“Hel-lo,” she said warmly to the man who stood there looking edgy, hand upraised to press the doorbell for the third time. “You must be Max. Won’t you come in?”

The man appeared to be around fifty, about her height and wiry in build. Even though his nose was rather large and his grayish brown hair was thinning, he was attractive in a way, possibly because he had a very nice smile. He was wearing jeans and a Hawaiian print shirt and sunglasses, the last of which he peeled off to reveal an astonished stare.

He muttered a profane exclamation, for which he immediately apologized. “Sorry. You really are Celia Cross. I thought-hell, I don’t know what I thought. My wife is never going to believe this…” He shook his head and his voice trailed off as he moved past her into the house, tucking the sunglasses into the pocket of his shirt and looking about him with undisguised interest.

In the living room, he halted, apparently transfixed by the view. When Celia joined him, he turned to her with a gleam of amusement in his keen gray eyes and said dryly, “Nice place.”

“Thank you.” She smiled back and decided she definitely liked him.

“So.” Deliberately turning away from the vast Pacific beyond the glass, Max took in a breath and lifted his eyebrows. “Where’s my boy?”

My boy? Liking the man more by the minute, Celia hid her delight and murmured, “This way,” as she made a graceful gesture for him to follow her. She was rather enjoying the role of gracious hostess as she led him to the room behind the stairs, knocked lightly as she pushed the door open, then stood aside like a well-trained housemaid for him to enter.

As he slipped past her, Max gave an explosive exclamation, the same one with which he’d greeted Celia at the front door. That was followed by, “Man, what the hell happened?”

“He was shot,” Celia offered. “Among other things.”

She thought Roy looked rather comical, actually, standing beside the bed with his head and one arm through the appropriate openings of the sweatshirt she’d given him to wear. The rest of the shirt was rolled up around his neck, leaving his chest and torso, complete with its Technicolor assortment of bandages, bruises and abrasions, mostly bare.

The look on Max’s face as he walked slowly toward him was like someone coming upon a tethered leopard-equal parts dismay and awe, with a healthy amount of caution.

Celia’s, as she gazed at the long, tapering lines of body disappearing into the sweats she’d once worn herself…sweats that now rode perilously low on narrow masculine flanks…must have reflected something very different. Remembering how that body had felt under hers, she had a sudden and terrible need to swallow-except she couldn’t, because her mouth had gone dry.

“I can’t lift my damn arm,” Roy muttered, throwing her a furious glare, as though it was somehow her fault. Transferring the glare to Max, he immediately contradicted his first statement with a growled, “I’m okay-I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Like a patient father helping a child dress for kindergarten, Max calmly lifted Roy’s arm and directed it into the proper sleeve opening.

Celia diverted herself to the easy chair where she perched on the arm and folded her arms across her waist. From there, she watched jealously as Max guided Roy to the edge of the bed and gently sat him down.

“Okay,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and frowning down at Roy’s glowering face, “let’s hear it. What the hell happened?”

Instead of answering, Roy stared meaningfully at Max and jerked his head toward Celia. Then, switching to her and showing his teeth in what he no doubt thought was a winning smile, he said jovially, “Hey…Celia…could I maybe get a glass of water? Or better yet, how about a cuppa coffee? What about you, Max? You want something to drink?”

“Uh, sure,” said Max, “that’d be great. Whatever you have.” But he flicked her a look of apology that made her inclined to forgive him.

Roy, however… What did he think she was-five?

Max’s eyes followed Celia as she rose with dignity, dipped her head in acquiescence and floated from the room.

“I can’t believe you,” he said in a low voice, after a long enough pause to make sure she’d really gone. “That’s Celia Cross you just treated like the hired help. Celia Cross.”

Roy shifted around and scowled, trying to pretend he wasn’t feeling uncomfortable about that himself. “So she’s an actress,” he muttered. “In a soap opera. Big deal. Anyway, she’s been trying to get me to eat and drink stuff ever since she hauled me in here. She’s probably thrilled I asked her for something.”

“I can’t believe you,” Max said again. “Where’ve you been living, under a rock? Or are you just too young to remember?” he paused to shake his head dolefully. “God, I feel old…”

“You are old,” said Roy, secure in the knowledge that Max had at least fifteen years on him. “Remember what?”

“Not what-who.” He jerked his head toward the biggest of the pictures on the wall, a framed movie poster. “Frederick Cross and Alice Merryhill-just about the greatest husband-and-wife team ever to grace the silver screen. They were…Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers without the music. Unforgettable.” He sighed, shaking his head. “When they died-”

Sympathy kicked Roy under his ribs. Or maybe old memories of the daddy he’d lost too young. “What happened to them?”

“Plane crash-small plane, in Africa, I think it was the early Eighties. Celia would’ve been just a kid. Oh-yeah-” he paused to throw Roy an accusing look “-that woman you’ve been ordering around like the maid? She’s their daughter-their only child. True Hollywood royalty, man.”

“Well, hell,” Roy said moodily, gazing at the poster, “I thought she looked sorta familiar.”

Celia was pacing in the kitchen like a caged lioness. She was about as angry as she could ever remember being.

How dare he? I found him. Washed up on the beach like a chunk of driftwood. I saved his life. He talked to me-okay, he was out of his head, but still…I was there. He talked to me. How dare he shut me out now? Banish me like a child? I deserve a part in this, dammit! I earned it.

She stared down at the tray on the countertop in front of her, not seeing it, seeing instead images from the past thirty-six hours…a gaunt face, gray-frosted with sand…a bruised and battered body, dark against her flowered sheets…a naked body, lean and spare, coiled and tense, like a painting of some martyred saint. Remembering the way that same body had felt when she’d held it wrapped in her arms, sand-gritty and cold against her nakedness, and the strange, intense sense of ownership.

Okay…it was impossible to stay mad at him, remembering what it had felt like to be lying on top of that body, hot and vital and strong…wrapped in his arms. Remembering his mouth…the heat… the taste of it…

You’re pathetic, you know that? You’ve fallen for him. You have-admit it!

Impossible. I’ve known him what, two days? And most of that time, he’s been unconscious. I’d have to be crazy.

Yeah, but we’re not talking love, here. How long does it take to fall in lust? Face it, Celia. You’re not mad because you’re being excluded-you’re scared you’re going to lose him before you even have a chance to take him to bed. He’s going to leave and go back to his life, as exciting and dangerous as that may be, and you’re never going to see him again.

Celia found that she was shaking her head in silent denial. But even as she whispered, “No, uh-uh,” she knew it was true.

You’re like a little kid-“I found him, he’s mine!” Finders keepers, right?

All right, she thought, maybe I have fallen for him. Maybe I do want him. But it’s not just him I want. It’s the life he leads-a life that means something. Dammit, I want that, too.

This…thing-whatever it is-he’s involved in…there’s a part for me in it, too. I know there is. I’m not going to be shut out. I won’t let them shut…me…out.

She blinked the tray into focus and was surprised to find it laden with coffee cups and spoons and napkins. She had no recollection of having put them there. “Great,” she muttered aloud, “all I’ve done the past couple of days is fetch trays from the kitchen-now I’m doing it in my sleep.”

With that, she turned her back on the counter and the tray, opened the refrigerator, snatched up two bottles of gourmet iced tea-mango-flavored-and marched out of the kitchen.

Both men broke off talking when she entered the bedroom.

Ignoring their pointed silence and polite, waiting stares, Celia swept across the room and, like a grande duchess bestowing favors, handed each of them a sweating bottle of tea. Then she plunked herself down on the arm of the chair across from the two of them and folded her arms on her chest.

“You might as well let me stay,” she said, with an airy toss of her head to disguise the way her heart was pounding. “I know everything anyway.”

Max and Roy looked at each other. After a long and profound silence, Max said in an ominous tone, “Does she?”

Roy opened his mouth.

“Don’t blame him,” Celia said. “He was out of his head. He didn’t even know I was there. Well-actually, I think he thought I was you. He made a very good report-very complete. At least, it seemed like it to me. Lots of detail.”

Max tore his fascinated gaze from Celia and swiveled back to Roy. “Is that true?”

Roy cleared his throat. His eyes flicked toward Celia, and she felt an odd little thrill ripple through her. “I haven’t heard it all,” he said in a glum and resigned tone, “but from the part she’s told me, I’d have to say…yeah, it probably is.”