B.J. is a woman with a mission--to show that she can handle a start-up engineer's job as well as any man. Then maybe she can prove to her ex that she is not the helpless wife he left for another woman. Dana is a man grieving the deaths of his wife and young son in a terrorist plane crash. Through a mix-up at stateside headquarters, they are forced to share a villa in the single status job in St. Croix. B.J. is the scapegoat when things go wrong at work and Dana becomes her reluctant defender when he is not defending himself against her unjust conclusions about him.

Despite their attempts to prove otherwise, the powerful attraction between them grows. B.J. is blamed for a bad accident at the plant and her job is on the line. When Dana is almost killed trying to find the real culprit, will B.J. finally admit that the love they have found together is the most important thing of all?

Excerpt

She swept past him as he opened the door and went directly to her room to change. She had to discuss what had happened with the man involved and the sooner the better, but she wanted them both to be fully clothed when she did so.

Coming into the living room a few minutes later, she was relieved to see that her house-mate was wearing khakis and a tee shirt which covered the distracting parts of his attractive anatomy. She took a seat facing the sofa where he sat.

"We need to talk." She spoke in a clipped no-nonsense tone and he looked up in surprise, then flicked off the TV.

"Okay."

"We almost made a big mistake a few minutes ago."

"Did we?" His eyes met hers and held them. "You seemed in agreement, unless I misunderstood your signals."

"I'd had three drinks. I wasn't thinking clearly."

"So that's the spin you're putting on it?" He shook his head in disbelief even as he secretly acknowledged the truth of her accusation. "I plied you with liquor and then tried to seduce you?"

"I'm not placing blame. I just want to put this in the proper perspective."

"By all means," he agreed solemnly.

"Maybe it's of no consequence to you but I have a reputation to consider. I don't want to be known as a woman who will sleep with every--"

"Wait a minute. It is of consequence to me, B.J. I don't go around sleeping with every woman I meet either." And he hadn't planned to let it go that far. He stood up, jammed his hands in his pockets and walked toward the veranda, then turned to face her. It was time to admit the truth. "I hadn't intended for this thing between us to get out of hand. But I felt something special for you. Something I haven't felt for a woman in a long time. I thought you felt it, too."

He waited and she finally said in a small voice, "Okay, I did feel it. We do seem to have a… strong attraction toward each other. But that doesn't mean we have to act on it. I don't want to be involved with anyone. I thought I made that clear."

"Perfectly. And I felt the same way. But you seem to have changed all that. Now what I want is you."

He stood looking at her with such open desire on his handsome face that her breath caught in her throat. It would be so easy to get up and walk into his arms and continue what they had started in the pool.

"Get over it, Thomas. Just what part of no don't you understand?" Her voice was as brittle as glass and she felt that she would shatter into a million pieces if he didn't stop looking at her with such longing. "I came here to do a job, same as you. It's important to my career to do it well. I couldn't afford to be involved with you if I wanted to. And I don't want to."

"Don't you?"

He seemed determined not to let it go. But she was just as determined to put it to rest once and for all. "No." His dark eyes held hers still, demanding the truth. "Well, yes, but I'm not going to be. I've done that. And I won't do it ever again."