The tropical sun was hot, shimmering on the white sands of the secluded Mexican beach, dancing golden on water of so keen a blue that just looking at it made Shay’s breath catch in her throat.

“Mitch?”

He was sitting on the small terrace outside their hotel room, his feet up on the railing, a man with five long minutes of marriage behind him. He looked back over one shoulder and laughed. “It’s a little warm for that, isn’t it?”

Shay ran her hands down the front of the mink coat he’d given her for Christmas. “It’s New Year’s day,” she answered. “That means it’s cold at home.”

“Your logic, once again, escapes me.”

Gulls and other seabirds squawked in the silence; it was the time of siesta and most of Mexico seemed to be asleep. Shay yawned and opened her coat.

Mitch, the sophisticate, the man of adventure, actually gasped. His eyes moved over Shay’s naked body with quiet hunger, leaving a fever in their wake. He rose slowly from his chair and came toward her, pressing her back into the shadowy coolness of their room. “Mrs. Prescott,” he muttered. “You are about to have the loving of your life.”

She slid the coat back from her shoulders, allowed it to slip sensuously down her back and arms to the floor, where it lay in a lush, sumptuous pool. “Call now,” she purred. “A wife this good can’t last long.”

As if bewitched, Mitch stepped closer. His throat moved, but he seemed incapable of anything more than the guttural growl he gave when she began unbuttoning his shirt.

Shay undressed her husband very slowly, pausing now and then to touch a taut masculine nipple with the tip of her tongue or tangle a finger in the hair on his chest. His groans of pleasure excited her to greater devilment.

Mitch bore her mischief as long as he could, then, with gentle force, he pressed her to the bed. He lay beside her for a time, caressing her breasts, her stomach, her thighs and even the backs of her knees. And when he had set her afire, he began kissing all those same places.

Shay’s triumph became need; she twisted and tossed on the satin comforter that covered their marriage bed, she whimpered as he loved her, tasted her, tormented her.

Only when she pleaded did he take her.

Nine months and ten minutes later, as Mitch liked to say, Robert Mitchell Prescott was born.

Epilogue

It had been one hell of a fight; the rafters were still shaking.

Glumly, Mitch climbed the steps leading to the attic and opened the door. He flipped a switch and the huge room was bathed in light.

There were cobwebs everywhere and for a moment Mitch hesitated, then grew angry all over again.

It wasn’t as though he intended to do anything really dangerous, after all. He wouldn’t be tangling with Nazis or Klan members or hit men. This book was about racecar drivers, dammit!