Denny laughed but it was mirthless. “Yeah. Ethan used to be a pickpocket.”

Michael swore, and turning, went running back up the stairs.

Brandy grabbed Dorie, and they raced after Michael to help however they could. At the top of the stairs, Dorie would have liked to double over and gasp for breath, but Michael didn’t stop. He ran around the back of his huge mansion, toward what looked like a one, two, three, four-car garage directly in front of… a moat?

And another dock.

Moored there was a small motor craft. Michael hopped in, and the girls did the same. The engine leapt to life, and Michael tossed them life vests. “Put them on!”

Dorie was still buckling in when he punched the gas, and after a moment of following the small waterway to the open water, they were faces to the wind, heading after Ethan.

“What are we going to do when we catch him?” Brandy yelled.

“Depends on if he’s hurt my boat.” Michael spoke evenly enough but there was underlying violence there. Dorie wouldn’t want to be the one crossing him or his million-dollar boat, that was for sure.

“Why didn’t you use this thing to take us directly to Fiji?” Brandy wanted to know. “Instead of putting up with us in your place?”

Michael glanced over. “This is just a ski boat. You do know how far from Fiji you are, right?”

“No idea.”

“Let’s just say it’s going to take Ethan days to get anywhere close to a place he could possibly even think about hocking my boat.”

“How long for us to catch up with him?”

Michael pointed, and as they came around a sharp, craggy curve of the island, they saw a white dot that was the Elegance, a few miles out on the horizon. It didn’t take them long to get closer. Ethan wasn’t having the easiest time sailing the huge yacht by himself.

Dorie looked back. She could just barely make out the vague outline of Michael’s house high on the rocks, and far below, the beach where though she couldn’t see them, she knew the others were with Denny.

Ethan tried to cut left, out to open sea, and got tangled up in a sail, which allowed them the precious seconds they needed to get closer. He was on deck struggling with the lines, swearing the air so blue it blew his hair back.

“Need a hand?” Michael asked politely, cutting his engine to be heard.

Ethan whipped toward them, and it wasn’t the glint of a knife that stopped Dorie’s heart this time, but the flash of a gun.

Going off.

Michael flew back against Brandy, who was propelled off her seat to the floor, with Michael in her arms. He rolled off of her, gritting his teeth before he could say anything. “It’s just a knick. Duck, now, before he shoots again.”

But Ethan had lost interest in them and was battling with the yacht, trying to hoist a different sail.

“Take the controls, Dorie,” Michael commanded. “Quickly.”

Gulping because his white shirt was covered in blood, Dorie whipped around and look at the controls. They might as well have belonged to a spacecraft.

“That’s more than a knick,” Brandy accused him, panic in her voice.

Dorie didn’t look. She was trying to figure out how to make the boat go. At her elbow, something squawked, making her jump.

A radio.

“Base to Phillips,” came a very French voice. “Tell me that wasn’t a gunshot we just heard.”

“They’re at the other dock.” Michael’s face was shiny with sweat, tight in a grimace of pain. “Tell him to get out my Stryker. It’s an offshore runner. He can catch Ethan on that.”

“He’s not going anywhere because we’re bringing you straight there to him,” Brandy said. “Do you hear me?”

Michael’s face was cushioned between Brandy’s two very expensive and beautiful breasts, and he didn’t look as if he minded. “Hard not to hear you,” he said. “You’re shouting.”

“Goddamnit, answer me,” came Christian’s voice over the radio, sounding very unhappy.

Dorie eyed Ethan. He was making headway, moving away from them with alarming speed. She lifted the radio to her mouth. “Yes, that was a gunshot. Ethan’s getting away and Michael’s shot and I’m trying to get back to you but I don’t know how-” She ended this with a scream when a large swell slapped at the front of the boat and splashed her right in the face.

“Hit the throttle,” Michael yelled at her. “Steer into the swells, not with the swells!”

Damn it. Maybe he could operate the radio and drive at the same time but she could not.

“Base to Phillips,” came Christian again. “Pick up your goddamn radio or I’m going to kick some serious ass!”

“What the hell is his problem?” she shouted back to Brandy and Michael. “I answered him!”

“Hon, you have to push the button when you talk.” Brandy had ripped off her shirt, and was pressing it to Michael’s wound, leaving her in nothing but a tiger-striped bra and those hot Daisy Dukes. “Now forget the radio and drive this sucker home.”

“I swear, I’m trying.”

“Push the throttle all the way down,” Michael told her.

When she did, the boat leapt to life. Okay, that was good. Speed was good, because her flesh was crawling, flinching in anticipation of a bullet tearing through it. She risked a look behind them.

Ethan had figured things out and was beginning to really move.

“First-aid kit,” Brandy yelled. “Where is it?”

“Forget that.” Michael said this through gritted teeth, sitting up with Brandy’s help. “Dorie, keep going. Circle around him, he’s going to ruin the-”

“Oh, you are not going to be a guy about this,” Brandy told him. “Screw Ethan and your damn boat. You’re going straight back. Christian’s a doctor, the best. He’ll patch you up-”

But Michael wasn’t listening. His eyes had changed. Grown heavy.

Closed…

“Michael!” Brandy cried.

He didn’t open his eyes but nodded. “Still here.”

Both Dorie and Brandy sagged in relief, but he was bleeding like crazy, and Dorie began to worry that he could actually bleed out. “You have to stay with us, Michael.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

Oh, God. There was a shocking amount of blood pumping from his shoulder, soaking into Brandy’s shirt, and Dorie did the only thing she could. She faced the terrifyingly choppy water and pushed the throttle all the way to the metal.

TWENTY-SIX

Faster,” Brandy cried. “We’ve got to get him back faster.”

“On it.” Dorie looked down at the swells barreling into the boat. “But I don’t want to kill us.”

“Circle around.” Michael spoke without opening his eyes. “Head into the swells, hit them perpendicular, so we don’t capsize.”

Right. No capsizing. She whipped them around, the boat nearly tipping up on its end when she hit a swell too hard.

“Into them,” Michael ordered again.

Into the swells. Into the swells. Into the swells. Dorie repeated it to herself like a mantra. She could see the house, the little canal they’d come out of, the dock that she was going to pull up to-if there was a God-and a figure standing on that dock.

Legs apart, radio up to his mouth, hair whipping around his face in the wind, Christian looked right at her from hundreds of yards away. “Are you hit?”

The button. God, she’d forgotten Christian still hadn’t heard a word she’d said. She picked up the radio and pushed in the button. “Michael was shot! We’re coming in-theoretically. Because I don’t know how to park this thing.”

“I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up. Are you fucking hit?”

“Not me. Michael.”

“What?”

Jesus! She looked up, screamed at the swell she drove straight into, nearly flipping them over, and tossed the radio aside to use both hands on the wheel. Sorry, Christian. She had to concentrate to turn into the canal.

Only she missed. She actually missed. “Oh, God.”

“Gentle,” Christian’s voice said, and she realized he was speaking to her through the radio lying on the seat. “Gentle on the wheel, that’s all.” His voice came soft and easy. Laid-back. As if they had all the time in the world. “Make a wide turn and come back, try it again. That’s it,” he said as she followed his directions, and this time made it into the canal. “Don’t worry about anything but this,” he said. “Denny’s tied up, and I’ve still got Ethan in sight. You’re doing great, Dorie.”

Bullshit, she was doing great. She was hyperventilating. Her heart was in her throat and her legs were sweating. “The steering on this is stupid!”

He couldn’t hear her, but he responded anyway. “Ease up on it, there you go. Ten more feet and I’ve got you.”

In five, he took a flying leap from the dock and landed like a cat right next to her, pushing her aside to maneuver the boat into the slip with an extremely irritating ease. “Tie us,” he called to Andy and Cadence, who were running toward them to help.

Then Christian let go of the wheel and hauled her up to her toes. “Thank Christ,” he said, looking her over. “Jesus, I thought-” He shook his head, his breathing hard and uneven.

At the sound and feel of him, her heart sort of swelled, and then jammed in her throat, which didn’t explain why her eyes began to burn. Strong as she’d had to be the past few days, she felt strongest right here, right now, surrounded by him. What she felt for him was so, so much bigger than she’d even imagined, and, more shocking, couldn’t be contained. “I love you,” she whispered, the words escaping without permission.

He went still, staring at her.

Oh, God. That thinking out loud thing really had to stop! “Michael’s been shot.”

As a diversion, it worked. He blinked, and very carefully put her down before moving to Michael’s side.

She stood there a moment more, swaying in the breeze, wishing for one good wave to just rise up and swallow her. Yeah, that would work.

But somehow she managed to draw air into her lungs, and then turned to see what was happening behind her. Christian had dropped to his knees at Michael’s side, where he’d pulled Brandy’s shirt away from the wound at his shoulder.

“How bad?” Brandy asked him tightly.

“Not bad,” Michael said.

“Shut up,” Brandy told him, eyes on Christian. “Tell me.”

“Not bad,” he said, echoing Michael’s words. “Bullet went through. Let’s get him up to the house.”

“My boat,” Michael said, looking a bit pasty. “We have to get my boat.”

“Oh my God!” Brandy exploded. “Will you stop being a stupid boy for a freaking minute? Jesus Christ, you’re going to bleed to death and you’re worried about a stupid toy, like a… a-”

“Stupid boy?” Michael’s lips twisted, in a combination of good humor and pain.

Brandy glared at him. “This isn’t funny. Nothing about this is funny.” And she burst into tears.

Michael went immediately contrite, reaching for her.

“No, no, don’t do that,” she sobbed. “I’m okay. Delayed stress. That’s all.”

But Brandy couldn’t stop crying. And because Dorie felt like crying, too, she hugged her tight, and together they watched as Christian and Andy helped Michael out of the boat and up to the house.

“He’s going to be okay,” Dorie said to Brandy.

“Yes, he is,” Brandy agreed. “The son of a bitch. Of course he is. It’s us I’m worried about.” She sighed and wiped away her tears. “So. You love the gorgeous doctor?”

“Heard that, did you?”

“Honey, the whole world heard it.”


While Christian stitched up Michael, his brain whirled so hard it hurt.

Dorie loved him.

How had that happened?

“Shouldn’t he stay lying down for a while?” Brandy asked when he was done, hovering like a mother hen.

“No,” Michael said.

“Yes,” Christian said.

“No,” Michael said again, and got up. He wobbled, swore, then stepped to the door.

On the other side of it stood Dorie, Andy, and Cadence.

Dorie had been pacing, but she jerked to a stop. She looked at a spot over Christian’s shoulder instead of meeting his eyes. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He wanted to haul her up against him and hold on tight. He wanted to yell at her for nearly getting shot. He wanted to kiss her. But mostly he just wanted to look at her.

The others had circled around Michael, urging him to sit. Christian went directly to Dorie.

“Um, about before.” She shifted her weight back and forth on her feet. “You know, when my mouth got the case of the runs? If you could just forget everything I said, that would be good.”

She wanted him to forget that she loved him. He’d work on that.

Fat chance.

“Christian?” Brandy called. “Michael’s insisting on talking to Denny. Tell him that’s a bad idea.”