And Babies Make Four Read Online Free Page A

PINK continued, rotating her cam toward Einstein. “He doesn’t resemble a filthy beast. Noel’s mistaken.”
    Sam’s jaw tightened dangerously. “She called me a filthy beast?”
    “ ‘Filthy, hulking, oversexed, macho-jerk beast’ were her exact words, I believe,” Einstein supplied helpfully. “Maybe she needs her eyes examined.”
    “For starters,” Sam growled, his former compassion dissolving. Several descriptive words for Noel Revere came to mind, none of them repeatable. For now. “Look, all I want is my tackle box. Where’d she put it?”
    “Under the bed,” E replied. “She said it smelled like fish.”
    “Of course it smells like fish!” He hunkered down beside the bed, dumping the undergarments in a heap on the edge of the covers. Sheffield Industries isn’t paying me enough, he thought as he inched his large frame under the cramped space beneath his bed. Not nearly enough.
    He spotted his tackle box shoved into the far corner next to the headboard. With a grunt of triumph he scooted completely under the bed and grabbed the handle, pulling it toward him. Okay, so maybe it did smell like fish. Badly. But that still didn’t give her the right to rearrange his things. Or to call him—what was it?—a filthy, hulking, oversexed, macho-jerk beast.
    He’d met her kind before. Hell, one of the reasons he’d left the States was to get away from people like her. Self-righteous harpies who wouldn’t know a charitable thought if it bit them in the behind. Since she’d arrived the lady hadn’t had one good thing to say about him—or about St. Michelle. And Sam, who owed the island and its inhabitants more than he could ever repay, took that as a personal insult.
    Two years earlier he’d drifted into the harbor, as scarred and battered as a piece of tide-tossed driftwood. Working as a mechanic on a ship with a mostly legal cargo, he’d joined his crewmates in a hurricane of a bender—and had ended up alone and nursing a force-five hangover in the local jail. When he got out he’d found that his ship had sailed without him, leavinghim stranded and virtually penniless, with only the clothes on his back to his name.
    But fickle Lady Luck hadn’t deserted him. To his surprise, the simple, goodhearted townsfolk had taken him in like one of their own. He was a complete stranger—they hadn’t even known his name—yet they’d generously shared their meager wealth with him as if they’d been richer than Rockefeller. They’d taught him a way of living between the sea and the sky, between the storms of rage and calms of despair that still occasionally battered his soul.
They taught me how to live in the eye of the hurricane. And if I don’t move too far in any direction, I can just manage to survive
—
    The sound of an opening door curtailed his thoughts. Sam heard Dr. Revere’s voice. “Hi, E. Hi, PINK.”
    He froze. Dammit, she wasn’t supposed to be finished so soon. And once she’d finished she was supposed to spend a solid ten minutes primping. The women he’d known always primped after showers. Damn, it was just like her to mess up his plans by doing something unexpect—
    Sam’s internal monologue screeched to a halt as Noel walked to the bed and dropped her bath towel to the tile floor inches from Sam’s nose. His mattress-limited perspective cut off everything above her ankles. Unfortunately, that left him with an unobstructed view of her slim, provocatively arched feet, her toenails painted a ridiculously frivolous hot pink, her light, graceful step, and the undeniable knowledgethat she was standing above him as naked as the day she was born.
    The vivid image hit him in the gut with the force of the falling walls of Jericho.
    He gritted his teeth, wondering how he was going to get out of this mess. He knew she’d never believe his innocent reason for being under the bed. Hell,
he
wouldn’t have believed it. She’d accuse him before he got two words out, probably adding voyeur