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as he rolled her over with the next wave. With a muffled laugh he heard her swear at him again as she gulped in air. Then the water tossed their bodies together. The surf sprayed and ebbed, shifting the sand and shells beneath them. They lay, half covered with water, breathing hard.
    "MacGregor?" he repeated suddenly, shaking his head to clear it. Drops of water from his hair splattered on her face. "Serena MacGregor?"
    She pushed her own dripping hair out of her eyes and tried to think. Her body was throbbing with the potent combination of anger and desire. "Yes. And the moment I remember some of those wonderful Scottish curses, I'm going to dump them all on you."
    For the first time she saw pure surprise on his face. It had the effect of draining her anger and replacing it with bewilderment. Then his eyes narrowed on an intense study of her features. Still panting, Serena stared back, only to become more confused when the smile spread slowly over his face. Dropping his forehead on hers, Justin chuckled, then roared with laughter.
    The sound was appealing, but as she started to respond to it, Serena concentrated on the uncomfortable lump of sand and shell digging into her back. "What's so funny?" she demanded. "I'm soaking wet and full of gritty sand. I've little doubt that my skin's been slashed by shells and I never even finished my lunch!"
    Still laughing, he lifted his head, then gave her a brotherly kiss on the nose. "Ask me again sometime. Come on, let's rinse off and eat."
    Chapter Three
    Serena MacGregor. Justin shook his head as he reached into the narrow closet for a shirt. It was, he decided, the first time he'd been completely confounded in years. When a man made his living by his wits, he couldn't afford to be taken by surprise often.
    Strange that he hadn't noticed the family resemblance, but then, she had little in common physically with her large, broad-featured, red-haired father. She was more a modern version of the little painted miniature Daniel kept in his library. How many times had he been to that fortress in Hyannis Port over the years? Justin wondered. Rena, as the family called her, had always been away at school. For some reason he had developed a picture of a scrawny, bespectacled scholar with Daniel's flaming hair and Anna's eccentric dignity. Yes, Serena MacGregor was quite a surprise.
    Odd, he thought, that she would take a job that would do little more than pay her room and board when she was reputed to have an I.Q. that rivalled her father's weight and enough capital to buy an ocean liner for her personal pleasure yacht. Then again, the MacGregors were a strange, stubborn lot, prone to the unexpected.
    For a moment Justin stood, naked from the waist, his shirt hanging forgotten from his fingertips. His torso was dark and lean, the skin stretched taut over his rib cage, where on the left it was marred by a six-inch scar. He was remembering.
    The first time he had met Daniel MacGregor, Justin had been twenty-five. A run of luck had given him enough money to buy out his partner in their small hotel on the Strip in Las Vegas. Justin wanted to expand and remodel. For that he needed financing. Banks were usually dubious about lending large sums of money to men who made their living with a deck of cards. In any case, Justin didn't care for bankers, with their smooth hands and dry voices. And the Indian in him had little faith in a promise made on paper. Then he heard of Daniel MacGregor.
    In his own fashion, Justin checked out the stock wizard and financier. He gained a picture of a tough, eccentric Scotsman who made his own rules, and won. Justin contacted him, diddled around by phone and letter for over a month, then made his first trip to the fortress at Hyannis Port.
    Daniel worked out of his home. He didn't care for office buildings where one had to depend on elevators and secretaries. He'd purchased his plot of land near the sea with the wealth he had earned first with his back, and then with