"Damn it, Patrick! Can't you at least knock?"

The tall, dark-haired man moved around the worktable. His tanned face held a crooked, teasing smile that invited her to play. At the sight of it, the studio felt ten degrees hotter than before. The quick beat of her pulse could come from fright, but she knew that wasn't the cause. Patrick Berzani was reason enough.

"After three months at sea, you'd think I'd get a better welcome than that."

Low and intimate, his voice raised a shiver across her skin. He sounded amused that he had startled her, but she could also hear desire threaded through his words. The combination unlocked the lid on memories that Kate thought she had banished forever: their first cup of coffee at the café, his long-lashed, silver-gray eyes looking at her with warm interest, his curly black hair splayed across her pillow, begging to be touched. She tried in vain to stuff all these images back where they belonged. She had spent months forgetting them—and him—and thought she had succeeded. How could all that effort disappear like smoke?

The smile, the eyes, his hair, even the golden earring, high in the curve of his left ear, had deceived her from the start. Patrick had laughed when she asked if he was an artist like her. No, he was a sailor—a racer—wh