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who knows you better than you know yourself.”
    His first thought was that’s ridiculous hype . Yet he had always believed in magic, at least in some hidden corner of his soul.
    Or he had wanted to believe. You could call it magic if you wanted. Or psychic talent. He wasn’t sure which was the better term. He’d read dozens of books about people who were supposed to possess abilities denied to the likes of ordinary humanity.
    Sometimes he’d felt like he was on the edge of possessing magic powers himself. He had fantastic intuition when it came to finding shipwrecks and other lost objects.
    And yesterday afternoon, that sixth sense had made him whip out his hand and prevent José from shooting to the surface and killing himself.
    But that was the extent of his talent. And maybe it hadn’t been extrasensory perception that had helped him catch José. Maybe it had been a flash of movement at the corner of his vision.
    His attention turned back to the woman who called herself Magic Anna. He liked her body, liked her slender waist, gently rounded hips, and high breasts.
    He’d been drawn to her face, then deliberately focused on the rest of the package to give himself a little breathing room. Now he slowly raised his eyes. She looked to be a few years younger than he was. Her lips were sensual. Her nose was short and straight. But her eyes were her best feature, their blue depths fringed by dark lashes—a very attractive combination.
    Yet he wasn’t just staring at a good-looking woman. The longer he regarded her, the more he thought she really could look into his mind and…what?
    Connect with him on a level he’d never experienced with any other human being? Even as the notion flitted through his mind, he stifled a laugh—and gave himself points for a vivid imagination. He thought he was going to find the thing he’d been looking for all his life in a nightclub in Palmiro?
    Sure.
    With a mental shrug, he walked down the block to a bar where the main activity was drinking.
    Â 
    A soft knock at the door of her dressing room made Anna jump.
    â€œTwenty minutes, sweetheart,” Bertrand called in his soft island accent.
    She’d come to think of that accent as part of a disguise, along with his short-sleeved button-down shirts covered with tropical flowers. On the surface he seemed like a laidback dude—drifting along on an island breeze. In reality, he had the sharp teeth of a jungle cat.
    When he walked away, she breathed out a little sigh.
    From almost the moment she’d arrived in Palmiro, she’d known that Bertrand wanted something from her.
    It had started with the long, speculative look he’d given her while they were waiting at the airport for her luggage to be unloaded. Although he hadn’t made any moves on her, his hidden agenda added to her tension level.
    So what was going on? Did he want her to read his palm? Did he think she could put him in touch with a dead relative—or a dead lover? If so, he was going to be disappointed. Because her powers were limited to what she did in her act. That was it.
    She hadn’t figured him out. Just the way she hadn’t figured out a lot of things that other women seemed to know instinctively about the opposite sex.
    Too bad her psychic abilities couldn’t help her in that department.
    She’d had a few relationships. But nothing deep. Nothing that didn’t lead to a disappointing dead end. Because she’d never been able to really open up with anyone. And more than once she’d thought that fate had granted her a mental power that few other people possessed—and left her with a crippling emotional disability as payment.

CHAPTER
THREE
    ANNA DRAGGED IN a breath and let it out slowly, wishing her talent hadn’t brought her to this place and this time. It had started off as a childhood game, picking up things that belonged to other people and tapping into their