She swallowed and crossed her arms to secure the sarong, instantly aware of her nakedness beneath the light cotton.

  “A glass of water?” She lifted a sheepish shoulder since there was an L-shaped counter between her and the sink. “I couldn’t resist looking at the photos. This is a family home?”

  “My father’s grandparents built the original and raised their children here.” He moved to the kitchen, where he’d left a light burning over the stove. He opened a cupboard to the left of it. “We modernized ten years ago, but the laws are strict when it comes to exterior changes. We were more interested in preserving what we love than turning it into a palace, anyway. My sister and I are the only ones who use it. Tap okay? Or would you prefer bottled?”

  “Tap is fine.” She followed him into the kitchen and accepted the glass he poured. “Do you spend a lot of time here?”

  “As much as I can, given the size of Can-Carib and my many responsibilities and other family obligations. My father’s relatives are here so I try to visit a few times a year. I share a housekeeper with my aunt. She’ll know I’m here and will expect me to drop by.”

  That sounded like a warning. Eden lowered her glass.

  “Will the housekeeper tell her you’re not alone?”

  He leaned his hips on the counter and folded his arms across his bare chest, drawing her eye to the curve of his biceps and the ball of his shoulder. The compulsion to set her lips against his burnished skin was nearly irresistible.

  “She might. And since I’ve never brought a woman here before, I imagine she’ll read into it.”

  Eden tried to swallow past a sudden dryness in her throat. Don’t think that makes you special, she cautioned herself. He had only brought her here for expediency’s sake.

  “What will you say if she finds out?”

  “I don’t know.” His mouth twisted.

  Another crack of lightning made her jump. Thunder rattled like a convoy of semitrailers across the roof.

  She looked up with alarm while the lights flickered.

  “You should be here during a hurricane.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. And I take back recommending it. It’s exciting in the wrong way.”

  She liked that quirk of his mouth when he was being ironic. Their gazes caught and locked. Whether it was the gathering of ions outside, working toward another lightning strike, or the ever-present chemistry between them, she didn’t know, but the air became charged. All of her pricked and her lungs grew tight.

  “Is it not fair to say that you’re helping me dodge a publicity problem?” she asked, feeling the tension that flexed in her throat. “That that’s all this is?”

  “Sure,” he drawled. “I can give that a try.”

  “Your aunt won’t buy it? Because it’s not as if we’re...carrying on.” Had she really used one of Grammy’s old-fashioned expressions?

  If she was honest, she definitely wanted to carry on. Longing was buffeting her like those winds outside, gusting and pushing and swirling—

  The world went black. Utterly absent of light.

  Above them, the cascade of rain on the roof increased.

  She blinked and widened her eyes, but saw absolutely nothing.

  “I left my cellphone in the bedroom.” She reached for the edge of the counter, planning to set down her water. Her fingers bumped into the warm skin of Remy’s tense abdomen.

  He caught her hand, held it firmly.

  “Mine is in my room, too.” His voice was tight.

  He started past her, but she held on to his hand, shuffling behind him past the furniture and into the hall. She trailed her free hand along the wall as they made their way past the opening to the first room. It had looked like an office when she had briefly glanced in on her way to the kitchen.

  He stopped and held her from bumping into him with a light pressure on the hand he still held. “Can you get to the bed from here?”

  She could feel the heat radiating off him. Her ears were trying to pick apart his tone. Was he angry?

  “I wonder if this is what it feels like to be untethered in deep space,” she mused, hand reaching into the nothingness.

  “We have oxygen.”

  Yet she couldn’t breathe. As metaphors went, the vacuum of space epitomized her future. Formless and empty. Unsurvivable.

  “I’ll get my phone so you can see,” he said.

  Before he could step away, without letting herself overthink it, she turned into the only thing that felt real. Him. She reached for his strength and pressed herself into his warmth, sliding her arms around his waist. Her face found the hard plane of his chest and she rubbed her cheek against the taut silk of his skin.

  “Eden.” Her name was a tight, hot roar of fire.

  “I’m sorry.” Her chin grazed his hard nipple as she tried to push away.

  He didn’t let her go. His arms clamped around her. “I can’t take another chance.”

  “I know. I just wanted to feel you.”

  “Feel, then,” he said in a guttural voice. He scraped her hands across his chest and swept them behind his back again. Then he cupped her face with his firm palm and his mouth was on hers. Hungry. So hungry she moaned in ecstasy at feeling her own yearning echoed back to her in this greedy, encompassing kiss.

  It felt stolen, kissing like this in the pitch-dark. His image formed in her mind from her questing hands. From the indent of his spine and the firm globes of his butt and the ripples of his rib cage as she trailed her hands across him. She found the taut tendon connecting his neck and shoulder. His earlobes were as neatly formed as the rest of him. His tight curls prickled her palm as she pressed the back of his head, urging a deeper kiss.

  He seemed equally determined to discover and memorize, squeezing and caressing as he swept his hands across her back, hips, breasts and waist.

  “Let’s find the bed,” she urged.

  Instead, he slipped away from her. His lips touched her collarbone, then he was sliding from the arms she had twined around his neck.

  She sobbed with loss, only to realize he was dropping to his knees. Her back met the doorjamb. Her sarong was an ephemeral thing that was brushed away like a bridal veil. His mouth branded kisses across her abdomen and across the tops of her thighs and into the aching center of her.

  Gasping with acute pleasure, she clung to his shoulders and moved with the rhythm of his kiss, moaning unashamedly, thrilling and rising so quickly to her peak, it ought to have been embarrassing, but it was too good. Too, too good.

  He didn’t stop. She was still pulsing in climax as he pressed his finger inside her. He continued kissing and laving, and the gentle thrusting of his finger drove her to an even higher pinnacle. She nearly screamed when she arrived.

  Shaking, she would have collapsed, but he rose to gather her and somehow shuffled to the bed and set her on the rumpled covers.

  With a half laugh of bemused joy, she stroked her touch over his arms, eager to feel his weight come down upon her. She wanted him in her.

  He evaporated into the dark.

  “Sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” His words rasped across her sensitized nerves.

  “Remy.” She sucked in a breath of betrayal and rose onto her elbow, but only heard the door closing behind him.

  Pressing her still trembling thighs together, she rolled onto her side, hugged a pillow and buried her crumpling face into it.

  * * *

  After feverishly appeasing the lust-driven barbarian within him—alone, with his fist—Remy slept in. He woke with a head full of sawdust and recriminations ripe in the back of his throat.

  In those sightless, humid moments in the night, he had told himself it was enough that he didn’t risk another pregnancy, but his attempt to slake his thirst for her had only been stimulated, not satisfied. He wanted her more than ever.

  He stepped under a blast of cold water, swore, but was no longer erect, so he dressed and followed the aroma of coffee to the kitchen.

  Beyond the open doors to the veranda, the sun shone brightly on the thick tropical vegetation that spilled bright blooms around the gazebo. The rest of the backyard was mostly sand and almond trees, with a boardwalk beneath their shady branches that led to the beach.

  Eden stood in the open wooden gate at the end, facing the ocean. She had switched out last night’s bonnet for a yellow-and-blue head wrap and had changed into one of his sister’s T-shirts and a pair of loose board shorts, both a size too big.

  Remy heard a noise and realized it was him, groaning. He only needed to look at Eden and he was right back to wanting to touch and taste and take. Last night had been the backslide of an addict, but oh, had it been worth it. Her trembling thighs and writhing hips and cries of exaltation had nearly tipped him over the edge, all from touching her, not himself.

  Somehow, he’d kept himself from taking yet another reckless chance, but craving her had returned with a vengeance.

  So stupid. It wasn’t fair to say she had reached for him first, either. He knew she was going through a lot. He never should have let it get as far as it had. It was a damn miracle he had walked away last night, but he had heard her gasp of shock right before he’d closed the door between them. She had been hurt by his exit.

  He had turned what could have been a tense, but civilized, sharing of a living space into a powder keg of bottled emotions.

  There was no hiding from it, though. He poured himself a coffee and walked down to join her.

  “Thinking of starting your day with a swim?” he asked as he came up behind her.

  She stiffened and sipped the coffee she held, eyes staying on the ocean.

  “Maybe later, when it’s hotter. I don’t feel like being cold and wet right now.” Her voice was thin and strained.

  His ears rang, hearing too much significance in that statement. Then he thought, screw it. He wasn’t going to pick apart what they’d done or leave himself open to jabs.

  “Your Canadian is showing,” he said and set his cup on the top of the gatepost. He brushed past her, striding unhesitatingly down the kelp-littered beach and into the surf.

  The water here was always a tepid, silky bath. Diving into a wave submerged him in homecoming, washing away whatever troubles had driven him to the place of his roots.

  Today, his troubles waded cautiously into the water behind him.

  “It’s warm!” she said with an astonished smile that hit his heart like an exploding rainbow.

  “You said you’d been to the Med. It’s warm, isn’t it?”

  “Sure, but I’ve also been in the Atlantic. I never got past here in PEI.” She cut the side of her palm against the outside of her thigh. “This is fabulous.”

  She sank to her shoulders. Her head bobbed as a wave rolled in to pick her up and move her toward the beach.

  They swam for twenty minutes before they waded ashore. The T-shirt hung off her shoulders and clung to her chest. She plucked it away so her bra wasn’t so visible through the fabric, but he’d seen it. It was imprinted in his brain now, exactly the way she was. Indelibly.

  “Iguana,” he said, forcing his gaze down the beach and pointing.

  “Get out.” She walked a little closer to the driftwood, where the stocky, brownish-gray lizard was perched. Waves rhythmically frothed around their shins. “Do they bite?”

  “I’ve never been close enough to find out. He’ll disappear pretty—There he goes.” It skittered up the beach into the brush, leaving only slither marks in the sand.

  “Too bad they didn’t see it.” She looked toward some children who were coming onto the beach with their father. Tourists, Remy surmised, since he didn’t recognize them. “This was your childhood? Swimming before breakfast and spotting lizards?”

  “This was my winter. I don’t even know what a white Christmas is.”

  “Lucky.”

  He was. He knew that. But not always, he thought, as her profile grew troubled again.

  “Can I ask you something?” It had been bothering him since the hotel room.

  “What?” She lifted her gaze and wary shadows came into her expression.

  “Why did you want to marry Hunter if you didn’t love him?”

  “Oh.” She looked at her feet, bending to pick up a broken shell. “Lots of reasons, all very practical. Being impetuous has never served me well. Where’s the harm in meeting a man at a nightclub?” She lifted a disparaging eyebrow. “Where’s the harm in sleeping with him once?”

  Once. His heart swerved. He didn’t look at her, but he knew she wasn’t looking at him, either. That word—once—had been closing like walls around him, suffocating him in its limitations. That’s what last night had been. Once more.

  So foolish, but he couldn’t seem to regret it. Not enough to swear it wouldn’t happen again.

  “Being impetuous got my mother into trouble. Literally. The same kind,” she added with amused despair. “A tale as old as time, right?”

  “Is that why she married Gould? She was pregnant with Micah?”

  “Yes. She was a small-town prairie girl backpacking in Europe with a friend. He swept her off her feet and she immediately turned up pregnant. She was so relieved when he agreed to marry her, but she quickly regretted it.”

  “Abusive?” he asked with a stab of suspicion. Stronger than suspicion. Fatalistic certainty.

  “I’m not sure about physically.” She frowned into the distance. “She doesn’t talk about him. My take is that he was very insidious in how he dismantled her self-worth. His family piled on. Mama wasn’t born into money and private education and aristocratic lineage. His parents thought she was a gold digger. They insisted she have a nanny, then Kelvin used that against her when she left him, saying she had never bonded with Micah in the first place.”

  Kelvin Gould had been a monster.

  “When did she leave?” Remy was pretty sure he knew, but he wondered if Eden did.

  “When he cheated. Of course, the prenup favored him.” She worked her thumb on the smooth inside of the shell she still held. “She signed it very naively, believing him when he said it would protect her. She wasn’t entitled to anything and didn’t want his money, anyway. She wanted to bring Micah to Canada. She didn’t have any money of her own, though. Nothing for a lawyer and no qualifications to get a job that paid well enough to afford one. She had to work minimum-wage, entry-level stuff. Kelvin said she couldn’t support Micah in the standard he was entitled to and left him in Austria with his own parents. He threatened such an ugly fight, Mama settled for Micah visiting a few times a year, when Kelvin deigned to send Micah to her. Her boss found her crying about it one day. He bought her a coffee and a few days later he gave her a promotion and a raise.”

  “Your father?” Remy asked, guessing.

  “Yes.” Eden smiled with affection. “They still didn’t know each other that well when he proposed. Mama wasn’t keen at first, having already been in a marriage that went south, but Dad could see how desperate she was to have Micah in her life. He loved her practically at first sight—”

  Her voice faltered briefly and Remy’s breath stopped in his lungs, but maybe she’d just been affected by discussing the loss of her father. He didn’t even believe in things like love at first sight, let alone imagine it was hereditary.

  “Dad was also very pragmatic and sensible, so it wasn’t the same whirlwind that had got Mama into such a bad situation with Kelvin. Dad wanted a family and they already worked well together. He said if she married someone as well respected and wealthy as he was, she would have more leverage against Kelvin, which was true. She was able to fly him over more often and eventually got him to live with us. Briefly.”

  Her voice halted again as she perhaps remembered what he’d told her about that time.

  “Anyway, they loved each other very deeply. That encouraged me to believe I could have the same strong and healthy marriage if I found the right sort of partner.”

  Was that really what she wanted? Something about that didn’t ring true. He couldn’t claim to know her well, but she was lively and whimsical and had leaped into his car very impetuously. She was here with him, barely twenty-four hours after she was supposed to marry another man, and could possibly be pregnant with his child.

  Eden struck him as someone who led with her heart. It didn’t make sense that she would settle for a dispassionate and pragmatic arrangement. No, Remy was sure she would prefer to marry for love.

  “Bonjour,” she called warmly in French.

  They had come up to the children, who were turning over a rock.

  “What have you found? A sea star? Oh, a baby crab.” Eden expressed the right amount of fascination. They invited her up the beach to see some other small wonders.

  Their father hung back with Remy, asking if it was safe to let the children swim or if there were rip currents to watch for.

  Remy said it was safe and gave him tips on where to snorkel and hike with his young family.

  He was absently keeping one eye on Eden and the children as they bent to examine a pool of water. Eden was smiling as she rose to stand, but her expression dropped into a surprised sort of blankness. She staggered once and her knees collapsed.

  “Eden!” Remy started running, but couldn’t get any traction in the sand.

  Even as she put out a hand to catch herself, she crumpled limply to the beach.

  “Eden!”

  The children stood wide-eyed as Remy dropped to his knees beside her. He rolled her onto her back. She was completely unconscious. Breathing, at least, but his own lungs had shrunk to airless sacks. His entire body flooded with adrenaline.

  “What happened? Did something sting her?” The father came up, breathless.

  The children shook their heads, fearful.