His hand slipped over hers. "For being such a good... person."
She grinned, tilting her chin. "Goodness is its own re ward."
"Like hell it is," he growled, his fingers curling around her palm in a movement that reminded her of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. "I'll take my bonus in install ments." He leaned near, just barely brushing her ear with his lips. "The first one will be due tonight," he whispered.
She looked up and her gaze locked with his, suddenly serious, suddenly a bit scary. Why not? she asked herself. She liked him a lot. She was attracted to him as she didn't think she'd ever been attracted to a man before.
Because, a part of her said stubbornly. Just because.
Ross read the shifting emotions in her eyes as clearly as if she'd expressed them aloud. His lips tightened. He'd never been denied a woman he wanted this badly.
But the anger he half expected didn't flare inside him. As he looked at her chiseled profile, her delicately sculpted ear and the tiny strands of wiry hair that escaped from her slick hairstyle, the only thing he felt was an overwhelming tenderness. And that worried him. He would have preferred the comforting familiarity of anger.
"Hello, Ross. I thought that was you."
Ross looked up quickly. It was Gerald Frame, a fre quent tennis partner and sometime business associate. A relationship from his "other" life, and a serious threat. At least the man hadn't used his last name.
"Gerald." Ross nodded but didn't smile, hoping the man would take a hint and move on.
No such luck. Gerald planted his feet as though he were settling in for the duration. A handsome man, his blond hair worn a bit too long in back, he had an eye for the la dies, and he cast it now at Charity.
"I was just sitting across the room with the Hendersons, and all through dinner I kept saying, 'That's gotta be good old Ross over there. We should ask him to join us.'"
Ross sighed. Gerald was waiting for an invitation to sit down. "So you've finished your dinner, have you?" He tried to sound pleasant, but failed. "Well, it was nice seeing you."
Gerald wasn't much for subtleties. He didn't budge. "We missed you at the country club last night," he went on, glancing again at Charity. He obviously expected to be introduced and wasn't about to leave until he was. "Mar lena said you were off on some wild-goose chase that had something to do with-"
The Dos Pueblos Pier consortium. He was about to say it. And once he'd said it, Charity would know. In the fraction of a second between when Ross realized he was about to be unmasked in the worst possible way and when he realized he had to do something to stop it, he thought of a plan.