The Sometime Bride

reminded himself, not quite. Brunettes, in general, meant trouble. And Alexia had taught him that trouble not only hurt like the dickens, it was darned expensive too.
    “Your ring,” Mike said, stepping forward.
    “You have a lot of nerve…” she said, setting her chin. Yep, Mike told himself, they were definitely brown. Chocolate-brown eyes that could probably look enticingly warm were they not so heated with vehemence. “…intruding on my private moment!”
    Mike laughed. “Intruding? But I was here first!”
    She shuffled sandaled feet beneath the low hemline of her dress. Feet that were attached, Mike couldn’t help but notice, to two very well-formed feminine ankles. “Well, if you were, I certainly didn’t see…”
    Mike arched his eyebrows, and she stopped. By the way her appreciative eyes had traveled from his damp pecs to his navel, sure as heck looked to Mike like she’d been seeing something.
    “What I meant to say was—”
    Mike walked forward and lifted a balled-up fist from the woman’s side. “Here,” he said, prying her fingers loose as she looked on with incredulity.
    Mike pressed the ring into her palm. “Someone spent hard-earned money for that. Don’t think it’s very good of you to go throwing it away.”
    Carrie glared at the insolent man, wondering how he’d known exactly what she’d been doing. More puzzled still at how he dared intrude on her life. “Don’t think it’s very good of you to go telling a complete stranger how to run her affairs!”
    “Oh, so it was only an affair, was it?” he asked, with a cool sheen to his evergreen eyes. Eyes that Carrie was quite certain could look enticing under different circumstances. “Somehow I imagined it was a heck of a lot more serious than that.”
    “Well, maybe,” she said, flipping over his wrist and cramming the ring back into his hand. “You ought to think of something better to do with your overactive imagination than torment women you don’t even know.”
    Carrie turned her back on him and started toward the inn. Of all the indignities. To be trounced upon by one man during dinner, then have a hunky dish like this one serve up insults for dessert.
    “Hang on!” he called, hurrying to catch up with her. “Your ring!”
    “Finders, keepers,” she said, picking up her pace. But what Carrie most desperately didn’t want to find herself doing was falling for another man. Especially one who looked like that in a pair of swim trunks—all six foot something of virile man, dripping wet… Criminy! Carrie scurried up the cold stone steps to the main building’s front door. The flame was barely extinguished on her relationship with Wilson and here she was already playing with matches!
    Carrie struggled against the notion of turning back toward her predator but knew he stood silently watching her at the bottom of those stairs. Silently—rugged, handsome, yes, darn it, handsome. And wet. Carrie’s throat went dry at that last thought.
    “What?” she asked, spinning abruptly on her heels. “What in the world are you staring at?”
    But Mike, who truthfully didn’t know, just stood there dumbfounded with this beautiful stranger’s ring in his hand. Beautiful, indeed. There was a fine sweep of color that just dusted her cheekbones, and somehow—given all the crying she’d apparently been doing—Mike didn’t imagine it was the magic of makeup. No, there was something much more powerful going on here. Something that made absolutely zero sense. And, for a lunatic instant, Mike found himself wishing he hadn’t wasted his heartfelt offering on Alexia but had given it to this goddess instead. Lunatic was right. Mike gazed up at the powdery quarter moon threading stardust through the trees, deciding he’d been out in the night air too long.
    But whether he was crazy or not, Mike knew one thing and one thing only. Before she disappeared into the inn, and perhaps for eternity, he had to get her name.
    “I was just wondering,” he began tentatively, feeling the heat expand from his temples to the tops of his ears. “What your name is.” Holy Christ. He was insane! Alexia’s ring was still at the bottom of the pool, and here he was…what? Making eyes at another woman who’d just now broken some Romeo’s heart?
    “Why?” she asked, holding court at the top of the stairs but not looking half as menacing as she apparently intended.
    “Just in case the law comes after me for stealing your ring,” Mike raced