Deep Blue by Kat Martin

the parking lot of the motel, came around to the passenger side, and reached for her hand to help her climb out, she hoped he couldn’t tell she was trembling.
    Somewhere down the block, a makeshift reggae band played Bob Marley, One heart, one love. Let’s get together and feel all right. Hope kept walking, making her way along the leafy path to her room.
    They arrived at the door and she stiffened, praying he wouldn’t press her to come in, praying if he did, she would be strong enough to refuse him. It was only lust, she reminded herself again. It shouldn’t be that hard to handle.
    “Thanks for dinner,” she said. “I had a very nice time.”
    The edge of his mouth barely curved. “Did you?”
    She moistened lips that suddenly felt like paper. “Yes…”
    “So did I.”
    She told herself to turn away, to shove her trembling fingers into her purse and dig out her room key. She told herself to open the door and go in.
    Instead she looked up at him, read the desire in his eyes. “We can’t do this,” she whispered, staring at his mouth, wanting him to kiss her. Praying he would not.
    “We can…if it’s what both of us want.”
    Hope shook her head. “You don’t know what I want. Even I’m not sure anymore.” It was true. There was a time she might have had the courage for this kind of brief, casual fling, but not anymore. Not until she knew she could handle it without suffering the pain she had felt after Richard.
    “I want you, Hope, and I think you want me.”
    An image appeared of the man she’d once loved, naked in bed with her best friend. She thought of the baby she had lost, the unborn child she had wanted so badly. Hope straightened, her control returning, her mask falling back into place.
    “Is that so? Well, guys like you are a dime a dozen. If I wanted you, I’d have you. Obviously, I don’t.” She turned away from him, started to dig through her purse. Conn’s long fingers curled around her shoulders. He hauled her toward him and his mouth crushed down over hers.
    It was a hard, taking kiss, a hot, wet, delicious kiss that turned soft and coaxing and left her utterly breathless. Her lips softened under his and she tasted him, opened for him. He took her with his tongue, an erotic parody of what he would do to her if she let him come into her room. A faint moan seeped from her throat as Conn broke away.
    His eyes were still hot, burning into her like a brand, and filled with something she couldn’t quite name.
    “Thanks for the dance,” he said. Turning, he strode toward the room next door and jammed his key into the lock. He turned the handle and pushed the door open, but he didn’t go in, just stood there waiting until she finally found her key, fumbled it into the lock, went in, and closed the door.
    Her eyes slid closed as she leaned against it. Her stomach was quivering. She was throbbing in places that hadn’t throbbed since Richard.
    She wanted Conn Reese.
    Worst of all, he knew it.
    Hope walked over to the sink on shaking legs, ran water into the basin, and washed her face.
    She was tired but her body still hummed with need. The bed beckoned, but it only made her think erotic thoughts of Conn and she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
     
    The man who pounded on her door the following morning was a different man from the one she’d been out with the night before. He was just as tall and male, just as handsome and virile, but this man’s jaw was set, his eyes a cool shade of blue. He was different.
    But then, so was she.
    It was obvious both of them had their protective walls back in place. Sometime in the night, Hope’s common sense had returned. So what if Conner Reese was a good-looking man with a body right out of the movies? So what if she found him sexually attractive? She was only human. It was a completely natural reaction.
    The problem was, she would only be in the islands for a few short weeks. Maybe even less than that. If nothing turned up of the Rosa, the