She closed the lid on her laptop, stared at it for a moment, then rubbed her eyes. “He’s in Miami.”

16

South Beach was a twenty-four-hour carnival of swaying palms; Latin rock music; Easter-egg-colored art deco buildings; and shapely, long-haired women strolling along Ocean Drive with hoop earrings the size of bracelets and colorful thongs showing through tight white shorts. She and Coop arrived early the next afternoon at the Setai hotel, a Collins Avenue sepulcher serving the very wealthy, where Coop had booked a suite with a nightly room rate that could have bought her a set of tires and a new laptop.

Prince Aamuzhir had left London three days earlier for Miami and his five-hundred-foot yacht. Piper had wanted to go see him alone, but Coop had loudly vetoed the idea, pointing out that she couldn’t get to Aamuzhir without him. She’d attempted to dissuade him, but he wasn’t a man to hide from his enemies, and she couldn’t put her heart into it.

Coop had no trouble wrangling an invitation to the yacht, and exactly one month from the day he’d caught her spying on him at the club, they were back in his old stomping grounds. Everyone from the skycaps to the food truck vendors selling empanadas greeted him as a returning hero. She did her best to stay in the background and was disheartened to realize that some part of her wanted to tell the world he was her lover.

While he worked out in the hotel gym, she took in the ocean view through the massive wall of bedroom windows and changed from her travel clothes into one of the outfits she’d picked up in a rush shopping trip. They were meeting some of his former teammates for dinner, an invitation she’d tried to get out of.

“I’m only pretending to be your girlfriend when we’re on the yacht tomorrow,” she’d reminded him. “Tonight you’ll be with your old teammates. You don’t need a fake girlfriend.”

For some reason, that had irritated him. “You’re a little more than a fake. We’re sleeping together.”

“A technicality.”

“You’re going with me,” he’d retorted.

She came out of the suite’s luxury bathroom as Coop returned from the gym. The guilt that had been dogging her once again nipped at her heels. If she hadn’t talked him into helping Faiza escape, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

He stopped inside the door of the suite and stared at her. “Where the hell did you get that?”

She gazed down at her short hot-pink A-line jersey dress. “What’s wrong with it?” The spaghetti straps that crossed in the back hadn’t come undone, and the stack of silver bangles encircled her wrist in the proper place. She’d put on makeup and traded the sneakers she’d worn on the plane for barely-there sandals. She’d even pieced out her hair with what was left of an old jar of hair gel. So what if she’d bought her dress at H&M instead of one of his ridiculously overpriced boutiques?

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” he said, circling her. “That’s why the world as I know it has come to an end. You look female.”

He was in rare form for a man willing to put his life in danger by meeting up with a powerful prince who could be holding a big grudge, but every time she tried to apologize for getting him into such a dangerous situation, he became more annoyed, so she gave him the once-over instead. “More than anyone, you should know I look very female.”

“Not with your clothes on. At least not most of the time.”

She appreciated his insight. “I know how to put clothes together, the same way I know how to cook. I just prefer not to.”

“Thanks to Duke Dove.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Out of curiosity, did he ever mention that you’re pretty?”

“Why would he?” She didn’t like the way he was studying her, as if he saw something she couldn’t. “I have to look at least a little like I could be one of your playmates. It’s a stretch, I know, but—”

“Not that much of a stretch.”

The conversation was making her jittery. “These are strictly work clothes, and I expensed everything, so it’s all yours when the job’s done. Except for my sandals. And the bracelets are from an old boyfriend who didn’t know me nearly well enough.”

“Obviously not.” He sniffed the air as if he’d smelled something odious. “Are you wearing perfume?”

“Magazine sample.”

“Leave it between the pages. You smell great without it.”

And so did he, even after his workout. Male sweat on a clean body. She wanted to strip that sweaty T-shirt right off him and drag him into the bedroom.

He looked thoughtful. “If I own that dress, that means I can rip it off you anytime I want, right?”

“I suppose so. Although I’d appreciate it if you’d wait until the job is over.”

“That,” he said, “is going to be hard.”

She dipped her gaze. “So I see.”

He smiled, but the guilt she was carrying dampened her own amusement. She should have come up with a way to help Faiza without involving him.

His irritation returned. “Stop it, Pipe. You didn’t make me do anything I wasn’t willing to do.”

“I know that,” she said, way too vehemently.

He arched a brow at her, reading her mind in a way no one else had ever been able to.

She picked up his cell. “One of the prince’s people called while you were gone. About a launch to take us out to his yacht tomorrow.”

He stripped off his T-shirt. “Unacceptable. There’s no way I’m letting that jerk control when we get on and off that boat.”

“Exactly. I’ve already hired our own launch.”

“Of course you have.” He lifted her off the floor so her sandaled toes dangled over the top of his sneakers. His long, deep kiss destroyed most of her makeup, and her hot-pink dress soon landed in a puddle on the floor. He wanted to take her into the shower, but she dragged him into the bedroom instead.

They made love—no, not love. And—although she wasn’t averse to using the well-placed F-word—what they were doing wasn’t that either. Instead, they . . . had sex—lots of sex—in a bed with a sweeping ocean view that transformed the room into an aerie over the sea. She wanted to stay naked for the rest of the night. Apparently, he did, too, because she had to kick him out of bed.