Mr Right Next Door. Teresa Hill

      The woman smelled great, looked… Well, it was scary what that woman could do to a little, yellow bikini. It was downright unfair. Criminal, even.

      He had indeed been forced to watch her for hours sunning herself in a bikini. She’d rubbed lotion on herself and he’d watched. Drank a silly, fruity drink, licking her lips when she was done, and he’d watched. Rolled over onto a perfectly toned tummy and then reached behind her back to untie the strings of her top, baring a completely naked back, while he watched and another agent had been whispering in his ear, speculating about how much Nick and the rest of the crew would pay him to dump a cup of ice water on her back and make her jump up, leaving the top behind.

      Nick had watched it all.

      There’d been a secluded deck on the ship reserved for nude sunbathing. He would be forever grateful she hadn’t gone there and taken any more of her little suit off.

      But now he’d gotten close enough to smell her hair, actually brush past her shoulder, and every other thought—except what torment she’d already caused him—had simply vanished from his head.

      “Hey, what did she say?” Harry asked.

      Nick had no earthly idea.

      Damn.

      “I think it was something about being in love,” Harry said.

      Nick frowned. Love was not an emotion he wanted involved in any of his cases. Lust was trouble enough, especially when it was him lusting after a pretty woman in a bikini, but love… Love was bad. It was awful. People who thought they were in love did completely unpredictable, illogical, often incredibly stupid things. They got mad. They got hurt. They set out for revenge, ruining their lives and often the lives of people around them, all in the name of that foolish thing called love.

      God save him from another woman in love.

      “Did you get that on tape?” Nick asked. “Can you play it back?”

      “Yeah, hang on. It’ll be up in a second or two. We’ll up the volume on the playback for you. Here it comes.”

      There was a lot of background noise, but he knew her voice by now, just as well as he knew how she smelled.

      He might try to fool the other guys working with him on this case, but he wasn’t going to try to fool himself. It was hard not to remember the woman’s sweet, slow, genuine-sounding Southern drawl. He’d fallen into an exhausted, all-too-brief sleep the last two nights with the sound of her voice and the things she’d said running through his head.

      The way she laughed.

      The pretty smile she so often flashed.

      The twinkle in her pretty blue eyes.

      And yes, the way she’d looked in that little, yellow string bikini.

      Contrary to popular belief, he was not inhuman, just disciplined and focused most of the time, better than most at hiding any feelings he might be unfortunate enough to have and suspicious as hell of almost anyone he met, especially a pretty woman who might or might not be innocent of whatever crime he happened to be investigating.

      Okay, there it was, the tape of the conversation she’d had not thirty seconds ago, playing in his head, the way her voice had been doing for the last forty-eight hours already.

      “I think…” she said. “No…” The tape cut in and out. “Sure…” Come on. Let ’em hear it. “I’m in love.”

      “Oh, great,” Nick said.

      “Yeah, baby,” Harry said. “What do you think? From the way our guy was hanging all over her the last few days, it’s gotta be him, right?”

      “Hell, I don’t know. You know how women are, Harry.”

      Nick had to hope one Eric Weyzinski didn’t feel the same way. That he wouldn’t have a little fling with someone like her on a ship and just walk away from her when it was over. He had to hope Weyzinski was either coming here, or she was going to him, so Nick could follow her and find Weyzinski again. Because they’d screwed up as the ship’s passengers left, lost Weyzinski and they still hadn’t figured out whether he was their bad guy or not.

      That was Nick’s job.

      Catching the bad guys.

      Catch ’em and move on.

      That was his motto, his life, and it suited him just fine.

      One crook after the next.

      Bring ’em on.

      “Okay,” Harry said through his earpiece. “The guy with her did flash a badge to get through security. From a police force in a little town north of the city called Magnolia Falls, which is where our pretty blonde claims to live. We’ll check with the cops there and get back to you to tell you for sure if he is who he claims he is. And from the information I’ve got now, looks like he and our blonde have the same last name. Cassidy. His name is Jackson Cassidy.”

      “Tell me she’s not his wife,” Nick said.

      Because the thing people thought was love, coupled with a marriage license and a wedding ring, mixed in with jealousy and another man who happened to be a crook… That was sure to be a disaster in the making.

      “If the cop’s her husband, she wouldn’t come home from vacation alone and announce to him that she’s in love with someone else,” Harry reminded him.

      “Oh, she just might.” He’d seen more than one unhappy wife throw something like that in her husband’s face.

      “Hey, buddy, remember that little problem of yours we’ve talked about before? The woman thing?”

      “I don’t have a problem with women,” he claimed. “I just have women who happen to cause me problems quite often.”

      Her being merely the latest in a long string of problem-causing women.

      “But I don’t have a problem with women,” Nick insisted.

      “All right, buddy. Whatever you say. What’s your pretty blonde doing now?”

      “Well, the cop looks unhappy about her little announcement, but not pissed off. So I’d say he’s not her husband.”

      One thing to be grateful for.

      “Okay,” Harry said. “Didn’t think so.”

      “Hang on. We’re moving again,” Nick said, putting down the newspaper he’d picked up moments ago and falling into step behind them, blending into the crowd as best he could.

      They made it to the escalator and he managed to get a spot right behind her by rudely cutting in front of an older couple and a woman with a baby, jostling his sore shoulder as he went.

      Oh well.

      A guy had to do what a guy had to do.

      So what if the shoulder still hurt when all he’d done was taken a fall and rolled through it? So what if he didn’t roll as well as he used to and he grew more cynical by the moment?

      He could still do the job better than most.

      And he was not old.

      Thirty-eight was not old for an agent.

      Thirty-eight meant he was simply more experienced and therefore smarter than most.

      Knew all about women and love.

      And this was nothing but another job.

      With the kind of discipline his job demanded, he put his focus firmly back on his case. They had a band of modern-day pirates based off the northern coast of Africa preying on passing vessels. Private boats at first, the crooks stealing to fund whatever other things they might be doing. Then they’d moved on to bigger and better things. Luxury yachts and, now, cruise ships.

      How the hell did they expect to actually board a cruise