"Ah."

"Just because you've been sitting on a deserted island for the past six months doesn't mean I have. I'm not as hot to trot as you are."

"You were thirty minutes ago."

"That's projection."

He settled into his chair and laughed, cocky, genuinely amused.

"You still can't believe you kissed me back, can you?" "It is rather hard to swallow. But I understand, and I forgive you.

We'd just had a shock, and you haven't--well, I'm the first woman you've come in contact with in quite a while. It's only natural, if you think about it, that you'd end up throwing yourself on me. "

"Jesus. You're amazing." He sat forward, holding up two fingers.

"Two things. One, you enjoyed what we did down in my car as much as I did.

I know you did. You know you did. "

She squirmed and said nothing. Her tea, at least, was soothing.

"Two, this six-months-on-a-deserted-island bit will get you only so far. You're using it as an excuse for 'succumbing' to my demands or some damned thing. I'm not an animal. I can control myself." "That was self-control down in your car?"

He grinned. It was almost like a caress and set her skin tingling.

"That was supreme self-control."

She took a breath. Sometimes she should know when to leave well enough alone.

"My point is," he continued, "you bear responsibility for your own actions. If you kiss me back, it's because you want to, not because I demand it."

"I see. Well." She cleared her throat, sipped her tea, decided he didn't know the first thing about what she wanted. She was aware of his eyes on her, aware of his. self-control. If she so much as breathed the idea, he'd take her to bed.

"Six months on Labreque Island hasn't reverted you back to caveman status. Okay. That's good."

His eyes flashed, sexy, knowing.

"That's not what I said. I said I could control myself. I didn't say my months of isolation haven't had an effect."

"You mean you do feel" -He cut her off. "" Caveman status' covers it.

This wasn't going well at all. She felt exposed, as if he could see right through her dress, and she wondered if 'caveman" conjured the same images in his mind as it did in hers. With a shaky hand, she tucked a few stray hairs behind her ear. " Now that we have that straight"

He laughed.

"We don't have anything straight, but go ahead."

"We have to find out more about the fire at Sam's. How it happened, if it was arson, why Matt was there--and Emile. Where he was."

Straker shook his head.

"We don't have to do anything."

"That's true. You can go back to Maine."

"You try a body's patience, St. Joe." His voice was low, serious, not as irritated as she could have expected. She drank more tea, closing her eyes briefly as she tried to let the chamomile calm and soothe her.

"You've done enough.

Tonight. fetching me at the fire. Thank you. "

' T wish I had a tape recorder. Riley St. Joe thanking me. "

She leveled her gaze at him.

"Are you always this aggravating?"

"You've known me since you were a tot. You tell me."

"You were beyond aggravating at sixteen."

"That's when you gave me the scar above my eye. You were pretty much a pain in the ass yourself.

Nose in a book, and when it wasn't, you had to go around telling people how many individual hairs there were on a sea otter. "

"A hundred thousand. I also hiked and kayaked."

"You were and still are a showoff."

"At least I wasn't mean, and I didn't go around trying to humiliate twelve-year-old girls."

"You were impossible to humiliate. You had too high an opinion of yourself." He got to his feet, enjoying himself.

"If I'd noticed even the smallest chink in your armor, I'd have left you alone. Instead you opened up my skull for me."

She smiled, remembering her shock at the blood, his barely controlled rage. He hadn't thrown a rock back at her.

"It's a good thing I didn't live in Maine year-round. We'd have killed each other."

"Nah. We'd just have ended up in bed together a lot sooner."

"Straker!"

"Not when you were twelve. I'd have waited a few years."

"That's it. I'm locking my door tonight."

She jumped up, set her mug in the sink, tried to push back a mix of images that had nothing, nothing, to do with the reality of the man standing in her kitchen. He'd stirred her up, and she needed to settle down and recognize that she and John Straker had always been a volatile combination.

"Front door or bedroom door?" he asked, languid, deliberately sexy.

"Both. I swear, Straker, if I could do it, I'd handcuff you to your futon."

It was a mistake. His grin was slow and easy, and he slouched against the doorjamb, one knee bent, his eyes half-closed. "I think I have a set of cuffs down in the car if you want to give it a try."

"No wonder my mother worries."

"She's a smart woman, Mara St. Joe." He sauntered back into the living room, where he sat on the futon couch and stretched out his legs, relaxed. His mind was still working, however, she knew. "Take a nice hot shower and go to bed, Riley. Anyone calls or pounds on your door, I'll get rid of them."

"The police..."

"They didn't see you at Sam's," he said, "but they'll probably want to talk to you."

She nodded, the enormity of what had happened tonight sinking in. '

"This makes it more likely he was murdered, doesn't it?" "His death might just have been inconvenient for someone who didn't want the police pawing through his stuff. We don't know, and because we don't know, we need to keep an open mind." "Is that what you do as an FBI agent?"

"Nope. I get out my six-shooter and shoot everyone in sight."

In spite of herself, she laughed.

"You're impossible."

"Hot shower. Bed."

"You?"

"Cold shower. Lumpy futon. But after you, of course."

Seven -^ @^~ Otraker ordered a breakfast roll-up thing at one of the food stalls at Quincy Market, a short walk from the Boston Center for Oceanographic Research, where he'd dropped Riley off for the day and parked in her spot in the garage. It was ten o'clock on a lousy Friday morning.

He'd woken up with a score of reasons why he should be back on the island and damned few why he should stay in Boston. The prospect of sleeping with Riley counted as a reason to clear out. So did the prospect of not sleeping with her.

He had a choice of eight different kinds of coffee. He stuck with Colombian, black, no sugar, and took it and the roll-up into the rotunda, where he stood at a wooden counter that serviced the throngs eating on the run, but still had the feeling of a trough. The place was empty. The drizzle and low clouds made everything seem close and claustrophobic. At least Boston Harbor was practically across the street. If worse came to worst, he could rent a boat and clear out.

Worse had come to worst. He'd let Emile Labreque go on his merry way, and he couldn't get Riley St. Joe out of his mind.

He bit into his roll-up. Scrambled eggs, ham, cheese, peppers, onions.

It wasn't breakfast on his porch looking out at the sunrise, but it wasn't bad.

He knew he was exaggerating. Worst-case scenario wasn't kissing Riley.

Worst-case scenario was if he'd taken her to bed last night. They'd come close. Too damned close for sanity's sake.

She hadn't repeated her previous morning's mistake. She'd come out of her bedroom dressed for work, right down to panty hose and shoes, and had announced primly, "A good adrenaline rush can make one do the silliest things, can't it?"

He'd resisted comment. If thinking of the sexual currents between them as silly kept her on the straight and narrow, who was he to disabuse her?

He finished his roll-up and took his coffee to a pay phone. He put a collect call through to a Maine state detective who owed him big-time.

"I'm not one to call in a favor," he said, "but I need to know what you guys have on Sam Cassain."

"It's not my case, Straker."

"I know. Get me what you can. I'll wait." He read off the number at his pay phone.

Ten minutes later, he had his information. His friend was straightforward, detailed and professional. The medical examiner had determined that Sam Cassain had drowned after a blow to the back of the head had probably knocked him unconscious. It looked de's liberate, but there were a lot of ways a man could get knocked cold working a boat.

In the days before his death, Cassain had stopped at the Granger house on Mount Desert Island. He'd seen Abigail, Caroline, Matthew, Richard St. Joe, Henry Armistead and other members of the center's staff and its Maine supporters.

"Oh," his friend said, "and we talked to Mara St. Joe. En route to Mount Desert, Cassain stopped in Camden and saw her."

This was a surprise.

"Why?"

"Don't know."

"What about Emile?"

"He's not an official suspect, but he's their best bet. Doesn't look good, him taking off like that. Pal- ladino thinks Riley St. Joe's holding back and has at least a fair idea of where grandfather could be. You, too."

No point mentioning they'd seen him last night.

"What about the fire at Cassain's house down here?"

"Arson. Looks like a time-delayed device, crude. Massachusetts police are cooperating with us. Well, that's it. That's all I've got. We're square, Straker. Next time you call, it better be because you've got something for me."

Straker tossed his empty coffee cup in a trash can and headed back to the Boston Center for Oceanographic Research. Sam Cassain had been to see Mara St. Joe. Ten to one Riley didn't know, which meant Mara hadn't told her. Interesting.

He let this latest piece of information simmer while he concentrated on his surroundings. He passed a trio of men in expensive suits, two women in expensive suits, an old woman walking a cocker spaniel and a bunch of beefy guys in hard hats. The hard hats were working the interminable Big Dig, a massive project that had already added the Ted Williams Tunnel under the harbor and now was sinking the Central Artery.

The noise of traffic and construction coupled with the dank weather and his frustrated inactivity magnified Straker's overall squirreliness.

For two cents he'd clear out. He didn't have to go back to the island.

He could go anywhere. He could go back to his damned job, where there were rules, procedures and no slim, dark-eyed oceanographers.

But he walked past the center's marine mammal fountain and up to the main entrance, where he got the steel eye from the security guards and was told he wasn't welcome back. Abigail Granger must have put out the word. The guards wouldn't even let him pay up and visit the exhibits like a normal tourist. No trust. No sense of humor. A bit of an overreaction on Ms. Granger's part, but there wasn't much Straker could do about it.

This wasn't going to work. He stood in front of the fountain and contemplated his situation. Shadowing Riley would drive him over the brink. He needed to get moving on his own Big Dig, find out who'd killed Sam Cassain, what it had to do with Emile and Matt Granger and maybe even Mara St. Joe. He needed to get this mess unraveled, sorted out and tied up with a ribbon before someone did something stupid.

Like Emile. Like Riley.

He remembered the feel of her breast, the taste of her mouth. Like him.