Some Kind of Wonderful. Sarah Morgan

into areas not covered by school.

      As in everything, she’d proved a quick study.

      She’d been an eager pupil, lying on the bed with her hair spilling over her naked body, doing everything he’d demanded of her and more.

      If he’d been filling out her report card, he would have given her top grades.

      Her reward had been a broken heart.

      He dragged his eyes from sun-kissed skin and lean muscle and focused on the spider. To be fair it was too big to fit comfortably under a teacup, which he knew to be the favored way of dealing with anything born with more than four legs. “Probably thinks it’s a good place to raise a family.”

      “You’re not funny. Please get rid of it.”

      The fact that she hadn’t even reached for a towel told him how freaked out she was.

      For his own sake, he grabbed the nearest towel, threw it to her and dealt with the spider.

      When he returned to the bathroom, she was still in the same place, the towel clutched to her chest with her good hand.

      Turned out it was a hand towel, and she didn’t seem to realize that clutching it across her breasts left most of the lower half of her bare. Or maybe her priorities were elsewhere.

      Her teeth were chattering. “Is it dead?”

      “No.” There were plenty of humans he would happily have flattened under his boot, but when it came to animals and insects he preferred a more sympathetic approach. “Didn’t see the point in killing it. I relocated it somewhere it might be more welcome and comfortable.”

      “That means it’s going to find its way back into the house.” She took a step back, and he turned his head, desperately searching for a bigger towel.

      “Last time I looked, spiders didn’t come equipped with GPS. They don’t have spiders in Greece?”

      “Not ones that size. Or maybe I managed to avoid them.” Distracted, she pushed damp hair back from her face. “What are you doing here anyway?”

      Finally, now the crisis was averted, she was registering exactly who had come to her rescue. He had a feeling that up until that point he could have been anyone. “You left your backpack. Thought you might need it.”

      “But how did you get in? I locked the doors—” Her voice faded and her eyes widened. “You broke in? Why would you break in?”

      “You screamed.”

      And he was trying not to examine the reason he’d felt the fierce need to protect something that wasn’t even his to protect.

      She stared at him, lips parted, breathing shallow. “Right.” Her mouth closed and she swallowed hard. “I guess I should be grateful breaking and entering is still one of your party tricks.”

      It had been years since he’d used anything other than a key to open a door, but he knew there were many who would have shared her assumption. Usually it didn’t bother him. People could believe what they wanted to believe; the only difference was that in the past she’d been the first one to defend him.

      He could hardly blame her for recalibrating her expectations.

      And if part of him was unsettled by how quickly he’d been driven to gain access to a locked property once she’d screamed, he ignored it. He’d believed her to be in trouble. Any man would have done the same.

      Silence, tense and awkward, spread between them.

      Her body was lightly tanned, the bronze glow of her shoulders intersected by paler strap marks. The uneven marks told him she’d gained that color while doing the job she loved, not by lying on a beach, soaking up the sun.

      Now that the spider had gone, there was nothing between them but the past and the electricity that shimmered and crackled in the air. The way she stayed flattened to the bathroom wall made him wonder if she saw him as a threat worse than the spider.

      She lifted a shaky hand to her damp hair. “I’m grateful for the whole knight-in-shining-armor routine. You said you came to return my bag. Where is it?”

      “Kitchen.” And he knew she wasn’t grateful. She was livid that she’d needed help and that he’d been the one to give it.

      “Thanks. Do I need to count the money?”

      It was a question she never would have asked before, and he stared at her for a long moment, watching the flush build in her cheeks.

      Although that was one crime he wasn’t guilty of, he knew he was guilty of plenty of others so he didn’t bother defending himself.

      Instead, he looked at the clothes strewn haphazardly on the floor of the bathroom where she’d obviously struggled to strip them off. He was no detective, but it seemed to him that she’d slept in the clothes she’d traveled in.

      Dragging his eyes from the thong, he eyed her plaster cast. “You having trouble managing with that thing on your arm?”

      “No. No trouble.”

      It was her right hand. She was right-handed. It had to be a problem, but he guessed she would rather have faced another spider than admit to him that she was struggling.

      He glanced from the mess on the floor to the cast on her wrist and told himself it wasn’t his business.

      “You’ve got people you can call if you need help?”

      “I don’t need help. Goodbye, Zach.”

      His legs refused to move. “You need to think about getting a new bolt on your back door.” The cottage was isolated. Her nearest neighbor was a mile away. The thought sent his tension levels rocketing.

      “My lock is fine. This is Puffin Island.”

      “Last time I looked there was nothing stopping the criminal element stepping aboard the ferry.”

      “I guess you’re proof of that.”

      Zach’s eyes met hers. He’d always assumed that his less-than-clean-cut past had been part of the attraction for her, at least initially. At the time it had amused him that a few nasty secrets had the upside of making him more interesting to the opposite sex. He’d milked it for all it was worth. Why wouldn’t he? If the gutter had a silver lining, then he figured he might as well wrap himself in it.

      Those days were long behind him, but clearly not forgotten. Not by him and not by the residents of Puffin Island. And, it seemed, not by his ex-wife.

      With a brief nod, he turned and walked out of the house, this time leaving by the front door.

      If she chose not to buy a better lock for the back door, that was her business. At any rate, he was willing to lay bets that there wasn’t a decent lock to be had in any of the stores since he’d landed back on the island.

      “HOLY CRAP, he saw me naked. Could it be any more humiliating?” Brittany lay on her back on the bed, talking to Skylar on the phone.

      “He heard you scream and broke in to save you. That’s so romantic.”

      “It’s not romantic, it’s the sign of a misspent youth. Would you know how to break through a door without damaging the lock?”

      “No, but we all have different skills and you’re missing the most important point. All these years you thought he didn’t care, but he obviously does.”

      “I don’t know how you draw that conclusion.”

      “He thought you were in trouble, Brit! You screamed and he came. A knight in shining armor.”

      “He was wearing black jeans.” An old pair of Levi’s and a black T-shirt that had fitted him perfectly, molding to every contour of his muscular frame. “He looked like a ninja not a knight.”

      “Yum.”