“Where do you work? I’ll call them and let them know you had an accident.”

“They won’t believe you. They’re bastards.”

“I can be very convincing.” He took the steps leading to the Beachcomber two at a time, ignoring the shooting pain from his own injured leg. The porch was full of people having breakfast, and his passenger turned her face into his chest. At the maître d’ stand, he asked for Libby and was shown to her office off the lobby.

“Mac!” Smiling, Libby jumped up from her desk chair. “I didn’t know you were coming home!” She glanced at the woman in his arms whose shaft of long hair hid her face. “And bringing a friend. Don’t tell me you ran away and got married.”

“Not exactly. We had a little accident on the street.”

Libby glanced at the woman’s leg, saw the blood and went into paramedic mode. “Bring her in here.” She gestured to a sofa in her office.

“I don’t want to get blood all over your sofa,” the injured woman said.

Libby grabbed some towels and spread them out.

As Mac put down his passenger, her breast bounced against his arm, sending another burst of lust coursing through him. Her hourglass figure reminded him of the old pinup girl posters his father had in the garage when Mac was a kid. Betty Boop had nothing on this woman.

With her uninjured hand, she brushed the hair back off her pretty face.

“Maddie!” Libby cried. “What happened?”

Maddie gestured at Mac. “Someone wasn’t watching where he was going and knocked me off my bike, which is now totaled.”

Libby tied back shoulder-length dark hair and broke out an elaborate first aid kit from under her desk.

Mac hovered in the doorway to the small office. “Do you want me to call your work to let them know you’ll be out today?”

“Just tell them I’ll be late. I can’t afford to miss a whole shift.”

No way could she work today, but Mac wasn’t going to argue with her—yet. “Where am I calling?”

“McCarthy’s Gansett Inn, housekeeping department.”

Smiling to himself, he reached for his cell phone and dialed the number from memory. Maddie watched him, a startled expression on her face.

Keeping his eyes fixed on her, he asked for the housekeeping department. “Ethel? Hey, it’s Mac McCarthy.”

Maddie gasped from the double shock of hearing his name and having antiseptic applied to her gruesome cuts.

He whispered to Maddie, “What’s your last name?”

“Chester,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Little Mac McCarthy, you devil,” Ethel said. “How in the hell are you?”

“I’m great, how are you?”

“Can’t complain.”

“I wasn’t on the island five minutes when I knocked one of your housekeepers off her bike.”

“Still causing trouble, I see,” Ethel said with her trademark guffaw. “Which one?”