He held her gaze a moment more before his eyes drifted to her mouth, and he leaned forward to touch her lips with his own. The soft heat of them drove even the simplest thought from her head. His hands moved from her arm to the back of her head, from her waist to the curve of her breast, and she yearned to get closer to him, to mold her body with his in every possible way.

  Her fingers clutched at the front of his shirt, sifted through the soft satin of his hair. She looped her leg with his and tried her best to move on top of him. Unfortunately, the solid base of the box springs right above them stopped her halfway across his body. His lips continued to wreak havoc with her senses, sending electric shocks to harden her nipples and pool low in her belly. She lifted her leg, gently caressing the bulge of his sex with the crook of her knee while his tongue darted into every nook and cranny of her mouth, teasing her and leaving her breathless.

  She drew her hand down his chest, feeling the sinewy strength beneath the fabric of his shirt. When she reached the waistband of his jeans, she tugged slightly to loosen his shirt, then began pulling at the button. She got it loose and was just beginning to unzip the fly when his strong grip on her hand stopped her.

  They broke apart, both gasping for breath. Monica tried to free her hand, go back to loosing him from the confines of his jeans, but he held her still and arched his head toward the mattress above them. The heavy haze of arousal cleared slowly as she listened, but she realized Ryder was trying to tell her that Matt and Josie were no longer on the bed.

  “We’d better get down there or they’ll be wondering where we are,” she heard Josie say.

  And then Matt chuckled and said, “They were probably running late for the same reason. I don’t think they’ll mind too much. Maybe we should just cancel breakfast altogether. We could…” His voice trailed off as they moved into the hall and the door clicked closed behind them.

  Monica and Ryder stayed where they were for another second, then he released her hand and eased out from under the bed. She crawled out after him, running a hand over her hair and clothes while he tucked in the loose tail of his shirt and refastened his jeans. They kept their eyes averted, neither of them brave enough to say a word about what had happened beneath the bed.

  “We’d better get downstairs,” Ryder finally worked up the courage to say.

  She nodded and followed him to the lanai. “I should fix my hair and make sure my tan isn’t splotchy.”

  Back in their suite, Monica refused to look at the bed that took up a good portion of the room. If she looked at the bed in here, she would remember the bed in there. And if she started thinking about the bed in there, she would remember all sorts of things better left forgotten.

  Apparently, the close confines had played havoc with Ryder’s judgment, too, because he seemed less than eager to recall the situation himself. He moved across the room toward the door, never sparing her a backward glance. Never mentioning that what had happened between them beneath that bed was either a huge mistake or the start of something very special. Never showing signs that he was either completely repulsed or compulsively eager to pick up where they’d left off.

  And if it hadn’t affected him, then it sure as hell hadn’t affected her.

  Ryder went to the door, crossing his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles, leaning back to wait for her. Rather than darting into the bathroom to get ready, she stayed where she was, on the other side of the room.

  “You go ahead,” she told him, centering her gaze on the smoke alarm above his head. “I’m not much in the mood for breakfast.”

  Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she caught his frown in her peripheral vision.

  “Don’t you think Matt and Josie will think it’s odd that I called to say we were running late and then show up without you?”

  She met his eyes then and tried not to recall the deep, hot passion she’d seen there only moments earlier. With a shrug, she said, “I don’t really care what they think. Tell them I’m sick. Tell them we had a fight and I’m not speaking to you.”

  Surprisingly, he didn’t argue with her or order her to accompany him. Instead he asked, “What are you going to do up here by yourself?”

  She thought about that for a moment. Then, biting down on the dread that threatened to launch itself up from her belly, she reached into her cleavage and removed the thumb drive. The move reminded her too much of what they’d shared under the adjoining suite’s king-size bed.

  Nothing happened between us. Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing…

  “I’ll run down to the hotel business center and print out everything from this drive. Then maybe we can call Simon to see if he can use any of it to get my money back.”

  For the longest time, he didn’t respond. Then he turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped into the hall.

  “All right,” he agreed. “But we might as well share an elevator on the way down.”

  She’d been trying not to get close to him…to get him out of the room so she could do a bit of hyperventilating without an audience, then get a firm hold on her hormones before having to face him again. But she had no ready excuse for why they shouldn’t leave the room together, and it really would be stupid to follow two steps behind.

  With a nod, she slipped past him, doing her best to stay out of reach as they moved down the hall, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the buttons for their respective floors.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Women have to be in the mood. Men just have to be in the room.

  Ryder stood alone in the elevator after letting Monica out at the ground level. He leaned against the metal bar at the rear of the car, dragging in deep gulps of air and fighting the urge to drag his wife back to their suite to finish what they’d started. The sounds of Matt and Josie above them had been hugely awkward at first; the last thing a brother ever wanted was to catch his sister getting lucky. But it had taken him only a second to block that out entirely, his attention zeroing in on Monica until all he could think of was kissing her and touching her, and much, much more.

  Close confines and the power of suggestion were good excuses, but he doubted even Monica would be able to look him in the eye and deny that they’d done what they’d done because they’d wanted to do it.

  But then, she hadn’t been able to look him in the eye at all once they’d crawled out from under the bed. That’s when he’d known they couldn’t simply pick up where they’d left off, no matter how fast his heart was still beating or how hard he was to be inside her.

  When she’d told him she didn’t want to go down to breakfast with him, he’d been almost relieved, thinking that what they both needed was a little time apart to put things into perspective. Now, though, he wasn’t sure there was any perspective to be found. They hadn’t spoken or come within a foot of each other the entire elevator ride down, yet he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head. Her scent continued to tease his nostrils. The remembered feel of her silken flesh tickled his fingertips, the taste of her keeping him painfully aroused. It took every ounce of willpower—and a list of about three thousand parts of a horse’s anatomy—to keep from hauling her back up to the room, tossing her down on the bed, and showing her what a real man could do to a woman. He doubted her ex had ever made her moan in even half the octaves Ryder had in mind.

  Throwing a hand over his eyes and rubbing his temples, he pushed himself away from the wall as the doors slid open and strolled toward the dining area.

  When he reached the restaurant, he spotted Matt and Josie right away, ignoring the hostess station to head in their direction. Rather than sitting down, he gripped the back of an empty chair at their table and smiled ruefully.

  “Sorry about this, but we’re not going to be able to join you for breakfast,” he told them, knowing he wouldn’t be able to get through a meal while wondering what Monica was up to and whether she was making progress in her efforts to track down the money Matt had stolen.

  Josie looked immediately worried and started asking if something was wrong.

  He fell on the first excuse that came to mind. “Monica isn’t feeling well and I don’t want to leave her alone for long. You’ll be all right without us, won’t you?” he asked, meeting Josie’s eyes and ignoring Matt altogether. He may not be ready to tell his sister her husband was a snake of the lowest order, but the more time he spent with Monica, the less he liked his new brother-in-law.

  “Of course,” she answered. “I hope Monica’s all right. Do you think it’s serious?”

  He shook his head. “Naw. Probably just something she ate.”

  A mischievous glint entered Josie’s eyes and she smiled brightly. “Maybe it’s morning sickness.”

  It took a full minute for her meaning to sink in, and when it did, Ryder pushed himself away from the chair he’d been leaning on so fast it hit the edge of the table before settling back on all four feet. Not because it was a real possibility—God knew it wasn’t, at least not with him—but because the sudden image that popped into his head of Monica pregnant with his child, cradling his child, was real and solid and not nearly as abhorrent as it should have been.

  His face grew warm, and he swallowed past the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “No, it’s not that. Definitely not that.”

  She gave him another mischievous smile and shrugged one shoulder. “I hope she feels better soon. Tell her we’re thinking about her. And if you need anything, we’re right next door.”

  Ryder nodded and made his way back through the restaurant to the lobby of the hotel. He passed the elevators without slowing down and headed outside into the bright sun of a beautiful Hawaiian morning. He didn’t want to have breakfast with his sister, but he wasn’t going to stare over Monica’s shoulder while she fiddled around at the computer, either. Out on the street, he looked one way down the sidewalk, and then the other. With no idea of where to go, he started walking.

  A couple hours later, Ryder returned to the hotel, hoping his walk had helped him build up a resistance to his wife, who would no doubt be back in the room by now. It sure as hell hadn’t helped him forget the feel of her knee rubbing back and forth across his crotch or the sound of her impassioned moans in his ear as he teased her nipples to tight little peaks. Closing his eyes, Ryder shook his head and admitted he’d need to walk the length of Oahu and all seven of its surrounding islands to work off the energy still bubbling just beneath the surface of his restraint.

  Against his better judgment, he slipped his key card into the door lock and walked into the suite. Monica was nowhere to be seen. He moved slowly into the room, not wanting to startle her, but not wanting to be startled by her, either. Considering the clothes she chose to wear in public, there was no telling what kind of cardiac situation he’d be risking by invading her privacy.

  The bathroom door was open, lights off, so he knew she wasn’t there. That left one more space where she could be hiding. Unless she was still out, she had to be on the balcony.

  Pushing the heavy curtains aside, he opened the door and stepped onto the lanai, immediately spotting Monica. She was lounging on one of the long beach chairs, her sandals dangling from the tips of her toes, a pair of dark sunglasses shading her eyes. A bottle of suntan lotion sat on the cement floor beside the chair, and she’d rolled the hem of her blouse up to just below the swell of her breasts, encouraging the sun to kiss as much warm, white skin as it could reach.

  Ryder thought the sun was a lucky son of a bitch.

  She rolled her head to the side, looking at him from behind dark lenses. “I wondered when you were coming back,” she murmured, but didn’t sound overly concerned about his welfare. “How was breakfast?”

  “I skipped it and took a walk instead.” Glancing over his shoulder, he checked to make sure Matt’s and Josie’s lanai doors were closed, then asked, “How did it go with the bank stuff?”

  Throwing her legs over the edge of the lawn chair, she stood and cocked her head to one side, motioning for him to go back inside. She followed, closing the glass doors behind her and pushing her sunglasses up to rest in the soft cushion of her hair.

  “It went okay,” she said, but didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic. She kept her voice low so no one else would hear—unless they had their ear pressed to a drinking glass against the wall. But Ryder doubted anyone other than Monica would resort to such means of eavesdropping.

  “The account exists, so I have to believe the money is still there, but I had to pretend to be Matt’s secretary and give some of his personal information just to find out that much. For anything else or to have the money transferred to another account, I’ll need a lot more. Like his social security number, answers to security questions, etcetera.” She pulled a face. “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can fake my way through all of that. Do you?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not. And if he’s swindled money before, then he’s probably got multiple social security numbers and different answers for different security questions, depending on the account.”

  Monica blew out a breath, ruffling a few strands of hair that had fallen across her face. “I was afraid you’d say that. And I think you’re right.”

  Silence filled the room as seconds ticked by. Then Monica inhaled deeply, squared her shoulders, and dug down to the base of her gut for every ounce of self-assurance she could muster.

  “As long as Matt doesn’t suspect anything, we don’t have to rush. I mean, I’m sure his radar is up now that we’ve crashed his honeymoon, but he doesn’t know we hacked his laptop and made copies of his files, so if we play it cool, we may be able to lull him back into a false sense of confidence.”

  “Okay,” Ryder agreed slowly. “Then what?”

  “I’ll call Simon Farraday again. He’s a forensic accountant, and from everything I’ve heard, highly respected. To be honest, I don’t know how he got hooked up with Matt to begin with. But he has to have account information, and if there’s any way to access them or prove Matt took my money under false pretenses, Simon can figure it out.”

  “You trust this Simon guy?” Ryder asked, crossing his arms and hitching a hip, making it clear he had his doubts.

  “I don’t know. I think so,” she told him honestly. “I’ll feel him out a little when I call, and I won’t give him any pertinent information unless I think he’ll be a good ally. How does that sound?”

  Ryder shrugged. “I don’t suppose we’ve got much choice.”

  She shook her head, but he could see the doubt in the lines between her eyes and around her mouth as she chewed nervously on the nail of her thumb.

  “Hey,” he said, reaching out to cup her shoulder and give her a reassuring squeeze. “Whatever happens, we won’t be any worse off than we are now, right? Follow your gut the way you have this whole time, and we’ll handle one thing at a time.”

  It occurred to Ryder that in the short time he’d known Monica, his opinion of her had done a full one-eighty. He’d gone from thinking she was crazy—or at the very least, taking him for a ride—to realizing she’d been right about everything: the money, Matt, the data they’d found on his laptop. The way her mind worked, the ideas she came up with, could be outlandish and sound borderline bizarre, but at the root of it all, she knew what she was doing.

  Just because she went about things differently than just about anyone he knew didn’t mean she was a space cadet. She was smart and gorgeous and giving him a run for his money—literally.

  Wondering exactly when Monica’s skewed logic had begun making sense to him, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the gift he’d brought back for her from his walk.

  “I almost forgot,” he said, handing her the small white box. “I got this for you.”

  She took the box, but didn’t open it right away. Instead, she stared at it as though it were some foreign object she didn’t quite recognize. “For me? What is it?” she asked.

  He almost grinned. “Why don’t you open it and see.”

  She rolled the box over in her hands, touching each side and corner before turning it back again and lifting off the lid. A pair of earrings rested inside. The bright red hibiscus flowers were carved out of wood and would hang almost to her shoulders. As soon as he saw them, he’d thought of Monica and known they would go perfectly with her short, dark hair and killer outfits.

  “They’re beautiful.” She ran a soft finger over one of the petals and then lifted them out of the box to slip the fish hooks through her earlobes. “How do they look?”

  Her smile almost brought him to his knees. She looked sexier and more beautiful with that smile on her face than he’d ever seen her—and that included the time she’d strutted around the room in nothing more than a towel and his Stetson.

  After staring at her for what must have been a full sixty seconds, it occurred to him that she’d asked a question and was most likely waiting for an answer. Except that he couldn’t remember what her question had been.

  “The lady at the shop said the hibiscus is Hawaii’s state flower. They looked like something you’d wear, and I thought you might like a souvenir to take back with you.”

  “Other than the ‘Dirty Little Slot’ tote bag and hula dancer nightshirt, huh?” Her lips curled in a teasing smile as she beamed up at him and then leaned forward to press a light kiss to his lips. “I love them. Thank you.”

  The kiss might as well have been a hand stroking him all the way down to his groin. Of their own volition, his hands reached out to cup her elbows, bringing her flush with his body, flattening her breasts against his chest until her nipples felt like marbles digging into his flesh. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him fully before he’d even thought of tipping his head down to hers. Their mouths meshed, tangling until he couldn’t tell where his tongue ended and hers began.