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But he wasn’t ready for climax. Not yet. Not until he taught her how no other man, no other lover could ever satisfy her completely—heart, body and soul—as he did. Once certain of that, how could she ever leave him?

  Yet Harley had no such agenda. With her toes, she tickled his thick sacs, then drew her foot up and down, stroking him beneath the water. He took her nipple then, punishing her with his teeth.

  Her cry embodied the sweetest rapture he’d ever heard. She grabbed his cheeks and held him to her breast, kissing his forehead and whispering a jumble of words, some unintelligible, others that fired his soul. He suckled her thoroughly, until a slickness met his fingers where he caressed her.

  He could wait no longer.

  He flipped over and dragged his pulsing body to the uppermost step, leaving only his rear end in the water. Before he could tear open the red packet, Harley’s mouth encircled him, teasing and plying and sucking. He nearly dropped the condom back into the pool’s cool depths, but she stole the latex from his grasp, sheathed him and sat atop him, sliding his sex inside with a feminine, yet guttural gasp.

  The tile bit into his back, but Grant didn’t care. The warm night air swirled in bursts—breezy, then gusty, mirroring the thrusts he pumped into her white-hot center. She sat up straight, slicked back her wet hair and arched her back with feline elegance.

  He heard himself uttering words resembling a sacred litany, but couldn’t form a coherent thought. He clutched Harley’s buttocks, bolstering and guiding her deliberate rhythm. When she scooped handfuls of water to trickle over her pointed nipples, the first wave of molten fire drained from him to her.

  A blur of motion followed. Raw. Demanding. He took her breast in his mouth, slid his hand between them, inciting her instantaneous climax. She screamed. His accompanying explosion echoed like deep bass to her piercing aria. He crashed into her with a ferocity she not only matched, but exceeded. With his final thrust, he lifted them off the step and splashed their joined bodies into the dark blue water.

  HARLEY KNEW NOW what drowning felt like. Not the terror or the agony, but the helplessness. Locked to Grant, she merely held on while he spun them beneath the surface, bringing them up for breath then plunging them under the water in an undulating ritual that cleansed her like a pagan baptism.

  He finally pulled her out of the water near the steps to the Jacuzzi, settling her on the cradle of his lap, his touch tentative, his kisses soft. A few minutes passed before she’d gathered enough air in her lungs to speak.

  “Was that crazy enough for you?” she asked.

  Nuzzling her neck, he hummed his denial against her skin. “It’s a start. We have all night to find true insanity.”

  “Is once ever enough for you?”

  “Is it for you?”

  She pulled herself out of his arms to the pool deck, her muscles weak and shaky, but pleasantly so. Smiling wickedly, she eluded his grasp and sauntered to the table, watching him watch her. She swiveled her naked hips just a bit more than she would normally, enjoying the play of refreshed need on his features. She retrieved her wineglass and relieved her cottony mouth with a generous swallow. The sweet blush slid like ice down her parched throat, yet his gaze, even from a few feet away, sent a heated torrent spiraling through her.

  She refilled both glasses and returned to the Jacuzzi. “I didn’t thank you for rescuing me.”

  He lifted himself to the edge, swung his feet into the Jacuzzi, took his glass then guided her to sit beside him.

  “Those people didn’t want to hurt you, or they would have.”

  She took another sip of wine, hoping the alcohol would dispel a sudden chill. “But they want to hurt Buck. And maybe Moana. If she is my cousin, I can’t let that happen.”

  “We won’t let that happen. I’ll call Mac in the morning. We’ll work something out.” He turned his goblet between both hands, his eyes cast down, his lips pursed, as if he contemplated some great irony in the rose-tinted liquid. “It wasn’t a very exciting rescue. If I were Mac, I’d have rushed in, guns and badge blazing.”

  Harley covered her amusement with another sip of wine. She wasn’t accustomed to Grant acting so boyish, so unsure of himself, so…normal. And yet, she had to clear up his misconception without delay. She may have just met Mac’s wife, but the memory of Jenna’s sad eyes boiled her blood. “If you were Mac, you would have spent the evening ignoring me.”

  Grant shrugged then swallowed a quarter of his glass. “Mac loves Jenna. He’s just a little…obsessed. With his job. With what other people think about the way he does his job. He’ll come to his senses.”

  Harley didn’t answer. Who was she to judge someone else’s relationship when theirs was based on fantasy and half-known truths? At least Mac and Jenna had time to fix whatever was so obviously wrong with their marriage. She and Grant wouldn’t have that luxury.

  Grant put his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. Coupled with the slightly rough tile grazing her bare backside, his touch reminded her that only moments would pass before she’d need him inside her again. Before she surrendered, a few things needed saying.

  She took another sip to steel herself for her confession. “I overheard Mr. Phipps talking to you at the wedding. After we danced.”

  His shoulders stiffened, but he continued to sip his wine as if her revelation meant nothing. “Don’t mind him. He’d had too much champagne.”

  She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, breathing in his scent, a mixed aroma of sex and chlorine and musk. “That’s not true and you know it.”

  After draining his glass, he climbed back into the hot tub, easing her down with him. “You want me to tell you what’s true, Harley? Howell Phipps can’t run the firm without me. He lost his instinct for the market years ago. Up until a few days ago, I’d forgotten that fact. Let him make his threats. When push comes to shove, he can’t touch me.”

  “He could replace you.”

  Grant wrapped his arms around her and pulled her full to him, hard and ready again. “He won’t.”

  “You don’t really know that. If he finds something really horrible in my past, he could destroy your reputation.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Stop worrying about me. I’m more concerned about what he’d do to you.”

  She believed him, though she couldn’t muster any real fear of Howell Phipps. Not for herself anyway. Grant’s capacity to place her needs above his embodied the main reason she loved him so deeply. And why she didn’t dare stay in his house past tomorrow morning.

  “I don’t belong in his world…or yours. In my world, whatever that man says or does won’t mean a thing.”

  Grant growled low and took her cheeks between his palms, tilting her head so her gaze met his, blue irises to brown. “Harley Roberts, you are my world.”

  Her breath caught in her throat and a band of iron seemed to wrap around her heart, squeezing until she gasped. Grant didn’t know what he was saying. The sensational sex had clouded his usually razor-sharp brain. “Please, Grant. You know that can’t be true.”

  “Why can’t it? Because you haven’t regained your full memory? Because you might be a stripper? Because your cousin might have a criminal connection?”

  Harley knew she’d never find the will to leave tomorrow if he continued down this road. He was wrong. Dead wrong. She accepted responsibility for his delusional thinking. She’d led him into a series of fantasies where anything and everything was possible—where two people from different dimensions of the universe connected and thrived.

  Yet tonight, she’d learned just how reality would squash those dreams like a meaty fist on an ant. Despite his reassurances, she’d heard the power in Howell Phipps’s threats. The venom in his tone. But mostly, she recalled how Grant had had to rescue her. How she’d had to cling to him to find relief from her fear. Grant’s caring bolstered her like a crutch. Without doubt, she’d never cajole her mind into recovering her lost memories so long as she had Grant to keep her pain at bay.
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br />   “I don’t want to talk anymore.” She kissed his chin and smoothed her naked breasts against the soft hair on his chest. “I want to know more about insanity.”

  His groan was resigned, but his smile ignited a thrill that burned all rational thought from her head. “Then just look to me, sweetheart. These last few days with you, I’ve become an expert.”

  HARLEY DECIDED GRANT’S parents must never have let him sleep late. Despite his desire for her to join him at his grandmother’s for breakfast, he’d accepted her sleepy “maybe later” without a smidgen of argument. He’d simply kissed her nose, drawn the sheet over her and promised to call her at noon.

  She jumped when the phone rang at nine-thirty, only twenty minutes after she’d heard Grant’s sport utility vehicle roll over the driveway and she’d begun to dress. She almost didn’t answer, afraid he’d phoned her from the car. Not wanting to alert him to her plan to leave long before his twelve o’clock call, she picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  Silence answered, though Harley thought she heard the rumble of traffic in the background.

  She tried again. “Hello?”

  This time, she heard a distinctly feminine, though shaky voice. “Hailey?”

  “Excuse me? Who are you calling for?”

  “God, please let this be the number. I’m looking for my cousin, Hailey Roberts. I got this number from my friend, Joy. She said some rich guy gave it to her, and that I could find…”

  “Moana?”

  “Hailey? Lord, girl, you never call me by my stage name. Is something wrong?”

  Hailey? Stage name? Harley bent her knees slowly, letting the mattress catch her before she fell into a swirling dizziness.

  “A lot is wrong. More than I should discuss over the phone. Where are you? There are people after you, do you know that? You shouldn’t go back to your condo.”

  Moana’s snort overrode the background noise. “I already made that mistake, but I booked before anyone saw me. I’m at a rest stop outside of Plant City. Joy said you were staying in Citrus Hill. Isn’t that where that guy from the bachelor party lived? Is it him? I mean, I knew you could pull off the gig, but I didn’t think you’d move in.”

  “I haven’t. Well, I have, but only temporarily. Until I found you. Can you meet me?”

  “Give me the address. I’ll ask for directions when I hit the exit.”

  Harley bit her bottom lip, reluctant to bring more scandal on Grant if someone discovered not one, but two strippers holed up in his house.

  “No, that wouldn’t be a good idea. I know which rest stop you’re at—I saw it on my way to Tampa. Hang tight. I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes, okay?”

  The hesitation in Moana’s voice clutched Harley’s lungs. This woman was Harley’s only link to her past, and to the boy whose sweet face haunted her dreams.

  “Yeah, sure. But don’t piss around, okay? After the wreck those punks did to my place, I don’t think I should stay in one place too long.”

  Harley agreed to hurry and gently hung up the phone. Without allowing time for regrets or what-ifs, she threw her measly collection of clothes and makeup into a tote bag she found in Grant’s closet and headed downstairs. She didn’t have much choice but to take Grant’s Mercedes, rationalizing that she’d find a way to return the car soon after reuniting with Moana. Telling herself she had no time for notes, she grabbed Gus’s phone number and Grant’s extra set of car keys from his study and left.

  The drive to the Plant City rest area took fifteen minutes—just long enough for Harley to realize how impossible leaving Grant forever would be. Emotional crutch or not, the man had seared himself into her soul. She loved him. Respected him. Needed him. Maybe once she’d regained her memory and fell back into the regular patterns of her life, she’d manage to see the last few days for the innocuous diversion they were.

  Or maybe she’d find a way back into his life.

  When she caught sight of Moana leaning against the rusted door of a Chevy Impala probably older than she was, Harley thought twice.

  She pulled the Mercedes alongside and studied the woman’s face, positive her features matched those of the young girl in the photo she’d shoved in her tote bag. When Harley rolled down the Mercedes’ tinted glass window, Moana’s smile of recognition matched the grin in the picture—full over the lips and teeth, but just failing to reach the eyes. Apparently, happiness didn’t come easily to women in her family.

  Moana whistled long and appreciatively, running her hand lightly over the shiny black paint job. “Buck would freak if he saw you behind the wheel of this. Where’s your banker?”

  Harley bristled at the sound of Buck’s name, but shook her fear away and stepped out of the car. “Grant doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Moana hissed out a curse. “Now you’re a car thief? This is big trouble you don’t know about.”

  “Trouble and me have become well acquainted in the past few days.”

  Harley noticed then that Moana kept her gaze focused on the entrance to the rest area, only glancing her way when she spoke. A half-dozen cigarette butts lay flattened by Moana’s feet. Her fingernails, still sporting spots of bright vermilion coating, had been chewed to the quick.

  With her hand as a sun shield, Harley joined Moana in scoping out the line of semitrucks and recreational vehicles parked on the other side of the rest area, across from a pavilion with public washrooms and vending machines. After a few seconds, she realized she had no idea for whom she searched. “Were you followed?”

  Moana shook her head, but with her bottom lip clutched between her teeth, she didn’t look one hundred percent certain.

  “I’ve been on the run for two days straight, then I get back to the condo and find it trashed. By the time I reached Joy, I was pretty freaked. She told me Riva was looking for me. For me! They think I can lead them to Buck.”

  “Can’t you?”

  Moana leaned her jean-clad hips on the side panel of her rusted car and slid a cigarette from the pocket of her vest, a sweet daisy print worn in contrast over a tight, ribbed tank top. “I left that jerk in Valdosta the minute I realized his guys did your carjacking.”

  “Carjacking?”

  Moana tore a match from a wilted book and lit her cigarette. “Damn. Joy wasn’t kidding, was she?” Moana cupped her hand beneath Harley’s chin and gazed deep into her eyes. “You don’t remember me.”

  Harley leaned back on the door of the Mercedes and shook her head. “I can’t remember anything before Thursday night.”

  “Then how did you know who I was when you drove up?”

  Harley reached into the car and pulled out the acrylic frame. She handed the photo to Moana, suddenly wishing she smoked so she’d have something to do with her hands other than fidget or thrust them into her pockets.

  Moana chuckled at the picture. “I noticed this was missing from my place. Thought Riva’d snatched it to show around, since it’s the only picture I had with me in it. It’s old, but I guess we kind of look the same. ‘Cept for Sammy.”

  Harley took the photo back when Moana offered it. She traced the chubby face of the chocolate-covered toddler. “Sammy. He’s my…”

  She looked up at Moana, her inflection posing the question.

  “Your baby brother. Your parents died when he was only one. You were twelve. You came to live with me and Momma. Life went downhill from there.”

  Nodding, Harley clutched the photo tight to her chest as she’d done the night before while hiding from Riva and her henchmen. Her heart ached to find Sammy, but the pain diminished now that she knew she could.

  “You can’t even remember Sammy? Have you seen a doctor?”

  “No, but I will. As soon as I find out where I live.”

  Moana took a long drag of her cigarette, then blew the smoke away from them. “Girl, as of today, you and me are homeless. You left Momma’s about a week ago. You swore not to go back, except to get Sammy when you had a place.”

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nbsp; A week ago? That didn’t make sense. Yet it did. Now she knew why Joy and the others from the local strip clubs didn’t know who she was. She was a stranger to the area.

  “You had a studio hooked up, but then one of Buck’s gang jacked your car and your cash. You came to stay with me at the condo. And we can’t go back there.”

  “A studio? For what?”

  Shaking her head, Moana watched as another line of cars pulled off the interstate into the rest area. “You’re a physical therapist. You use dance to help people recover from accidents or diseases.”

  “I’m not a stripper?”

  Even the air horn from a nearby semi couldn’t cover Moana’s raucous laughter. “A stripper? Honey, this job for the banker would have been your first and your last. You did it because you needed the cash or you’d lose your studio. Which you probably have.” Moana flicked a line of ash to the ground.

  Harley’s legs nearly buckled. “A therapist? But the costumes? I remembered a closet full of really skimpy costumes.”

  Moana shook her head. “Momma had you ballroom dancing from the minute you showed a lick of talent. You won a ton of championships, made a good load of cash and scholarships. Unfortunately, you let Momma talk you into a joint account. What Buck’s creeps stole was all you had left.” She dropped her cigarette, pressed it flat beneath her boot and gazed at Harley through squinting eyes. “You really don’t remember me?”

  Her mind swimming with the new information, Harley concentrated hard in order to answer. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know what your real name is.”

  Moana chuckled and coughed at the same time. “Baby, half the time, I don’t remember that either. You’ve been the only one to call me Mary Jo in a long, long time.”

  Mary Jo. Hailey. So close to their “stage” names and yet worlds apart. Mary Jo and Hailey matched the girls in the faded photograph, but not the women they were now. The names oozed innocence. Simplicity.

  Suddenly, Moana muttered a venomous string of curses that caused Harley’s nerves to stand on end and shiver.

  “I know that truck. Damn, damn, damn.” Grabbing her purse from the Impala, Moana ran around to the passenger side of the Mercedes and popped open the door. Her skin paled. Her eyes widened in fear. “Don’t just stand there! Get us the hell out of here.”