Moonlight Magic. Doris Rangel

NO SWIMMING STAY OUT OF THE WATER.

      The damned thing’s too small, he thought bitterly. And damned near worthless. This place needs an electrified fence around it, not a puny little hand-lettered sign. Twenty-four-hour guard dogs ought to patrol the area, trained to drag people away if they came within a hundred feet of the water.

      Better yet, some civic-minded citizen should fill it in with cement, pave it over and make it a parking lot. The cove’s very existence invited tragedy.

      What if someone couldn’t read that paltry notice—or was too stupid to recognize a warning when they read one?

      Scowling at the distant, slightly tilted sign, Daniel angrily forked his fingers through his hair.

      And stilled.

      Inch by careful inch, he lowered his hand to stare at his fingers, still splayed as they’d been in his hair.

      Hair?

      Not daring to hope, he reached up again—actually raised his arm and hand—and lightly touched the top of his head. Against his palm he felt the crisp pelt of his…hair.

      But as he again stared at his hand in awe, a small movement just beyond caught his attention, and Daniel lifted his head sharply. Someone besides himself was on the beach.

      A woman, he realized, sitting on the sand, arms clasping her knees as she stared out over the sea. Her hair, the same color as moonlight, lifted slightly in the breeze. The woman from Tom and Janie’s party.

      And she sat within inches of the water.

      Ready to warn her, Daniel took a step, only to become aware of what he’d just done. Looking down at himself, his own wonder captivated him again.

      He still wore his boxers, he saw. And…he fought an urge to laugh wildly…his money belt! Had anything else about him changed?

      His bare chest and flat stomach looked no leaner, no fuller. His legs were as muscled, as much from walking a thousand miles of hospital corridor as from deliberate exercise. Near the small toe of one bare foot ran the thin line of a scar he’d had since he was twelve.

      It was his body all right. His arms, his legs, what he assumed was his face. Nothing about it was different. And he had moved!

      The thought brought him back to the present with a thump.

      The woman! While he’d been checking himself over, she had risen from her seat on the sand and now swished one foot in the tiny wavelets washing the shore.

      “Hey! Don’t do that!”

      A part of him marveled at the sound of his voice echoing over the beach, but this time Daniel didn’t take time to enjoy it. He headed toward the woman at a dead run.

      She turned a startled face in his direction, dropped her sandals and ran, too.

      Away from him.

      Her action stopped Daniel in his tracks.

      Women didn’t used to run from him. Did he not have his same face after all?

      But the silly woman continued running down the beach, her moonlit hair streaming behind her—each frantic step splashing in the shallow water of the shoreline, sometimes at its edge, sometimes a little deeper.

      Daniel pelted after her again. Whatever hid in the waters of this cove was dangerous. Stay out of the Water the sign said.

      An order, not a warning.

      The woman ran like a deer, but in the wrong direction.

      She was afraid of him, he guessed, and if she’d just aim toward the trees or toward the houses beyond, he’d leave her alone. He had other things to think about.

      But in her panic, she raced down the shoreline, her tracks weaving in and out of the shallow, gently breathing water.

      So he tackled her.

      Chapter Two

      “Oomph!”

      Ellie hit the sand, with her assailant landing on top of her. But she hadn’t spent two nights a week and a small fortune on self-defense classes for nothing.

      As she landed she rolled, and before he could get a grip on her, she lifted her knee and made a dent in the man’s chances for future children.

      Her aim was off, but good enough to make him fall away from her with a groan.

      Leaping to her feet, she took off again.

      “Not that way, you idiot!” she heard the man gasp behind her. “Toward the street! Run to the houses!”

      And Ellie finally understood what her attacker was trying to tell her.

      He was right. Like the idiot he’d called her, she was running up the beach when escape lay toward the neighborhood just beyond it. Heck, Chad’s apartment was only a block away.

      Something didn’t make sense here.

      Still running, but slowing a bit, she risked a look over her shoulder.

      Her assailant remained where he’d fallen, only now he was sitting up and hugging his knees tightly, his head drooping.

      Ellie jogged in place, considering the situation, then turned fully around to stare at the hunched figure from a safe distance.

      Other than waving an arm toward the town behind them, he ignored her.

      “Are you all right?” she asked, taking a few steps toward him but ready to speed away again at the least hint she hadn’t completely clobbered him.

      “Peachy. But at least I know all of me works.” He groaned. “Did work.”

      She took a few more steps in his direction, the better to give him the full effect of her glare. “Take it as a warning the next time you attack a woman,” she replied coldly. “Just be glad I didn’t connect as well as I should have.”

      “Oh, I’m glad. Trust me.” His bitter laugh checked abruptly. “And I didn’t attack you.”

      “No? Guess we don’t read the same dictionary. What do you call chasing a woman so you can knock her down?”

      “Ah, you can read.” The man’s forehead still rested on his knees, but his tone matched hers for sarcasm. “So why didn’t you? And I call it trying to save your stupid neck.”

      “Why didn’t I what?”

      “Read the sign,” he growled.

      “I did. Since I wasn’t swimming, I don’t see what the problem is.”

      At last the man lifted his head so he could gaze at her, his handsome face a study of disgust.

      Handsome? The man was drop-dead gorgeous!

      “It doesn’t just say No Swimming,” he bit out. “It says, and this is a direct quote, ‘Danger no swimming stay out of the water.’ No commas, no periods, no question marks.”

      “I barely had a foot in it,” Ellie replied coldly, then paused. “Are you saying the water is polluted?”

      “Of course not. But the water here is dangerous. The sign says so, and I know so. Yet there you were, ignoring the warning like the mainlander you are.”

      Ellie sighed. Talk about overreaction! But the night was far too beautiful to argue. So what the heck.

      With opportunities in short supply for rescuing damsels these days, let the guy have his water dragon.

      “All right. I should have paid attention,” she conceded, by now standing beside him. “Thanks for your, um, efforts on my behalf. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

      His smile did weird things to her knees.

      “And I’m sorry I frightened you,” he