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One
Love is like war; easy to begin but very hard to stop.
—HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Eleven months later…
Driving from the shop by the beach to her home in the Malibu hills, Juliet Weston peered through the deepening dusk and weighed the merits of bathing in Super Glue. A dab would repair a fingernail. She’d read a line of the stuff could close a wound. What she faced was more dire, however. Would immersion in a tub of maximum-hold adhesive keep her from fracturing into a thousand little pieces?
She needed her protective shell. It kept her emotions contained and it kept away the rest of the world. But the jarring information she’d been told twenty minutes before had tapped her surface, a single hammer blow to porcelain, and she sensed the cracks in her control.
She arrived home to find her foyer shadowy, her kitchen just as dark, but she didn’t flip a single switch. Bright lights, a deep breath—who knew what might trigger the ruin of what had held her together for the last eleven months?
With slow, careful steps, she made her way across the terra-cotta tiles in the kitchen, her gaze brushing the butcher-block island, the whitewashed cabinets, the gleaming sink, to land on the window overlooking the flagstone deck and the pool that stood between her and the guesthouse. From there she took in the stretch of Pacific Ocean that was her western view.
It was an incredible vista, worth every penny she’d paid for the place, and though she’d lived here a week, its beauty wasn’t sinking in, any more than the news she’d been told at the yarn shop by the beach. That was the downside of her shell—it kept her distant from the good as well as from the bad.
“Who am I?” she said out loud, and at the same instant she voiced the question, a light flashed on outside. Startled, she jerked, stumbling back so she had to catch herself from falling by slamming her hand onto the butcher block.
Some idiot had left a knife there, a small one that the same idiot—Juliet herself—had used to cut up an apple earlier in the day.
It cut her now. Without thinking, she lifted her forefinger to her mouth, her attention shifting out the window again.
The pool lights were glowing, turning what had been dark waters into a tranquil, turquoise lagoon, a lovely contrast to the now-descended night. This time, the beautiful sight struck her, a second hammer blow.
And then the surface rippled, the lagoon was invaded, the tranquility shattered.
A man was in Juliet Weston’s pool.
Her finger was still bleeding. The blood was salty on her tongue, giving an earthy flavor to a further realization.
A nude man was in her pool.
She should turn away. At least shut her eyes.
Instead, she found herself staring at the naked, novel sight.
Against the turquoise light his figure was a dark silhouette with an aquamarine outline running along the edges of his body like veins of neon light. He was tall and lean, his shoulders wide. He had strong arms that reached out as if to gather life closer to himself with each stroke.
He swam away from her, and as his long legs fluttered with lazy kicks, she detected the shift of muscles in his rounded buttocks, the muscles tightening to create a scoop on the right, then a scoop on the left. She watched, fascinated at how every movement, how every line of that big body exuded power. And sex.
Sex?
Embarrassment flooded Juliet’s face with heat, but something was burning inside her, too, burning so hot that the blast of heat was the final blow to her compromised defenses. As her gaze stayed focused on that masculine specimen of sinew and skin, her shell crumbled, the pieces flaming as they fell to land as ashes at her feet. Her flesh was left behind, still clothed, but hypersensitive to the gentle scrape of fabric against its surface. It left her hyper-aware of that swimming man, turning now.
Coming toward her. Inexorable. Inevitable.
Climbing the steps, climbing out of the pool, his all-male nakedness part threat, part magnet.
His right foot breached the deck. His left.
Her heart expanded, pressing against her chest wall. Get back! her instincts screamed. Get away!
Air rushed out of her lungs. She leaped in retreat, even as she knew he couldn’t see her through the darkened windows. Her hips crashed into the square butcher-block table, shoving it along the terra-cotta pavers with a piercing screech. The knife clattered to the floor, followed by the shallow wooden bowl that held the rest of the ripe, red fruit.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Apples rolled unevenly along the floor, mimicking the jerky beat of her heart.
One darting glance showed that the dark figure had frozen, but then it thawed in an instant and made a dash for the kitchen door. The too-flimsy door that was the only thing keeping them apart.
It was wrenched open. The overhead light blazed on.
