Read Online Hours to Cherish by Heather Graham - Free Book Online Page A

in a flash, but he had underestimated his adversary. She was in the water, disappearing like a streak of gold.
    “Get back here, you little fool!” he shouted after her, swearing a mile a minute beneath his breath. “Damn it, we’re in a good sixty feet of water, almost a mile offshore!”
    Cat paused long enough for an answer, ironically glad she had chosen the light halter-dress for the evening. The weight wouldn’t drag her down. “I’ve taken every scuba and lifesaving course offered, Mr. Miller,” she shouted at him. “A mile, you say? I’ll be just fine.”
    He was a silhouette in the light of the cruiser against the pitch-darkness of the night as Cat began to swim. She heard him laugh suddenly. “Okay, you want to swim—swim.”
    Cat was relieved by his quick agreement. She could make the mile, and she could probably outdistance him if he came after her, but she could better utilize her strength by moving slowly and fluidly. But she was a fool, and she knew it. Even an excellent swimmer faced dangers at night. Lemon sharks and makos chose the evening hours as preferred feeding times and one never knew when one might encounter the trailing tentacles of a man-of-war.
    Don’t think about it, she warned herself, utilizing a steady Australian crawl. It wasn’t really hard to face such hazards. She would rather see a man-of-war at the moment than Clay.
    Cat paused for a moment treading water, startled as she found herself captured in a spotlight.
    He was letting her swim, all right—but he was following just far enough behind for safety.
    “You can come back up!” he advised her. He looked nice and rested, sipping a beer as he manned the small tiller.
    “I hope you split up on a coral reef or hit a sandbar,” she replied sweetly.
    Cat frowned as she saw his grinning expression suddenly change. The smile was radically erased from his face. “Get out of the water,” he yelled.
    “No, you think this is a joke—all highly amusing. Well I haven’t been amused and you can follow all you like, but I’d rather swim than accept a second of your brand of hospital—”
    Her words were drowned out by the splash of his body cutting cleanly into the water. She hadn’t been prepared for his jumping in after her and was caught off guard when the strength of his dive brought him beside her.
    “Let me go—” she gasped.
    “God damn it, this is no joke, and I’m not playing!”
    She was propelled to the cruiser’s starboard side and hoisted high into the air. Her shoulder, derriere, and head hit the deck hard, but before she could rage her protest, he hurtled over her. And then before she could even stutter, she was ignominiously dragged to her feet and swirled to stare into the spotlight.
    Her words caught and died in her throat. In the shaft of yellow that had bounced upon their heads just moments ago, two large fins speared the surface, cruising stealthily, turning in figure eights. She could feel his anger, intensified by fear, in the harsh grip he maintained over her shoulders. She tried to twist in his arms, to apologize, to thank him.
    He turned her himself, shaking her. “All this over making love. Okay, Cat. You want to make love, we’ll make love. I had thought to protect the vestal virgin, but I suppose deflowering beats death by shark bite.”
    Cat opened her mouth. She wanted to tell him that she was really very sorry about the whole evening, that she had acted like an idiot, made a total fool out of herself. She was even ready to explain that she had fallen in love with him and hadn’t known how to handle the situation maturely. Could he possibly understand such a thing? She really wasn’t usually so incompetent.
    She didn’t have a chance. Her mouth was nothing more than an open invitation as his lips burned hers. His tongue was hotly seductive, plunging deeply one moment, withdrawing with his lips a whisper away the next so that he might trace the line of hers, weave his moist trail along