An instant later she jerked upright. The computer screen had already flashed back a blue bar with the words, Searched the Web for Roy Starr Fishing Charters Florida. Results 1-10 of about 115,786. Search took 0.18 seconds.

She gave a huff of astonishment and whispered, “Wow.” Then, clamping her teeth on her lower lip, she leaned forward and began to read through the entries on the screen.

A few minutes later she was triumphantly connected to a Web site for STARR CHARTERS, and gazing at a picture of a rather ungainly-looking white boat afloat on impossibly blue water. Plainly visible on the boat’s bow were the words, Gulf Starr. Below the picture, the company’s name and logo were featured artistically, along with mailing and e-mail addresses and an 800 telephone number. Below that were the words, Roy Starr and Scott Cavanaugh, captains-experienced, trustworthy, professional.

There were links to other pages and other pictures-a good many of them. It took some time, but Celia visited and studied them all. Most of the photographs featured happy sunburned fishermen displaying their catch, but several afforded glimpses of the crew, as well. The one most often shown was a big, burly man with honey-brown hair cut short in a distinctly military style. The brother-in-law, obviously. He looked to be in his mid-forties, and had a nice smile-a very nice smile, Celia decided, the kind that made the man wearing it look as if he might actually be trustworthy and professional.

The same could hardly be said of the other man in the photographs. This one had a lean and untamed look, with a whisker shadow and longish dark hair that flirted with the wind. And, far from inviting trust and confidence, his smile held a hint-just a delicious shivery touch-of wickedness.

So he was telling the truth-about this, at least, Celia thought, shaking off the shivers-though her heart went tripping on in double-time, oblivious to her will. But it doesn’t explain how he came to be shot and washed up half-dead on my beach.

It didn’t explain the nightmare babbling about boats and bombs and millions of people dying. It didn’t explain about a luxury yacht called Lady Of The Night. And who was Max?

Since the answers to her questions didn’t seem likely to magically appear on the computer screen she was staring at, she turned it off, huffed a frustrated breath and went downstairs.

In her bedroom, the stranger-Roy Starr, alleged charter boat captain from Florida-slept on, his breathing raspy and rhythmic, not quite a snore. Celia tiptoed past him to her dresser, then to the closet, gathering clothes and clean underwear. From the bathroom she collected makeup and toiletries, and then, arms full, trudged back up the stairs, pleased once again to note that her legs barely protested.

The master bathroom felt chilly and unfamiliar to her when she first entered it-hard to believe it had been almost a year since she’d used it last. In some ways, she thought, a very long year…and in others, the night of the accident seemed like only last week. Like yesterday.

Nausea twisted coldly in her belly. She slammed the door on those memories and turned on the water in the shower.

She unbelted her robe and let it fall, as was her habit, in a heap on the floor, and as she did that the thought flashed into her mind: Ohmigod, I’ll have to call Mercy!

Normally, the robe would stay where it had fallen until Mercy the cleaning lady or one of her helpers picked it up and either put it in the laundry hamper, or, if it was the day for it, in the washing machine. But, of course, the cleaning service was going to have to be cancelled, at least temporarily, since it would be hard to explain to Mercy and her girls the presence of a wounded stranger in her bed.

It occurred to Celia for the first time, as she stepped into the shower, that the man downstairs was likely going to change her life more than a little. Last night, what she’d done-getting Doc to help her, picking him up, bringing him here-she’d done in the dark and fog and loneliness of a sleepless night. The wee hours of the morning. People did crazy things in the wee hours of the morning-ask anybody! It hadn’t occurred to her then what it was going to mean, practically speaking. Such as the fact that, apparently, she was now going to have to do her own cleaning.

And cooking! What about that? Celia did not cook. She’d never learned how to cook, and it was a bit late to start now. Before the accident, she’d seldom eaten a meal at home, if you didn’t count breakfast-which she didn’t. As far as she was concerned, mowing down yogurt, fruit and coffee while barely conscious wasn’t really eating. During the past year she’d discovered the wonders of the local market’s deli and meat sections, and why, with all the ready-to-serve gourmet stuff available, would anybody ever need to cook?

Now, it appeared, she was going to be shopping-and preparing meals-for two. At least for a while. As long as it takes him to get back on his feet. How long might that be?

Her fingers, following the trail of soap over the familiar contours of her own body, paused and lingered, feeling the still-alien ridges of scar tissue that wandered drunkely across her lower abdomen. A spasm shook her, something akin to grief.

I thought I was over that.

Closing her eyes, she put her head back and let the warm water sluice over her, carrying away the soap and the last of the sand that had been transferred from the stranger’s body to hers in the course of the night. That strange, unbelievable night, while she’d held him and given him her warmth, and with her body-this body-had probably saved his life. This body, that had once been a source of pride-even arrogance?-to her, and which she could hardly bear to look at, even now.

And his body…lithe and lean in the photographs…young and tan and unmarred…

With her eyes closed and the water pouring over her face she saw it again the way she’d first seen it last night-bruised and crusted with sand, and the ragged hole high on his chest where a bullet had burst through. Like her, he’d carry a scar there, for the rest of his life.

In a thoughtful mood, a calmer mood, Celia turned off the water and reached for a towel. She dried and dressed in jeans, T-shirt and sandals, tied her wet hair up in a haphazard ponytail and put on a baseball cap over it. This was her grocery-shopping outfit. Celia knew how to dress if she wanted to be noticed, and once upon a time she’d enjoyed playing the celebrity…loved the attention, the adulation. Now, the thought of being recognized in public made her sick to her stomach. Dressed like this, she was almost guaranteed not to be recognized by anyone among the hoards of surf bums and sun worshippers that swarmed over Malibu in all seasons of the year.

Pausing only to add the finishing touch-a pair of sunglasses, no makeup-she went downstairs to look in on the sleeping stranger one more time. Then she went outside, locking the house behind her, and got into the modest American-made SUV she’d bought last summer when she’d finally gotten the doctors’ okay to drive again. She was still getting used to it-it seemed tall and ungainly after her beloved Mercedes roadster, which she’d turned into a twisted mass of metal on the Pacific Coast Highway just over a year ago. The fact was, she was still getting used to driving at all and wondering if the day was ever going to come when she could get behind the wheel of a car without feeling that cold clenching of fear in her stomach.

This morning, mentally focusing on the task ahead of her the way she’d once prepared for a particularly challenging scene, she fought down the fear, backed the SUV carefully out of her driveway and headed slowly up the narrow winding street toward the Pacific Coast Highway.

Roy dreamed he was being chased. He dreamed of running, running, running, with his lungs on fire and his breath coming in tearing gasps. Then suddenly he wasn’t running, he was swimming, but his lungs were still on fire.

Sharks. Sharks were chasing him, so he couldn’t stop swimming, but his chest hurt so badly he was pretty sure he was going to die from that, anyhow. Hell of a choice-get eaten by sharks or have his chest explode. Since it was an impossible choice to make, he woke up.

He discovered that he was lying in a bed under a mountain of comforters, in a tangle of damp sheets, drenched in sweat and shivering with cold. And his chest was still on fire.

But no sharks.

Yeah, he remembered now. He’d been shot. He’d escaped from the yacht Bibi Lilith by diving overboard into the Pacific Ocean, but he’d been shot in the process and somehow, by some miracle, he’d wound up here. A gorgeous blonde and a chubby little guy named Doc had brought him here and put him in this bed, and for some strange reason hadn’t called the cops or the paramedics to come and deal with him.

And the blonde had asked him about Max.

Max! I have to get hold of Max. Have to let him know… Let him know I blew the mission. Screwed up. Failed…

The house seemed profoundly quiet. He thought about calling out for someone to come and help him, but his head was pounding and his mouth felt like the Sahara Desert. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and managed to hitch himself up onto the pile of pillows behind him. The pain in his chest seemed to ease some, so he lay still for a minute or two, resting up for the next big step. He didn’t know how he was going to manage it, but somehow or other he was going to have to get himself to a bathroom.

While he was trying to psych himself up for the ordeal, he let his gaze travel around the room, getting a good look at the place he’d come to, trying to get a fix on the kind of people into whose clutches he seemed to have fallen. An actress and a doctor? An odd couple, for sure-but no, the doc had said they weren’t a couple. Roy was pretty sure he remembered that much.

The first thing that struck him about the room he was in was that it didn’t look like a bedroom-at least, not the kind of bedroom he’d have associated with a gorgeous single woman. The walls were mostly covered with bookcases, the built-in kind, custom-made and expensive, from real wood finished in warm honey tones, some with leaded glass doors. Where the bookcases weren’t, the walls were paneled with the same golden wood, and hung with framed photographs and movie posters, though not of the blonde, as he might have expected. These looked like old-style Hollywood. Many were black-and-white, and the people in them, a man and a woman, looked familiar to him, though he couldn’t immediately think of their names.

The shelves and glass cabinets held books, a lot of them, but other things, too. An intriguing assortment of things, from what looked to Roy like just about every corner of the world: a kachina doll, a lacquered box painted with brightly colored birds, an elephant carved from something that looked like real jade. There was a stuffed bear that looked old, and one of those Russian dolls made of wood that have dolls inside of dolls, each one smaller than the one before, and a model sailboat, and a zebra, exquisitely carved from dark wood.

On one shelf high up near the top, there was a row of golden statuettes he’d seen before, though only in pictures. The three in the middle were of an off-balance female figure holding up an open sphere. Flanking these like bookends were two pairs of statuettes most likely everybody on the planet would recognize-a sleek but rather stiffly posed bald guy named Oscar.

Roy breathed a soft, soundless whistle and thought, Wow, she said she was an actress, but she didn’t say she was famous! And he wondered why, if she’d won all those awards, he didn’t know who she was.

Celia, love…

The name popped into his memory along with images of a sleek and voluptuous curve of back and bottom and long, graceful legs walking away from him, and hunger-juices miraculously pooling at the back of his throat…

Doc called her Celia. Celia what? Didn’t ring any bells.

Summoning his strength and will, Roy pushed back the mountain of comforters and struggled to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, legs over the side, feet tingling on the carpeted floor. His head swam and nausea threatened, the pain in his head and chest, and all his joints and muscles-hell, even in his teeth-was so bad he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to keep from passing out. And he was so damn thirsty.