“Steven and I broke up…a while ago.”

“A while ago?” Lia took a moment to digest this information. “Then you were keeping it from me?”

“No, I just didn’t tell you right away, because I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Didn’t want to upset me? Do you think I’m that shallow?” Lia flapped a hand in frustration. “I want to be there for you, like you’ve always been there for me. You’re going through this horrible, painful, awful time, and you can’t even confide in your sister?”

“Lia—”

“I’ve failed you!” Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Lia, please, you’re exaggerating this whole situation. It is not that awful. Steven and I were… mismatched.”

Lianne shook her head, disgusted to the core. “That’s ridiculous. You can stand there and act brave if you want to, Annabelle. I know you’re crumbling inside.”

“I am not crumbling!”

“She doesn’t look like she’s crumbling.” The smooth baritone that interupted into the girls’ conversation was richly ironic. Annabelle’s attention snapped to its source, but Lia spoke first.

“Adam!”

Just inside the French doors that led to the patio, Adam Garrett stood like a tawny-haired Mel Gibson, tall and lean, with a wicked smile that looked as if he’d just heard a blue joke.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Lia rushed to his side. “When did you get home?”

“Last night. Good to see you, scruff.” He ruffled her hair, the only person who could still treat Lia like a twelve-year-old and get away with it. “I missed you.”

Unconsciously tightening her grip on “Ask Effie,” Annabelle watched her sister and her neighbor, one thin and fair, the other tall and imposing and more deeply tanned from the time he spent at sea than anyone else she knew in Oregon. As always when she saw Adam after he’d returned from one of his adventures, she felt a strange combination of conflicting emotions: exhilaration, resentment, curiosity and relief.

His career as a marine videographer kept him moving all over the world, and his latest expedition had kept him away for five months.

“Hello, Belle.” He met her gaze with eyes as green as the trees dividing their two properties. “How are you?”

Her heart hammered in a way it should not have, not from a question so banal. “Fine,” she said, striving for nonchalance. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you.”

“Where were you this time?” Lia asked, keeping her arms around his lean waist, evincing none of the awkwardness Annabelle felt, but then, Lia’s relationship with Adam had never been as complex as her sister’s.

“New Zealand,” Adam responded, and Lia gasped in awe.

“Wow. What’d you bring me?”

“Lia!” Annabelle admonished, but Adam merely laughed.

“Not so fast,” he said, glancing at Annabelle with a raised brow. “Mind if I sit?”

He moved to the chair, and for the first time Annabelle noticed that his right foot was encased by an ungainly rubber shoelike contraption with straps that buckled up the front of his leg from ankle to knee.

“What happened?” Lia exclaimed, noticing, too, and following him to the chair. “Did you break it?”

“One bone.” He shrugged, wagging his head with good humor over the indignity of such an injury. “Not even enough for a good cast.”

“Can you still dive?”

“Not if I want it to heal.”

“How did you do it?” Lia breathed, ready to be impressed. “Were you stung by a man o’ war? Chased by a shark that didn’t want to be photo-graphed?”

Adam grinned. “I slipped while I was swabbing the deck.”

Lia’s expression was so crestfallen he laughed out loud. “I’m a wharf rat for the time being, ladies. Will you take pity on me?” He cocked a brow, addressing the question to both the women, but keeping his eyes on Annabelle.

“Sure.” Lia plopped her jean-clad tush on the edge of Annabelle’s desk, answering for them both. “How?”

Adam pretended to consider the possibilities. “You could have dinner with me one night this week.”

Quickly, Annabelle turned to fiddle with some papers on her desk. She wanted to say yes—immediately. The intensity of the urge no longer surprised her—wanting to say yes to Adam had long been a habit with her, a bad one. She ducked her head, unwilling to let him read the response on her face.

He could charm the leaves from the trees; it had always been that way. Fortunately for her, she no longer gave in to impulses that were better off checked.

In high school Adam had wooed the very teachers who ought to have suspended him for some of the pranks he’d pulled: riding his motorcycle into the morning assembly and offering a ride to the principal—for a dollar; turning the senior lunch area into “Senior Bay,” carting in sand and flooding the center with a garden hose. He’d been Collier Bay’s answer to James Dean in Rebel without a Cause.

For a hopelessly level-headed girl like Annabelle, who for her freshman class project had taught her homeroom how to organize a day planner, Adam’s bold impetuosity had been irresistible.

“I warn you,” Adam said now, “I intend to take no prisoners. If you’re sticking to salad and diet soda, you can forget it. I’m in the mood for the biggest cheesiest Italian meal we can find.”

Lia offered a mock groan. “If you insist, but just this once.” Italian food was her all-time favorite.

“Which evening is good for you?”

Annabelle glanced around in time to see a hint of satisfaction in Adam’s chiseled features. He knew that without Lia she would find a reason to say no.

Sliding off the desk, Lia shrugged. “I’m free. You and Belle can decide.” She shot her sister an uncomfortable look, a silent reference to the argument they’d been having before Adam walked in. “She’s in charge,” the girl mumbled as she crossed to the door leading into the main part of the house. “I’m going for the mail.”

She closed the door behind her and, paradoxically, the room seemed smaller after she left.

“Good to see you, Belle. It’s been a while.” Adam’s voice flowed like Southern Comfort, mellow and rich.

The air between them crackled.

“A few months.” Annabelle shrugged, forcing a breezy smile. “You’ve been gone longer than that before.”

“True.” Relaxing back in the chair, Adam folded his arms and regarded her through lazy, half-closed eyes. “But you were avoiding me for at least two months this time before I left.”

“No, I wasn’t!” Telling the lie made her face feel hot. “Not intentionally. I was very busy. There’s a lot of work to do around here.”

“Mmm. What were you and Lia arguing about when I came in?”

The Collier Bay News And Views seemed to ignite in Annabelle’s hand. “Nothing,” she mumbled. “We weren’t.”

Mutinously, she clamped her lips together. Adam walked in and out of their lives and thought he could pick up again wherever they left off. But for Annabelle, his comings and goings made her feel like an earthquake survivor who was too dumb or too reckless to move away from the epicenter.

He would find out soon enough about Steven, either from Lia or from the paper, but he wouldn’t hear it from her. She kept her troubles to herself. She could handle her life just fine; she was merely experiencing a temporary setback.

“All right,” Adam said, his gaze at once lazy and challenging, “if there’s nothing wrong between you and Lia, then tell me, what’s the matter with your desk?”

“What?” The strange question had her gaze bouncing from Adam to the big mahogany secretary. “What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s something on it.” Relaxing in the well-upholstered chair, he waved a hand, indicating the paperwork lined in precise piles along the outer edge of the desk. “I’ve never seen anything on your desk except lemon oil.” One golden-brown brow, a match for his hair, arched in an ironic compliment. “Annabelle Simmons you’re practically cluttered.”

Ooh, she hated it when he did that—noticed every-thing around him like a hawk! It made her feel like a plucked chicken, naked and goose-pimply. Annabelle’s gaze skittered to the stacks of paper, neatly aligned and organized, and she felt a rush of anxiety, like a whirlpool inside her.