Duncan Stewart sauntered into Annie Grave’s dive shop trailing groupies like chum.
Annie dug her fingernails into her palms and resisted the urge to duck under the counter and hide out until he went away. It had been five years since she’d seen Duncan face-to-face, and she’d convinced herself she was over him. But the double punch of jubilance and jealousy kicking her stomach took her completely by surprise.
Oh God, he’s the last person on earth I want to see.
But that was a big fat lie and Annie’s heart knew it.
Secretly, she’d been wishing and hoping and praying that she and Duncan might run into each while they were both back in St. Augustine. She just hadn’t expected him to show up at the shop. Truth was, she missed him and mourned the loss of the friendship they’d once shared.
A friendship destroyed by one passionate, regrettable night.
Once upon a time, the ruggedly handsome Scot had been not only her closest confidant and surrogate big brother, but also the object of her unrequited teenaged affections. That was what had ruined it all. Annie’s desperate need for something more than Duncan could give.
An insouciant smile graced his lips and the closer he came, the tighter her chest constricted. Suppressing the instinct to flee, she did the mature thing and simply refused to make eye contact with him. Instead, she glowered at the bimbos in itsy-bitsy bikinis giggling and touching Duncan’s sun-bronzed, rock-slab biceps and begging him to autograph their ample cleavage with felt-tip markers.
Possessiveness gripped her like a fist, but she shrugged it off with a determined roll of her shoulders. Some things never changed. Duncan’s charm with women was legendary. She ought to know. Annie had been singed firsthand.
I don’t care with whom he chooses to fritter his time, it’s none of my business.
She had enough problems. Like how she was going to care for her ailing grandfather and keep his dive shop open after she ran out of vacation time and had to return to her job as a Wall Street stockbroker. Not to mention what she planned to do about the very important question her boyfriend, Eric Hammond, had told her he wanted to ask her when she got back home.
A question she didn’t want to answer.
She and Eric had dated for three years and he was exactly what she needed---calm, steady, reliable, unemotional. So why did the thought that he was going to pop the question unsettle her?
The reason, Annie was forced to acknowledge, was standing right in front of her. Here was the man who had stolen her good girl heart with his bad boy ways and had never given it back. There’d been no closure between them, and that, she assured herself, was why she couldn’t forget him. Not because she was still in love with him.
Oh yeah? demanded her aching heart. If you’re not in love with him, how come it still hurt so damned much?
“Sorry ladies, no more autographs,” Duncan told his bevy of lovelies. “I’ve business to transact.”
With disappointed sighs, his fan club dispersed throughout the store. The women pretended to be interested in pressure valve regulators and wet suits and weight belts, but all the while they sneaked adoring glances at Duncan before angling suspicious glares at her. Annie censored a childish urge to stick out her tongue at them.
“Hello, Harvard. I didn’t know you’d come home.” Duncan’s voice was deeper than she remembered, but the faint hint of Scottish brogue was still there. The sound of it curled her toes and cemented her tongue to the roof of her mouth. He leaned across the counter, encroaching upon her personal space and leaving her little choice except to meet his insistent gaze.
“I’m not home,” she replied, more tartly than necessary. “My home is in Manhattan and don’t call me Harvard.”
His calling her Harvard irritated Annie. Like he thought, that she thought, she was better than he was because of where she’d attended university.
“Manhattan may be the place where you sleep, but your heart will forever belong in St. Augustine.”
“Where I chose to sleep, or for that matter with whom I chose to sleep, is none of your business.”
Duncan’s eyes crinkled. He threw back his head and let loose a hearty laugh. The sound, so wickedly familiar it hurt, unraveled something inside her.
“Ah, Annie. I’ve missed your feistiness. You’re a fine sight for sore eyes and more beautiful than ever.”
Not wanting to draw attention to her physical imperfection, Annie resisted the urge to reach up and finger the deep scar at her chin, courtesy of a childhood accident. She had a tendency to touch the scar whenever she was feeling fragile and the fact that he’d called her beautiful made her feel very fragile indeed.
Duncan was so full of shit. The ego of the man. He was boldly flirting with her when half-dozen gorgeous, unscarred women were lurking in the back of her store just waiting to pounce on him. In comparison, with her short stature, well-rounded body and damaged chin, she felt like a chubby little field mouse who’d suffered a near death experience at the paws of an evil tabby.
“I see you didn’t you didn’t get lost in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Nay.” With a impish gleam in his eyes, he patted his chest with both palms. “It’s all me. Safe and sound.”
“Damn the luck. I had a fiver riding on your disappearance,” she quipped, denying what she was really feeling—supreme relief that he’d made it home uninjured.
Duncan had just returned from guiding a team of National Geographic photojournalist on a rigorous dive through the mysterious section of the Atlantic. They had recovered the remains of a two hundred year-old pirate clipper ship in the Triangle and Duncan was the talk of St. Augustine. That explained the groupies waiting to have their boobs autographed.
He pinned her to the spot with his hot gaze. “Would you have cried if I’d died?”
“Not for a second,” she lied.
They breathed in tandem inhaling the same air. Their eyes were locked. Stances identical. Hands on hips, chests outthrust.
She could hear the wall clock behind her ticking loudly. Tock. Tock. Tock. Annie did not flinch or squirm. She dealt with multi-million dollar trust funds on a daily basis. She knew real pressure. She could handle one rugged, slightly arrogant, seafaring man.
Ha! Who you trying to kid?
Annie struggled not to notice how good he looked. His dark-brown, wind-tousled hair streaked with lighter shades of sun bleached strands. He had a heavy five-o’clock shadow that enhanced his natural rakishness. His shoulders were so broad they strained the seams of his white T-shirt emblazoned with Whatever Gets You Through the Night the slogan for a company that manufactured diving lanterns. He was so overtly masculine, so dominantly sexual that she couldn’t really blame the bimbos for falling all over him.
He was big. He was strong. He was sexy. And he was not a man you could ignore.
“Harvard hardened you,” he murmured. “Or maybe it’s living in New York City.”
Don’t blame Harvard or Manhattan. You’re the one who hardened me.
Unbidden, her thought tumbled back to the past. To the first reckless, headlong moment when she’d thrown caution to the wind and dared him to kiss her. In lucid detail she recalled the shock of his lips the first time they’d claimed hers. How the power of it entered her like a bolt of electricity. How her body tingled when his rough calloused palms had pushed up underneath her yellow cotton blouse to rub against the hard buds of her straining nipples.
The urgency in his kiss had stunned and excited her. She’d dared to act on her long restrained impulses, never guessing that he’d been lusting after her just as much as she’d been lusting after him.
Annie hadn’t believed it possible, but Duncan was even more attractive now than he’d been the one and only night they’d slept together. Unfortunately, that one and only time had become the yardstick to which she measured every encounter with all other men and no one else had ever seemed to measure up.
Either literally or figuratively. She resented him for being so good in bed that even five years later she could still vividly recall their lovemaking.
“What do you and your harem want, Stewart?” She laced her voice with sarcasm. She was in no mood for his Highlander charm.
Or her weak-kneed reaction to it.
His laugh was genuine, his dark eyes dancing in amusement. No one on earth could irritate her quicker or cause her heart to beat harder. What was this unshakeable hold he held over her emotions?
“Jealous, Annie?” His eyes latched onto hers as she tried her best not to become spellbound.
“Of you?” She snorted. “Not damned likely.”
“Liar. But don’t worry. You have nothing to be jealous over. I’m not seeing anyone at present.”
“Honestly, I couldn’t care less.”
“Liar.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Then stop lying.”
“What do you want?” she repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. He was staring so intently at her mouth it was all she could do to keep from licking her lips.
Duncan’s heated gaze drifted to her breasts at the same time she realized her posture was enhancing her cleavage. She straightened, dropping her arms to her side and shooting him daggers with her eyes.
Annie noticed one of his groupies monkeying with a top-of-the-line aluminum diving tank. She snapped her fingers at the blonde woman. “You there, put that down, unless you’re going to buy it.”
“Shiny.” The blonde smiled vacantly and settled the tank back in its slot.
Annie shot Duncan a pointed look.
“I’ll get rid of them,” he said conspiratorially. “So we can be alone.”
So we can be alone.
She hated the way that made her feel, all excited and hot and edgy. No matter how much she told herself she disliked the man, just one look from him, one turn of phrase, she was pudding.
Damn him. Damn her. Damn them both.
