Coming Undone by Susan Andersen Page A

in place while giving another connected island they hadn’t covered a considering gaze. Another drop coasted down the shallow groove of her spine and disappeared into the low-cut bandless waist of her little blue shorts.
    Christ, had the temperature just spiked another twenty degrees? He could see the headline now: Semper Fi Detective Strokes Out on Measly One-Mile Run. Lucky for him, he knew he could count on his sister to spend time at his bedside wiping the drool from his chin. John, on the other hand, would probably just show up to laugh at him.
    To his eternal relief, P.J. turned back toward the first bridge.
    Figuring he could safely assume she was headed back to the hotel, he slacked off his pace. Then his professional self demanded, And you’re going to discover her room number how from back here?
    “Crap.” Blowing out a breath, he picked up his speed again.
    She’d disappeared by the time he got in sight of the pool again and, swearing to himself, he put on a further burst of speed.
    “Enjoy your run?”
    He skidded to a halt, his head whipping around. P.J. sat at one of the umbrella tables on the rail-enclosed deck, her feet up on the chair next to her. He walked back. “You knew I was behind you the entire time?”
    “Hard to miss the sound of those sandals slapping on the path.” She nodded at his feet. “You run pretty good for a man in Tevas.”
    He swung over the railing onto the deck and took a chair across from her. “Gimme your water.”
    “Get your own drink.”
    He leaned toward her. “I sold my favorite baseball card for you. Give me the goddamn water!”
    “That was fifteen years ago, and you sold it for both of us, not just me.” But she shoved the CamelBak she’d removed across the table.
    He swooped the backpacklike hydration system up, stuck the mouthpiece between his lips and nearly sucked the well dry. When he came up for air, he found her gazing at his naked chest.
    “You might want to put your shirt on,” she said dryly. “I think this is one of those no shirt, no shoes, no service places.”
    “Then they must not get a helluva lot of business. It’s next to a damn pool.”
    “That’s a point.” A valid one, P.J. saw when she looked around and saw a few of the diners still in bathing attire. She was nevertheless relieved to see him raise his right hip and fish his navy T-shirt from his back pocket, where he’d stuffed the shirt’s tail. All that bare skin stretched over all that well-defined muscle and bone made her a little nervous. So she gave him a wiseacre smirk. “Who would have guessed that you’d turn out to be so buff?”
    He pulled the shirt on over his head then flexed an impressively muscular bicep at her. “You a fool for muscles?”
    “Oh, yeah.” She laid it on thick, batting her eyes and doing the pitty-pat thing with her hand on her heart. “They just make me weak all over.”
    “Uh-huh.” As she’d hoped, he thought she was yanking his chain, even though the sight of his shoulders and chest and ridged abdomen did make her feel a little giddy.
    Lord Almighty, girl. Get a grip.
    Clearly she had to get out more. She’d determined as a kid not to get sucked into the penchant that seemed to run rampant in so many of the small-town women she’d known—that longing for a man, any man, to stand between them and the lonelies. She’d always patted herself on the back for striking a healthy balance. So okay, she’d admit that recently she’d been concentrating on her career so much that her love life was pretty much nonexistent. Still, she certainly hadn’t turned her back on men altogether.
    Maybe she was going a little overboard on the vocation side of the equation these days, though, if the sight of one well-muscled chest gave her palpitations like those of a fourteen-year-old exposed to her first crush. That was a little on the awkward side.
    All the same, the girlish giddies had her feeling pretty cheerful.
    “So, when did you start