THE PRINCESS AND THE P.I.

by Donna Sterling

  Had it also brought a sparkle to her eyes, or maybe a defiant gleam? He wouldn't know. She was still hiding from him behind those sunglasses. Even last night, she'd escaped to her bedroom without removing them. He was almost ready to rip them off her face.

  "I'm going to cook, Walker," she announced with a grand flourish of a spatula.

  He settled back down into a chair at the table, crossed his arms over his chest and watched her. The woman was a true enigma. She threw herself into cooking breakfast with an anticipation usually reserved for adventures into the unknown.

  "I'd hoped to make us poached eggs in Hollandaise sauce, Canadian bacon and toast with caviar and cream cheese, but I'm not sure how to make the sauce … or poach the eggs, for that matter. And do you know, I couldn't find Canadian bacon or a single jar of caviar in that entire grocery store?"

  At first he thought she was kidding. When he realized she wasn't, he fought to suppress a smirk. Her princess side was showing. Who else would look for caviar in a beachside grocery store that probably specialized in beer, cheap wine, chips and sunscreen? Unable to resist teasing her, he exclaimed, "What, no caviar?"

  "I know—it would have been perfect." Oblivious to his sarcasm, she made a disappointed moue and shrugged. "Oh, well. Guess we'll have to make do with bacon and eggs."

  Make do turned out to be the operative phrase for that particular meal. Although he had offered helpful tips throughout the endeavor, the coffee was brewed to industrial strength, the bacon was charred and the eggs crunched with every few bites.

  "I don't know how these shells could have gotten in here," she commented, frowning at the scrambled eggs on her plate. "I tried to be so careful."

  "That's what you get for cooking with sunglasses on." His desire to see her eyes was turning into something of an obsession.

  "They're prescription. I have to wear them." After another bite of burned bacon, she mumbled, "Sorry about the bacon."

  "It's fine." Determinedly, he ate the rest of his.

  "Liar."

  He stopped chewing for a moment, tempted to retort, "If you're not the pot calling the kettle black!" But he didn't say it. She had as much reason as he to stick to the lies they'd told each other. She didn't need those sunglasses to see, she wasn't a prizewinning poet, and he hadn't been hired by her cousin. Yet, for all their lies, he had the damnedest feeling that he knew her—the important part of her. And he wanted very much to kiss her, right here and now, over their breakfast of burned bacon and crunchy eggs.

  A dangerous impulse. She was a business assignment. An important one. Now was not the time to be sidetracked.

  "Promise me," he uttered, "that you won't leave without me again."

  Her fork paused above her plate, and she seemed to have a hard time swallowing. "I'm sorry, Walker," she finally replied in a soft, regretful tone. "I can't do that."

  He stared at her. She stared back. He felt no anger at her refusal, only a deep uneasiness.

  They finished what they could of their breakfast, then he helped her load the dishwasher. He'd be watching her constantly from this moment on. He wouldn't allow her to get away from him. Was she harboring some secret motive, he wondered, for leaving home alone and incognito? And why was he resisting the idea of making his first report on her whereabouts?

  Because I want her to myself.

  He pushed that disturbing thought away. He wasn't ready to make that first report because he didn't feel the time was right yet. "Will you answer me one thing, Claire?"

  She paused in the act of drying her hands on a towel, looking almost frightened at his request. "What one thing?"

  "If you know it's dangerous, why are you traveling alone?"

  She bent her head to evade his searching gaze, finished drying her hands on the dish towel and hung it neatly, with great care, on a stove door rack. "I've recently broken up with my fiancé," she finally disclosed, her voice just above a whisper. "We went together for a long time. Our families were upset that I called off our wedding. I wanted to get away. To think." Slowly she lifted her face to his. "I came alone because I want my whereabouts to remain a secret. I didn't know who to trust."

  He wanted, in that moment, to be the one she could trust.

  But he wasn't.

  A tentative smile curved her lips. "I think I made the right decision. I'm feeling better already, and I haven't even hit the beach." She turned on the dishwasher and cocked her head to one side, her hair tumbling over one silky shoulder as she studied him. "Are you going to just follow me around, or do you want to swim with me?"

  Did he want to swim with her!

  "I'm on duty." He knew he sounded too surly, too abrupt. "I'll just watch."

  Her disappointment was almost tangible as she turned away, murmured something about changing and ducked into the bedroom.

  He headed to the bathroom where he quickly shaved, changed into shorts and loaded a fresh cartridge into the microcamera built within the rim of his sunglasses. He'd promised Hattie pictures for her tabloid. He'd send her a few innocuous beach shots and be done with it.

  And he'd report to his other client as soon as he found the chance.

  Cued by the sound of her bedroom door opening, he returned to the living room the same time Claire did. She was wearing her sun hat, sunglasses and presumably the white bikini she'd bought yesterday, covered now by a white, loosely crocheted tunic that allowed teasing glimpses of the tanned skin beneath. The so-called cover-up barely reached the top of her smooth, golden thighs.

  Shapely thighs. Shapely legs, somehow longer than he'd first thought. A man could get lost, wrapped in those endless legs…

  He caught the beach towels she threw to him and followed her to the elevator, his teeth once more tightly clenched. "Just watching" was going to be torture.

  Savoring the salty tang of the sea air and the bright, white heat of the Florida sun, Claire stood at the top of the stairway that led to the beach and enjoyed the panoramic beauty. Gulf water shimmered in shades of turquoise and blue, cresting in foamy waves against the white sand. Sea oats waved like wheat fields in the gulf breeze that whipped her hair around her face and cooled her sizzling skin in refreshing little spurts.

  Nanny had told her about this beach in Panama City where she'd vacationed with her grandchildren. Out of all the spectacular beaches Claire had visited as Valentina Richmond—her favorites including Tahiti, St. Lucia and Kauai—she'd always longed to come to this one. Her uncle wouldn't hear of it, though. Her friends scoffed at the very idea. It simply wasn't one of their approved vacation sites. But Nanny had made the place sound so … friendly.

  And it certainly seemed to be. The air hummed with the happy vibrations of sun-drenched vacationers: sand-covered children toddling from water to beach; scantily clad teens with slick, gleaming tans that smelled of coconut oil; women and men of all ages swimming, lounging and laughing, some sipping exotic rum drinks from the thatch-roofed bar beside the pool.

  The best part, mused Claire, was that she stood in the very center of the lively scene and no one knew or cared who she was. Wearing nothing but this skimpy white bikini and her sunglasses, she felt more comfortably concealed than she had in years. Not that she hadn't garnered a few admiring gazes from the men. Each lingering look flattered and soothed her sorely deflated feminine ego.

  Thinking of that deflated ego, she turned a quick, covert gaze to Walker, who leaned with apparent languor against a shady column beneath the beach bar's thatched roof, presumably watching her from behind those silver sunglasses. Dressed in a pair of dark shorts that hugged his virile hips, he looked like some Roman sun god taking a leisurely break—his powerful body lean, tanned and well-honed. The impressive breadth of his shoulders and the rolling muscles of his biceps couldn't help but attract the feminine eye, which would then be drawn to the soft black curls that bisected his muscular chest and tapered down to a flat abdomen.

  He was, in a word, gorgeous.

  More than one woman around him had
noticed. More than one preened and pranced, throwing come-hither glances in his direction. He'd smiled at a few, Claire had noticed.

  He hadn't once smiled at her. The entire time she'd sunbathed on a lounge chair beside the pool, he hadn't paid much attention to her at all. "I'm on duty," he'd told her. She didn't see why that meant he couldn't sit with her. She'd given up the idea of swimming because she'd have to take off her glasses to do it. Instead she'd sufficed with quick, chest-high dips into the pool, just to cool herself down when she felt her skin beginning to bake.

  But now she'd had enough of the pool, the sun-deck and Walker's neglect. The beach and the wild blue sea beckoned.

  Resisting another glance at Walker, she hurried down the smooth wooden steps from the sundeck to the beach, wondering if he'd follow. Of course he would. He was "on duty"—unless he'd become too distracted by one of the bathing beauties. Turning her face into the cooling sea breeze, Claire sank her feet into hot, powder-soft sand and trod toward the murmur of the surf.

  She was here to have fun, to savor her freedom, to find out exactly what she'd been missing in her ivory tower. Why, then, should she waste another single, frustrating thought on Walker? She should be firing him now, anyway. The longer she stayed with him, the more chance she was taking that he'd hear about Valentina Richmond's running away and connect it to her cousin, who had hired him. She had to fire Walker … or maybe just slip away from him. That would probably be easier. She should leave him tonight.

  Weaving between sand-digging tots and sun-bathers, she made her way to the water's edge, where she burrowed her toes into the shifting wet sand, letting the waves surge, ebb and foam around her ankles. Kids on short, plastic Boogie boards rode the waves on their stomachs, gliding past her and clear up onto the sand. Mothers bobbed in the shallow water with their babies. Young couples clung together, laughing and jumping over waves.

  A surprising ache of loneliness formed in Claire's throat. How could she feel so alone in the midst of such revelry? She gazed away from the young couples toward the cloudless azure sky, where gulls looped, helicopters lifted tourists above the coast for a panoramic view, and a small plane streamed a banner advertising evening specials at a local bar. Farther down the beach, a parasailer soared above the water with a colorful canvas chute billowing above him.

  Life at its finest. Sun and fun and freedom.

  "Watch out!"

  The masculine yell startled her from very close behind. Strong hands caught at her arms and yanked her backward just as a young boy on a Boogie board shot across the water and onto the sand where she'd been standing. The kid would have mowed her down, she realized in a shaken daze, if she hadn't been dragged out of his path … and into her rescuer's strong arms, against a hard bare chest…

  "Never say I didn't save you from anything." The deep, wryly amused mutter warmed her ear. Walker, of course. She'd recognized his touch before he'd spoken—and the masculine scent of his sun-heated skin, and her sensual response to both.

  "From a sun-crazed ten-year-old on a Boogie board," she acknowledged, holding back a gurgle of laughter that sprang more from the pleasure of finding his arms around her than from true amusement. "You saved my life." She twisted around to look up at him, her cheek nearly touching his bare shoulder. "Or at least my ankles."

  She caught his answering smile, and thrilled to it.

  "Sorry, lady!" hollered the fair-haired youngster as he splashed by them with his board under one bony arm.

  Walker slowly released her, backing away, leaving her feeling bereft. She wanted to touch him again, in any way she could. But he stood a full arm's length away, ankle-deep in the swirling surf, his eyes concealed behind silver sunglasses that reflected the turquoise water. "I thought you were going to swim."

  "Changed my mind. I've decided to walk down the beach instead. Care to join me?"

  "I won't be far behind you."

  It wasn't the reply she'd wanted. Of course, she could hardly expect him to grab her hand, pull her against him and mosey along the shore with her as if they were lovers. He could have walked with her, though … as if he weren't being paid to. Maybe that was his point, she reflected as she paced a good distance ahead of him. To make it clear that he wasn't being paid to socialize with her.

  She walked down the beach, the sun at her back and sunbathers lounging on her right. Other walkers passed by, giving a nod and a smile. Some of the male walkers gave a bit more—long, appreciative gazes, soft whistles, an occasional "Mmm-mmm." She paid them no mind. The man whose attention she craved seemed oblivious to her, lurking somewhere far behind, probably watching bikini-clad bodies other than hers. She strode past huge hotel complexes, tropical gardens, swimming pools, beach bars and wooden-planked piers until she came to a cabana where a small crowd had gathered.

  Jet Ski Rentals, the sign read.

  She'd always wanted to try a Jet Ski.

  "Walker!" She turned around and crossed the distance between them in a lively half skip. "Let's rent a Jet Ski."

  He'd known he should have refused the Jet Ski invitation, but by the time she'd turned to him with her exuberant request, his resistance to her had been ground down to a dangerous low.

  He'd been watching her for hours as she sunned herself by the pool, nearly naked, with oil glinting all over her lithe body. She'd rubbed that oil onto her skin with slow, circular movements, stretching provocatively to reach out-of-the-way places. It had taken an excruciating effort to stop from offering his assistance. But he was no fool. A distraction like that would only take his mind off his job all the more. The job that had become more important to him than any other—protecting her. He'd managed to resist.

  But then she'd risen from the lounge chair looking all flushed and disheveled, as if hot from a bout of lovemaking, and sauntered down to the sea, leaving her sun hat behind, allowing her hair to billow in a vibrant blaze around her golden shoulders. She moved with a seductive grace, tantalizing him and every man she passed. He felt insanely close to beating his chest and roaring out a savage warning to other male animals. Keep your distance or die.

  He had a hell of a time keeping his own distance. His need to touch her had continued to grow until he'd pounced at the first excuse, grabbing her out of the way of a Boogie board when a simple shout would have done just as well. He'd savored the momentary contact. She'd felt warm, curvy and peach smooth, and he wanted to run his hands over her, everywhere.

  He'd been in that frustrated state of self-deprivation when she'd asked him to take her Jet Skiing. Not even a warning of rough seas from the rental agent had stopped him.

  That was how he came to be driving a roaring, vibrating monster over mountainous swells—up one side of a wave, then down to crash headlong into another, his muscles straining to hold the ski upright. The speed, the wind and the onslaught of water all added to the physical challenge of mastering the tumultuous sea.

  Even more exhilarating was the feel of the woman who clung to him—her arms around his waist, her thighs clamped around his and her torso pressed against his back. Her wet bikini seemed to have dissolved against his bare skin, and he felt every curvaceous contour as she leaned and shifted in sensuous synchrony with him. A wave jolted them from the side, and he swore he could feel the scrape of her sea-cooled nipples against his back.

  Desire sluiced through him, and he took the next wave in a blind, heated rush. Water crested over their heads. He felt her shiver, and he yelled over the roar of the motor and the wind, "You okay?"

  "Yeah!"

  He couldn't help but smile. She was one plucky princess. And he was one crazy fool to have her out here. As they plunged down the side of another swell, he shouted, "Look to the right."

  He sensed more than heard her exclamation. In the salty, sunlit spray around them shimmered a dazzling rainbow. The colors grew brighter, and awe overtook him. He was soaring through a misty prism with the woman he'd loved only in his dreams, riding headlong into a world of magic and passion and answered pr
ayers.

  Her arms tightened around him, and he ached to turn around and hold her. He couldn't, of course. And he couldn't keep her out here, riding rainbows. Angry at himself for a reason he didn't quite grasp, he turned the Jet Ski sharply toward the shore.

  "Is our time up?" she shouted into the wind.

  Although they'd rented the Jet Ski for a full hour and only half that time had elapsed, he answered, "Yep. Our time's up."

  With every muscle tensed, he rammed the Jet Ski through the breaking surf until the front grazed the sand bottom. A lanky, sunburned teenager from the rental cabana ran out and grabbed hold of the ski as it bobbed and swayed. Tyce climbed down into the swirling, knee-high waves and reached up to help Claire. Her hair was a tangle of wet ringlets and her smile a flash of brilliance in her suntanned face as she laughingly fought to keep her balance on the bucking ski.

  "Jump!" Tyce ordered, impatient to catch her. Impatient to fill his hands and arms with her…

  She swung her long, slim leg over the seat, stood and fell into his outstretched arms. Her body slid down the length of his, her skin soft, slick and warm, sharpening his hunger, until her mouth was a mere whisper from his. His need to kiss her had grown into an urgent, living force, and as his eyes sought hers, a little shock went through him.

  Gone were her sunglasses. He stared into wide, violet-blue eyes warm with laughter, sunshine and a powerful beauty that reached deep into his heart and squeezed. He felt suspended in time, in space … and more aroused than he'd ever been outside a bedroom.

  He set her away from him, maybe a little too forcefully. No woman had the right to affect him this much, especially one he could never, ever, have. Hurt bewilderment registered in her gaze, confusing him all the more. "Your glasses," he said. "They're gone."