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and fixed her with a very serious, narrow-eyed gaze. It took him around four seconds to think the problem through.

      “Then can I beg you on my bended knees to stick around for a bit, Sierra?” he said. “Help me out with this?”

      “Stick around? Help? You mean act like we’re still really married? Are you joking?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “Work it out, and get back to me.”

      She put her hand on the door, intending to climb out, but he leaned across and stopped her, laying one arm across both of hers. She froze. His bare arm brushed her stomach, and would brush her breasts if she leaned just a little bit.

      At one time they’d been way more intimate with each other than this, so she shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about it. Problem was, his touch opened up too many memories, and too many lost possibilities.

      “I’m not joking, okay?” he said, with his voice dropped low. “I want this whole situation to go away, and that pushy, man-eating journalist’s attitude just now, on top of everything else, made me realize it’s not going to, not on its own. Or not before it’s driven me crazy, anyhow. I’m not the type to get my head down and wait out a storm.”

      “No…”

      “I like to take action. I need to. You knew that about me eight years ago.” True. “And it hasn’t changed. So I’m asking for help.”

      “Now, that has changed,” she couldn’t help saying.

      “What has?”

      “You asking me for help.”

      “Yeah?”

      “That’s never happened before.”

      He shrugged, dismissing her claim as either untrue or unimportant, but she had a strong inkling in the back of her mind that he was wrong on both counts. “Well, it’s happening now,” he said. “Stay. Couple of weeks.”

      “I—I can’t.”

      “You’re on school summer break. Your family can manage without you. Some people consider Stoneport a great place for a vacation.”

      “I don’t need a vacation.”

      He ignored the statement. “My place is big enough for us to keep out of each other’s way,” he said. “And I’ll be in my office or on the water most days. The only thing I’ll ask is for us to go out together a handful of times. In the Porsche, so that we’re noticed. Make it real romantic, so that everyone gets the idea. When the heat fades, we can each see a lawyer, and you can head back to Ohio with a new tan and some friendly divorce papers in your suitcase.”

      It sounded easy, when he put it like that, yet Sierra still told him, “That’s insane.”

      Probably because her inner reaction was insane. Her heart shouldn’t race like this. Her head shouldn’t spin. And she should absolutely not consider for a second that he was offering her a second chance at their marriage, because he wasn’t, and neither of them wanted one.

      After eight years?

      When even without the A-list article he probably had half a dozen beautiful, eligible, perfect women dangling after him at any given moment?

      And, most important of all, when none of their reasons for splitting up in the first place had changed?

      “It’s not insane,” he told her. “It’s practical. There’s no risk, is there, if we try this? After all, we’re already married, and on the verge of a divorce that any sane person could have predicted before the ink on our marriage certificate was dry. Nothing worse we can do to each other than that!”

      “That’s what you think about marriage? About our marriage?”

      If he hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second. “Pretty much.” His voice sounded like gravel rolling slowly in a cement mixer.

      Sierra felt both hurt and angered that he would look at their four years as man and wife so cynically. No wonder he hadn’t been in any hurry about a divorce, before this. He clearly had no intention of falling into the marriage trap again any time soon, so he didn’t need the legal freedom. For different reasons, neither had she.

      Beyond the hurt and anger, however, she was still thinking about the fact that he’d actually asked.

      Asked her.

      For a favor.

      More than a favor. He’d said he needed her help. Self-sufficient Ty Garrett, who’d once had a chip on his shoulder the size of a tree trunk and wouldn’t have admitted to needing anything in case somebody noticed, and who in fact never had needed anything, judging by the success he’d made of his life without anyone else’s input…That same Ty Garrett had just looked her right in the eye and asked for her help.

      Sierra didn’t have time to explore the reason why, but it was the thing that tipped the balance for her, in the end—the fact that he’d actually asked for her help. If it wouldn’t create problems for her family, she would stay in Stoneport a little longer and do what Ty wanted. Along the way, she might get a few answers to questions about their marriage that she hadn’t known she still had.

      “I’ll have to call home,” she said, and saw him frown.

      “That’s your basis for a decision? Whether you’re needed at home?”

      “It’s a factor.”

      He was silent for a moment as if debating his reply, but finally he just shrugged and said, “We’ll head out to my place, then. Take a look at it, see what you think, and you can make the call.”

      He took the back streets, leaving Sierra with the impression of a town that had found its feet as an attractive vacation spot and commercial hub for smaller surrounding communities.

      She saw old Victorian houses spruced up as antique stores, restaurants, craft boutiques and bed-and-breakfast enterprises. On the far side of the harbor, which opened onto the sheltered waters of Carteret Sound, she saw a nineteenth century brick warehouse converted to upscale apartments, and on the way out of town there were signs indicating a theme park, hiking trails and golf.

      Within a few minutes, they’d left Stoneport behind to thread their way along Onslow Banks, where the road offered stunning glimpses of green and white Atlantic breakers rolling onto the shore.

      “You’re not in town?” she asked.

      “Not far out. Another couple of minutes…Here.”

      Wow.

      Not a sterile apartment, not a lavish mansion, and definitely not a hotel suite. Instead, Ty had a year-round beach-house that was every bit a home. Set high up behind the dunes to put it out of reach of all but the strongest storms and tides, and surrounded by a wide wooden deck, it looked quirky and unique and as if it had grown in that spot.

      It pretty much had, Sierra soon found.

      “Built by one of the fishing fleet owners a hundred years ago,” Ty told her. “When nothing else was out here. Quite an eccentric guy, I understand. It started out as just a cottage, but his descendants added to the place over the years which is why it looks…a mess, I guess.”

      “No!”

      “You don’t think so?”

      “It has character.” Sierra forgot to feel self-conscious about telling him what she really thought. “Feels as if it’s inviting me in, to explore. That little window up top is winking at me, and that set of stairs disappearing round the corner is asking if I can guess what I’ll find.”

      “Round the corner? There’s a bench and seats built into the deck. Then there’s a kind of Florida room, with a—You’ll see. Come in and make that call to your family.”

      “They’ll be fine, I’m sure,” she said, then realized it

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