Her Bad Boy Billionaire Lover (Billionai - By Bretton, Barbara Page 0,32

why you're surprised," she said. "Sexual chemistry is what our marriage was all about, wasn't it? I think I was in some kind of erotic haze from the moment we met until the moment--" She stopped abruptly and looked away.

He finished it for her. "Until the moment you walked out."

"That about says it all." She met his eyes once again. "We were never very good at conversation, were we?"

"No, Meggie," he said. "Not very good at all."

They'd used sex to get closer...and to stay further apart. Substituting sex for intimacy had been so easy, so natural, that it had never occurred to either one of them that there was more to marriage than what happened between the sheets.

"You know, you're a lot...nicer than I remembered."

He grinned. "And you're a lot more perceptive."

She tilted her head to one side. "Do you hear that?"

He listened. "Birds singing?"

"Conversation, Lockwood. We're having a real live conversation. Can you believe it?"

"Too bad we didn't think of it six years ago."

"Yes," said Megan, her eyes glistening. "Too bad."

She shivered despite the hot sun and wrapped her arms across her chest. There is so much I need to say to you, Jake, and I don't know how to begin....

"Come on," he said. "We'd better get these clothes dry before we head back to the yacht."

She gripped his forearm. "The ship! How on earth will we get back there, Jake? What if they sail without us?"

"They won't sail without us."

"How can you be so sure?"

He flashed the piratical grin that had first won her heart. "They need me, Meggie. Can't have a cruise without a piano player. International law." You blew it again, Lockwood. You had the perfect chance to tell her the truth and you were too goddamn yellow to take advantage of it.

He took her hand and led her toward the cottage. "There's a laundry room off the kitchen," he said as he unlocked the door. "We'll toss these things in the dryer. While they're drying I'll make a few calls and see if I can scare us up another rowboat."

He ushered Megan into the cool, dimly lit front room. She glanced about, taking note of the pale stucco walls, the spare furniture, the total absence of sound. "What makes you think the phone is hooked up?"

"Positive thinking." He lifted the receiver of the wall unit in the kitchen. "See?" He punched in a few numbers. "It's working."

She arched a brow in his general direction but said nothing. The past few days had been one unbelievable turn of events after another. It wouldn't surprise her if the leaky rowboat appeared on the shore, all repaired and ready to go.

The kitchen was stripped to the bare essentials. Tiny refrigerator. Tiny stove. A small porcelain sink with a window that looked out over the scruffy backyard. Bracing her elbows on the sill, she gazed out through the dusty glass and tried to imagine Jake living in this place.

So this was where he'd been when her father died, when she was alone and pregnant and so deeply in debt she couldn't pay her doctor's bills. He'd been living in a tumble-down cottage on some godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I know how it feels now, Jake. I know all about living hand-to-mouth, about worrying how I'm going to pay the bills, about things like need and ambition and being responsible for someone who's too young and too immature to be responsible for herself.

She chuckled softly. Only difference was Jenny was five years old while Megan had been nineteen.

Once again Jake was speaking Spanish. She caught the words "rowboat" and "trouble," but he spoke so rapidly that her high school Spanish couldn't keep pace. The laundry room was right off the kitchen. She wrinkled her nose at the age of the big washer and dryer but beggars couldn't be choosers.

If she went back to the Sea Goddess looking like something caught in a fisherman's net, she could kiss her contract with Tropicale goodbye. She'd had more than her fill of being the object of the gossip mongers when her father died. She wasn't about to go through that again.

Quickly she stripped off her sundress and tossed it into the dryer. She hesitated for a moment over her panties but then decided the time was long past for false modesty and they joined the sundress.

"I can get us a rowboat from a guy a mile up the road," Jake said, his footsteps