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wooden slats gave way to silken sand, Alexia stood on one foot to remove her shoe, then switched to the other. Not sure when he’d become a gentleman, Blake held her hand to help her balance. Her fingers were dainty. Slender and fragile. Warm. Strong.
    The kind of fingers that would feel incredible skimming over his naked flesh. Tugging his zipper down and gripping his hardening erection. Stroking, guiding.
    Hell. As soon as she was barefoot, he not only grabbed his hand back, he put a safe couple feet between them. The woman was potent.
    “You’re not taking yours off?” she asked.
    “Nope.” To end the discussion, he strode onto the beach, his tennis shoes sinking, sand filtering into his socks. Didn’t matter. He had the feeling he’d do better to keep every article of clothing intact.
    Although he didn’t have Cade’s track record and fancy-faced looks, he’d had his fair share of women hitting on him. Hitting back always depended on three things.
    Timing. Was he fresh off a mission and in need of shedding some pent-up energy, or about to embark on a mission, which would provide him with an inarguable exit strategy?
    Spark. A lot of guys he’d served with banged anything that moved. For the notch, for the cheap thrill, to stroke their ego. Whatever. Blake didn’t want notches, thrills or strokes when he got naked with a woman. What he did want was spark. Heat. Something wild and intense, like the rest of his life.
    But the most important return-hit factor was the commitment perspective. Years of SEAL training had sharpened his instincts to a razor’s edge, and years of avoiding commitment had honed his ability to discern a woman’s intentions—even if she didn’t realize them herself.
    Timing and spark didn’t mean jack if the woman’s perspective was skewed toward long term.
    The redhead smiled. A slow, wicked curve of her lips. It didn’t matter that the look wasn’t aimed at him. Blake’s muscles still bunched, his senses sprang to full alert and his dick hardened. Yeah. There was plenty of spark. It was the timing, and the scary depths of her perception, that worried him.
    “I’ve missed the beach,” Alexia said after a few minutes of silent strolling along the water’s edge.
    “Where’ve you been?”
    “New York.” She gave him a saucy look, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “Can’t you tell from my accent?”
    Before training for the SEALs, Blake had served as a cryptologic technician. In civilian terms, a linguist. He spoke fluent Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Persian. And once in a while, pretty decent English.
    “I meet a lot of people from a lot of places,” he told her. “Most are easy to place by their accents. You don’t have one, though.”
    “Seriously? I don’t have any accent?”
    He grinned at her affronted tone.
    “I’m an expert,” he assured her. “Take it from me, you’re accent free.”
    Then, maybe because he was starting to relax for the first time since watching Phil’s helmet blown to smithereens, he decided to show off a little.
    “Bet you moved around a lot as a kid. Not just the U.S. Your tones are too rounded to be purely American. Europe. Maybe Asia?”
    She stood rock still, music from the party ahead filling the air with a Motown beat, her hands fisted on her hips, and gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Did Michael track you down and say something this afternoon?”
    Blake laughed. There wasn’t a whole lot to do for entertainment on a ship in the middle of the ocean, so he’d built a rep guessing where the guys were from. Name that accent in ten words or less, Phil had called it.
    His laughter faded. The memory didn’t hurt as much, though. Maybe it was the dark. Or the company.
    “Your brother didn’t spill any secrets,” he assured her. “I told you, I’m good at accents.”
    “You really are clever.” She laughed, the sound as alluring and mysterious as the ocean itself. “I’ll bet it’s a handy skill. Does your job involve