“I’m sorry,” she said. “Am I disturbing you?”

God, he thought, you have no idea.

“Not at all. Just enjoying the morning.”

“I know what you mean,” she replied, sinking into a chair and stretching her legs out, propping her feet up on the railing of her balcony. “I don’t have to be anywhere until after lunch and wanted to get a little sun while I have some downtime. It’s quiet out here this morning.”

She stretched out to maximize her body’s exposure to the sun and, consequently, to Tim as well. He held his place in the book with one finger and turned to smile politely at her.

“It’s a weekday. People are off at business meetings, I guess.”

She shielded her eyes from the sun to look at him. Her lips were full and red and perfect. “No meetings for you?”

“Fortunately not.”

He shifted uneasily, not sure he wanted to have this conversation but also not wanting to be rude. And God, she was beautiful. The sounds from the previous night returned as he stared at her, and he could not help imagining those lips saying those things, pleading, moaning, and then . . . You can put it anywhere you want. Shit, he’d almost forgotten about that, and now that he’d remembered he could barely even pay attention to what she was saying.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What was that?”

She smiled, a sparkle of mischief in her eyes, as if she knew exactly what had distracted him.

“I asked what brought you to Santa Monica, if not business.”

Tim ran though possible answers in his mind, but they all came down to a choice between lying and telling the truth, and he had given up lying years before. He and Jenny had been going through a rough patch, distance growing between them because he had been traveling for work so often, and he had been unfaithful. It had nearly ruined his life, nearly destroyed their life together when he confessed to her, but they had gotten through it. He had vowed that he would never stray again, but it had taken years before she actually seemed to believe him. Forgiving him, though, was something else. She had said she did, but he had always wondered, and wondered even still.

“Honestly, it’s sort of a sad story for such a beautiful morning,” he said. “What about you?”

She cocked her head curiously, maybe intrigued by the tragic air about him. Tim had seen it before. Maybe someday he would take advantage of the way some women reacted to sad stories, but he had not yet reached a place where he could do that.

“Just sightseeing. A little California dreaming, you know? Started in Napa and made my way down with . . . Well, Kirk’s no longer with me.”

So his name had been Kirk.

“Kirk?”

She arched her eyebrow suggestively. “I guess I was a little too much for him.”

Tim could have taken that any number of ways, but the eyebrow made it clear what she meant. In his mind he could practically hear Kirk’s voice even now, calling her every filthy thing he could think of. When he had imagined the woman on the receiving end of those words, she had been nothing like this lovely creature on the balcony. As beautiful as she was, she seemed sweet, even charming.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tim said.

“It’s a morning for sad stories, I guess,” she said. “My name is Diana, by the way.”

“Tim,” he said.

“Sorry if we kept you up last night, Tim.”

He grinned, feeling himself flush even more deeply, and glanced away. If he had seen the comment coming, he could have prepared, pretended to have slept through it all, but her directness had sneaked up on him.

“Nah, it’s fine. I mean, not for long—”

Diana pouted. “I think I might be insulted.”

“—no, no, that came out wrong,” he stammered. Then he laughed at his own embarrassment. “I’m a pretty sound sleeper. And who hasn’t been on the other side of thin walls at least once, right?”

Her eyes seemed to dance with merriment. “Exactly. That’s so true.”

She sat up to take a sip of her coffee, her breasts straining against the thin fabric of her bikini top, a single strand of her blond hair—loose from the ponytail—hanging across her face.

“So, are you going to tell me why you’re in Santa Monica?”

Her boldness impressed and entranced him. As he thought about it, he could see this woman being the honest, passionate, carnal lover whose voice he had heard through the wall the night before. Yet Diana had many facets, and he saw one of them now, as a kind of sorrow filled her eyes.

“I don’t mind sad stories. I’ve got a whole catalog of them myself. Go ahead. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”

Something in that last line made him wonder if she had said it to tease him, but he might have imagined it, added a pouty, sexy insouciance to it that was really only an echo of the night before.

“You might think it’s a little strange,” he ventured.

Diana turned her chair slightly, basking in the sun even as she transformed their two balconies into a strangely intimate confessional.

“I like strange.”

Tim thought about Kirk, the idiot who had apparently left this woman after a night like they’d shared last night. What kind of fool must he be?

“All right,” Tim said. He turned down the page in his book and laid it across his chest, staring out at the ocean for a moment before returning his focus to Diana’s curious gaze. “I’m on a kind of tour, I guess. I’ve been to New Orleans and Montreal and to Martha’s Vineyard, off Cape Cod. I even went down to this little village on the Gulf of Mexico. They’re all places that were important to my wife, Jenny, and me during the years we had together.”

The kindness in Diana’s eyes broke his heart all over again. “She’s gone?”

“Just over a year ago. Pancreatic cancer. It was agony for her, so it was probably good that she went quickly, but I didn’t have time, you know? No time to get used to the idea of life without her. It’s taken me this long to accept that I’ve got to live my life. I know she’d have wanted that for me. I’m only thirty-seven. There are a lot of days ahead, if I’m lucky. So I’m on vacation, but it’s also kind of our farewell tour.”

“Wow,” Diana whispered, almost wistful. “That may be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. You’re, like, the perfect husband.”

A familiar guilt filled him. It had grown like rust on his heart over the years. After he had betrayed Jenny, he had spent every day trying to make it up to her. He doubted he would ever have been able to, really, no matter how much time they had been given together. But he had wanted more time to try.

“Far from perfect,” Tim said, staring out at the Pacific.

“No, you’re a good guy. I can sense those things,” Diana said. “And you’re lucky, too.”

He frowned. “Lucky?”

The mischief returned to her eyes, and she stood, adjusting the strap of her bikini top.

“You said you were a sound sleeper,” she reminded him. With one hand on the handle of the slider, ready to go inside, she glanced over her shoulder at him in a pose so sexy it was painful to behold. “I always have trouble falling asleep. I need someone to tire me out. The only way I can really sleep well is if I’m so exhausted that I’m a quivering mass of jelly. And with Kirk gone . . .”

Diana glanced away, almost shyly, before looking back at him with renewed boldness. “I don’t know what I’ll do tonight.”

Tim could not speak. He dared not move for fear that she would notice the effect she had had on him, if she hadn’t already.

Obviously pleased by his speechlessness, Diana opened the sliding door into her room. “Enjoy your day, Timothy.”

He managed to croak, “You, too,” before her door slid shut.

Shaking his head in amazement, he went back to his book, the erection Diana had caused—the second in a very short time—slowly subsiding. After a few minutes he realized that his thoughts were straying and he had not understood a word he’d read, and he laughed softly at himself. Had that really been an invitation? Did she mean it?