He wrote his articles. He played basketball with Steve and Tony, attempting to lose himself in the organized chaos of a good, hard, vicious game. It worked.

Until one day during a particularly cathartic game when he happened to glance across the street and once again caught Rachel watching him from her studio window.

With sweat running down his chest and his heart pumping, time stopped for one long beat. Then Rachel turned away, breaking the spell, and Ben went back to some serious ass-kicking. But nearly a month into this caretaking thing, he almost wished Asada would make his move so he could be caught, so Ben could be released from this hell, so he could get on a plane and put ten thousand miles between him and South Village.

But Asada didn’t make his move. No one did. Which left Ben good and stuck until further notice.


MELANIE HAD IT ALL. She was quite certain of it. She had a fab job buying clothes for five linked upscale boutiques in Santa Barbara. She had a brand-new red Miata that had put a serious dent in her retirement fund but drove like a sweetie. If she chose, she could have a date every night of the week and her mirror assured her she had the best shape of any thirty-three-year-old around.

Too bad her boss was a jerk, the guys out there were all cheap pricks and, in the past few years, she’d had to pay big bucks for a local surgeon to keep her beauty in check.

Ignoring the speed limit, she headed out of Santa Barbara, making the two-hour trek to South Village for the first time in a month, since right before Rachel had gotten out of the hospital.

Cranking the music, she puffed from the one cigarette a day she allowed herself-not because it was bad for her, hell everything good was bad for her-but because she was getting lines around her mouth from holding the cigarette between her lips. Couldn’t have that, not when surgery cost so much.

Slowly the music started to grate on her and her smile faded, because really, what did she have to smile about? Justin had turned out to be married. After an attack of conscience, he’d broken it off with her, which really bit the big one. No one broke up with her. She did all the breaking up, thank you very much.

Ah, well…he’d been too quick with the trigger in bed anyway.

The truth was, she’d be out on the town tonight, on the prowl, if it hadn’t been that late-night message from Rachel a couple of weeks back. She didn’t know why, but in a far too rare moment, her baby sister needed her. God, she loved to be needed. So much. And that it was Rachel doing the needing filled a void deep inside her.

She’d have come sooner, but last weekend had been the boat races, and the weekend before that a fashion show she couldn’t miss, and besides every time she called, Emily kept saying everything was good. But it was time to get down there now and see her sister, the only person in Mel’s entire universe who always accepted her, no matter what stupid stunts she pulled.

And there had been some pretty stupid ones.

Parking in South Village was always a challenge and today, a Friday, was no exception. She cruised the block three times before finding a spot within walking distance-which couldn’t be that far given her high-heeled sandals. Why in the world Rachel chose to live on one of the busiest pedestrian blocks in the entire state was beyond her.

Mel wanted wide-open spaces and the beach. And unlimited parking so she could wear pretty shoes that were invariably uncomfortable.

Once out of the car, she paused to toss back her hair and glanced into the side-view mirror to touch up her lipstick. She also practiced a smile to lay on Rachel, a smile that wouldn’t reveal her shock at her sister’s appearance.

That had been the hardest part at the hospital. She hadn’t been prepared to see her baby sister lying so still in the hospital bed, a woman who’d never been still in her life. But worse than that had been the casts, the bandages, the horrible bruising and scarring.

And my God, the loss of her glorious, golden hair. Mel hadn’t been able to get past that, not until Rachel had noticed her discomfort and joked that she could always grow her hair again, but if she’d been six feet under…that would have been hard to fix.

Horrifying them both, Mel had burst into tears.

Mel lifted her chin now, determined to be as brave as her sister, who was the bravest woman she’d ever known. Then her gaze connected with the man sitting on the front steps of the refurbished firehouse. Of all the people in the world, he was the last she’d ever expected to be sitting there so quietly. Ben Asher wore basketball shorts and nothing else, looking lean, rugged and deliciously sweaty.

God, she loved lean and rugged and sweaty men, and before she could curtail it, need gushed through her. Ben Asher was everything she enjoyed in a man-tall, dark and gorgeous. Not model gorgeous, but a rough-and-tumble magnificent, a man who didn’t mind getting down and dirty. He was a rebel at heart, a man who knew what he wanted and knew how to get it.

He sure looked mighty fine. Young enough to still be a hard body, old enough to know what to do with it. He was propped back on his elbows, biceps and forearms nicely delineated. His damp chest was dusted lightly with dark hair from pec to pec. A line of it ran down, swirled around his belly button, vanishing tantalizingly into his shorts, as if in invitation for her hand to follow, to discover the treasures beyond.

And she had no doubt there were treasures. On a man like that? Oh, yeah, there’d be treasures. My, my, he was something. He hadn’t shaved today, maybe not yesterday either, and her thighs tightened thinking about that rough stubble running over her body.

She’d seen him at least once a year since he and Rachel had split. She’d brought Emily to him whenever and wherever he’d asked, mostly just to get a good look at him. Nothing wrong with a look.

But deep, deep down, she knew Ben had hurt Rachel more than he’d ever realized and in spite of her active hormones, her loyalties-misguided as they sometimes were-were always to her sister. So yes, she enjoyed looking at the man. Who wouldn’t? And maybe to make herself feel better about that, she’d lied a few times about him to Rachel-saying that he was a slut, that he sneered when Rachel’s name came up…whatever popped into her head to make her look better for lusting after the one man her sister had ever cracked her cool facade for.

And besides, Rachel never talked about him, never asked, so what harm could it all be? The very slight little crush she’d once had on him would hurt no one.

She supposed she should feel guilty, especially since Ben had always, always, asked about Rachel without a sneer. Maybe a better woman would have been truthful, but she’d never claimed to be good.

As she strutted her stuff across the street, walking the walk and smiling the smile, making sure he caught both, her gaze caught on the man in the yard next to Rachel’s house.

It was Garrett-dentist, Good Samaritan, and all-around Goody Two-shoes. He was raking the lawn, wearing simple jeans and a T-shirt, nothing special, certainly no Greek God. And yet when he glanced over and saw her, for a brief second, he went still.

She did, too, right in the middle of the street, instantly forgetting about Ben, frozen with the memory from last New Year’s Eve. She’d come to visit Rachel, who’d fallen asleep before ten o’clock. Bored and lonely, dangerously so, Mel had taken herself out to a bar not far from the house. She’d gone looking for trouble, and had found Garrett instead.

In a moment of insanity, she’d danced with him.

In a second moment of even more insanity, she’d gone home with him, for one long, glorious night. They hadn’t spoken since.

Because you’ve snubbed him each time he’d tried, she reminded herself.

“Mel,” Ben said in that low, gruff voice of his as she came into the yard.

She sought one last glance at Garrett, which made her stomach leap. “Ben.” She forced herself to relax as he slowly uncurled his long body and stood with the grace of a lean tiger. Forced her mind off Garrett, the man who didn’t matter. “What are you doing here, sexy? Taking Emily off on some exotic trip? I would have brought her to you.”

“I’m here for Rachel.”

Huh? “She…called you?”

He laughed at that, a low, sensual sound that she imagined could make a nun want to purr. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Garrett watering his flowers. He did it with the same concentration he gave everything and knowing she’d been the focus of that concentration once, her stomach leaped again. What the hell had gotten into her? She had no idea. She’d had sex recently and had only last night pulled out her handy-dandy vibrator.

“No, she didn’t call.” Ben’s slight smile still played around his firm mouth. “Have you ever known your sister to call for help?”

“Uh…no,” she admitted with a smile of her own, a real one this time. “So then…?”

“I’m here to take care of her, which again, is a bit tricky, since according to her, she needs no one and nothing.” His mouth twisted ironically. “Things haven’t changed much in that direction.”

“You’re here to take care of her,” Mel repeated slowly. “But Emily said she’d hired a nurse.”

“Was that the story you got?”

She stared into his laughing eyes and shook her head. “Oh, no. She didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah, she did.”

“And you came running.” To save the day. To save Rachel. “How very…sweet of you.” She tried to think if she’d ever been with a man who’d drop everything, his career, his life, to come running for her. From another part of the world, no less.

No. No, she hadn’t.

She purposely kept her gaze off the man on the next yard, the man who’d never even told a soul he’d wanted her at least once.

“She’s doing better,” Ben said, and if Mel was the blushing kind, she might have blushed for getting caught not asking about Rachel’s health, for being more worried about herself and her inexplicable need for a man she wasn’t even acknowledging.

“I’ll just see for myself, I suppose,” she said, and by habit sent him a come-hither smile, the one that usually rendered men stupid, just to see what would happen.

Immune, Ben opened the door for her, and utterly without permission, her heart tugged. Why didn’t the men she slept with open doors for her?

Well, actually, Garrett had, that long-ago night. But she wasn’t going to think of him again.

“Rach?” Ben, moving to the pole in the living room, called up. He turned to Melanie. “I left her in her studio an hour ago, she was going to try to work.”

“She’s up to that?” The last time she’d seen her sister, she’d looked like death warmed over.

“Nope, but we’ve already established she’s stubborn as hell. Maybe you can talk her into lunch. She’s been eating like a damn bird.”

Mel followed him and shook her head. He hadn’t even glanced at her carefully painted mouth, or run his gaze down her body, even though her little white sundress-accent on the little-was spraypainted to her body.

Was she losing it? She looked down at herself and had to say…she looked pretty damn hot.

Had Garrett checked her out thoroughly? She hoped he’d swallowed his tongue.

Not that she was thinking of him.

They took the stairs. At the closed door to the studio, Ben turned back to face her and smiled. “Ready to get your head bitten off?”

She jerked her thoughts off Garrett. “Why?”

“Well, she probably doesn’t snap at you every time you look at her, but-” with a low, soft laugh, he scratched his chest and looked a little sheepish “-Rachel and I…we seem to bring out the extremes in each other.”

That he hadn’t said “the worst,” but the “extremes,” stopped her cold. What, exactly, had been going on here? She put a hand on her hip. “You two doing something stupid, like knocking it out again? I sure as hell hope you know how to use condoms correctly these days.”

The door whipped open. Rachel stood there, propped up by a cane, glaring at the two of them.

“Hi, honey,” Ben said sweetly. “I’m home.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes at him, and then turned on Melanie. “You want to ask me something to my face?”

Oh, boy. She made the mistake of glancing at Ben.

“Don’t look at him,” Rachel demanded. “Look at me. I’m standing right here. Standing, thank you for asking, and yes, it hurts like hell.”

“Hey, sis. You’re looking…great.” Melanie decided to smile. It usually worked, though it appeared she was batting below average today.

Rachel let out a rude noise and turned away. She stared at her easel, which was conspicuously blank.