Read In Too Deep for Free Online Page A

really. It's just that when vacation time comes, I'm not that enthusiastic about going anywhere. I usually end up staying home and fiddling about in my garden. I can do that weekends, so why take off weeks and weeks?"
    "And this time?"
    She smiled. "My father sent the ticket and invited me to come for a visit."
    "Are you close?"
    "Not really," Tally said wistfully. "He left when I was five. We've never had an opportunity to connect, but maybe we can now that I'm an adult."
    "Parents divorced?"
    "Never married. My stepdad adopted me when he and Bev, my mother, married years later." God, Tally thought, not for the first time, she'd used up so much time yearning for her "real" father that she'd wasted what should've been wonderful years with the man who'd treated her as his own.
    "What better place to connect than an island paradise. No distractions. Sea and surf. Sounds ideal."
    "I hope so. And not a moment too soon, either. I swear I've become my own worst enemy in the last couple of months. My boss almost forced me onto the plane. He claimed I'd better leave town before I got run over by a bus." She smiled.
    "A run-in with a bus did all this?" Michael motioned with the pink stained cotton at her scrapes and bruises. His slightly too long hair had dried, and she noticed how the sun had bleached the shaggy ends. She resisted the urge to touch. His hair. His bare shoulders. His face.
    "Thank God, no buses involved. This one"—Tally pointed at her left knee—"was when I tripped up the stairs going to the El. This one when I bumped into some guy in the dark and wound up tumbling down the stairs at the movie theater. You'd think I'd just learned to walk. If I wasn't falling over my own feet, it was near misses with falling flower pots and eating the wrong mushrooms at the deli."
    She wasn't intrinsically clumsy. Although over the last few weeks she'd begun to wonder if she had some sort of hex following her, because she'd suddenly become accident-prone.
    Three years without a vacation was too long. This break in her routine was way overdue. Of course having the boat blow up could hardly be attributed to exhaustion and the need for a vacation. By surviving, Tally reckoned she'd broken the jinx.
    Unfortunately, close proximity to this man made all her nerves and muscles jump to attention like a hormone-driven adolescent. Since she'd never experienced anything like it, she was as fascinated as she was perplexed. Was there such a thing as survivor's lust?
    "Sounds dire."
    "It isn't. I just need a long, relaxing vacation, and where better than Paradise?"
    "The ideal place to relax," he agreed. "Turn around a bit so I can get at the scratch on your arm."
    Tally let out a little shriek as the antiseptic bit into the open wound.
    "Sorry," Michael said gruffly, then blew on the sting. Tally almost melted into the cushions. "This is healing fine. A little seepage where the stitches were pulled. The butterfly bandages are tucked into the left side there." He nodded at the first-aid box sitting open on the table. "Hand me one, will you?"
    Tally sorted through the contents with her fingertip until she found the bandages. "From what I've heard, Paradise isn't that big. What does your father do way out here? I imagine he's not old enough to be retired… or is he?"
    Tally pulled the paper off the bandage and held it stuck on the end of her finger until he was ready. "No. He's a boat broker. Buys and sells luxury craft."
    "They say the prices they sell those boats for are sheer piracy." He took the adhesive strip and applied it gently to her arm. His hair brushed against her chin as he bent over her. The masculine smell of him made her heart beat faster.
    Lordie Miss Claudie, she had it bad. Tally smiled. "I guess so. He's not going to be happy about the Serendipity going kaplooie, I bet."
    He nudged her bare foot, and an electrical charge shot up Tally's leg. She jerked out of his way and bumped her knee on the underside of the table. Her elbow