The Cliff House. RaeAnne Thayne

      Shane made a sound that could have been a scoff or a laugh, she couldn’t quite tell. He wrapped the towel around his neck and reached a hand out to Cruz.

      “It’s good to see you, but I should go,” Shane said. “We’re working on some new plays for the season. I’m glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”

      “Any knife wound is serious. That’s what the doc says. The risk of infection is huge.”

      “Right. Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Thanks for the game of hoops, Sunshine. You get better every time we play.”

      Mari beamed at him. “Night, Shane. I won’t rub it in your face that you lost, I promise.”

      “Thanks for sparing my feelings,” he said with a grin. He kissed the top of her head then leaned over to give Bea their usual hug.

      She could smell him, chlorine and shampoo and delicious male. To her surprise, he didn’t stop with a hug but kissed her cheek, and she fought a powerful urge to lift her mouth to his.

      Where on earth were all these strange impulses coming from?

      “Good night,” she murmured.

      “Night. Come on, Sal.”

      He waved to them all, then headed to the guesthouse on the edge of her property with his yellow Lab following after him.

      The place wasn’t huge, a one-bedroom with a separate combined kitchen and living room and a decent-size bathroom, but it was plenty big enough for one man and a dog, especially for only a few months.

      It had seemed a great idea a few months ago, the perfect solution when he needed somewhere to live during the renovation. In retrospect, she wished she’d never invited him to stay here at Felicidad. She wanted their friendship back.

      “I wish you’d told me he was living here,” Cruz said when Shane went inside the guesthouse and they, in turn, headed inside the main house.

      She sighed. “He’s not living with me. He’s living in the guesthouse, as you can clearly see. Farther away than when he lived next door to Three Oaks.”

      Even if Shane were living inside the main house, in one of the six bedrooms, she had more than enough room.

      It was too much house for only her and Mari. She knew that and some part of her wished she’d chosen differently when she was shopping for properties. But Daisy had advised her this was a good investment and she did love her studio that overlooked the ocean and had all the natural light she could ever want.

      As usual, though, she had been weak and let other people determine her destiny.

      “I’m going to change out of my swimming suit. I’ll be right back,” Mari said, hurrying off to her bedroom at the end of the hall, the one with the loft bed Shane had helped Bea build.

      “I bet Landry jumped at the chance to move here,” Cruz said when she was gone.

      She frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

      “You know what it means. Shane has always had a thing for you.”

      What did Cruz see that she didn’t? Those strange butterflies seemed to flutter around again.

      “You’re crazy. He has not. We’re friends. Best friends. We have been since fifth grade.”

      Cruz scoffed. “Shane Landry wants more than friendship from you. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”

      He was wrong. He had to be. She’d been divorced for years. If Shane was interested in her, why didn’t he do anything about it? Sure, he had been busy with his NFL career then the injury that had ended it, then caring for his ailing father the past few years. But he had dated other women in that time. He certainly hadn’t shown the slightest inclination that he wanted to kick their relationship to another level.

      Cruz didn’t know what he was talking about. She wasn’t in the mood to argue with him, though.

      “Are you really planning to spend an entire month here in Cape Sanctuary? Mari will love it, but you can’t be away from your career that long, can you?”

      “My team understands that I need this. I want to spend more time with my family. My baby girl. I almost died, babe. That crazy bastard wanted me gone. When I close my eyes, I can still see him coming at me.”

      She couldn’t even imagine. “It must have been terrifying.”

      “That kind of thing messes with your head. I’ve had nightmares every night since it happened. I wanted to fly back here that night after they stitched me up to be with you and Mari but I didn’t feel right about leaving Gabe. That’s the guy who saved my life.”

      “Was he seriously hurt?”

      Cruz nodded, looking uncharacteristically grim. “It was touch and go for a while. He ended up losing part of his liver.”

      “Oh, no!” She’d had no idea things had been that grave for the man who had stepped in front of a knife for Cruz.

      “For a while there, the docs said he might need a transplant. I was going to offer, but we both know mine’s probably not in the best of shape.”

      He grinned but she didn’t find the comment at all amusing. His drinking and his recreational drug use were partly responsible for the breakup of their marriage, helped along by his chronic infidelity. Cruz, known as one of rock’s sexiest bad boys, had a tough time resisting his legion of groupies.

      He didn’t look particularly bad now, sprawled out on one of her kitchen chairs. “Turns out, they just removed the damaged part.”

      “Is he okay now?” Bea asked.

      “He’s out of the woods. That’s another reason I’m back. After he was released from the hospital, he needed a place to recover. I told him there was no better place on earth to recuperate than here in Cape Sanctuary. He’s back at the house.”

      Along with probably a dozen groupies and other hangers-on. The king of rock had to travel with his court.

      “I’d love you to meet him,” Cruz continued. “Both you and Mari.”

      “Before I can let her stay, you know I’ll need to have Peter run a background check on this Gabe person and everyone else who is here with you at Casa Del Mar.”

      “Yeah, I know.”

      She had made it a requirement of their custody agreement, that she needed to vet all the people who surrounded her famous ex-husband before exposing her daughter to any of them. Her attorney who handled that for her was on speed dial and she would call him in the morning.

      “I’ll get you the names,” Cruz said. They had been through this routine so many times that he only sounded a little annoyed. He understood by now that she was only concerned for their daughter’s safety.

      The circumstances of the past few weeks reinforced that her husband lived in a precarious, larger-than-life world where strangers could attack with hunting knives and change a person’s life forever.

      “Are you really okay?” Bea asked. She had loved Cruz once, as deeply and passionately as a teenage girl could. Even in her early twenties she had cared for him, until his success had changed him from the earnest, loving boy with the golden voice and poet’s soul to a man addicted to his fans and his fame.

      “I’m fine physically. Like I said, just a scratch.” He paused. “Emotionally and mentally, that’s another story. Coming this close to death, knowing I could check out at a moment’s notice...that has made me reevaluate everything.”

      “And what startling conclusions have you come up with?”

      “That I never should have agreed to our divorce,” he said bluntly.

      The words came out of nowhere and just about knocked her over. If they had still been standing by the pool,