“We also asked that you visit the table.”

“It was the middle of a rush.” He shifted from foot to foot, keeping the bike between them. “Kinda late to be hanging out in the parking lot, Mrs.…” He pretended to search for a name he knew. “Sorry, I can’t remember your husband’s last name,” he added deliberately.

She gave a slow smile. “Don’t worry. I can’t remember his first name half the time.” She rounded the bike. “Want to walk the beach?”

“No.”

She peered up flirtatiously. “Want to take me for a ride?”

“No.”

She smiled, undeterred. “Want to skip the preliminaries and go back to your place for a nightcap and a—?”

He put his hand over her mouth. “No, Mrs. Hartgrave, I don’t want to do anything with you.”

Under his palm, her smile faltered. He dropped his hand and cocked his head toward the bike. “’Scuze me…”

She stepped closer, the perfume as offensively strong as she was. “I think you’re hot.”

“I think you’re married.”

That made her grin. “Nothin’ wrong with a little fun on the side.”

“Yes there is,” he said simply. “I need you to step out of the way so I can get on this bike.”

“I need you to think about what you’re missing.” She arched her back to press her breasts to his chest. “’Kay?”

He shifted to the side, smelling trouble as much as the cheap fragrance. Even if he was the least bit interested—which he wasn’t—he knew bad news when it batted over-made-up eyes at him. For years he’d trained himself to avoid anyone or anything like this.

“Bet your husband is worried about you,” he said, attempting for diplomacy.

“Bet my husband is on his ninth beer.” She splayed her fingers on his chest, hissing in a breath as she pressed against his pecs.

He closed his hand over her wrist and removed her hand.

She circled the other around his neck, pulling him down. “One kiss. I made a bet I could get one.” Up on her toes, she smashed her mouth against his the very second bright lights of a golf cart bathed them in yellow.

He jerked away, blinded by the lights and unable to see the driver. Instantly, the golf cart whirled around to head back up the path, and the moonlight shown on dark hair spread over narrow and familiar shoulders.

Damn it! “Tessa!” he called, practically tossing the woman in front of him to the side. “Wait!”

But she barreled the cart back up the path without even glancing back.

“Come on.” Grace put both arms around his waist. “Let’s—”

He gave her a gentle but solid push back, still watching the retreating golf cart. “Get the hell off me, lady.”

She stepped back, wiping the corner of her mouth, her eyes transforming from sultry to icy in an instant. But he barely noticed, his entire focus on that golf cart disappearing into the darkness of a winding path.

The second he had space, he threw one leg over the bike. He twisted the key and revved hard, not even looking at Grace as she dramatically threw herself backward.

He turned the wheel and shot out of the lot, his engine not quite loud enough to drown out Grace’s parting shot. “Fuck you, asshole!”

He hoped Tessa heard that, too.


Tessa parked the cart on the path, cursing her decision to go meet John at the restaurant and take that beach stroll he’d wanted. Marching across the grass toward the gardens, she heard the motorcycle engine rev, but the sound of her name called out in shock still reverberated in her head.

She slowed down when she reached the root-vegetable section, the burn of embarrassment finally subsiding.

Grace Hartgrave! How low can you go? Not that she thought for a minute he was interested in her, but did he take what any woman offered? Was that the thing he was hiding from her?

He’d certainly acted that way the night they’d met. Since then, he hadn’t shown any indication that he was a man whore, but she really didn’t know him.

She squeezed her eyes shut, the truth of that burning.

The motorcycle engine grew louder, coming up the path on the same route she’d taken. Maybe she shouldn’t have run, but she had. So now what? Hide in her own garden?

“Tessa!” His voice carried over the garden, more angry and frustrated than desperate.

Why had her instinct been to run?

She knew why. An image of another man in a parking lot flashed in her head, the memory of that moment when she saw Billy leaning against the yoga instructor’s car, reaching down to touch her possessively, and that very first twinge of disbelief and suspicion started to simmer in Tessa’s chest.

“Tessa!”

Of course, this was déjà vu. At least Billy picked someone worthy of Tessa’s jealousy. Grace Hartgrave wasn’t—

She spotted him rounding a live oak tree, pausing as if he’d picked up her scent, scanning the garden. Staying in the shadows of the citrus trees, she inhaled the sweet scent of orange and tried to erase both bad memories.

John wasn’t Billy, not by a long shot.

“Bloody hell.” The words floated over the garden, making Tessa draw back in surprise. “I could kill that fuckin’ woman.”

The words…spoken in a perfect English accent.

“What did you say?” Tessa’s question popped out at the same time she jumped from the shadow.

“Tessa!” He lunged toward her. “Holy crap, that was not what it looked like.”

But was that what it sounded like? “What did you say?”

He shook his head. “She threw herself at me, I swear.” He reached her, his hands out, a backpack hanging off his shoulder. “I’d just texted you that I was on the way.” He opened his hand and showed her his phone.

“I didn’t get a text.” Had she imagined that accent?

“I didn’t get to send it,” he said, stepping closer, his hair wavy from being pulled back in a ponytail, a shadow of whiskers darkening his cheeks, his eyes glittering shiny blue in the moonlight. “That woman freaking threw herself at me, I swear.”

Bloody hell. She shook her head as if she could make the words tumble out of her memory. Who said that? No one—in this country.

“Tessa.” He closed in on her, his large, masculine torso so close she could smell the scents of the kitchen. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s completely wrong.”

But now he sounded normal. American. Like someone from California and Nevada where they had zero accents and didn’t say things like bloody hell.

He stroked her cheek. “You were coming to meet me, weren’t you?”

She looked up at him, searching his face for a clue to any kind of secret. All she saw was perfection. Almost too perfect.

“To take a walk?” he asked.

He flipped the backpack over his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. “Let’s have a picnic right here in the garden. I brought stone crabs. I was going to take a shower, but…” He took her hand and pulled her down to the ground. “Sit down and please, please tell me you know me better than to think for one second I’d be attracted to that piece of trash.”

“John.” She refused to let him do this, steadfast in her determination not to be sweet-talked or coerced or lied to. In any accent. “I saw you.”

What she meant was I heard you, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that yet.

“What you saw was a pathetic woman throwing herself at a disinterested man.” He tugged her toward the ground. “C’mon, Tessa. Sit here. Talk to me.”

She let him pull her down. “I did see you kiss her,” she said softly as she let her backside hit the ground, a soft spot of orange-scented leaves.

“No, you saw her kiss me.” He settled right next to her, the backpack in front of his knees. “I have had exactly three conversations with the woman and hope that was the last.”

“She’s a…” She couldn’t quite think of anything bad enough.

“I know the word for what she is.”

“In what language?” she asked.

His eyes widened in surprise. “I only speak one.”

“Maybe I should say in what accent?” At his look of confusion, she took a breath and let her thoughts out in a rush. “I heard you when you were looking for me. You said ‘bloody hell’ and something in an English accent.”

“Did I?” For one second, one lightning flash of a millisecond that was so fast she almost missed it, she read a little fear in his eyes. Or guilt. Or…something. Damn it, there was something.

“That’s…odd.” He reached for the backpack, yanking the zipper. “I have everything we need for a moonlight picnic,” he said quickly. “Even a corkscrew. But no glasses. We have to drink from—” He finally looked at her, his expression changing as he took in hers. “Tessa, I swear I have no interest in that woman. She’s obviously the town slut, a complete—”

“You spoke with an English accent. I heard it. I know I did. Why?”

“I don’t know,” he finally said, so softly she almost didn’t catch it.

He pulled out a to-go white foam box, and then a bottle of wine. “I told you I lived in Singapore, and I picked up a lot of expressions from the Brits there.”

She didn’t answer, swallowing the temptation to remind him he said he’d lived there for such a short time it was more like a visit.

“Tess, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I need to trust you,” she finally said.

He set the box and wine on the ground, turning to put both hands on her face. His fingers were calloused and rough and so large that his palms covered her cheeks. “Listen to me, okay? I know what happened with your husband. I know that you saw what you think was me”—he searched for a word—“cheating on you.”