap of her hand. “There. Nice and tidy. So you have room to talk to me. You have time to tell me why, if you feel nothing for me, you’re not working harder to get me off this island.”

“Don’t get it, do you?” He leaned in close until his mouth was just a breath away from hers. His gaze speared into hers and she felt a chill beneath the fury she saw pulsing there. “This was never about protecting you. This was about punishing you.”

Punishing…a light began to dawn and Debbie didn’t much care for it. Could she really have been so wrong about him? Did he really feel nothing more for her than a lingering fury over a decade-old injury?

“Ten years ago,” he said, bringing life to her thoughts, “you used me up and cut me loose. Well, payback’s a bitch, babe. And this time it’s your turn.”

She shook her head and stepped back from him, unwilling to be so close to the hard glint in his eyes. “You’re doing all of this, keeping me here, holding me captive, just to hurt me?”

“You expected different?” he asked, standing now and shoving both hands into the pockets of his white slacks. He laughed shortly and shook his head. “Hell, if that jewel thief thing hadn’t come up, I’d have found another way to keep you here just to make sure I got a little of my own back. God, Debbie, did you really think I was carrying some torch for you? That this would all end up in some Hollywood version of happily-ever-after?”

“No,” she said, though damned if a part of her hadn’t actually been hoping for something along those lines, despite the fact that he’d claimed to not return what she felt for him. To protect herself, she lifted her chin and lied. “I suppose you thought I was going to fall madly in love?”

“Didn’t you?” he asked slyly.

Yes, she thought, but said only, “Oh, please.”

He nodded, staring at her as if trying to read the thoughts racing through her mind. Finally he smiled. “Nice try, babe. But you forget, I’ve seen you in love. I know what it looks like on you.”

Debbie squirmed uncomfortably. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And from where I’m standing it seems you’ve gone to a whole lot of trouble over a woman you claim to care nothing about.”

He scowled at her, then turned his back to stare out the window at the resort he’d built. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Deb. I’ve told you that before, too.”

“No,” she said, weary now, right down to the bone. What had begun a few weeks ago as a dream escape had slowly turned into the vacation of the damned. “But you might want to try to explain it to yourself, Gabe. Maybe ask yourself what you get out of this.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I get the satisfaction of keeping you here against your will.”

Her jaw dropped. “Once they catch that jewel thief, I’m out of here.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. This is my island, Deb.” He turned to face her. “If I say you don’t leave, trust me on this, you don’t leave.”

“Gabe, I have a life. A business. You can’t keep me here indefinitely.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“You’re not some feudal lord, Gabe.”

“Might as well be, as far as you’re concerned.”

Debbie shook her head. “So, me being suspected of being a felon really worked out well for you, then.”

“I’d have thought of something else if that hadn’t happened along.”