CHAPTER ONE
‘WHOEVER he is, he’s completely naked,’ Jessie Connor said as quietly as possible. Not easy with the heat flaring in her cheeks and her heartbeat pounding like a sledgehammer in her ears.
The most magnificent male specimen she had ever seen stood less than fifteen yards away. Stark naked. Thank goodness, he had his back to her, or her heart would have stopped beating altogether.
Dark tangles of wet hair flowed down to touch broad shoulders. Roped with muscle, his bronzed skin glistened in the afternoon sunlight as water dripped off his powerful physique and onto the white stone tiles of the pool patio. Oh, my.
Jessie edged back. She could feel the warm, weathered wood of her sister Ali’s Long Island home through the thin cotton of her blue sundress, but it was nothing compared to the heat throbbing low in her belly.
‘Who is he? Do you recognise him?’ Ali hissed next to her ear.
Jessie stared at her sister, huddled beside her behind the house. She took in Ali’s worried frown and her round figure, distended in pregnancy. ‘Well, I can’t be absolutely positive from this angle, but I don’t think I know him.’
‘Move over, I’m taking a look.’ Elbowing Jessie aside, Ali peered round the corner. After getting what Jessie considered more than a necessary eyeful for a married woman, Ali shuffled back. Her face had turned a vivid shade of scarlet. ‘Wow, that bum’s almost as gorgeous as Linc’s.’
Jessie decided to ignore Ali’s extremely inappropriate comment about her husband. ‘Yes, but did you recognise it?’
‘Of course not, I’m a married woman.’
‘Now she remembers,’ Jessie muttered.
‘We’ve got to get out of here and call Linc.’
‘Don’t be daft. We can tackle him ourselves.’
Ali’s eyebrows shot up. ‘We most certainly cannot. I’m nearly eight months pregnant and he’s enormous. Did you see those shoulders?’
‘Yes, I did. Among other things.’
‘You can’t go out there. This is America. He could have a gun.’
‘I’d like to know where he’s got that hidden,’ Jessie replied, her indignation rising. ‘He’s trespassing and I intend to tell him so. How dare he just come in and use the pool as if he owned the place?’ Jessie glanced down at her sister’s rounded belly. ‘You better stay here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Linc’s due back with Emmy any minute.’
‘What if he attacks you?’ Ali’s furious whisper sounded desperate.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan.’
Ali’s brows set in a grim line. ‘I don’t think I want to hear this.’
‘It worked a treat for Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’
‘Shh.’ Jessie pressed a finger to her lips. ‘He may be built but he’s probably not deaf.’ Taking a steadying breath, she leaned back around the corner and took another peek at their trespasser.
Jessie’s teeth tugged on her bottom lip. Ali was probably right. They shouldn’t approach him. But ever since they had returned from her sister’s hospital appointment and spotted the powerful black motorcycle sitting in the driveway, the sizzle of adrenaline had been surging through Jessie’s veins.
Impulsiveness was her worse trait. Hadn’t Toby, her stuffy ex-fiancé, told her as much the whole two years they’d been going out? ‘If only you were as reckless in bed as you are out of it,’ he’d shouted at her during their final titanic row six months ago.
Jessie squinted as the sun sparkled off the surface of the pool. She watched as the stranger towelled himself dry with an old T-shirt. The familiar anger at Toby’s insults flashed through her. Well, Toby could take his opinion and shove it in a place where the sun didn’t shine. She wasn’t reckless—or frigid, for that matter—it had just taken her a while to realise that Toby Collins wasn’t the Mr Right she’d spent her whole life looking for. He hadn’t needed her the way she’d thought he had. While she’d been dreaming of making a home, having children, building a family together, Toby had been fantasising about having a wildcat in bed and a mouse out of it. It still infuriated her that it had taken her two long years to figure it out.