By Request Collection 1. Jackie Braun

at the black screen. No charge. Great. Just great. Heart galloping, she darted to the bedroom doorway. From here she had a clear view down the length of the boat to the glass door where a light drizzle sheened the deck—and the stranger.

      Tall. Male. His outline glistening with moisture.

      Too broad-shouldered for Todd, thank God, but it could have been the hunchback of Notre Dame, his silhouette sharpening as silvery sheet lightning edged in bronze flickered behind him.

      In the clammy air her skin chilled.

      Then the hunch lifted away from his shoulders and she realised it was some kind of duffle bag. She pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle the hysteria rising up her throat. The bag or whatever-it-was hit the deck with a scuffed thud, then he straightened to a height and breadth rivalling her brother’s and she drew back instinctively. The sound in her throat turned to a choked gasp.

      She swallowed it down. Even as she told herself that it was probably a new arrival checking out the grounds, she was pulling on her dressing gown, yanking the sash tight. She pocketed the useless phone.

      She could exit via the rear door near her bed, but to leave the boat she’d have to pass within a close couple of steps of him on the narrow jetty then make it past the pool to the carport, wait for the roller door to rise … Safer to remain where she was.

      And if he wasn’t a new arrival … How had he managed to get past the security-coded roller door?

      Because he knew the code, right? Right. The thought was reassuring. Still, she had to force one foot in front of the other, her bare feet soundless over the linoleum as she skirted boxes and crates until she slipped on a pool of moisture that hadn’t been there a couple of hours earlier. Arms flailing and swearing to herself, she came to a slippery stop in her tiny galley, gripped the edge of her equally tiny table and looked outside.

      His sheer size swamped her deck. A flash of lightning revealed black clothing, bare forearms and uncompromising features. Alarmingly good-looking for a potential burglar. Vaguely familiar. Short black hair silvered with raindrops, dark stubbled square jaw. Big hands as he patted his chest then slid them down the front of his thighs as if he’d lost something.

      Dangerous. The errant thought of those hands patting her own chest sent an unwelcome thrill rippling down her spine. Something shimmered at the edge of her earliest teenage memories. A guy. As out of reach and dangerous and darkly beguiling as this man.

      She shook old images away. She’d been fooled by one too many tall-dark-and-handsomes to be fooled again. And this man was probably looking for his lock pick while she was standing here like a loon and letting him, when what she should have been doing was phoning the police. With her dead phone.

      Her limbs went into lock-down while her slow-motion brain tried—and failed—to figure her next move. She could smell the calming scents of the jasmine candle she’d used earlier, the fresh basil she’d picked and put in a jar on the sink, the ever-present pervasive river.

      Would they be her last memories before she died?

      She watched, frozen, while he dug into a trouser pocket and pulled something out then stepped right up to the door.

      Adrenaline spurted through her veins, propelling her into action. Reaching for the nearest object—a seashell the size of her fist—she curled stiff fingers between its reassuring spikes and stood as tall as her five feet three inches would allow.

      ‘Go away. This is private pr—’

      Her pitifully thin demand was gulped over a dry mouth when she heard the heart-stopping click of a key being turned in the lock. The door slid open and the stranger stepped inside, bumping into her brass wind chime on the way and bringing the fragrance of rain with him.

      She yanked her phone from her pocket. ‘No closer.’ His silhouette loomed darkly as he moved and her nostrils flared at the potent smell of wet male. ‘I’ve called the police.’

      He came to an abrupt halt. She sensed surprise but no fear and she realised her voice had given her away. Female.

      All-alone female.

      She lunged forward, the makeshift weapon in her other hand aimed at his throat. She felt the pressure as the shell’s prongs met flesh.

      Before she could draw breath, his arm blocked hers. ‘Easy. I’m not going to hurt you.’ His deep voice accompanied the thunder that rolled across the ocean.

      ‘I don’t know that.’ And she wasn’t giving him the chance. ‘You’re on my boat. Leave. Now.’ Tightening her fist on her shell, she jabbed at him again but his forearm blocked her. It was like pushing against steel.

      He made some sound, like an almost bored sigh. ‘You really don’t want to do that, sweet cheeks,’ he muttered, disarming her as easily as drawing breath. As if he fought off women for a living. Then his hand loosened, skated down her upraised arm from wrist to elbow and she didn’t doubt that was exactly what he did—and on a daily basis.

      The limb that no longer seemed to belong to her remained within the heat of his hand of its own volition, while hot and cold shivers chased over her skin. ‘You’re on my boat,’ she repeated, but it came out like more of a whisper.

      ‘Yet I have a key.’

      Before she could analyse that dryly delivered fact or think of a response, he released her, stepped sideways and flipped on the light switch. Then he raised both hands to show her he meant no harm.

      She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden glare. As she noticed the red mark where the shell had grazed a bronzed neck. As her brain caught up with the fact that yes, absolutely, he had a key and he’d reached for the light switch with such easy familiarity …

       Blake Everett.

      She sagged against the table but her partial relief was quickly chased away by a different kind of tension. He wore faded black jeans and a black sweater washed almost transparent with age. The shrunken sleeves ended halfway down thick sinewy forearms sprinkled with dark masculine hair.

      Jared’s mate. Her first innocent crush when she’d been nine years of age and he’d been eighteen and joined the navy. Then when he’d come home on leave after his mother’s death. oh, my. She’d been thirteen to his twenty-two but she’d looked at him as a woman would, dreamed of him as only a woman would and she’d kept the guilty pleasure a secret.

      She doubted he’d ever looked at her other than the time she’d fallen off her skateboard trying to impress him and bloodied her nose, his whiter-than-white T-shirt and, most of all, her young pride.

      Gossip had circulated. Bad boy. Black sheep. It hadn’t changed the way she thought of him until eventually she heard the rumours that he’d got Janine Baker pregnant then skipped town to join the navy. In an odd way, she’d felt betrayed.

      He had eyes that could turn from tropical-island blue to glacial in an instant and an intense brooding aloofness that had called to her feminine nurturing side even way back then. She’d spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like to be the focus of all that intensity.

      And now. maybe now he was looking at her the way she’d always wanted him to … with a definite glint of heat in those summertime eyes. But where men were concerned, she wasn’t as naive now. And she wasn’t looking back—not that way. Absolutely not. She wasn’t thirteen any more and there was a major problem here.

      ‘My name’s Blake Everett,’ he said into the silence broken only by an intermittent plop of water leaking from the roof into a plastic container on the floor. He remained where he was, hip propped easily against her counter top, his gaze skimming her too-slinky too-skimpy dressing gown and making her tingle from head to foot before meeting her eyes once more. ‘I—’

      ‘I know who you are.’ Posture stiff, she resisted the urge to hug her arms across her braless breasts to hide her suddenly erect traitorous nipples. She concentrated