Heather Graham Read Free Page A

jacket, reached her side, an ammonia stick in his hand. He knelt beside her and broke the stick in his fingers beneath her nose. “Oh!” she protested, trying to escape the pungent odor. Her eyes opened fully. She glanced about herself with alarm; her eyes fell upon each of three men, and she pulled herself quickly to a sitting position.
    “Where … am I?” she demanded with alarm.
    Donald backed away. “I’ll get some brandy, sir,” he told Flynn. “And a robe for the lady.”
    “You are quite all right, Señorita,” Juan supplied as Flynn took Donald’s place, kneeling beside her and staring at her anxiously.
    “You’re aboard my yacht, the Bella Christa ,” Flynn told her. “You are perfectly all right.”
    “Oh … thank God!” she murmured. Her eyes closed, and she leaned against the couch once again. She was a mystery—a mystery that puzzled Flynn incredibly, but he couldn’t help remaining silent for a minute to study the girl. She was an American; her Yankee accent had given her away immediately. Yanks never could master the Queen’s English, he thought, but not without a certain amusement directed at himself, for neither his years at Oxford—nor the summer at the American naval academy—had done much to curb the brogue in his own speech.
    An American woman … floating on a plank in the waters off Costa del Sol …
    A socialite?
    She was stunning. More so now, incongruous in the stylish bikini on the period furniture. She was tanned to a beautiful, glistening golden color; her hair, beginning now to dry, appeared to be a luxurious auburn, deep, yet flaming with color. A green-eyed redhead, yet no freckles sprinkled over her flesh. Her skin was entirely gold and smooth and as sleek as her long, shapely limbs. Her waist was wickedly slender, her breasts wickedly full as they mounded above the skintight, enhancing white of the bikini top.
    Draped across the sofa, she was sinfully appealing. A woman couldn’t have tried to appear more appealing. Tried? She had been washed up aboard a plank. Apparently the victim of an accident—or an attack? And yet, with her assets, she was able to be both disheveled and … totally alluring. The urge to rescue and protect …
    And also covet. Who was she?
    Donald cleared his throat as he reappeared with a snifter of brandy. Flynn lifted the girl’s head; her eyes flew open once again. “Sip this,” he murmured. “It’s brandy.”
    She took a sip of the brandy, coughed and sputtered, then pushed the snifter away. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her expression was lovely and vulnerable, lost and totally dazed.
    “Do you know who you are?” he asked her.
    Her eyes focused on him. “Of course! Oh, I am so sorry! Here I am … dripping all over your lovely sofa …”
    Flynn waved away her distress. “Don’t worry about the bloody sofa. Who are you, miss? What happened to you?”
    Her eyes met his, lifted to Juan’s, then returned to his. “My name is Brittany Martin—I’m an American, vacationing at Costa del Sol. I was terribly foolish—I mean, I’d been warned about this ‘El Drago’ who has been attacking pleasure craft—but I suppose I didn’t really believe the stories! Anyway, I just felt this terrible need to sail! Perhaps you understand—oh, surely, you must! I had to feel the wind and the sea spray—please, don’t laugh!”
    Flynn wasn’t about to laugh. He was staring at her incredulously. “El Drago?”
    “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him! It’s my understanding that he’s been the scourge of these waters—the dismay of the police!”
    Flynn stood and walked past the couch, stretching as he stared through the salon’s upper sheet windows. He felt Juan’s dark eyes upon him, and the girl’s.
    He turned back to her.
    “What happened?” he demanded tensely.
    “Why, I … I …” She floundered for a moment; her lashes fell to shield her eyes. Then those dark, seductive fans fluttered and raised; her chin was