Their Million-Dollar Night by Katherine Garbera

can get you past that.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” she said, the humor dying in her as she scooted back away from the table and stood up.
    He pushed to his feet and went around to her. Signaling the caterers to start cleaning up their picnic, he put his arm around her shoulders and led her down the beach to a rocky outcropping.
    â€œI did it again. I said something that made you close up. What is it?”
    â€œYou’re moving too fast, Max. I’m still getting used to the new me. I’m not ready for a man to notice me yet.” She moved so gracefully, he could see years of dance training in her posture and in her body. There was no hesitation to her movements today. Her injury, whatever it was, didn’t seem to be bothering her.
    â€œHow were you injured?”
    She looked out at the sea. Suddenly he realized that she must have done something to her body thatwould require cosmetic surgery. That the surgeries she was referring to were aesthetic.
    â€œLook at me.”
    She glanced over her shoulder at him and he saw the tears in her eyes. Saw the way she clenched her jaw from saying too much. He stepped up on the rock next to her, easily finding his balance and pulling her into his arms.
    He slipped his hand under her shirt at the small of her back, remembering the way she’d frozen earlier when he’d touched her there.
    Carefully he brushed his fingertips over her back and felt the ridges left by scar tissue. He lifted her shirt to her midriff and leaned down for a closer look. The scars were still red, still healing, and they were vicious. He heard her gulp in a huge lungful of air and then felt her shaking in his arms. He dropped the edge of her shirt and pulled her into his arms, wishing he knew how to make this right.

Five
    R oxy was glad to be back on the jet and headed toward Vegas. She wanted to go to her small house and hide. No matter how attracted she was to Max, they were from two different worlds, and she didn’t want to fall for a man who’d be leaving in a few days time.
    She especially didn’t want to bare her soul to someone who might only be interested in her while he was here. Max hadn’t said anything else or asked any more questions, but she saw in his eyes that he wanted to. That he needed to know what had happened.
    Lourdes smiled warmly when they stepped back on the plane. Roxy took a seat close to the cockpit and questioned the pilot about her job while Max satin the back returning phone calls and receiving faxes. Finally it was time for takeoff and Lourdes shut the door, leaving Roxy with no choice but to turn and face the man who saw too much.
    She’d found the sweater he’d left in the box of clothing for her and donned it. She didn’t think she’d take it off around him again. Not that it would matter if she stripped naked. Now that he’d seen the ugliness she carried around with her he wouldn’t want her to.
    â€œStop looking at me like I’m the Marquis de Sade.” He didn’t even glance up from his paperwork. She knew he was busy, had heard his phone ring several times when they were on the beach, but he hadn’t even glanced at it until they’d boarded the plane.
    â€œI’m not. I wasn’t thinking you wanted to have kinky sex with me.”
    He looked up then, arching on eyebrow at her. “But I do.”
    His words made her mind jump to images of the two of them in bed, maybe with her hands tied above her head. Max was so dominant outside the bedroom she couldn’t imagine him being any other way in it. “Stop teasing me. We both know I’m not the woman you thought I was.”
    â€œYou say that as though I just discovered you were a transvestite.”
    â€œPlease stop trying to make light of this,” she said around the lump in her throat. She couldn’t joke about her body. Not yet. Maybe never.
    He caught a strand of her hair in his hand, rubbing it