Dear Reader,

Most of the people I work with in my office know two things about me: I’m horrible with clichés and I have a tendency—a little, tiny, teeny-weeny tendency—to be dramatic. In fact, it has been said on more than one occasion that no one could be more dramatic than I am.

So naturally I set out to prove them all wrong.

My heroine, Corinne Weatherby, is definitely the most dramatic person I know. This is why it takes the calming influence of a man like my hero, Matthew Relic, to settle her down. But as Corinne quickly discovers, when it comes to love and passion and dancing, there’s nothing calm about Matthew! He’s absolutely one of my favorite heroes. You just can’t help but fall in love with him. Neither can Corinne.

This book is for everyone who has gone in search of true love, only to find it smack-dab under their noses.

Enjoy!

Stephanie Doyle

P.S. I love to hear from readers. Come visit my Web site at www.stephaniedoyle.net.

Could she really have an affair with Matthew?

Why had Corinne never noticed how good-looking he was? He was gorgeous! But he was her friend…could they have an affair and still be friends?

“Matthew, I don’t know about this.”

Somberly he nodded. “We are taking a big risk.”

“It’s just that this is all so new, so scary,” she added.

“Scary? It’s not like you could get sick,” he assured her.

Corinne made a face. “I’m not worried about getting sick. I’m worried you’ll be disappointed.” After all, it had been a while for her. Did one forget how to do these things?

He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m pretty easy to please.”

“I’m worried you’ll hate me in the morning when you realize…”

“As long as they have chicken on the menu…” he said at the same time.

They stopped speaking. Then Matthew got a pained look on his face. “We’re not talking about the same thing, are we?”

One True Love?
Stephanie Doyle

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the lunch crowd—especially Carolyn, Jeanine, Dawn, Mike, Bill, Paul and Chuck, with occasional special guest appearances from Matt and Jim. You guys manage to keep me laughing and sane in a sometimes insane place.

May the bridge always be burning when we get to it!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephanie Doyle began her writing career in eighth grade when she was given an assignment to write in a journal every day. Her own life being routine, she used the opportunity to write her own sequel to the Star Wars movies. One hundred and six handwritten pages later, she discovered her lifelong dream—to be a writer. Currently, Stephanie resides in South Jersey with her cat, Alexandria Hamilton Doyle. Single, she still waits for Mr. Right to sweep her off her feet. She vows that whoever he is, he’ll decorate the cover of at least one of her books.

Books by Stephanie Doyle

HARLEQUIN DUETS

65—DOWN-HOME DIVA

88—BAILY’S IRISH DREAM

SILHOUETTE INTIMATE MOMENTS

792—UNDISCOVERED HERO

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Harlequin Flipside! If you love a dash of wit and cleverness with your romance, then this is the line for you. These stories are for readers who appreciate that, if love makes the world go around, the ride is a lot more fun with a few laughs along the way.

Leading off the launch, we have USA TODAY bestselling author Millie Criswell with Staying Single. This heroine is determined to remain single—three almost weddings is enough for one girl, isn’t it?—no matter what her marriage-focused mother says. But after meeting a certain photojournalist, she just might have second thoughts….

Rounding out the month is Stephanie Doyle’s One True Love? Believing that each person has only one true love, our heroine is in a bit of a dilemma. Turns out that the guy she picked isn’t the same guy who’s captured her thoughts. This calls for some rearranging…fast!

Look for two Harlequin Flipside books every month at your favorite bookstore. And check us out online at www.HarlequinFlipside.com. We hope you enjoy this new line of romantic comedy stories.

See you next month!

Wanda Ottewell

Editor

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Executive Editor

Contents

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2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Epilogue

1

“I’M LEAVING YOU,” Corinne Weatherby exclaimed.

She slammed the door behind her, leaning against it as if the power of her own words had thrust her against the door. She spotted the second door open on the other side of the office and winced. She’d forgotten about the filing room. She crossed the room and slammed that door, too, for good measure. And in case the man sitting behind the office desk hadn’t heard her, she repeated, “I’m leaving you, Brendan. I mean it this time.”

Not looking up from his busy task of bouncing one silver ball against another on the same pendulum, Brendan waved off her statement. “You’re going on vacation, Corinne. You’ll be back in two weeks.”

With a toss of her flaming-red curls, Corinne explained the situation to him. “Not two weeks. A lifetime. I’m leaving you symbolically.”

This time Brendan did look up at her with his soulful blue eyes. She almost caved until she realized it was confusion she read in those eyes and not anguish over her departure. “Does that mean you’re not really going anywhere? Is this some kind of meditation thing?”

She closed her eyes and summoned patience. Maybe her true love wasn’t the brightest of men, but he was hers. Or at least he would be after they’d played out the script. She had practically written the whole plot in her head. Every line was committed to memory. Every piece of choreography had been rehearsed a thousand times in her mind. So far everything was on cue…except for the second open door. But there were some things that Corinne simply could not predict.

Pulling a bit on the length of her tiny grasshopper-green skirt—an atypical length for her but the chosen costume for this particular farewell scene—Corinne positioned herself accordingly to show off her shapely, albeit short, legs. Just a taste of what he was going to miss. “What I meant to say is that although I will be back in two weeks, when I return, figuratively, I will be dead to you.”

This time Brendan was motivated enough by her words to stand. He sauntered over to where she stood with her back still against the door to the filing room. In the few steps it took to reach her, Corinne could see the transition in his face.

The man was like a chameleon. He adapted his expressions perfectly to the current situation. For this confrontation he brought out the big guns: the cute, cuddly-boy routine.

He sure knew how to play rough. She was a particular sucker for this one. Had he gone with smooth and seductive, she might have stood a better chance.

No. No, she told herself firmly. She had to be strong. Cuddly-boy face or no, this was their future she was fighting for. Corinne shored up her defense system.

But it was so hard. The soft blond hair that was perfectly trimmed, the wide-open blue eyes framed in a face golden from more than a few hours spent at the tanning salon, and the pouting mouth that had made her knees buckle more times than she could count, all added to the package. Today he had chosen a powder-blue shirt, which highlighted his eyes and coordinating dark-blue suspenders. Those suspenders made her want to pull on them until they snapped against his gym-hardened pecs. Not to cause him pain or anything. Just because she thought it might be fun. Yes, this man was her destiny. This man was her one true love.

If only he would wake up and smell the donuts.

“Babe, what do you mean you’re going to be dead to me? I’m still going to want to see you when you get back.”

Such sincerity. Such caring. Such bull. Corinne knew him too well to believe his words. What she needed to do was show him how awful his life would be without her. “Stay with me, Brendan. I said you’re going to be dead to me. Which means the only place you will see me is in the lunchroom.”

“But why, babe? We have had a good thing going. And I think we’ve got some unfinished business,” he said slyly.

He was talking about the other night when she had kicked him out of her condo before they made it to the bedroom. Corinne was a modern woman. She was perfectly ready to go to bed with the man she knew to be her destiny. But she wanted it to be perfect. Perfect meant that when she went to bed with Brendan, he would stop going to bed with all the other women. It was sort of her rule. Until he was ready to make that commitment, the door to her bedroom would remain locked.

“Can you honestly tell me you’re ready to give up the others?”

“Others?” he asked in that innocently boyish tone he had mastered.

Corinne sighed. “The others, Brendan. The other women.”

“If that’s what you want…”

For a moment Corinne’s hopes were raised, but then a name flashed behind her eyes and she remembered what had started her off on this particular script in the first place. “Ah-hah!” she shouted, as she thrust her index finger into his impossibly firm chest.

“Ah-hah what?”

“You told me the other night that you were going to stop seeing all the other women. You said you wanted to commit to me. Then I had to hear about Marjorie from human resources from Sally in administration. Marjorie from human resources? I mean, really.”

Brendan immediately went for the innocent face. Not that he could fool her. Corinne knew each of his faces too intimately. She’d studied them. As a student of theater and acting she had from time to time graded his expressions. It was why they were so perfect for each other. He couldn’t fool her. He couldn’t charm his way out of messy situations with her. Once he understood that she knew him for who he was but still loved him, she was sure he would come around to her way of thinking.

Or at least almost sure.

Reasonably sure.

Pretty darn sure.

“Honey, Marjorie and I are just friends. So we went out for a couple of drinks. We were with a bunch of other people from the office.”

“Like who?” This was his fatal flaw. He could be a smooth liar, but he could never back up a lie once he began it. Oh, Brendan, is there anyone else on this planet who could love you? Corinne didn’t think so.

“Like…like…uh…uh…Relic was there!”

Corinne actually had to laugh. Although her script did call for a stoic face and a resolute manner throughout the entire breakup scene, this was too funny not to chuckle. “Matthew Relic was at the bar with you and Marjorie from human resources? I don’t think so.”

“No, really, he was,” Brendan continued futilely. “You can ask him.”

She shook her head sharply. “Brendan, Matthew and I are friends. If I ask him, he’ll tell me the truth.”

“Oh.” The man deflated before her eyes. But he was quick to rebound. “Sweetheart, babe, you know you’re the only one I really care about.”

It was the emphasis on the word care that got her. It always did. “I know you care about me, Brendan, but I want more.”

“And I want to give you more,” Brendan said with a smile, while he brought his hands up to cover her petite shoulders. “You deserve the best, honey. I know that. What kind of fool do you take me for?”

“I don’t think you’re a fool, Brendan. But you have to understand I can’t go on this way. The other people in this company are laughing at me.”

“But you always like to be the center of attention,” he volleyed.

“I like to be the center of attention when I put myself there. I don’t want anyone else to do that for me. Now for the last time, are you going to stop seeing other women?” Here it comes, she thought, the big finale to scene one.

Brendan shoved his hands deep into his suit pockets, then quickly took them out and smoothed out the wrinkles he had made. He shuffled his feet and looked to the ceiling for what Corinne could only assume was divine intervention. “It’s just that you know how I am, babe. I can’t help it if other women need me. I mean what about the man shortage? If I give up all the others, I’ll be contributing to it rather than helping it. That’s just not the kind of guy I am.”

He actually thought he was being noble. Corinne couldn’t stop the pain in her heart. Not that she hadn’t predicted exactly this outcome, but still, it took her a moment to compose herself. The touch of wetness to make her eyes look that much shinier would not be difficult to fake.

“Fine. But know this, Brendan. I’m the only woman you know who has seen the real you and has still managed to fall in love with you. You’ll never get from them what you could have gotten from me. Once I come back from this vacation, you’ll know what it means to be truly alone.”

BRAVO! Bravo!

Matthew Relic cheered silently from his current prison—the filing-room closet attached to Brendan’s office. Obviously, Corinne hadn’t seen him in here when she slammed the door, and Golden Boy must have forgotten that he had come in to get one of the client folders a few minutes prior to Corinne’s grand entrance. The polite thing would have been to inform them both of his presence rather than eavesdrop on their private conversation. But before he could stop Corinne—or Rinny as he liked to call her—she was off and running. No, the best thing he could do, he’d decided, was to sit and wait her out. Besides, there were worse things than being stuck in the filing-room closet listening to Rinny let the Golden Boy have it.

Absently, Matthew rubbed his chest and thought to himself that there were much worse things. In fact, all things considered, he had the best seat in the house. Corinne always knew how to play the scene. And he’d been waiting for this particular breakup for some time now. Once Brendan was out of the way, he would finally have his chance. This time he was going to take it.

In the last few months, since he’d recovered from the bullet wound that had put a hole in his lung, Matthew Relic had learned two important things about himself. One: he was in love with Corinne Weatherby. Two: he would never again put off until tomorrow what could be done today. Life was precious. If that punk in the convenience store had taught him anything it was that.

Yes, he was definitely in the right spot at the right time. After Rinny was done dumping Golden Boy, she would need a shoulder to cry on. More than likely, the shoulder of someone who had a few extra tissues handy.

Matthew patted his breast pocket. He normally kept three tissues there. Today he believed he had four. A good thing, too, since Rinny tended to be extra watery.

He sat and waited for the rest of the scene to play itself out. She’d already given him the soulful goodbye. After that she would wipe the tears from her eyes. Then she would hold up her chin and carry her five-foot-nothing frame out of his office. She might turn dramatically for one final glance to show him what he was giving up, then in another second he would hear a slam signaling her departure and his release from the filing-room closet.

One. Two. Three.

Nothing.

Damn. She must be holding the dramatic pause too long. He counted again.

One. Two. Three.

Still nothing. Something must be wrong.

“I’VE GOT to go to the can,” Brendan announced before Corinne could storm out of his office. Darn it, she had taken too long to wipe her tears in an attempt to save her eyeliner. She watched while he strolled out of the office and when she glanced down at her hand she could see the traces of brown eyeliner on her finger.

“Darn it,” she shouted. “That wasn’t in the script.” She didn’t even get to do the sultry look back. How was he supposed to spend the next two weeks pining for her, if he didn’t have the sultry look back to remind him of all that he was missing? Well, she could only hope that the perfect suit, the ultimatum and the teary declaration of love would be enough to sway him to the right side of her particular force. What choice did she have?

This was the man she had fallen in love with. And since she’d been a girl she’d always believed there was only one true love for everyone on this planet. Once a person found that true love she had to grab him and hold on to him, because if the relationship failed, the couple was doomed to walk the earth in tragic loneliness forever. Or at least until eighty, when most people forgot about love and concentrated on soft food.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

That was odd; Brendan’s office door was open. Who would be knocking? And why did it sound as though it was coming from behind her? Corinne whipped around and realized that the knocking was coming from the filing-room door.

“Ugh!” she growled as she threw open the door, utterly humiliated that she had an uninvited audience. That particular scene was supposed to have been a private show. “Matthew! What are you doing in there?”

He glanced down at the folder in his hand. “Uh, working.”

“You bastard! You heard every word, didn’t you!”

Since Matthew wasn’t a great liar, he shrugged his shoulders and told her, “Yeah.”

“Ugh! You don’t even have the common courtesy to lie about it!”

“What’s to lie about? You broke up with Golden Boy. I’m happy for you. You should have done it a long time ago.”

“What do you know about it?” she hissed. “And if you heard the whole thing, then you will answer this question…”

“No, I wasn’t out with Brendan and Marjorie from human resources last night. I’m Ole Relic, remember?” It was a nickname the others in their small company had dubbed him. Certainly, not the most flattering of names but Matthew had to agree it was rather accurate. He usually went to bed before ten on weeknights. He often did extra accounting work on the weekends. And on those rare occasions when Rinny could coax him out for happy hour, he only ever had one beer. Heineken. He liked the imported stuff. In summary, he was a C.P.A. who habitually carried extra tissues in his pocket. The very opposite of excitement and perhaps a little older than his thirty-three years would indicate.

“That rat!”

“Exactly,” he agreed.

“That scoundrel!”

“Absolutely.”

“That poor pathetic lonely man.”

“What?”

Rinny reached out to touch his arm. She was a toucher. It was one of the things he loved about her. “Don’t you see? He hides behind the lies because he doesn’t think he has a choice. Deep down, he is this insecure boy who needs the presence of multiple women in his life to make him feel like a man. Virile. Get it?”

All Matthew got was that the guy she had just described sounded like a putz with a small…putz. “So where did he go?”

“He went to the, uh…the gentlemen’s room.”

Poor Rinny, probably not the way she planned it. “Did you even get to do the sultry look back?”

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, mildly offended.

“Come on, Rinny, it’s me. When you used to visit me in the hospital you always flashed me the sultry look back right before you said good-bye. That look would follow me into my dreams. It’s a classic.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied convincingly.

Matthew just shrugged his shoulders. In an effort to change the topic, he asked, “So, where are you going on your vacation?”

This topic made her slightly more chipper, and she put aside her pique. “Two fabulous weeks on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Sun. Sand. And single,” she finished on a slightly more depressing note. Visions of honeymoon couples frolicking about on the beach danced in her head. “I’m sure it will be mag.”

“Yeah. Mag,” he repeated. “What exactly does that mean?”

Poor Matthew, Corinne thought. She didn’t know how it was possible, but he was even more lost than she was at this moment. Seeing his tie askew, she absently reached a hand up to the knot to tweak it straight. As she did, she studied the tie and the plain white shirt he wore with it. “It certainly isn’t this tie. Really, Matthew, you’ve got to do something with your wardrobe.”

He looked down at the tie she was arranging. “It’s my favorite.”

That made her snort. “And you need a haircut,” she said, running her hand along his neck to corral the few stray hairs that lingered. His rich brown hair, a color he obviously didn’t enhance, had always made her jealous. When he started to squirm, she pulled her hand away and thought that Brendan’s hair was always perfectly groomed. He had a standing appointment with a stylist once a week.

Her name was Sherry. Sherry, who also happened to dance at a strip club for extra money on the weekends.

Corinne couldn’t prevent the frown that she felt forming on her lips. She hated to frown. It always showed off the faint wrinkles at her mouth.

A tiny knock sounded behind them and they both turned to the open door.

“Is the coast clear?”

Corinne’s assistant and good friend Darla poked her head into the office. The plump woman with the warm smile and bright eyes looked at Corinne expectantly.

“It’s clear,” Corinne told her.

“Well?”

“It didn’t exactly go according to script.”

“She didn’t get to do the sultry look back,” Matthew told Darla.

“Oh no. But that’s, like, your heavy hitter. It’s right up there with the playful pout.”

“I do not have a playful pout. Or a sultry look back. You’re both making this up.”

They exchanged a glance that was all too easy to interpret, but Corinne didn’t have the energy to fight them. “I just don’t understand. Where did I go wrong?”

“Cheer up,” Matthew said, bucking her on the shoulder. “And stop thinking about Brendan. You never know. You might meet some fabulous man and have a wild vacation affair.”

She lifted her left eyebrow into a perfect arc over her eye. “Don’t be ridiculous, Matthew. I am a one-woman man. One-man woman. Oh, you know what I mean.”

Although, the idea did have a little merit. If she could send back pictures of her and some handsome stranger to her buddies in the office to view, and say Darla happened to accidentally drop one or two on Brendan’s desk, well then that might be just the thing to push him over the edge. And if that didn’t work, she could always literally push him over an edge!

“Uh-oh. I know that look,” Darla warned, studying her friend’s suddenly diabolical expression. “And it usually means involving me in one of your plots.”

“Scripts,” Corinne corrected. “And it does. I’m thinking about a whole new approach. What about jealousy?”

“You’re always jealous,” Darla reminded her. “You know, because Brendan’s always messing around with other women behind your back?”

Corinne scowled at her alleged friend. “Not me. Him. What if I set out to make Brendan jealous? Of course, given my deep and abiding love for him, it would be almost impossible for me to flirt with another man…”

“You mean like what he’s doing now with Marjorie from human resources?”

Matthew pointed to the scene just outside the door. Brendan was bending down to pick up a pencil Marjorie had accidentally tossed into the middle of his path, the whole time keeping his eyes pinned to her protruding breasts.

Matthew was amazed. “How does he manage to follow the conversation when he’s got his eyes glued to her…”

Corinne shot him a menacing glare, and he quickly closed his mouth.

The bastard. The poor pathetic lonely…Nope, sometimes Brendan could be just a bastard. Corinne crunched her teeth together and squared her shoulders. She was going to be damned before she was made a fool out of by Marjorie from human resources. Calling upon all of her training, she focused on making herself taller with larger breasts. It was a visualization technique her seventh-grade acting teacher had taught her, and it had stayed with her ever since. Visualize yourself as you want to be seen and people will see it, too.

“Go get ’em, tiger.”

“Give him hell,” Darla added.

This from her cheering section. With the regal air of a queen she stepped out into the hall. Cubicles lined up along the hallway were filled with not-so-busy customer service representatives who had been enjoying the Marjorie and Brendan Show. Now that Corinne had added herself to the mix, the scene took on a whole new tension.

The question was, how did she want to play this particular act? All fifty employees of the small company knew about her on-again, off-again relationship with Brendan. Most thought he was playing her for a fool, but that was because they didn’t understand him. Now here she was with her newest competition, who, if it was at all possible, was wearing an even shorter skirt than hers. The woman must have had her legs genetically engineered. It was the only explanation.

So did she go for catty? Explosive? Sorrowful and betrayed? Better yet, it was time for the old standby. She would play the bigger person. Not an easy task, considering she was playing the scene with an Amazon.

As cool as lemonade in summer, she strolled up to the couple standing too close together for company etiquette, and nodded her head. “Marjorie. Brendan. See you both when I get back.” Enough said. She continued her march down the hall and out the door.

She didn’t hear it, but she felt Matthew and Darla’s applause accompany her all the way out the door.

IT WAS TOO EARLY for it to be hot. April was supposed to be about cool temperatures and soft breezes. But in New Jersey, when the humidity started to spike, anything was possible. Oh well, Corinne decided philosophically as she shucked her grasshopper blazer and noted the sweat stains, all the better to get her acclimated to the weather in the Bahamas. Still, it would have been the cherry on top to leave New Jersey while the weather was lousy for her two weeks of fun in the sun.

Dropping her suit into the dry-cleaning bin, Corinne checked the suitcase open on her bed one more time. Sundresses. Long flowy skirts. Strategic hip wraps. Three bathing suits. And SPF40 sunblock. For a redhead, frolicking in the sun did have its down side and its name was freckles.

The phone rang, and Corinne skipped through her condo to get to the kitchen before her answering machine picked up. When she missed the call by one ring, she decided she really was going to have to get another phone for her bedroom. But, since the only jack available was used for her modem, another phone also meant another line.

“Damn, I hate these things. Pick up dear. It’s your mother.”

Corinne cringed and considered playing not at home. She held her breath and waited.

“Damn it, Corinne, I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing. Now pick up the damn phone.”

Damn was her mother’s favorite word. She said it was because back in the fifties it was the only swear word they would let a woman say on film. It sort of became one of her trademarks—the sultry eyes, the husky voice and the fact that she said damn before almost every line. The first few times it could be highly effective, but after the tenth or so damn, it started to lose its impact.

Knowing there was no way out, she picked up the phone. “Hello, Mother.”

“Ah-hah, I knew you were there,” Grace Weatherby said as if she had uncovered some dark and diabolical plot.

“I was in the bedroom,” Corinne explained, not like that meant anything to her mother, who had only seen her condo once. And even that had been just a glimpse.

“I have tragic news. It’s absolutely damning!”

Corinne waited.

“Your sister is refusing to go to the damn Cannes Film Festival. Can you believe it? I’ve told her, her only hope of winning an Oscar is if the critics start to see her as a serious actress. And she refuses to listen to me.”

Serious actress. Myra? Corinne didn’t think so, not when her last film had starred an alien and the film before that a ten-foot gorilla. “Myra is a Hollywood box-office star. Maybe she’s content with that.”

If you asked Corinne, Myra would have been content as a toll taker. Blessed with her mother’s flaming-red hair and endless legs and her father’s fine cheekbones and green eyes, she was destined to be Hollywood’s girl for however long the ride would last. And, of course, the Weatherby name didn’t hurt. But Myra’s heart was never really into it.

“The money isn’t enough. Damn!” her mother exploded. “How long have I tried to instill in all of you that a Weatherby has won an acting award in each generation? Your father for best actor, me for best supporting actress, and even your brother managed to walk away with a Tony.”

“And there was my plaque for employee of the month,” Corinne added with her tongue in her cheek.

“Yes, of course,” her mother agreed.

Corinne could almost hear her mother struggling to recall what it was that she did for a living.

“Darling?”

“Yes, Mother?” Corinne knew what was coming.

“What exactly do you do for a living?”

She was twenty-seven and had been working as a financial controller for the same company for the last six years. However, her mother chose to block such horribly dull thoughts as finance from her mind. So, each time Corinne mentioned her work, Grace would always have to ask the inevitable.

“I’m a controller, Mother.”

“Oh, yes.” Her mother sighed, even though Corinne knew she had no clue as to what that meant. “And do you still live in that…state?”

“Obviously, since I’m the one who answered the phone.”

“Don’t get fresh with me, young lady.”

“Haddonfield is a nice town. And New Jersey is a fine state, Mother. It has mountains and beaches…”

“Please,” her mother interrupted. “New Jersey is just that damn place right after you leave New York and are on your way to Hollywood. Anyway, the reason I called was to have you call your sister and tell her she must go to that damn festival.”

“I can’t call her. I’m about to leave for my vacation.”

“Vacation!” her mother exclaimed, as if Corinne had somehow said the word hell instead. “Weatherbys don’t take vacations.”

They had had this argument before. “Most Weather-bys get three months off in between movies or productions. I have to go to work every day. I need a vacation.”

A huge sigh, then, “Where are you going?”

“The Bahamas. Paradise Island.”

“Dear, couldn’t you have done better than that? Why, I can rattle off the top of my head at least fifteen more suitable islands.”

“Paradise Island is in my budget, Mother.” Budget was another word she knew her mother detested. Every once in a while Corinne liked to throw it into the conversation just to rile her. She could almost see Grace shuddering on the other end of the phone.

“At least tell me you’re going with that nice man…what was his name? Brendan?”

Yet another reason why Brendan and she were destined to be together. Her mother loved Brendan. The one time Grace had managed to set foot in New Jersey, Brendan and Matthew had been helping Corinne move into her new condo. Her mother had practically recoiled at seeing Matthew, big and sweaty, wearing tattered jeans and a torn cotton T-shirt. There was such plainness about him, she’d told Corinne later.

But Brendan had made a big fuss over her mother, referred to her as Corinne’s sister, then went on to list a few movies she’d starred in. Her mother had practically drooled over him.

It was that much harder to tell her mother that Brendan wasn’t coming with her. “Not this time, Mother. He has to work.”

Work on becoming an unattached man, that is.

“Well, you have a lovely time. And you’ll call me when you return?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Damn, I hate good-byes.”

“I’ll call in two weeks.” Corinne hung up the phone. “Or in two years,” she muttered after she was sure the connection was broken. Sometimes her mother could be very draining, to say the least. Not that she didn’t love the woman with all her heart, her father, too, it was just that they lived such a different life and believed in such different things that Corinne was never too sure how she came from them.

For one thing, the whole family mocked her idea of one true love. To them it was as foreign as domestic champagne. It was common knowledge that both her mother and her father slept with every leading person they ever starred with. Her mother could list ten true loves alone, and while her father’s memory wasn’t as good these days, given time he could list a handful as well. The only thing that had kept the family together was the fact that her mother and father had starred together in so many movies.

No sir, not for her. Myra had just broken off her fourth engagement. And her brother, Jeffrey, was working on his third wife. Corinne wanted something different for her life. She wanted stability. After all, she wasn’t the most stable of women, so it stood to reason that she could only successfully fall in love with one man once. That man was Brendan. Now if only he would come around to her way of thinking, they would be a perfect match.

Even her family liked him. And Brendan liked the fact that he knew someone with “famous” connections. When they married, her parents would throw her a gala wedding to rival Myra’s first wedding. Or almost-wedding. That particular fiancé she had left literally standing at the altar.

Regardless, she and Brendan would live happily ever after. Corinne was sure of it. If not, if she couldn’t straighten his arrow, well then she was just going to have to deal with being single for the rest of her days, because she wasn’t going through this agony again for anyone. And she highly doubted, anyway, that there was anyone else out there waiting for her.

Brendan was her mate. Her future. The other half of her soul. Without him she would live like old Miss Havisham of Charles Dickens fame. Alone. In a decrepit wedding dress and a room full of spiders. Forever.

Well, maybe not spiders. She didn’t like them so much.

Ding-dong.

The doorbell startled Corinne out of her musings. That’s strange. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Instantly, her heart began to race. What if it was Brendan, she thought as she skipped through the house to her front door.

What if he had come to his senses? What if he was ready to give up all the other women so that he could be with her forever?

What if it was just Darla?

Corinne’s face fell and her shoulders slumped when she opened the door to find Darla on the other side of it. “Oh, it’s you.”

“And hello to you, too,” Darla greeted her with a sarcastic tone. “I figured you might be down so I brought some comfort food.” She lifted the brown bag she carried in her hand.

“What is it?” Corinne asked.

“Brownies and vodka.”

“Okay.” Corinne took the bag and wandered back to the kitchen. “Only one brownie for me though. I’ve got to get this body into a bathing suit in less than forty-eight hours.”

“Fine by me.” Darla never had any problems with finishing off brownies. She made her way to the over-stuffed couch in the living room and sat down. “So Matthew told me that you told Brendan that if he doesn’t give up the other women that it’s really going to be over between you two. Is that true? This isn’t just a ploy to get him to straighten up?”

“Matthew has a big mouth,” Corinne said, returning from the kitchen with a tray of brownies, two martini glasses and a bottle of Cosmopolitan mix. She set the tray down on the coffee table, splashed the mix into the two glasses, then topped them with the vodka that Darla had brought. She handed a glass to Darla and lifted her own.

“Here’s to a successful plan.”

“Here’s to your vacation,” Darla said.

“Here’s to my showing Brendan how much he’ll miss me.”

“Here’s to looking good in your bathing suit,” Darla said instead.

Corinne lowered her glass. “I’m not sensing I have your full support of my plan.”

Instead of answering, Darla took a sip of her drink.

Gasping, Corinne stood up and pointed at her friend. “You don’t support me,” she accused her.

Wincing, Darla put down her glass. “I just don’t understand what you see in him. He’s been nothing but awful to you. I mean, Marjorie from human resources? Really! The only thing I can figure is he must be fantastic in bed.”

Slowly, Corinne sank back down on the couch and took a sip of her drink. “I wouldn’t know,” she muttered.

“What!” Darla shouted, practically spilling her drink. “You’re telling me you’ve never slept with him?”

“Do I look like the sort of woman who would sleep with a man while he was sleeping with other women?” Corinne asked, offended at the mere idea.

“No.”

“When I’m finally with Brendan I want it to be special. I want it to be perfect. After all, he will be my first.”

“First what?”

“My first lover,” Corinne clarified.

Darla snorted at such an outright lie. “Are you kidding me? I know of at least one. What about Carlos?”

“Who?” Corinne asked, feigning ignorance.

“Carlos. The guy with hair and the motorcycle who you…”

“I know who Carlos is,” Corinne snapped. “I’m just choosing to forget him. I’m revirginizing myself for Brendan.”

Darla’s brow scrunched. “Can you do that?”

“Yes, it’s done all the time,” she replied breezily. “I read it in a magazine. The point is, Brendan is my future. My destiny. My one chance to have the kind of life I’ve always dreamed of. If this trip away from him doesn’t convince him of that, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“You could always, oh, I don’t know, maybe find someone else,” Darla suggested. “What about Matthew? This may be out of left field, but I think he might like you.”

Corinne dismissed that suggestion as if she hadn’t even heard it. It was ridiculous. Matthew Relic liking her. Matthew Relic and her together. Impossible. It would be like putting the sun and the moon together.

“No. I refuse to turn into my mother or my sister or my father or my brother. All of them like to just flit and fly from one love to the next like bumblebees in heat. That is not going to be me. No, I’ve already decided that if things don’t work out with Brendan, then I’m through with men forever.”

Darla’s eyes widened. “Wow. Forever? That’s a really long time.”

“Yes,” Corinne choked out, feeling the fear building inside her.

“I think that calls for at least one more brownie.”

Corinne did, too.

2

SHE STOOD OUT like a ripe plum in a white bowl.

Okay, so he wasn’t the best at analogies but Matthew understood what he meant. With her red hair billowing out from underneath a grand straw hat, wearing her purple bathing suit and matching sarong, and stretched out in her chair on the powdery white sand, she was exactly as he had described. It just didn’t sound as good when he tried verbalizing it in his mind. Good thing he’d tried this one out silently before he used it on her.

What he wanted to say was, boy she sure did look pretty. It was clear to Matthew, and surely to every one else on the beach, that Rinny was the most stunning girl on the stretch. In the clutter of people—most of whom were happy loving couples—camped out on the beach outside the Paradise Hotel and Casino, Matthew had no problem spotting his girl. If he were less of a practical man he would say that she had a powerful aura about her. Whatever it was, it seemed to attract him like a fly to…He should probably forget the analogies.

Flipping his beach towel over his shoulder, Matthew marched across the beach to her private camp. She had a beach chair on either side of her—probably to keep the happy loving couples at bay—filled with a radio, three books, enough sunblock to ward off a nuclear blast and finally her. She sat in the middle chair, her legs covered by the sarong she wore, her arms covered by the shade of her near-sombrero. The sunglasses that she sported were shaped like cat’s eyes. Purple to match her suit. No doubt she had as many pairs of sunglasses as she had outfits.

His Rinny always knew how to put the package together. Standing before her, he waited for recognition from her that he was blocking her sun, but she was too covered in shade to notice. Beneath the glasses she must have had her eyes closed so Matthew decided to simply plunk his six-foot frame down next to her on one of the chairs. “Hi, Rinny.”

Corinne had been dreaming. Brendan had been down on one knee before her with a ring box in his hand and a loving expression on his face. He had been promising her his love, fidelity and friendship for all the rest of his days. The dream was so powerful she could almost feel the tears well up in her eyes as they might if it were really happening.

Then suddenly, Brendan’s face became Matthew’s face with its deep-midnight-blue eyes and strong chin. And he was calling her Rinny. No one else called her by that absurd nickname. She wasn’t even too sure why she allowed Matthew to continue to use it. Although the thought of trying to break him of the habit seemed exhausting. Matthew was like a steamroller. Slow. Plodding. Inexorable. And difficult to push off course. It made him a phenomenal accountant, but a bit of a bore.

“You asleep, Rinny?”

There it was again. This time Corinne did open her eyes and peer out over her sunglasses. There he was, plain as the sun, sitting next to her as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Matthew Relic was on Paradise Island. Somehow the two didn’t seem to fit, but there was no doubt it was him.

“What are you doing here?” She wasn’t too sure how she felt about his presence. Piqued because he had interrupted her vacation? Confused as to why he would follow her here? Or maybe a little happy to see a familiar face? After only two days, she realized that the next week and a half was going to drag with no one to talk to.

Most of the couples she met only stopped long enough to ask her where her husband was and if they wanted to get together for couples tennis. As soon as she explained that she was on the island by herself, they made their excuses and went on their way, absorbed with each other. She would have found the whole thing utterly depressing if she hadn’t continued to tell herself that the purpose of this trip was to secure the very same happiness that these couples had found.

“Darla told me you seemed a little down before you left. She said something about a lot of brownies.”

Corinne groaned, remembering how sick she’d felt the next day after eating all that chocolate.

“Anyway, she told me where you were staying. And I figured you would still be smarting from your breakup with Brendan, so…”

“Breakup?” Corinne interrupted. “We did not break up.”

“Sure you did. I was in the filing closet, remember? ‘No one is ever going to love you like I loved you.”’ He changed the words, but the meaning was the same.

Corinne laughed her, oh-you-silly-boy chuckle. “Matthew, Matthew. You don’t understand. That wasn’t a breakup, that was an ultimatum.”

“It was? It sure sounded like a breakup.”

“It wasn’t,” she explained. “You see I left him to give him a chance to feel what it would be like if I really left him. No doubt right now, at this very minute, he is at home contemplating what his life without me will be like and he’s wondering how he can get me back.”

Right now, at this very minute, Golden Boy was probably at home romancing Marjorie from human resources. But Matthew kept that opinion to himself. He didn’t want to hurt Rinny. He just wanted her to see that Brendan was no good for her, while he, on the other hand, was perfect. It wasn’t going to be easy. He could see that now. He needed an angle.

“So what does he need to do? What is the ultimatum?”

She shifted a bit in her beach chair. “He needs to stop seeing those other women,” she said tightly.

“You mean the ones that make him virile,” Matthew added in an attempt to show her how misplaced her love was for that man.

“Yes. I’m enough for any man,” she stated confidently.

“You can say that again.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Leaning back on his elbows and stretching his bare legs out to the sun, Matthew took in the view of the ocean. The water spectacularly blue against the iridescent white sand, it was so beautiful it almost hurt. A little like Rinny when she got huffy.

“I was just agreeing with you.”

“Hmm,” she uttered, disbelief evident in her tone. “Somehow I don’t think so. Well, if I’m so difficult then why are you even here? Don’t tell me you came all this way just to cheer me up. Did you follow me down here for another reason, Matthew?”

It was pointless to lie. Even when he tried it, everyone could always guess the truth. “Yep.”

“That’s it? ‘Yep.’ That’s the only answer I get? Sometimes you can be so difficult.”

“I don’t mean to be.”

Corinne tried again. “Would you mind telling me why you followed me?”

“Well…”

“Never mind. I think I know,” she stopped him. She tilted her head in his direction and gave him her, oh-you-poor-boy smile—which was only slightly different than her oh-you-silly-boy chuckle. “It’s really no big secret. The truth is you have a little crush on me. Don’t you?”

“I…”

“I don’t mind,” she offered gallantly. “Truly, it’s not surprising. After all, it’s only natural that someone like you would be attracted to someone like me. For one thing, we are complete opposites. That alone can be enough to stir someone’s interest in another person. You see the qualities that you lack in the other and you want them for yourself.”

He didn’t think so, but rather than try to correct her assumptions only to be cut off again, he let her continue.

“The important thing is not to let it get out of hand. You know that I love Brendan and you know he’s the only man I’ll ever love.”

“Why?” Matthew managed to toss into the conversation.

The question brought her up short for a second, but she recovered and quickly stepped up onto her Brendan soapbox.

“He’s really a very sensitive man. I know sometimes he doesn’t show it, but that’s because of his insecurities. He feels he has to hide his true self. There’s that and he’s a talented salesman. Of course he has excellent fashion sense. And we’re very much alike. We both enjoy the spotlight. We both play to the crowd. We understand each other.”

“If he understood you,” Matthew argued, “he would know that you’re not the type of woman who would tolerate cheating.”

“He’s going to stop cheating. He knows he has to or he will lose me forever.” There was a catch in her voice even as she said the confident words. “Would you want to lose me forever?” she asked him a bit frantically.

Gently, he shook his head, and said, “No. I wouldn’t want to lose you forever. I guess I’m worried about you. What if he doesn’t stop cheating? You’re not going to stick around for that, are you?”

He would have to kill Golden Boy if he ever caught him with his pants down around his ankles with some other woman while he was married to his Rinny. And Matthew would hate like hell to have to go to jail.

Back to huffy in the blink of an eye, Corinne whipped off her sunglasses in a fluid movement and he could see how indignant she was. “Do I look like one of those pathetic women who would let her husband cheat on her?”

“No,” he answered thoughtfully. “There’s nothing pathetic about you, Rinny.”

“Certainly not,” she affirmed. “I promise you, I have no intention of sitting by and watching his roaming eye for the rest of my life. If he can’t settle down, then we’re through. Unfortunately, that means I will have to spend the rest of my life alone, and I would really rather it not come to that.”

“Why alone? Why can’t there be someone else?” he challenged.

Thoughts of her sister and all of her fiancés, and of her brother and his two—soon to be three—wives and her parents with all of their paramours came rushing to the forefront of her mind. “Because it’s not supposed to be like that,” she stated adamantly. “There’s not supposed to be scores of lovers in a person’s life. Maybe there are multiple relationships, some that work and others that don’t. But there is only one true love. The one that you’re meant to be with. The one that makes your world complete. Sometimes that love only lasts for a day. Sometimes people never find it. Sometimes they find it but they let their day-to-day worries mess it up. Sometimes it lasts forever. You never know how it’s going to end up. I’m lucky enough to have found my true love. If I’m not lucky enough to keep him…well, then I’ll just have to live with the consequences. But it wouldn’t be fair to anyone else who might want to be with me when I would know the whole time that they were just a substitute.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“What do you know about love anyway?” she asked impatiently.

“I know plenty,” he said as he stared at the calm water. “I was engaged once.”

Matthew had been engaged? This was news to her. Most people who met him automatically came to the conclusion that he was single. It was because there was something very solitary about him. When Corinne defended him to their co-workers, which she often did, she called him an independent spirit. Her colleagues said she was simply being kind.

They believed he was odd. Too staid. Too regimented. Too private. He ate the same thing for lunch every day—a bologna and cheese sandwich and a green apple. He wore a tie and suit every day, even on dress-down days when everybody else wore jeans. He always had a tissue and a pencil on hand and ready to lend. The man was as predictable as the turning of the earth. The girls in the office joked that being married to Matthew would be like being married to one of the presidents on Mt. Rushmore. In other words, not too exciting. No, no one ever seemed to question why he was single. And everyone took it for granted that he always would be.

Only come to find out that he was engaged. To be married. “Who was she?” Despite her best efforts, Corinne couldn’t quite keep the incredulity from her voice.

“Her name was Debbie.”

Wow, he thought. It had been too long since he thought of her. There was a time when Matthew used to think about her every second and what his life would have been like had she lived. But time had passed. His heart had healed. The memories would always be precious, but they weren’t as keen as they used to be. And he had learned to love again.

“What happened?”

Corinne’s curiosity was like a hungry animal that simply had to be satisfied, Matthew knew. She wouldn’t stop until she had all the answers. “She died in a car accident two months before the wedding. Debbie was a schoolteacher, and there was a bad snowstorm and she wanted to make sure all the children got home safely, so she drove them herself rather than put them on the bus. They all got home, but she didn’t.”

It was tragic. A lump the size of a fist formed in her throat. “I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged and sat up to take the pressure off his elbows. “It was seven years ago. I miss her, but I’ve moved on. And I believe that she would want me to find someone else. Someone who I could love as deeply as I loved her. She was generous like that.”

The lump wasn’t going away. Around it, Corinne choked out, “She sounds wonderful.”

“She was. But after she was gone I never once thought that my life was over. I never believed that she was my only chance at happiness. Instead, I felt the opposite. I was reminded how dear life is and how I should always try to seize every moment. Somewhere along the way I forgot that lesson. I guess I’ve never been too good at seizing. It took a two-bit crook with a .38 Smith and Wesson and a craving for slushies to remind me.” Reactively, Matthew reached up to rub his heart where he could still feel the residual pain from the bullet that had just missed that vital organ.

The scar was invisible behind the white cotton T-shirt he wore. But Corinne knew it was there. Odd, because he didn’t seem like the type to be prudish about such things, but Matthew refused to let anyone see the mark that the bullet had left. He said it was a private matter between him and the man who put it there.

Corinne remembered that awful day as clearly as if it happened yesterday rather than several months ago. A police officer had shown up at the office with the news that Matthew had been shot during a holdup at a convenience store. Foolishly, Matthew had tried to talk the crook into putting his gun down, but the kid, doped up on PCP, had snapped and pulled the trigger. By the time Corinne got to the hospital, Matthew was nearly gone. The doctors said that although they had removed the bullet and closed the hole in his lung, he had lost so much blood in the process that they didn’t know if he would ever wake from the coma that he had fallen into.

Miraculously however, just two hours later while Corinne sat with him, telling him about the plot of her sister’s latest movie, Matthew had opened his eyes and smiled.

“I’m glad you didn’t die,” she blurted, abruptly returning to the present.

“Thanks. Me, too,” he returned. “I’ll never forget what you said to me in the hospital.”

Corinne struggled to recall what he might be referring to, but she often said so many memorable lines. It would be nearly impossible to remember each and every one. It was one of the advantages of scripting most of the major events in her life. She always mentally wrote herself great dialogue.

“You said, ‘Thank heavens, you’re awake. I’ve few enough real friends in this world and I would just as soon not lose one.”’

“It was true,” she reiterated.

“It was nice. It got me through, thinking that I had a friend like you who cared.”

Now it was starting to make sense, Corinne realized. That’s why he was here. It had nothing to do with a crush. It was out of some warped sense of gratitude that he felt for her because she was the only one who had come to visit him in the hospital.

Her vanity was somewhat offended. After all, chasing her down because he thought she was kindhearted wasn’t nearly as flattering as being chased down because he thought she was gorgeous and sexy.

In an easy manner she laid a hand on his arm and gave him her let-me-give-you-some advice expression. “You just need to open up a little more, Matthew. People don’t know you because you don’t let anyone inside.”

He never considered himself closed. He never thought about it one way or the other. He worked. He paid his bills. And he had his painting. By nature he liked solitude, but he didn’t think he ever intentionally cut people out of his life. Then again, he never went to a lot of trouble to include them either.

“You know me,” he reminded her.

And he knew why. It was because Corinne wasn’t the type of person to wait to be let inside. She was the type who disregarded any barrier that got in her way. Even his stoic silence. He remembered their first meeting vividly.

They’d begun with the growing software company at the same time to establish internal financial controls—him as the auditor and her as the financial controller. She had waltzed into his office, and he’d immediately felt as if he were in the presence of a star rather than a serious businesswoman who worked with numbers all day. Her flaming-red hair had been loose about her shoulders; she’d worn a yellow sundress that flowed over her body like water over land, and from her wrist had dangled five gold bangle bracelets that clinked about and made music while she spoke.

We’re both new which means we’re bound to be friends. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria for lunch. I prefer to eat around noon, low blood sugar and all of that, is that all right with you?

At the time, he recalled nodding, and then another gust of wind hit him in the face as she blew out of his office as dramatically as she had blown in to it. She’d left behind a lingering hint of her perfume and a hell of an impression.

They did eat lunch together that day. Mostly, Matthew sat and listened while she spoke about her plans for the company. He knew then that it was going to be his job to keep her in check. For whatever reason, that bologna and cheese sandwich and green apple had tasted better that day than it ever had before.

“Of course I know you,” Corinne said, snapping him back to the moment. “After all, we work together. And you can’t hide anything from me. Every thought you have is always written right there on your face. Come to think of it, you would make a lousy poker player. Be careful that you stay away from those tables when you go to the casino.”

“I’ll do that.”

“It’s not that I mean to be critical, Matthew. Truly, you are a wonderful man. And you deserve to have someone in your life. If you would behave more like a single man and less like a…like a…”

“Relic,” he supplied.

“Yes…you would be amazed at the women who would come knocking at your door.”

“But would any of them be you?” he muttered under his breath. Aloud, he said, “Thank you for the advice. Maybe I’ll try that.”

“Good,” she said, pleased with her apparent success. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I was thinking of taking a swim.”

“So you’re staying?”

“If I wouldn’t bother you.”

“See,” she pointed out. “That’s another one of your problems.”

“Another one?”

“You’re too accommodating.”

He thought he was just being polite. “But…”

She continued without interruption. “What difference does it make if I want you to stay or I want you to go? You probably paid just as much money as I did to get here therefore you have every right to enjoy your vacation. You shouldn’t let me tell you what you can do.”

“That’s true….”

“You’ve got to learn to take what you want out of life and stop letting other people dictate your actions,” she charged.

“Okay.”

“You have to speak up, Matthew. Learn to just barge right in there with your thoughts and your wants. Let people know you’re serious.”

And he would have, too, if she hadn’t kept rambling. After a few minutes he tuned her out, the point of her little speech having already been made. It wasn’t the first time he heard one of Rinny’s speeches, and he wasn’t the only one ever to receive them.

Often, he could hear Rinny inviting people into her office, giving them a pep talk along with their assignments. She would listen to their woes and then pick that person up off the floor again with her cheerleader-like attitude.

Just another thing to love about her was her good and generous heart. It was a shame that few people ever understood her generosity. Most people got lost in the act she portrayed. They believed her to be whatever she wanted them to. Many were convinced she was simply shallow and self-absorbed.

But Matthew knew differently. He’d known it the minute he’d wakened from his coma and found her on the other side of his bed with unshed tears in her eyes.

“You’ve got to be bold,” she continued. “You’ve got to be aggressive. And most important, you must always implement a course of action!”

Inwardly, he chuckled as her cheeks started to heat up and her eyes began to take on a new glow. She wanted him to implement a course of action, huh?

What if he reached over there and pulled her off that chair, ripped off that silly sarong she had tied around her waist—no doubt to hide what she considered unsightly curves that he considered womanly—and kissed her until she couldn’t see straight? That was a course of action he certainly wouldn’t mind implementing.

It would shock her. It was something she would never expect from him, but he did have that side to him. It was one of the few things that Debbie had never understood about him. She had hated to be taken by surprise. For that matter she hadn’t liked to be fondled much. She’d only made love with him after they became engaged, and then it had to be in a bed at night with lights out and her nightgown, if not on, at least close by. He’d loved her, so he respected her wishes. He had hoped that one day she would see that making love was about having fun and enjoying each other.

Making love with Rinny would be that. It would be that and a hundred other things as well. Intense. Hot. Exciting. Playful. He could see them together in his mind. A sudden surge of lust overwhelmed him and vaguely Matthew realized that the dunk he was planning in the ocean was suddenly becoming something necessary to cool his overheated libido.

“So I’m staying,” he told her, not too sure where she was in her speech but wanting to at least make that clear. “And I’m going for a swim. Coming?”

Corinne was breathing a little heavily. Perhaps her speech had gotten a little out of hand. The good news, though, was that he had listened to her and had taken her advice. He was doing what he wanted to do and that was stay. Since it was what she wanted him to do, too, things had really worked out for the best.

“No, you go ahead. I’m not a real big swimmer.”

This clearly confused him. “Why would you come to an island if you don’t swim?”

Haughtily, she answered, “That’s non-swimmer discrimination.”

“It is? I thought it was just a question.”

“Just because I can’t swim doesn’t mean that I should be denied the privilege of coming to an island. I like to look at the water. And maybe later, if I want to, I will sit by the pool, too.”

He simply shrugged. “Okay.”

“For now, however, it’s getting late. I think I’ll head back to my room.”

“So, I’ll meet you for dinner tonight. Around seven in the Pirate’s Cove,” he stated rather than asked. How was that for being aggressive and telling her what he wanted? Whether it worked or not remained to be seen.

He studied her face for a moment, and her expression was priceless. First, there was a little surprise at his forwardness, then a little outrage, then finally the realization that he had done exactly what she had instructed him to do. She was probably mentally congratulating herself on her success.

“Are you asking me to dinner?”

“I don’t think I’m asking,” he replied boldly.

She squinted her eyes at him, but then after a beat nodded her head. “Yes, I suppose I can meet you at the bar.”

Corinne packed up her things and headed back up the beach. Matthew gladly watched the graceful movement of her hips as she sashayed her way to the hotel. Only the stupid sarong that she had wrapped around her waist prevented him from getting the full view. That was her sister’s doing, he thought. Just because Myra was reed-thin, Rinny thought she had to hide the fact that she wasn’t.

“You know, Rinny,” he called out to her impetuously. “Your hips aren’t all that big. You really don’t need to cover them up with that sheet thing.”

That being said, everyone within earshot immediately turned to stare at Rinny. And her hips.

Stiltedly, Corinne turned and shot death rays at him with her eyes. So powerful were they, he was relatively sure she would have killed him had she been a super-hero. Turning away from him, her chin held high, she removed the sarong, as if to show her viewing public that she had nothing to be ashamed of, which she didn’t, and stormed off. His Rinny always knew how to make an exit.

MATTHEW PLUNGED through the water and the gentle waves, finally diving beneath the surface of the clear ocean. When he came up he tried a few strokes, but instantly his lung started to hitch and his arm stiffened up. The one thing they never showed in the movies or on TV was how long it took to recover from a bullet wound. Most heroes just slapped a bandage on it and off they went. Here he was several months later, and he still wasn’t up to snuff.

Don’t regret getting shot, Matthew told himself as this time he took on the water a little more slowly. In retrospect it was the best thing that ever happened to him. If he hadn’t gotten shot, he might never have woken up to the fact that time was passing, and he and Rinny weren’t getting any younger.

After all, he was sure she wanted to have children. She talked about having them with the Golden Boy, although he couldn’t imagine him being anything more than an absentee father. Golden Boy was too self-absorbed for children. But Rinny would be an excellent mother, of that he was sure.

Yep, it was time for them to get started with their life together. All he had to do was convince her that she didn’t love Golden Boy and that she did love him. Not an easy task, but not an impossible one. What had she said earlier, something about needing a course of action?

She was right.

He could always tell her how he felt about her. But after her speech about needing to open up to people, he had the sneaking suspicion that she had reduced his feelings for her to a minor crush, one rooted in the fact that she had been there for him. If he declared his love now, she might mistake it for misguided gratitude.

No, in this case, honesty was not going to be the best policy. Lousy poker face or not, he was going to have to give it his all to try and hide his true feelings for her. At least until he was sure that she could accept them for what they were.

There was always the friendship angle, but he’d played that card since the day he met her and all it had gotten him so far was her, well…continuing friendship.

Maybe he should tell her about Brendan and what a scoundrel he was and how Marjorie from human resources wasn’t the first woman to make his eyes wander. No, any attack on Golden Boy would only lead to her leaping to his defense. Matthew wasn’t up for another round of the poor-misguided-insecure-Brendan soliloquy.

So what was left to him?

Matthew flipped onto his back and began to back stroke. The sky was a shade of blue that he couldn’t quite label, but knew that when he got back to his condo in New Jersey, he would try to replicate it with his paints. He had no doubt he would fail. It wasn’t that he was a pessimist. Just bad with colors. Not to mention he wasn’t a very good painter. It was simply the process and its contrast to working with numbers all day that pleased him.

Then it clicked. The process. That was his course of action. He had to stop thinking about the end result and concentrate on the process. The end result was love and happily ever after. It was the ending that most people hoped for any time they began a relationship. But the process was the wooing. The dating. The flowers. The dinners. And the sex.

If Matthew couldn’t get Rinny to fall in love with him, maybe he could get her to have an affair with him. Technically, she had broken up with Golden Boy, so she couldn’t cry infidelity as an excuse. Then there was the added element of them being outside their normal realms on this island. Away from the office, their friends, anyone who knew them, they could be anybody they wanted to be.

It would be tricky. He would have to convince her that it would strictly be a two-week gig. No regrets or recriminations when it was over and they were back in the office. Of course, if he had his way there would be no “over.”

Instead, there would be happily ever after and a nice house and babies and…Rinny.

It wasn’t going to be easy. Pulling this off meant that he would have to be sneaky and manipulative. Two things he utterly failed at. But this particular poker game was for the jackpot. And he didn’t plan on losing.

A vacation fling. It just might work.

3

TO TIE OR not to tie. That was the real question. Matthew was dressed in a pair of gray slacks to which he dared to add a soft-blue oxford shirt with a white collar. It wasn’t his normal style. He preferred plain white. What with his lack of talent for color, it made it much easier to match his ties with his shirts.

However, fashion seemed to be important to Rinny. Or maybe not fashion so much as style. She was forever commenting on his absence of it. She’d given him this shirt as a Christmas gift last year so he had to assume it would meet with her approval. And there was the added fact that he simply wanted to wear it for her.

Besides, these were the islands. It was time to cut loose and live on the wild side.

He had gone so far as to roll the sleeves up to his elbows as a bow to the heat, but leaving it unbuttoned at the neck just didn’t feel right to him. Again, he held the tie up against his chest. It was red. No doubt Corinne would have assigned some fancy name to the color, like vermilion or some such nonsense, but to Matthew it was just red. And red went with blue, didn’t it? Oh well, it couldn’t be that bad. Lifting his collar up, he secured the tie about his throat and tightened it. Then he tugged at it a bit, pulling it away from his neck ever so slightly.

Already, he felt a little wilder.

DECISIONS, decisions. Corinne stared at the five dresses she had laid out on the bed and contemplated each one as her potential dinner ensemble. One was too sexy, the other too loud. One was too girly and the other too prim. Number five it was. Really it was a combination of the four other problems, but to a lesser degree, so she figured she was safe. Slipping on a pair of panties, she stepped into the island dress.

It was a mesh of bright reds, yellows, whites and greens with huge blooming flowers all over it. As soon as she’d spotted it in the gift shop she’d known she had to have it. It tied about her neck leaving her shoulders bare. The flimsy island material overlapped, concealing her shape for the most part, but when she walked the material separated granting anyone watching the pleasure of a quick glimpse of thigh. A pair of three-inch strappy heels to give the effect of height, if not the reality of it, and she was ready for her date.

Evening, Corinne corrected. This was not a date.

Because it wasn’t a date, she had no reason to want to impress Matthew with her new ensemble. Not at all. On the contrary she was going to have to be very careful not to flirt with him or smile too much. There was no reason to encourage his current crush regardless of its seemingly harmless origin.

But Corinne never went anywhere not properly dressed, and this evening would be no exception. She snapped up her matching red clutch purse and winced. The dress had been an indulgence, but the purse had been gluttony. She could almost feel the little pang of shock she was going to receive when she opened her credit card bill next month.

It always amused her when people assumed she was rich just because of her last name. Corinne would proudly point out that she had never taken a penny from her family. Instead she worked hard and invested well so that she was able to indulge herself every once in a while. Hell, if it weren’t for her investments her family would be in debt up to their eyebrows.

Weatherbys know acting; Weatherbys don’t know money, her mother would often quote. So it was left to Corinne to keep her family’s fortune growing. Left to their own devices they would either squander their millions away or have it stolen by a corrupt accountant.

Not that they would care, Corinne thought sentimentally. Her family wasn’t in show biz for the wealth. It was the attention they craved. The adoring fans, the boisterous crowds and the heat of the camera lights. The money was nothing more than a pleasant perk.

Not so for Corinne. Like everyone else who worked full-time, she needed money to live. She glanced at the perfect handbag that matched absolutely the vibrant red of her sandals. The purse was going to hurt. But the pain was worth it. And this was a vacation.

Tossing a scarf about her neck—a scarf she refused to acknowledge because it made the cost of the purse seem inconsequential—she left her room and headed downstairs to greet her nondate.

MATTHEW GLANCED at his watch again. He’d said he would meet her at seven. It was fifteen minutes after, so he figured he had another five minutes to wait. Had this been a business meeting she would have been downstairs at seven on the dot. She was obsessively punctual when it came to business.

Social events, however, were an entirely different matter. The Christmas parties. The office picnics. After-hours get-togethers. It didn’t matter what the social occasion was, Corinne was always late.

Made for a better entrance that way, he knew. The fact that she was currently bordering on twenty minutes late meant two things—she considered this a social event, and her entrance was going to be spectacular. Matthew could barely contain the anticipation that was bubbling up inside his gut.

He checked his watch again. Twenty-one minutes late. Boy, she was going to look pretty.

“Hmm-hmm,” she coughed delicately behind him.

Spinning around, Matthew felt his tongue pop out of his mouth. Probably not a suave move for a guy who was about to propose an affair, which was a very suave thing, he thought. As nonchalantly as he could, he drew his tongue back inside his mouth. A deep breath and he was ready to give her an appropriate compliment on her dress for the evening.

“Wow,” he exhaled.

She smiled brightly, then frowned severely. “Ugh,” she huffed.

Matthew reached up to make sure his stubby clipper-cut brown hairs were behaving themselves on the top of his head. He’d gotten the haircut per Rinny’s suggestion, but the girl at Cuts-R-Us had gone a little overboard with the clippers.

However, it wasn’t his hair that had earned her disapproval. Without hesitation, Corinne marched up to him and began to undo his tie. Although this was exactly how he planned to end the evening, Matthew wasn’t so sure a public bar was the best place to get things started. But if she insisted, who was he to refuse her?

“I think you do this on purpose just to get a rise out of me,” she muttered as she undid the tie and pulled it from around his neck. “This color red does not go with that color blue. Put it in your pocket.”

He took the tie and shoved it in his pocket. He was about to outline his problem with colors in general, which also explained why people usually cringed whenever they saw one of his paintings, but she was still speaking. It wasn’t polite to interrupt.

“I swear when we get back to New Jersey I’m going to take you shopping and show you how to dress. And if I have to show up every morning at your home to put you in clothes that match, that’s just what I’m going to do.”

Yeah, he was thinking along those same lines, her being in his house every morning to dress him. Naturally, it would be a help to have her there every evening to undress him. What with his pajama tops rarely matching his pajama bottoms. Inwardly, he smiled lasciviously.

As casually as if she’d been his wife for years, she reached up, no easy task considering their height disparities, and unfastened his top button. Smoothing the collar a bit, she sighed in resignation.

“I guess that’s the best we can do for now. Remind me, however, that we need to go shopping in the gift shop. This is an island and you have to have at least one tacky island shirt. Why, look around you. Can’t you see what all the other men are wearing?”

He saw flowers. He wasn’t going to wear any flowers.

“At least you wore the blue shirt. It looks good on you,” she decided. “It brings out the blue in your eyes.”

“Okay,” he muttered.

Really blue eyes. Deep, rich, almost vibrant blue eyes. Corinne had known Matthew for years, but she didn’t think she’d ever paid attention to how truly remarkable those eyes were. Always so serious at work, he seemed more relaxed with her tonight. And that seemed to bring out a sparkle in his eyes. That along with the blue shirt and no tie…for the first time Corinne found herself acknowledging that Matthew Relic was quite a handsome man.

“Hello? Corinne?”

Breaking the contact and the sudden spell she had found herself in, Corinne tried to play it cool. “What?”

“You were staring at me,” he said.

“I wasn’t,” she lied, with a little laugh to let him know how ridiculous he was being.

“Yes, you were,” he insisted.

Silently damning him for his inability to let a white lie pass, she gritted her teeth and tried again, “No. I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.”

Finally, Corinne snapped. “Okay fine, I was staring. If you must know I just never really noticed your eyes before. They’re very nice. Very blue. Not traditional fair blue eyes, but a rich deep blue.”

She thought he had nice eyes. The compliment made him almost giddy.

“You can be so stubborn,” she accused, miffed that she was forced to confess something that any other man would have let slide. “Do you know that about yourself?”

“It isn’t so much stubbornness as it is thoroughness,” he tried to explain. “I like to have all the answers.”

“Well, now you have them. Satisfied?”

No, he didn’t think he did have all the answers. Certainly not to all the questions he had about Rinny. And he was a long way from being satisfied. But the fact that she liked his eyes was a nice start, he believed.

Just then the maitre d’ interrupted them to let them know that the table Matthew had requested was ready. The couple followed the man through the bar to their table. The restaurant was one of the more casual dining areas the hotel had to offer. Situated outside, it was actually roofed with colorful sun umbrellas that crowned every table. The area was lit with what appeared to be tiki torches, which Corinne assumed were something a little more technically advanced. And happy loving couples were everywhere. But this time it was okay. This time she was part of a couple…a couple of friends, that is.

Matthew held out a seat for Corinne and gently pushed her closer to the table. “Is this okay?” he asked as he took his own seat. “I thought that this might be more comfortable than the formal dining room.”

“It’s perfect,” she assured him. And much better than having room service sent up to her room. She’d never realized that traveling alone could be so…lonely. With his presence, Matthew held the loneliness at bay. For that alone she was grateful to him.

A waiter came to take their drink order. Corinne began to explain with her hands the type of drink she would like. She moved them wide. “I would like something large, like in one of those bowls.” She moved her hands lengthwise and added, “It has to be fruity and make my head spin.” Finally she waved her hands about in a flourish and finished with, “Oh, and umbrellas. Make sure it has lots of umbrellas.”

It took a minute for the waiter to get all that down, but eventually he turned to Matthew.

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