This happened a lot. Gail smiled down on the pudgy little lady with short white curls. “I have my PhD in literature. I’m an associate professor at a small liberal arts college.”

Lana smiled. “How perfectly lovely!”

“Just great,” Jesse said under his breath.

That was it. Gail had reached the limit of her patience with this guy. He might be sexy as hell, but that had already been canceled out by the fact that he cursed at inanimate objects, had the emotional maturity of a Little Leaguer, scoffed at her profession and walked around sporting a near-permanent scowl. The man couldn’t be much older than Gail, but somewhere along the line he’d become a curmudgeon. How sad for him.

Gail cocked her head to the side and glared at Jesse, and he met her gaze straight on, unabashed. She scrutinized his face for flaws—there were none—while he studied her, one dark brow arched over one of his dusky blue eyes. The two of them remained in this standoff for several seconds, while Gail wondered about a few things. Why was Jesse here, anyway? Why did he feel the need to introduce everyone? Did he fancy himself some kind of rude one-man island-greeting committee? And where was the tour guide?

Suddenly, Jesse’s expression changed. The curiosity disappeared, replaced by a calm determination. Gail knew he was going to say something to her. She had a feeling it would be something important.

“Cash or credit?” he asked.

HOLY HELL, WHAT A MESS this was shaping up to be.

Beaverdale Gail knew far more about Hemingway than he did, which wasn’t much of a shocker considering she had a PhD in American Literature and Jesse’s only qualification was that he was a nautical-suspense author filling in for a flighty ex-sister-in-law who’d once again been summoned to traffic court.

It occurred to Jesse that if he had any hope of making that extended deadline in two weeks, he’d have to find a way to stop anyone else from asking for more favors. Maybe it was time for one of his deadline lockdowns: disconnect the phone, unplug the DSL and lock all his doors and windows.

The little tour group had come to one of their designated stops, 328 Greene Street, the site of the original Sloppy Joe’s Bar and Grill. Jesse explained that it was once a ramshackle establishment run by Ernest Hemingway’s fishing and carousing pal, Joe Russell, and went into his summary of Hemingway’s legendary drinking. “He had a tendency to get into trouble when he’d had a few too many,” Jesse said. “He had his famous fistfight with the poet Wallace Stevens here.”

“Actually,” Gail cut in, speaking more to the Purdys than him, “Hemingway was at home that evening, completely sober, when his sister told him that Stevens was at a house party claiming that Hemingway was a horrible writer. Ernest was so angry he drove to the house on Waddell Street and pummeled Stevens into a bloody heap on the floor. The poet was hospitalized and had to be fed through a straw for days.”

“Fascinating,” Lana Purdy said.

Jesse stared at the professor in wonder. Clearly, she had a lot of free time on her hands back in Beaverdale. But Jesse was the local. He was the tour guide here. He may have gotten that one detail wrong, but he had a whole arsenal of useless Hemingway minutiae at his disposal and he wasn’t afraid to use it.

He turned to Lana Purdy, who seemed to be legitimately interested in all this garbage, bless her soul. “Intriguingly enough,” Jesse began, the sarcasm dripping from his tone, “Wallace Stevens wasn’t even a famous poet at the time. He was still making his living—”

“Selling insurance,” Gail said. She slowly raised her gentle brown eyes to Jesse’s. “But you were right about Ernest often getting into trouble here. He met up with his third wife on a barstool at Sloppy Joe’s.” She smiled a smile so slight that he could have missed it if he weren’t paying close attention. “It was love at first sight for both of them,” she added.

Jesse laughed hard at her typical female delusion. Gail had romanticized what was essentially a sexual sting operation, not unlike the one that had snagged him. “I’m not sure about that, Professor Gail,” he said, still chuckling. “It was garden-variety entrapment. The chick ambushed him, actually paying the bartender twenty bucks to introduce her to the very married Hemingway.”

Gail raised her chin. “I take it you don’t believe in love at first sight?”

Jesse smiled kindly at her. “I believe in criminal background checks, Professor. And credit reports and not chucking the God-given capacities of my frontal lobe just to get me some—” Jesse stopped himself, suddenly remembering that Dr. and Mrs. Purdy were hanging on his every word. “Just to spend time with a pretty woman.”

Gail made a dismissive clicking sound at the back of her tongue and rolled her eyes. It reminded Jesse of a thirteen-year-old being told to clean her room. She turned on her heel and started walking.

They continued their stroll through Old Town at senior-citizen speed, passing French pastry shops and sidewalk eateries and art galleries. Jesse didn’t mind the slow pace because it gave him plenty of time to watch Dr. Gail walk. As he spoke about the publishing projects Hemingway worked on while living in Key West, Jesse studied Gail’s appearance and tried to decide why, exactly, he found the woman so damn alluring. She wore a preppy cotton skirt that hit just above her cute knees, a simple tailored sleeveless blouse and a pair of sensible sandals. Her hair was back in a ponytail. She wore very little makeup. And she was lugging around a shoulder bag big enough to stuff a corpse in.

For the life of him, Jesse couldn’t figure out why he found that unremarkable getup so provocative. Maybe living here most of his life had made him immune to tight spandex minis and cleavage-enhancing halter tops. Maybe his imagination was getting the best of him again, deciding that beneath the professor’s old-school exterior was something untamed, something deliciously and thoroughly…well…wild.

“Actually,” Gail said, correcting what had apparently been yet another of his tour-related inaccuracies, “To Have and Have Not was a character study of Key West locals, but it was also a commentary on the distribution of wealth in this country during the Depression.”

“Fascinating!” Lana said.

“I’ll tell you what’s fascinating,” Dr. Purdy said, marking the first time he’d opened his mouth since the tour began. “How the hell could a man as pickled as Hemingway write his own name, let alone a whole slew of novels?”

Jesse decided it was the perfect time to discuss Hemingway’s creative process, but Gail beat him to it.

“He did most of his work in the first half of the day, between eight and one, when the air was at its coolest—and before he started drinking,” she said.

Jesse jumped in. “He usually wrote in the studio he kept on the second floor of the pool house, which we’ll see when we get back to the Hemingway House in just a few minutes.”

Gail’s warm brown eyes flashed at him. Obviously, she was enjoying their little battle of trivia as much as he was. Without warning, Jesse’s mind traveled to that small liberal arts college she mentioned, where she stood at the front of a lecture room, skirt slit up to here and blouse unbuttoned down to there, her loose blond hair swinging as she turned her back to write something on the board. In the fantasy, Jesse’s mouth began to water as he stared at the professor’s gorgeous bottom cradled in the tight skirt. In reality, he was focused on her smooth legs and small sandaled feet, and his walking shorts were starting to tent.

He was in a heap of trouble. No way had he intended to hit on the temporary mami from next door. What the hell was going on here?

Dr. Gail was behaving like a snooty academic and he was, he knew, acting like an ass. But it didn’t seem to dampen a damn thing. Every time they looked at each other, his skin sizzled and his blood pounded. Gail was a brown-eyed, blond, buttoned-up package of female smarts and sensuality, and he was captivated. Simple as that. And though every working synapse in his brain was telling him to back away, he couldn’t help but nudge closer every opportunity he got. It was crazy. It was stupid. He knew better.

The very last thing he needed was to get involved with another woman who wanted a piece of his money and fame.

“By the way, Jesse, are there any other jobs of yours I should know about?” Gail smiled sweetly when she asked that question—no sign of sarcasm whatsoever. “Because I’m headed to the Pirate Museum tomorrow and I’m half expecting to see you employed there, too.”

Jesse’s heart stopped. She had no idea who he was. Well, of course she didn’t. He hadn’t told her, after all. They hadn’t met at a book signing. Sure, he was famous enough, but it was entirely possible that a brainiac like her didn’t read popular fiction. She might not have ever heard of J. D. Batista, author of the blockbuster “Dark Blue” suspense series set in the Florida Keys.

As if on cue, Jesse’s gaze wandered two doors down and he knew he had to act fast. He lodged himself between Gail and the huge display window of Island Books, where his face and latest release were prominently displayed.

“Shall we cross here?” he asked, placing a hand at the small of Gail’s back and pushing her toward the busy street. “Dr. and Mrs. Purdy? Would you come along, please?”

Though Gail frowned at him as though he was a madman, Jesse got the group across Duval and away from his poster-sized publicity photo. If pretty Gail didn’t know who he was, that meant all the electricity being generated between them was real. He wanted to keep it that way. Jesse couldn’t remember the last time he’d been attracted to a woman who wasn’t aware he was a local celebrity. This was too interesting to ruin now.

“Well?” Gail asked him. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

Jesse smiled at her and shrugged, making sure his body blocked her view of the bookstore as they walked. “Like most locals, I piece together a living doing a little here and a little there, but I can assure you I don’t work at the Pirate Museum.”

Gail tipped her head just a little and inspected him from stem to stern. “Hmm,” she said. “That’s a shame. I think you’d fit right in.”

Just then, Lana Purdy giggled. “I must say, this has been the perfect way to celebrate our sixtieth anniversary.”

“I’m glad,” Jesse said.

“The two of you just crack me up,” she continued, hooking her arm in her husband’s. “Watching you two flirt so outrageously reminds me of our courtship so long ago.” Lana squeezed her husband close to her side and gave him a playful kiss on the cheek. “That was such an exciting time, wasn’t it, dear? We couldn’t get enough of each other back then!”

They still had a block to go to get back to the Hemingway House, but Gail stopped walking. Jesse watched her pull the giant carryall to the front of her body and stare at Mrs. Purdy in shock. Okay, fine. The old lady was a little off base, but did Gail have to look that horrified?

“Courtship?” Gail asked, her eyes widening.

Jesse laughed. “I think you’re mistaken about that,” he told the cute old woman. “Gail and I hardly know each other.”

Lana smiled and patted Jesse’s arm. “Oooh!” she said, shimmying her shoulders daringly. “That makes it even better!”

GAIL STOOD BEHIND THE red-velvet rope that dissected Ernest Hemingway’s bedroom. She stared down at the double bed that he’d shared with his wife. Or wives. Or, technically, his mistresses prior to becoming his wives. She studied the simple white chenille bedspread and matching pillow shams, picturing what the scene would have looked like all those years ago, the covers rumpled up and soaked with sweat from unbridled—and possibly even illicit—lovemaking.

She immediately straightened, looking around the room to make sure no one had witnessed her mental debauchery. What in the world was her problem? When had she become such a slattern? Why did she have sex on the brain?

One quick glance at Jesse, and she had her answer. He stood so close to her side that the skin of her arm felt hot. Technically, she felt hot all over. She needed to get a grip. She needed a cool glass of water.

“That’s a damn small bed if you ask me,” Dr. Purdy said, the second statement he’d made all morning. “Can’t get too creative in a bed that small.”

“Oh, you!” Lana said, giggling.

Gail could see the corner of Jesse’s mouth curl up in a faint smile, and he looked everywhere but at her.