Just like that.
Alexia hadn’t even planned to say good-bye.
Mike sat on the end of a lounge chair and studied the two rings in his hand. One glistening solitaire, the other an elegant arrangement of emeralds and diamonds. For all Mike knew, he thought, casting a tired gaze over the pool surface, there were others like these down there. Dozens, maybe. Heck, if he looked long enough, he might even find thousands.
He could start his own business: Ring Finders Unlimited. He’d make a fortune on broken hearts…
Mike blinked back the heat in his eyes and stared up at the star-speckled night, realizing just how cynical he’d become.
It was really too late to drive back to the city, and his room for the night was bought and paid for. Plus, he still had mystery woman’s ring in the palm of his hand. Mike didn’t know how, but some way before he left here tomorrow, he was going to get that woman to take back her ring. Then maybe she could return it properly to whoever had given it to her in the first place.
Not that it was Mike’s normal style to go inserting himself in other people’s relationships, but someone had to wise the female species up to the damage it was doing out there. And, since he had nothing left to lose, Mike thought, tightening his grip around his solitaire, it might as well be him.
Chapter Two
Carrie sat at the small breakfast table, absentmindedly stirring her coffee.
“Good morning,” a deep baritone echoed from above her.
Carrie looked up at the dapper man in chinos and a button-down shirt. “Mike! I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!”
A couple at the next table set down their grapefruit spoons and stared.
“I mean,” Carrie backpedaled, perspiration sweeping her hairline, “dry.” Oh, Criminy. Carrie picked up her cup, but Mike just grinned and pulled out a chair.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
Now that was a loaded question for eight o’clock in the morning. Carrie picked up the Style Section of the newspaper and rapidly fanned her face. “Sure, why not?” Anything, she thought. Anything to get this Greek Adonis to sit—and her to stop babbling like an idiot in this public place.
“Listen,” he said, squaring his chair in with the table. “I think we got off on the wrong foot last night.”
“Look, Mike,” Carrie said, reaching a hand across the table to touch his arm, then instantly regretting it. It had to be over eighty degrees inside, with the air-conditioning in this antiquated building malfunctioning, and yet, still, the contact sent shivers up her spine. “As far as I’m concerned, the two of us aren’t even going anywhere. So, wrong foot or no, it’s all water under the bridge.”
“Or, into the pool,” he said with a smile that pinned her in place even though a very big part of her longed to spring from her chair and race from the room. What was it with her? What in the world was she afraid of? Mike…? And if it was terror she felt, then why did every inch of her skin vibrate with electric fire each time his sea-green eyes settled on hers?
Carrie took a very long, deliberate sip of water, then set down her glass. “You know, I never got your last name,” she said with a smile she hoped looked pleasantly interested, not recklessly giddy.
“Davis,” he said as a server sauntered over. “No,” he told her as she tilted the silver coffee carafe, “I’m not staying.”
“You’re not?” Carrie asked before she could stop herself.
Mike arched one eyebrow, and the slightest tingle took hold of Carrie’s tailbone. Damn it, she thought, shaking off the confusion. She was not attracted to this man, not attracted one iota. And she was going to prove it. To him—and the rest of the world, as well.
“Please,” Carrie said in her most gracious Southern tone. “Do stay. It’s the least I can do for…”
Their waitress colored slightly as Carrie’s words fell off.
Mike accepted a cup of coffee then met Carrie’s eyes with a sly smile. “You know,” he whispered as their server departer. “I think you almost embarrassed that woman.”
“Truth be told,” Carrie admitted, taking a sip of coffee that had grown lukewarm, “I almost embarrassed myself.”
Mike tore open a sugar packet and dumped the contents into his cup. “Do tell.”
But Carrie didn’t want to tell—tell this man any more than she had to. For, in a very big way, she already feared she’d told him way too much. Maybe not in so many words but certainly with her eyes. Guy who looked like that was bound to be experienced. Would certainly know when a woman was…what? Ogling him? Impossible. Carrie St. John was a business professional, a seasoned woman of the world. She did not ogle. She appraised. And every one of Mike’s assets, darn it, were starting to add up.
“I never kiss and tell,” Carrie said, realizing afterwards just how flirtatious that sounded.
Carrie flagged down the waitress and asked for another glass of water, wondering if she wouldn’t be better off having the waitress dump the whole pitcher in her lap.
Mike stirred his coffee, then set aside the spoon. “Okay by me,” he assured her with earnest green eyes. “Believe me, I won’t be pressing you for details.”
Carrie shifted in her chair, wondering why his gentlemanly assertion made her heart drop down to her belly. It wasn’t that she wanted him pressing her—for details.
Criminy! She was a mess!
Carrie gratefully grabbed her refilled water and downed half the glass in one long swallow. “Won’t be here for too much longer anyhow,” she said, searching for a reasonable-sounding way out of the corner she’d painted herself into. “Least ways, not long enough to engage in long-winded conversation.”
“I see,” Mike said, studying her white-knuckled grip on her water glass. “So, then, where will you be going back to?”
“Mill Creek,” she told him, feeling the room lightly spin around her. As ridiculous as it seemed, there was something about him that made her want to forget about going home altogether. Maybe it was in the heart-stopping way he looked at her, even when he pretended to be making normal conversation. Or maybe it was in the way he looked when he was half undressed…
Carrie bit into her bottom lip as Mike fell back in his chair with surprise.
“No kidding? I’m right next door in Redfields!”
“So what are you doing up here?” she asked, trying to keep her thoughts on the straight and narrow. Straight and narrow? Holy cow! Totally wrong image! What on earth was wrong with her? Never in her life had her mind been so carnally occupied!
His eyes fell to his coffee cup. “Maybe it’s best if I don’t kiss and tell either.”
“You mean,” Carrie asked with surprise, “you were here with a woman?”
He looked up, little wrinkles creasing his brow. “You find that so amazing?”
Actually, what Carrie found amazing was that any woman in her right mind who’d come here with Mike in the first place wouldn’t still be here with him now. “What happened?” Carrie asked, softening her voice in concern. “I mean, certainly you don’t have to tell me, but—”
“She dumped me,” Mike said, bright eyes darkening. “Sayonara. Just like that. Didn’t even have the courtesy to say good-bye. Simply walked out at dinner and never came back.”
“No…” Carrie said, catching her breath on the unbelievable. That actually sounded worse than what had happened to her!
“Wish I could say it wasn’t so,” Mike said with a shake of his head, “particularly after all the… Well, never mind,” he told her, fingering the rings through his pants pocket. “None of that matters much now.”
Mike reached into his chinos and pulled out the pair of rings. “Not quite a matching set,” he said, laying them on the table. But quite an attractive pair just the same.”
Carrie blanched and looked up. “Are you telling me that… Now, wait a minute—”
Mike nodded. “Uncanny as it seems, my ring got tossed in the pool as well. Maybe it’s some sort of unwritten bylaw to staying in this place.”
“Only when the guys involved are first-class jerks,” Carrie said with a hard edge to her voice.
A rosy band of color swept across the bridge of her nose. “Oh, sorry… Didn’t mean it to—”
“So, you’re assuming it was somehow my fault?” Mike asked.
“Well, it’s only natural. If she felt strongly enough to throw your ring in—”
And here he’d actually been feeling sorry for her. Had been entertaining these ridiculous thoughts. Ideas that he and this fellow lovelorn soul might actually have something in common. Or maybe he’d just been deluding himself to keep his mind off his raging heartache.
Mike pushed back abruptly from the table. “Enjoy the rest of your stay,” he said, dabbing his mouth with his napkin.
“Wait!” Carrie said, leaning forward across the table and attempting to grab his arm. But it was too late. He’d already laid a ten dollar bill on the table and walked away.
Carrie tipped the waitress, then hurriedly made her way out the front door. Bright sunlight spun gold through lilac bushes lining the cobblestone walk in front of her. Overhead, morning birds called out in song as the fragrance of early summer laced the air.
This was absurd! Carrie didn’t even know where in the inn he’d been staying, much less what kind of car he drove. For all she knew, he’d already gone!
Carrie looked down in a cold sweat at the two rings nestled in her damp palm. She hadn’t even wanted one, and now she’d been saddled with two of them! One from a man she thought she’d known but actually didn’t know at all. The other from a virtual stranger!
Carrie raced down the path, then halted where it met the gravel drive. Off to the left and down at the bottom of the grassy hill, lay the gazebo—and the swimming area.
Of course, she thought, squaring her shoulders and taking off in that direction.
Mike sat at the end of the chaise lounge, knowing it was more than just Alexia. His failings at romance had an awful lot to do with himself. Hadn’t he just proven that back at the inn ten minutes ago? Fifteen minutes with a woman who didn’t know him from Adam and she’d already pitched him straight into that flaming barbeque pit.
Well, fine, maybe monogamy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be anyway. Just because he’d always thought he’d wanted a wife and family didn’t necessarily mean that was in his cards. And every good poker player knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Maybe, at thirty-eight, it was time Mike cashed in his chips. He’d always yearned to do something different. Move to the Caymans, maybe, and open up that dive shop he’d always dreamed about.
Before, with gold-digging Alexia, he’d been reluctant to leave his “stable” job in real estate and pursue something more daring. Now, he had nothing in the world to stop him.
“Thought I’d find you down here.”
Mike looked up in surprise to find Carrie standing radiant in the sunlight.
“I believe I have something of yours,” she said, walking toward him and turning over his solitaire in her hand.
Mike stood. “That was awfully nice of you. But you didn’t have to. Particularly after the way I—”
She gave him the soft smile he’d always known her capable of. “Didn’t mean to offend you—or imply that you, personally, were any kind of jerk. That’s just…uh, been my own unfortunate experience.”
“Yeah, well, unfortunately, my experience with women hasn’t run much better.”
A cool morning breeze lifted off the water and fanned Carrie’s long skirt around her legs. “We’re a real pair, aren’t we?” she asked, bending down to smooth out the clingy material that Mike kind of wished she’d left in place. It had been doing a spectacular job at emphasizing the curves of her luscious legs.
“A couple of losers, you mean?” he asked, wrinkling his brow. “Now, I don’t think I’d go as far to say that.”
“Losers, absolutely not,” Carrie said, coming over and sitting in a nearby chair. “Just down on our luck a bit at the moment.”
“I’ll say,” Mike said, pulling up another chair and sitting beside her. “Worked a good long time to buy that ring. That last house, especially, was a bear to sell. But I knew if I didn’t have the commission—”
“You’re in real estate?” she asked, looking amused.
“What’s so surprising about that?”
“Oh nothing, really,” she said, pursing her lips and looking toward the pool. “Just somehow I envisioned you in a line of work a little more—physical.”
Mike spurted a laugh. “Lifeguard, you mean?” He pondered the notion of giving her mouth-to-mouth as she turned her very kissable lips toward his. Lips that had no business looking so damn inviting on such a downright disastrous morning.
Carrie shrugged two silky white shoulders that peeked out from beneath her halter-style dress. “Well, sure. That—or a rock climber. Firefighter. Policeman…”
Carrie bit her tongue, realizing how very much she sounded as if she were exercising her fantasies. And if she put her mind to it, Carrie was quite certain she could come up with one or two of those involving the well-built man beside her—clothed or not.
It was probably getting close to checkout and time for Carrie to get back to her room. Her first order of business was calling her grandmother to tell her tomorrow afternoon’s bridal shower was off. It would be a sorrowful disappointment to her grandmother and all of her grandmother’s old friends who’d worked so hard in the planning. Not only that, they’d all been expecting to meet the groom! And here Carrie was having to show up empty-handed.
Carrie cast a sideways glance at the man beside her, a totally absurd notion popping into her brain. No, he wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even dare to ask!
“You know the worst part about all of this?” Mike asked, still studying the water. But Carrie truly couldn’t imagine anything worse than the look on her grandmother’s face when Carrie confessed she’d let another eligible bachelor slip right through her ineffectual fingers. “It’s my reunion.”
“Reunion?” Carrie asked.
Mike grimaced. “High school. And for once, I thought I’d finally have a fighting chance to prove them wrong.”
Carrie heaved a deep sigh, grateful that her own twentieth was still a good, safe five years away. Other than business success, she’d had nothing to show for herself at her tenth, so hadn’t gone. By her twentieth, she’d been certain she’d have a dashing man—perhaps even a baby or two—on her arm. Now, she wasn’t so certain.