Officer, Surgeon...Gentleman!

Oh, God, she’d just hit Send!

All the blood drained from her body to pool in the pit of her stomach.

Would she really have done so if Cole hadn’t walked in?

How did he always manage to find her? Not that she was hiding, but he always turned up wherever she was. She’d resigned herself weeks ago to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to avoid him. She wasn’t even trying to avoid him anymore. What was the point? She was being pursued, stalked by a predator more deadly than any jungle cat.

One that slid on his belly and seduced with his mesmerizing eyes and silver tongue. Just like Eve in the Garden of Eden, Amelia was defenseless against his powers of temptation. Difficult for a Stockton to swallow, but one of their greatest traits was the ability to call an apple an apple and an orange an orange. Stocktons didn’t lie, not even to themselves. Especially not to themselves.

She wanted Cole. Had from the beginning. Had he married her sister, she would never have acted on that want, but he hadn’t married Clara. Instead, he’d come for her and was biding his time until she was willing to admit she’d been waiting for him to do just that for the past two years.

She’d done what he’d asked. She’d waited for him. Two damn years.

“I was e-mailing my sister,” she said perversely, irritated with herself for her weakness.

He didn’t physically react, just watched her. “Is everything okay?”

She snorted, too frustrated to hold back what she was truly thinking from him. “Nothing has been okay from the moment you arrived on this ship. No, longer. Nothing has been okay from the moment you walked away from your rehearsal dinner.” A pause, as she dragged in an unsteady breath. “How could you have just left? How?”

A pause, a twitch of that perfect set of lips, then, “I’m not leaving you, Amelia. Not this time. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

She inhaled a breat

h meant to calm her frayed nerves. “Do you want to, Cole? Do you regret manipulating your way onto my ship?”

“No.”

Why was she trying to pick a fight? For what purpose? She closed her eyes. “Was there something you needed?”

“Other than you in my bed?”

Amelia clamped her lips closed, her heart pounding at his directness. She should threaten him with sexual harassment, should walk over and slap his handsome face, should do so many things. But all she did was release her pent-up breath.

“Is that what all of this is about?” she asked in a calm voice. Too calm really. “Sex?”

He moved closer, regarded her with speculative eyes. “What do you want this to be about?”

“I don’t want this at all, Cole. None of this.” She put her hands up in front of her. “I don’t want you here, period.”

“But you do want me.” He wasn’t asking a question. He was stating a fact.

She swore softly under her breath in a way that would have her mother going for a bar of mouth-washing soap. “Yes, I want you, but to what purpose?”

“Mutual satisfaction?”

“What makes you so sure you can satisfy me?” she taunted.

His gaze raked over her face in a lazy caress, lowered down her throat, lower, until she’d swear he could see right through her clothes, her skin, to where sweat slicked her body.

“If you’d like proof…”

“No.” She shook her head forcibly, moving away from the computer desk, away from where he stood. “I wouldn’t like anything from you except to be left alone.”

He laughed. “You’re like a broken record, Amelia. Isn’t it time you stop protesting so much?”

“Where you’re concerned I’ll never stop protesting.”

“Then the next few months won’t be dull, will they?”