“Who else knows about the map?” she asked.
“Only you.”
“No one else on the Triangle dive was with you?”
He had to be careful. He was treading deep water, and he had to tell her what she needed to hear or this wasn’t going to work. “I found it when I went diving alone.”
“Duncan Stewart!” A scandalized breath escaped her lungs. “You know better than that. My father taught you better.”
He shrugged. “What can I say?”
“Still the maverick, aren’t you? Still have to be the hotshot. If Jock knew about this he would bawl you out but good.” She sounded like the girl he remembered. No controlled, businesslike Harvard in her voice now. She was upset.
“Jock would want us to go after her.” Duncan thumped the map.
“Well, it’s a moot point because we’re not telling him.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t have you turning his world upside down. He’s sick. He might not pull through this. I won’t get his hopes up and risk dashing them.”
Duncan looked into her eyes and knew it wasn’t her grandfather’s life she feared getting turned upside down, but her own. Annie was scared. And if Annie was scared, that meant she cared, and if she still cared, that meant he had to keep pushing.
“But what if we find it? It’d be the best medicine Jock could have.”
“And if this map is a hoax?” Frowning, Annie held it closer to her face.
Terror gripped him. Duncan froze. She knows!
He’d weathered the leather for two weeks in salt water, but was it long enough to fool her? His gut knotted and he held his breath, waiting for her accusations.
But it never came. Finally, she put the map aside. “My family has suffered enough over that cursed figurine. Let’s keep the past buried.”
“What are you saying?”
“Destroy the map. We’re not going after the Siren’s Call.”
“Wah?” The noise strangled from his throat. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t taking the bait. Everything he’d plotted and planned was falling apart. Then again, he should have known Annie wouldn’t make it easy.
“You heard me.”
“But we have to go after it.” He did his best to sound cool. He couldn’t let her know exactly how much power she held over him. “To honor your parents.”
“I’ll honor them more by staying far away from that damn idol.”
“How do you figure?”
Annie didn’t answer his question and marched for the door. “I’ve got to get back to work. This store won’t run itself.”
Duncan went after her. Just the sight of her swaying ass lit up his circuit boards in a hundred different ways. No matter how hard he’d tried, no matter how many adventures he’d lived or women he’d bedded, he could not stop craving her. This time he did not deny the demanding urge rampaging through him. In two long-legged strides, he caught up with her, grabbed her by the arm, and whirled her around to face him.
Annie’s eyes widened. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“If you have to ask, then it’s been too long since you’ve had a proper kiss.” He yanked her into his arms, forcefully crushed her lips underneath his.
Her lush breasts were smashed against his chest, her firm thighs nudging his. She gasped, but he swallowed her protest. Initially, she struggled, squirming in his arms to get free, but seconds later, she relaxed and started kissing him back. Just like he knew she would.
Delight detonated in his mouth. A wildfire burned through his nerve endings. She was more essential to him than oxygen. God, he’d forgotten just how good she tasted. How plush and warm she felt in his arms. How she smelled so hot and sassy. He wanted to fuck her so badly his cock hurt.
Something dark and dodgy fisted inside him.
If he had the slightest doubt that what he was doing was wrong it vanished. He tightened his arms around her. Her teeth parted and he speared his tongue deep inside her.
Moaning softly, she slid her arms around his neck.
She tasted so delicious. Like heat and those cinnamon breath mints she adored. More, he had to have more. Craving her, he tipped her back. He inhaled her, merged with her. She dizzied his head like champagne bubbles. She was amazing. Smooth as honey and twice as sweet.
Her breasts were soft against his chest, her hair tickled his shoulder. He traced her spine to the small of her back, then gently kneaded her shapely ass. Her body, which seconds before was tense and resistant, turned fluid, supple at this touch.
“Annie,” he whispered into her mouth. “Annie.”
She twisted away from him, breathing heavily, her eyes glazed with the sheen of lust and surprise. She splayed her palms against his chest and pushed him away. “You don’t get to do that. You gave up your right to do that five years ago. Now please, just go.”
She stared at him hard with those dazzling green eyes, but he could not read her thoughts.
This was different. This new ability she’d developed to hide her feelings from him. He didn’t like it. Once upon a time he could read her like a book. But no longer. Had he lost her for good?
“Annie,” he beseeched.
Fiercely, she frowned and pointed toward the door. “Just leave, Duncan. We both know it’s what you do best.”
3
The Siren’s Call was luring Annie to her ruin, just as surely it had lured her parents ten years earlier. The legendary mermaid idol lay in an underground cave off the coast of the Florida Keys. Not so far from the very bed she was lying in.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She was already under the spell of the passionate Scot who’d brought the treasure map to her. Annie groaned, overwhelmed by fear, trepidation, embarrassment, and a healthy dose of excitement. Dammit, she shouldn’t be excited, but she was. This couldn’t be happening at a worse time.
Forget about the Siren’s Call. Forget about Duncan Stewart. Go to sleep.
But she could not.
Obsessively, her mind replayed the afternoon, from the moment Duncan had swaggered into the dive shop until he’d kissed her. She didn’t know which disturbed her more, her intense sexual feelings for Duncan, or her compelling desire to find the enchanted mermaid idol that had eluded her parents.
This was ridiculous. Hadn’t she vowed to break the cycle? Hadn’t she sworn that she would never let irrational passion dominate her life the way it had dominated her parents’? Most of all, hadn’t she learned her lesson where Duncan Stewart was concerned? The man could not be trusted. He’d hurt her once; was she willing to give him the opportunity to do it again?
She couldn’t think of a more deadly combination than the two of them together in possession of the Siren’s Call. It would be like fueling a cigarette lighter with high-octane gasoline.
Believing in the power of the talisman wasn’t something that a Harvard-educated MBA should believe in, but Annie couldn’t help herself. Believe she did. A deep-seated family indoctrination in superstition and fables and lost treasures trumped years at the country’s finest institute of higher education.
Sorry, Harvard.
She flipped and flopped. Punched her pillows and tried to calm her mind. Nothing worked.
The room was too hot. That’s why she couldn’t sleep. She threw back the covers, hopped out of bed, and opened the window. Fresh sea air filled the room, billowing the curtains. She’d forgotten how good home smelt.
Home. The word conjured feelings inside of her she’d been denying. Nostalgia, wistfulness, and a lonely longing for everything she’d left behind. Was St. Augustine still her home? If she married Eric she knew she’d be stuck in New York City for the rest of her life.
Stuck? Where had that thought come from? She liked her job, liked living in Manhattan, yet she could not imagine spending the rest of her life far from St. Augustine’s seafaring history.
The seafaring life and one seafaring man in particular is the very reason you left St. Augustine in the first pla
ce. Don’t ever forget that.
The sound of the surf soothed her, and finally she fell into a fitful sleep.
Duncan swaggered into her dreams as if he had every right to be there. He had one of those grins that could turn a woman’s insides to instant pudding, and a way of cocking his head and leveling her with a look that made her feel both breathless and brain dead.
He smelled sensuously luscious, like the thick amber taste of butterscotch on the back of her tongue. The flavor made her crave him and filled her with a tight, hot longing that promised serious trouble. His dark eyes danced with inherent mischief and he crooked an index finger at her.
“Come ’ere,” he said in his husky Scottish accent, as if he could see right down inside her soul. He held out his hand.
And God help her, she took it.
That’s when things had gotten really interesting.
The dream transported them to a lush tropical island. They lay on a white sand beach beneath a brilliant yellow moon. All around them cactuses, heavy with expectant pods, glowed in the moonlight. Under his deft fingers, her body ached into full bloom as rich and ripe as the flowering plants.
As their bodies joined and hotly fused, thousands of sphinx moths shuttled from one blossoming bud to another. The ruffling rush of their fluttering wings was as primal as the heavy breathing Annie shared with her midnight lover. The air was thick with the steeping drench of vanilla-scented nectar and the smell of their mingling sex. They were part of an ancient dance, a classic ritual, a timeless mating.
Annie jerked awake, sopping with sweat, her body blazing hot all over, in spite of the cool ocean breeze blowing across her skin. Her breasts were swollen and achy. Her mouth bone dry.
“Duncan,” she whispered and ran her fingers along the inside of her damp thigh. She imagined that it was his fingers touching her in that tender spot. Imagined it and moaned softly. Annie put her fingers to her mouth and wet them, then trailed them down her hot skin, pretending it was Duncan’s fingers instead of her own.
Casting her mind back, she remembered how it had felt to be touched by him. Rapture. It had been pure rapture. A bliss beyond anything she’d ever known before or since. She shivered as she stroked herself the way he’d once stroked her.
Slowly, she slid her wet ring finger into the slick moistness of her engorged pussy, pretending Duncan was finger-fucking her. It felt good. Hot and wet. But how much better if it were Duncan’s manly hands?
Annie pictured him moving over her, as her fingers quickened the pace. One finger inside her, the other rubbed juices against her aching clit.
She wanted him so badly it was a burning fire in the pit of her belly, and the intensity of her desire told her exactly how wrong it was for her to want him. Too much passion was never a good thing. Too much longing could destroy a person. She forced herself to remember how devastated she’d been when he’d left. How she’d spent days sobbing into her pillow before, hardening her heart, she pulled herself up by her bootstraps and headed off to Harvard. She shouldn’t want him. Not ever again. But damn her, she did.
Duncan. The man she’d been in love with since he’d come to work for her father when they were both teenagers. She was thirteen, he sixteen. She with a bad case of hero worship, he a streetwise boy with a dark past. He was her first lover. He’d taken her virginity and her heart. Duncan was the one her body would forever crave, no matter whom she ended up with.
She touched herself by proxy, seeing him, feeling his touch stroke the sensitive bud of her arousal, stoking herself into a frenzy. Thrashing her head she rode the wave of pleasure, felt it building to a shattering release.
“Duncan, Duncan,” she cried and arched her hips upward, pushing against her own hand.
Her climax came, quick and hard, but it left her feeling sad and empty. Wretchedly, she buried her face in the pillow, blinking back tears. Oh God, what was she doing, letting herself get sucked into the past?
She remembered everything about him that she missed. His smile, his strength, the wonderful way he smelled. All she could think about was the one and only time he’d fucked her on his houseboat, the swell of the sea rocking them as they rocked each other. She recalled how gentle he’d been with her and the reverential look on his face when she’d told him she was a virgin.
The memory of how he’d slowly peeled her clothes off and kissed her and licked her until she was so hot and wet she’d ripped the clothes off his body was permanently branded in her brain. How he’d kept licking her, trailing his tongue lower and lower until he’d found her sweet-aching innocent clit. He’d teased her mercilessly with his tongue, sliding it in and out of her as wave after wave after wave rocked the boat, rocked her world.
Then she remembered something else. Lying together, breathing hard, gazing into each other’s eyes, and how he’d told her what a good friend she was and how much he treasured their friendship. Emphasis on the word friend.
She’d known then he was going to leave her.
And she experienced anew what it had felt like when he walked her off the boat and left her standing on the pier, while he went straight over to Ginger Jones’s boat without a backward look, and she could still feel the imprint of his body inside hers. Could still feel the kiss he’d planted on her lips before he’d turned away.
Duncan had broken her heart once and Annie wasn’t about to let him have a second crack at it.
* * *
The next morning, achy and embarrassed over her midnight indiscretion with her imaginary lover, Annie phoned Eric. She desperately needed to hear his voice. Because, try as she might, she could not remember what her soon-to-be fiancé looked like. Whenever she attempted to call up Eric’s appealing but unobtrusive features, she saw instead Duncan’s roguish face.
“Hello, Anne,” Eric answered.
Annie cleared her throat. Hearing his voice wasn’t bolstering her mood the way she’d expected. “You know that thing you said you wanted to ask me when I got back home?”
“Yes.”
“Ask me now.”
“It’s not something you ask over the phone. The time and place must be perfect.”
Perfect. Right. Everything with Eric had to go by some predetermined plan, by his timetable. Why did his refusal feel like a rejection? Why did she suddenly want to tell him it was all right with her if he never asked her the question?
“Listen, Anne, could we make this quick? I have an early meeting.”
“Sure, sure.” Disappointment bunched in her stomach. “I was feeling lonesome and wanted to touch base. See how you were doing.”
He launched into a long spiel about the case he was working. Some conglomerate suing their competition.
“I miss you,” she said, when he’d finished talking, although at this point she wasn’t sure that she did.
“Miss you, too.”
His response was automatic. She could hear him doing things. Putting his cereal bowl in the dishwasher. Snapping his briefcase closed. Jangling his keys. Normally she lauded his work ethic, but today it irritated her. Couldn’t he, for once, give her his undivided attention?
“When do you foresee that you’ll be able to come home? I’m ready for our lives to get back to normal.”
“I don’t know. Jock will be in the rehab hospital for another week at least.”
“You’ll be out of vacation time by then.”
“I’m thinking about asking for unpaid leave.”
Eric made a noise of disapproval. “You’re putting your career in jeopardy. You do know that. People who have too many family distractions don’t get promoted as quickly as those of us who devote our full attention to our jobs.”
Feeling chastised, Annie sighed. “Yes, I know.”
“Have you hired anyone to run the dive shop yet?”
“No.” She’d been dragging her feet on the issue and she couldn’t say why.
“You ought to just sell the thing.”
“What would Jock do with himself if he didn’t h
ave the shop?”
“Be realistic, Anne. More than likely your grandfather is going to end up in a nursing home, if he pulls through this at all.”
Eric was right, but that didn’t stop her from fisting her hand in her lap as anger and despair washed over her. Odds were against Jock making a full recovery at his age, but she didn’t want to hear what was practical or common sense. She wanted to believe her grandfather was going to live for a long, long time. Couldn’t Eric offer her a little hope?
“I’ve got to go now. Call me tonight and we’ll discuss this further.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling bereft and very alone.
“Love you.”
But when Annie tried to say it back, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “Have a nice day,” she mumbled instead and hung up, feeling as if the safe, ordered life she’d carefully constructed was rapidly unraveling.
* * *
Down in the dumps after her conversation with Eric, Annie went to see her grandfather in the rehab hospital. She tapped on the door of his room and stepped inside with a smile on her lips, only to have it vanish the minute she spied Duncan sitting in a chair at the foot of Jock’s bed.
She caught her breath, disturbed by the effect he had on her. She wore a pink sundress with a short flirty hem and matching flip-flops. She caught him unabashedly ogling her legs. The way he stared sent a hot jolt of erotic sensation shooting through her. How dare he seduce her with his eyes right here in her grandfather’s sickroom.
“What are you doing here?” She glared.
“I dropped by to offer my sympathy to your grandfather,” Duncan said, looking far more handsome than he had any right to look, in a light blue T-shirt and tight-fitting jeans.
“Liar,” she countered. “You came to tell him about the Siren’s Call.”
“Not me. I made a promise to keep my lips zipped.”
“The Siren’s Call?” Jock perked up. “What about the Siren’s Call?”
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