LITMIR.BIZ

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it’s not. Don’t worry. I won’t get you pregnant. I promise. I can take care of that.”

      “Not that kind of dangerous. Emotionally dangerous.”

      He looked blank. Of course he did. He was a man.

      “I could fall in love with you,” she said bluntly.

      “Oh.” He looked appalled. “No. You don’t want to do that.” He was shaking his head rapidly.

      No, she didn’t. Not if he wasn’t going to fall in love with her in return, at least. And he’d made it clear that he had no intention of doing so. She supposed there was always the chance that she could change his mind, but from the look on his face, it didn’t seem likely.

      “Like I said, dangerous,” Anny repeated. “For me.” She shrugged when he just continued to stare at her. “You said it was up to me,” she reminded him.

      His mouth twisted. “So I did.” He rubbed a hand through his hair. “That’ll teach me,” he muttered.

      “I’m sorry.”

      He made a sound that was a half laugh and half something Anny couldn’t have put a name to. “Me, too, princess,” he told her. Then he gave her a wry smile. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

      “Sure,” Anny said.

      But it wasn’t going to happen—she hoped.

      She was the most baffling woman he’d ever met.

      When she didn’t know him, she wanted to make love with him. When she knew him, she didn’t want to—but only because she might fall in love with him.

      Where the hell was the logic in that?

      Well, perversely, Demetrios supposed, squinting at the Italian shoreline as if it might provide some answers, there was some. But it wasn’t doing his peace of mind much good.

      It made all those glimpses of Anny he kept catching out of the corner of his eye all too distracting, though he supposed she intended nothing of the sort at all.

      She wasn’t coy and flirtatious the way Lissa had been, eager and enthusiastic one minute, pouting and moody the next. With Lissa he’d never known where he stood or what she wanted.

      With Anny, she flat-out told him.

      When she wanted to make love, she’d said so. Now she didn’t, and she’d said that. No, he’d never met a woman even close to her.

      After their discussion, she had finished her lunch, then taken both their plates below. He’d expected she would stay there to avoid him and his “dangerous” appeal. But she came back to put her feet up on one of the cockpit benches and leaned back to lift her face. She still wore Theo’s visor, but for the moment her face was lit by the sun and the wind tangled her hair.

      “Isn’t this glorious?” she said, turning a smile in his direction. And there really was nothing flirtatious about the smile at all. Just pure enjoyment of the moment.

      “Yeah,” Demetrios agreed, because it was.

      But also because it was pretty damned glorious to stand there and simply watch her take pleasure in the moment. For the longest time she didn’t move a muscle, didn’t say a word, just sat there silently, absorbing, savoring the experience.

      She didn’t glance at him to see if he was noticing. Lissa had always been aware of her audience.

      He remembered when she’d badgered him to take her sailing. He had been in Paris at the time and she back in L.A., having just finished a film. And every time they talked on the phone she’d chattered about how wonderful it had been going sailing with a couple of big A-list stars.

      “We could go sailing,” she’d said to him.

      It was the first time she’d shown the least interest in any such thing. When he’d taken her to his parents’ place on Long Island right after they were married, she hadn’t set foot on the family boat. She’d had little to do with anyone, and she’d been eager to leave almost as soon as they’d arrived.

      He’d thought at the time it was because she’d wanted to spend some more time with him alone. Only later he began to realize a family vacation on Long Island wasn’t fast-lane enough for her.

      But when she’d made the remark about sailing, he’d taken her suggestion at face value and offered to charter a sailboat so they could go to Cabo San Lucas as soon as he got back home.

      Lissa had been delighted.

      “Ooh, fun,” she’d squealed on the phone when he’d tossed out the idea to her.

      They hadn’t seen each other for more than two days at a time in the past two months. It seemed like a great way to spend some time alone with her. And he’d been delighted she was as eager for some uninterrupted time together.

      “It will be wonderful!” Lissa had crowed. And he knew that tone of voice—it was the one that went with the impossibly sparkly blue eyes. She’d let out a sigh of ecstasy. “The wind. The water. The two of us. Oh, yes. Let’s. I always feel as if I’m in communion with nature.”

      So two days after he got home, he’d chartered a boat, and they’d set sail to Cabo from Marina del Rey.

      For the first five minutes Lissa had looked exactly as content as Anny did now. But an hour later the contentment had vanished.

      The wind was too cold. The boat tilted too much. The ocean spray wasn’t good for her complexion. She was afraid of sunburn.

      Demetrios had tried to be sympathetic. Then he’d tried to joke her out of it. But Lissa didn’t take teasing at all. She pouted. She wept. She slammed around and threw things when she was upset. They weren’t two hours out of Marina del Rey and she had become seriously upset.

      Demetrios did his best to placate her. “I’ve missed you, Lis. I’ve been waiting for this.”

      She looked at him, appalled and flung her arms in despair. “This? This? There’s nothing here!”

      “We’re here. The two of us. Alone,” he reminded her. “No press. No fans. No one at all. Just us. Relax and enjoy it.”

      But Lissa hadn’t relaxed and she hadn’t enjoyed it. She’d gone below, she’d come up to the cockpit. She’d flipped through a magazine, tried to read a possible script. There was no one to talk to. She was bored.

      He’d offered to let her take the wheel. She’d declined. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

      “I’ll teach you,” he’d offered.

      She hadn’t wanted that, either.

      As the hours passed, she’d become more agitated. She hadn’t been able to sit still.

      “When do we get there?” she’d begun asking when they’d barely left Catalina behind. She had looked around hopefully, as if their destination might materialize on the horizon. “It’s only a couple of hours to Cabo.”

      Demetrios had stared at her. “Flying,” he’d agreed. “Sailing it’ll probably take us about a week.”

      “A week?” Lissa’s voice was so loud and so shrill he thought they probably could have heard it in Des Moines.

      “Well, depending on the winds, of course, but—”

      But she hadn’t let him get any more out than that. She’d lit into him with a fury he’d only seen before on the set when she’d played a drug addict deprived of her source. She’d got an Emmy nomination for the performance.

      It turned out she hadn’t been acting. It turned out Lissa had more than a small drug habit. She’d been intending to score some in Mexico, though Demetrios hadn’t known it at the time. There was a whole lot about Lissa he hadn’t known then—things that even now he wished he’d never known.

      It

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