The Billionaire's Bride. Jackie Braun

by his thorough, frank appraisal. And she figured she had him.

      Marnie didn’t believe in false modesty, so she would be the first to say she looked damned good in this swimsuit, great even. It hid the small tummy she’d gained since Noah, the little pouch that no amount of sit-ups seemed to eradicate. She’d come to grips with that and had decided to work around it. Accentuate the positive, as the saying went. And so she did. The neckline scooped low to show off her full breasts, and the bottom was cut high at the hip to reveal every inch of her long and slender—if a bit pale at this point—legs.

      She’d planned to carry this suit and dozens of other flattering ones in her mail-order business in what she now thought of as her other life. And even though she’d purchased it three years ago, this was the first time she’d actually worn it outside the confines of a fitting room or in her bedroom, where she’d taken pleasure in modeling it for her husband just a month before the accident.

      J.T.’s voice snapped her back to the present.

      “Sorry, I’m not in a generous mood today.”

      He didn’t bother to hide his smile after he took another satisfying gulp.

      She scowled at him. All that flirting wasted.

      “Just today? I got the feeling that was a permanent state for you,” she snapped.

      “Why are you here?”

      “Again with the questions,” she groused, sliding her feet out of her sandals and dumping her sunglasses onto the towel.

      “I haven’t liked any of the answers so far,” he shot back.

      “Your problem.”

      The breeze tugged at her hair when she turned away from him and started toward the water.

      “I meant it about the undertow,” he called after her.

      She was hip deep in the chilly water before she replied, “Yes, but did you mean the part about not coming in to save me?”

      J.T. watched her dive under the next wave. Her dark head emerged a few feet away and then went under again. He scanned the surf between large rock formations, anxious for a glimpse of her, but spotted nothing.

      “Damn!” he muttered, setting his coffee down on one of the rocks and tugging the shirt he wore over his head.

      He was in the water, swimming frantically toward the spot where he’d last spied her, when he heard laughter. Treading water, he turned and saw her standing on the beach.

      Holding his coffee cup.

      She raised it in mock salute before bringing it to her smiling lips. Afterward, she called, “You make a mean cup of joe, J.T.”

      She was still laughing as he swam to shore. By the time he reached her towel, where she sat reclining on her elbows, wet skin glistening in the morning sun, his coffee cup had been drained and J.T. had worked his way past irritated to the upper end of irate.

      “That stunt was incredibly low, not to mention stupid. If there had been an undertow, I could have drowned trying to save your sorry butt.”

      “I beg to differ.”

      “About the undertow?”

      “No, about my butt. It is anything but sorry,” she said.

      He opened his mouth, then snapped it back shut. He wanted to argue with her. Really, he wanted to. But she had a point. In fact, he’d spent several hours the night before lying in his bed thinking about the very butt in question as well as the rest of the package that, when put together, made up one mouthwatering woman.

      Still, he wasn’t letting her off the hook, no matter how fine he found that derriere.

      “I’d like an apology.”

      She tipped down her sunglasses and regarded him over the top of the dark lenses. Even without a hint of makeup, she had the most incredible eyes. They made him think of molasses. They were that dark and rich, and when she blinked she did so slowly, as if it were an effort to close the lids.

      “I’ll admit to being ruthless when it comes to my morning coffee, but you will recall that I asked you very nicely to share before resorting to trickery.”

      “Trickery? Try thievery.”

      She shrugged as if to concede the point. “Call the cops.”

      “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” he demanded.

      “No. That’s not all.” She glanced at the hem of his soaking wet shorts. “You’re dripping on my towel.”

      She had the audacity to slide the sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and lay back on the towel.

      J.T.’s control was the stuff of legends. He never lost his cool, not during the most heated of board meetings, not even during his divorce settlement, when Terri’s team of lawyers had hovered like vultures over his self-made fortune and tried to pick off what they could.

      But looking down at the smug raven-haired woman, he lost something. He didn’t think. He didn’t consider the consequences—something his attorney would ream him for were Richard Danton present. No, J.T. acted. Bending down, he scooped Marnie up from her towel and headed toward the ocean, intent on dumping her into the churning surf.

      That’ll teach her to mess with me, he thought.

      “What do you think you’re doing?” she cried.

      Oh, he had her plenty surprised. She squirmed in arms, cool wet flesh sliding against cool wet flesh until the friction generated heat.

      Lots and lots of heat.

      And now she wasn’t the only one surprised. Beneath his anger, he felt it, that low tug of something he didn’t want to feel at all. But there it was, and there was no denying its existence.

      Marnie wasn’t a small woman. Tall, long-limbed, nicely curved in all of the areas that counted. She filled up his arms almost as well as she filled out her bathing suit.

      And, she had one hell of a right hook he realized too late.

      It connected solidly with his jaw, staggered him so that they both wound up sprawled in the sand. A wave came up, cool water drenching the pair of them, but this was hardly like the scene in From Here to Eternity. Neither of the actors in that movie had taken one on the chin before going down.

      “What was that for?”

      “As if you need to ask,” she spat, disengaging her legs from his and then rolling to her feet.

      She glared down at him, an angry Amazon. God, he’d never seen any woman look half as sexy. And that thought made him more determined to ignore his traitorous libido.

      He didn’t have time for this distraction in his life right now. He had enough on his plate with the Justice Department breathing down his neck, interviewing disgruntled former employees of Tracker Operating Systems and subpoenaing records and assorted other company paperwork. That’s why he’d come to Mexico—to get away, to think, to plan. And then Marnie LaRue had sashayed into his life, listening to the same Motown music he preferred and muddling up his brain with her mile-long legs and lush sweep of lashes.

      He’d be damned if he could get a bead on her. She was after something, had to be. But he still couldn’t figure out what. A job? An interview? A ring?

      Still, he’d give her this: she certainly had a different approach than the others.

      He rubbed his sore jaw and, though he berated himself for it, admired the view as she stalked away.

      They steered clear of each other for the better part of the day, which was easy to do since Marnie spent most of it in town. She called her parents and talked to her son, who, as she’d suspected, had already renegotiated his bedtime and met his candy quota for the month.

      The man from whom Marnie had rented the house apologized for the