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him.”
    She tightened her hold on Domino. “I don’t mind holding him.”
    “I don’t want him spoiled.”
    A slight frown furrowed her smooth forehead. It had nothing to do with her spoiling Domino. How could she spoil the dog when he didn’t know who she was? And in that instant Logan had just unwittingly revealed a lot about himself. He was selfish
and
possessive.
    Wordlessly, she handed him the dog and turned on her heel. The boundaries had been drawn. There would beno connection, no communication as long as both occupied the house.
    “We’ll take my vehicle,” Logan said, following her down the porch and around to the rear of the house where he had parked his black Jeep Wrangler.
    Not waiting for him to help her up, Caryn opened the passenger side door and pulled herself up to the seat. He had removed the soft top from the two-door, four-wheel-drive vehicle, and the sun beat mercilessly down on her bared head. Reaching into her purse, she took out her sunglasses and perched them on her nose, while Logan attached a leash to Domino’s collar and looped the end around the Wrangler’s roll bar.
    Logan swung his long frame up into the car in a smooth, graceful motion. He reached his sunglasses off the dash and put them on before shifting gears and turning on the ignition. The engine caught and seconds later he maneuvered the Jeep along Watermelon Patch Lane then out onto the main road.
    A warm breeze lifted tendrils of hair about Caryn’s face as they escaped the single braid resting between her shoulder blades. The searing sun beat down on her bare shoulders, and she berated herself for not applying a layer of sunscreen to protect her delicate skin.
    Logan drove slowly, seemingly in no hurry to get to the hub of Marble Island’s business community. He had lingered along the two square blocks of business establishments on the ride from Raleigh, cataloging the number of stores and what they offered the vacationers who swelled the normal population of twenty-six to a burgeoning seventy-five.
    One building claimed the local post office, shoe repair, and locksmith. Another doubled as a Laundromat and dry cleaner. There was a candy store which sold everything from soda, newspapers, and magazines to video rentals, and a small supermarket. There was only one restaurant which served three meals a day, seven days a week, a nondenominational church, a service station offering gas andauto repairs, and a small pharmacy. The residents of Marble Island were adamant about not permitting a fast-food establishment on their island. They claimed it would destroy the ambiance of their laid-back ocean retreat community.
    Once he’d left the city limits of Wilmington and headed south along Route 17, Logan felt as if he had shed all of the pain and bitterness that seeped into his being the moment he opened Nina’s bedroom door to find the woman he had fallen in love with and pledged his future to in the arms of his best friend. What was deceit was magnified twofold. The people he had trusted most had the power to hurt him the most.
    Once burned, twice shy.
    It would never happen again. He would never trust another woman.
    He pulled into a parking lot behind a row of stores, shut off the engine, and chanced a quick glance at Caryn. Her face was flushed with color, the tip of her nose bright red, and a sheen of moisture dotted her smooth forehead and cheeks. Wisps of black curls clung to her damp neck, bringing his gaze to the spot. The warm, clean feminine scent of her body rose sharply in his nostrils, reminding him that Caryn Edwards was the epitome of femininity.
    He didn’t know when he had mentally cataloged everything about her, but he knew without looking at her the delicate shape of her small hands and feet, the graceful curve of her neck which made her appear taller than she actually was, and the luminous glow of the gold-green eyes which seemed so incongruent to her black hair. But what he had consciously noticed was the