LITMIR.BIZ

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Marcus rolled off the bed and hurried to her side. “Where?”

      “The dark sedan with the tinted windows. They showed up about a half hour after I did. I thought the clerk recognized me.”

      “And they saw me come in?” Marcus asked.

      “They probably have a nice photo of you. But it does them no good if I’m not in it, too. You’re just an ordinary Joe going into a motel room. Not very interesting. So we’re probably safe so far.” She glanced up at him. “If they catch us, you’ll be a celebrity, too. Eden Ross’s new boy toy.” She giggled. “I’m not sure you’d appreciate the publicity.”

      “So what do we do?” Marcus asked.

      “Oh, that’s easy.” She walked over to the phone and picked it up. “First, I dial 911.” She paused, then spoke into the phone. “Hello. Yes. I’m staying at the.” She looked over to Marcus.

      “Sandpiper,” he said.

      “Sandpiper Motel. There’s a dark sedan parked on the street in front of the motel, and I think the man inside is planning to steal a car. He’s been looking at a Mercedes convertible in the motel lot.”

      Marcus frowned. “This is against the law,” he whispered. “Reporting a false emergency.”

      Eden put her hand over the phone. “They’re harassing me. That’s against the law, too.” She pulled her hand away. “Yes. I’m in room twelve. My name is Eugenia Montevecchio. Yes, I’ll wait right here. Please hurry. I think he might have a gun.”

      Eden hung up the phone and grinned. “Now we just have to wait until the police arrive, and once the photographers are occupied, we sneak out. We’ll have to take your car, though.”

      “Great plan, unless we get arrested for falsely reporting a crime.” Ian would not be pleased. “And who the hell is Eugenia Montevecchio?”

      “My alias. I’m also Liselotte Bunderstrassen and Carmella Ramirez della Fuego. So where should we go? We could go to New York. My hairdresser is there and he could fix the mess I made.”

      Marcus shook his head. “I have to work, Eden. And why waste money on a hotel when you can stay on the boat for free?”

      Eden shook her head. “No. I’m done with anything that has to do with my father. If he’s going to disown me, then I should begin dealing with it right now. Once I’m rid of his car, there’s nothing more connecting us.”

      “Except the money.”

      She drew a deep breath. “I have just enough left in my trust fund to start all over, to find a place to live and to buy a car. I just have to find a job.”

      “And what will you do?” Marcus asked.

      She shrugged. “I’ll figure that out later. For now, we need to worry about getting out of here without being photographed or arrested. Are you going to help me with that?”

      Marcus nodded. Strange how easy it was to get swept up in one of Eden’s little adventures. And he wasn’t even considering the consequences. If Ian ever discovered Marcus’s complicity in this, he wouldn’t think twice about tossing them both in jail. And once Ian was done with him, Dec would have a few things to say. “Get your things together,” he said. “I know the police chief in this town, and his guys are pretty quick to respond.”

      “HOW LONG IS IT SUPPOSED to take?”

      “I don’t know,” Marcus said. “Read the directions.” He crinkled his nose. “This stuff really stinks. And I don’t like these damn gloves.”

      “You can’t use your bare hands,” Eden said. “The dye would burn them.”

      Eden sat perched on the toilet in the glass-block bathroom of Marcus’s loft, her body wrapped in a towel, her head covered with hair dye. They’d made an easy escape from the motel last night and were now comfortably settled at his place.

      Eden wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t this. From the outside, the two-story building looked like a ruin of peeling paint and weathered wood. The clapboard facade overlooked a boatyard cluttered with timber boat cradles and rickety ladders. Wide sliding doors on the first floor opened to a spacious workshop. Half the second floor was a loft apartment with a wall of windows on both sides, overlooking the workshop and the water.

      The airy loft had a cozy feel, with timber framing and exposed beams. Marcus had carved the posts with unusual patterns that she recognized as his own art. A galley kitchen lined the wall to the right, and on the left was Marcus’s bedroom with old sails draped down from the beams for privacy. The only walls in the loft were glass block and surrounded the bathroom.

      She’d never really thought about Marcus’s life off Victorious. She knew he lived somewhere, but there’d never been much cause to consider where. Now she was forced to acknowledge that there was more to Marcus Quinn than the beautiful body sunning next to her on deck or the soft kisses waking her up from an afternoon nap or the deep blue eyes watching her from across the cockpit. He had a real life, friends and family, a place that he called home.

      Eden scanned the directions. “Fifteen minutes,” she said. “How long has it been?”

      Marcus held out his arm so she could see his watch. “Ten,” he guessed. “Maybe twelve.”

      Eden’s gaze drifted up from the light dusting of hair on his belly to his broad chest. He was barefoot and bare-chested, dressed only in faded jeans that rode low on his hips. She reached out and ran her fingertips over his stomach, and he backed away as if her touch tickled. There were a lot of things she liked about Marcus and his body was near the top of the list.

      She’d been with handsome men, but they’d been handsome in a premeditated way. They spent hours on grooming to look perfect—three-hundred-dollar haircuts and weekly manicures, an expensive stylist to choose the perfect clothes. But Marcus was sexy by just being a man. He combed his hair with his hands and wore faded Levi’s because they were comfortable. His smooth skin was tanned from weeks of work in the sun rather than a few days on a Mediterranean beach or a few hours at a tanning salon. There was something to be said for a man who didn’t have to work at looking like a man.

      A tiny smiled twitched at the corners of Eden’s mouth as her gaze fixed on the top button of his jeans. She fought the temptation to reach out and unbutton it, to draw the zipper down and expose him to her touch. It wouldn’t take much to make him hard, and after that she could bring him to a climax with her fingers or her lips. Marcus hadn’t ever tried to resist her.

      Eden drew a deep breath. Or they could take the last step in their slow journey toward the inevitable. They’d come so close over the past week, but Marcus had always stopped short, as if he were waiting for an invitation to possess her, permission to lose himself in her body.

      A tiny thrill raced through her at the thought of opening herself to him, the sensation of feeling him move inside her. She wanted to make love to him, but it also frightened her at the same time. Things were already too perfect with Marcus Quinn.

      Searching for a distraction, she reached out and grabbed a bottle of cologne from the back of the toilet, then sniffed at it. “It doesn’t smell like you,” she murmured.

      “And what do I smell like?”

      Eden shrugged. “Sweat. Sawdust. Seawater. It’s a very intoxicating scent.”

      “There are times when I want to smell nice,” Marcus explained. He tossed the plastic bottle from the dye into the wastebasket, then ripped off the gloves.

      “When you want to seduce a woman?”

      “Maybe,” Marcus admitted. “Don’t you make yourself smell good when you want to be seduced?”

      She unscrewed the cap and tipped a bit of the cologne onto her finger, then slowly drew it down along his naked belly, circling his belly button with her fingertip. “Sometimes,”

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