CHAPTER ONE

      WAS she ever going to start painting?

      The woman had been sitting and staring at the blank canvas for the better part of an hour. Chase Bryant had been watching her, nursing his drink at the ocean-side bar and wondering if she’d ever actually put brush to paper, or canvas, as the case might be.

      She didn’t.

      She was fussy; he could see that straight off. She was in a luxury resort on a remote island in the Caribbean, and her tan capris had knife-edge pleats. Her pale-blue polo shirt looked like she’d ironed it an hour ago. He wondered what she did to relax. If she relaxed. Considering her attitude in their current location, he doubted it.

      Still, there was something intriguing about the determined if rather stiff set of her shoulders, the compressed line of her mouth. She wasn’t particularly pretty—well, not his kind of pretty anyway, which he fully admitted was lush, curvy blondes. This woman was tall, just a few inches under his own six feet, and angular. He could see the jut of her collarbone, the sharp points of her elbows. She had a narrow face, a forbidding expression, and even her hairstyle was severe, a blunt bob of near black that looked like she trimmed it with nail scissors every week. Its razor-straight edge swung by the strong line of her jaw as she moved.

      He’d been watching her since she arrived, her canvas and paints under one arm. She’d set her stuff up on the beach a little way off from the bar, close enough so he could watch her while he sipped his sparkling water. No beers for him on this trip, unfortunately.

      She’d been very meticulous about it all, arranging the collapsible easel, the box of paints, the little three-legged stool. Moving everything around until it was all just so, and she was on a beach. In the Caribbean. She looked like she was about to teach an evening art class for over-sixties.

      Still he waited. He wondered if she was any good. She had a gorgeous view to paint—the aquamarine sea, a stretch of spun-sugar sand. There weren’t even many people to block the view; the resort wasn’t just luxurious, it was elite and discreet. He should know. His family owned it. And right now he needed discreet.

      She finished arranging everything and sat on the stool, staring out to the sea, her posture perfect, back ramrod-straight. For half an hour. It would have been boring except that he could see her face, and how emotions flickered across it like shadows on water. He couldn’t exactly decipher what the emotions were, but she clearly wasn’t thinking happy thoughts.

      The sun had begun its languorous descent towards the sea, and he decided she must be waiting for the sunset. They were spectacular here; he’d seen three of them already. He liked watching the sun set, felt there was something poetic and apt about all that intense beauty over in an instant. He watched now as the sun slipped lower, its long rays causing the placid surface of the sea to shimmer with a thousand lights, the sky ablaze with myriad streaks of colour, everything from magenta to turquoise to gold.

      And still she just sat there.

      For the first time Chase felt an actual flicker of annoyance. She’d dragged everything out here; obviously she’d intended to paint something. So why wasn’t she doing it? Was she afraid? More likely a perfectionist. And, damn it, he knew now that life was too short to wait for the perfect moment, or even an OK moment. Sometimes you just had to wade into the mire and do it. Live while you could.

      Pushing away his drink, he rose from his stool and headed over to Miss Fussy.

      * * *

      Millie did not enjoy feeling like a fool. And it felt foolish and, worse, pathetic, sitting here on a gorgeous beach staring at a blank canvas when she’d obviously come to paint.

      She just didn’t want to any more.

      It had been a stupid idea anyway, the kind of thing you read about in self-help books or women’s magazines. She’d read one on the plane to St Julian’s, something about being kind to yourself. Whatever. The article had described how a woman had taken up gardening after her divorce and had ended up starting her own landscaping business. Lived her dream after years of marital unhappiness. Inspirational. Impossible. Millie turned away from the canvas.

      And found herself staring straight at a man’s muscled six-pack abs. She looked up and saw a dark-haired Adonis smiling down at her.

      ‘I’ve heard about watching paint dry, but this is ridiculous.’

      Perfect, a smart ass. Millie rose from her stool so she was nearly eye-level. ‘As you can see, there’s no paint.’

      ‘What are you waiting for?’

      ‘Inspiration,’ she answered and gave him a pointed look. ‘I’m not finding any here.’

      If she’d been trying to offend or at least annoy him, she’d failed. He just laughed, slow and easy, and gave her a thorough once-over with his dark bedroom eyes.

      Millie stood taut and still, starting to get angry. She hated guys like this one: gorgeous, flirtatious, and utterly arrogant. Three strikes against him, as far as she was concerned.

      His gaze finally travelled up to her face, and she was surprised and discomfited to see a flicker of what almost looked like sympathy there. ‘So really,’ he asked, dropping the flirt, ‘why haven’t you painted anything?’

      ‘It’s none of your business.’

      ‘Obviously. But I’m curious. I’ve been watching you from the bar for nearly an hour. You spent a long time on the set-up, but you’ve been staring into space for thirty minutes.’

      ‘What are you, some kind of stalker?’

      ‘Nope. Just bored out of my mind.’

      She stared at him; tried to figure him out. She’d taken him for a cheap charmer but there was something strangely sincere about the way he spoke. Like he really was curious. And really bored.

      Something in the way he waited with those dark eyes and that little half-smile made her answer reluctantly, ‘I just couldn’t do it.’

      ‘It’s been a while?’

      ‘Something like that.’ She reached over and started to pack up the paints. No point pretending anything was going to happen today. Or any day. Her painting days were long gone.

      He picked up her easel and collapsed it in one neat movement before handing it back. ‘May I buy you a drink?’

      She liked the ‘may’, but she still shook her head. ‘No thanks.’ She hadn’t had a drink alone with a man in two years. Hadn’t done anything in two years but breathe and work and try to survive. This guy wasn’t about to make her change her ways.

      ‘You sure?’

      She turned to him and folded her arms as she surveyed him. He really was annoyingly attractive: warm brown eyes, short dark hair, a chiseled jaw and those nice abs. His board shorts rode low on his hips, and his