Iris woke up the next morning with considerable more spring in her step than she would have thought she’d have. She’d fooled around on the piano for a few hours last night and had nailed down the top melodies of the two songs that had been banging down the door inside her head since she met Marcus.

Being able to release them had been a tremendous relief. In some ways, she felt like she was a champagne bottle that had finally been uncorked. All the tension had been boiling and growing within her, fueled by the broody, intense presence of Agent Marinos. Iris had never been happier to hear that there was a musical instrument in close proximity.

She woke up with the sunrise but spent an hour in her room trying to get some lyrics down. She always liked working right when she woke up in the morning, before the world had a chance to get in the way. It was a surprisingly fruitful writing session. Both of the songs that had been hounding her had pretty much flowed right out of her. She didn’t understand some of the lyrics that she’d written, they didn’t quite make sense yet, but they matched the melodies well and she considered it a healthy start.

When the need for coffee was starting to fog her senses, Iris showered quickly, brushed and dressed in more borrowed clothes to find her way downstairs.

The sun through the windows was warm, bordering on hot, so she donned shorts and a roomy long-sleeved t-shirt. She had to belt the shorts tight around her waist to keep them up, but she thought the overall effect was pleasing. In her normal life, she didn’t often wear things that showed her legs. She considered them to be her best feature by far and she got way too many stares and comments on them when she wore anything that revealed them. But she was basically alone out here on this little island, so what was the risk? The cool air felt delightful on her bare legs as she made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Iris made her way to the coffeemaker and noted that it was already full of steaming coffee.

“Beau dropped off some groceries,” a deep voice spoke from behind her and Iris whirled, gasping. Her fingers knotted in the fabric of her shirt in complete surprise. Agent Marinos merely raised an eyebrow at her reaction and continued on, “So if you take milk in your coffee there’s some in the fridge.”

Iris nodded and willed her blood to resume its normal pace through her veins. And immediately, she noted that she’d miscalculated with her shorts. The agent’s eyes dropped from her face to her bare legs. He took them in in one beat before turning away from her and back to the pile of papers that sat on the table in front of him, his cup of coffee steaming away.

Iris frowned as she poured herself a cup of coffee and found the half and half in the fridge. It wasn’t that she wanted him to ogle her, that kind of thing always made her dreadfully uncomfortable. But he’d looked at her bare legs with something like disdain and disapproval. Was she dressed inappropriately? She hadn’t thought there was a dress code for this kind of thing. Sipping her coffee, she turned and took a covert peek at his attire.

His legs, bronzed and toned, were angled under his chair and covered with dark hair. He wore shorts and a t-shirt. Iris wondered briefly if his chest was covered in that same smattering of dark hair but she mentally slapped herself. That was no way of thinking about the federal agent who was charged with protecting her life right now. Besides. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt just like she was. So she had no reason to be self conscious about her attire.

Without another word, Iris slipped out of the kitchen and toward the back living room with the piano. She was grateful that it was several rooms away from the agent. He looked like he was consumed by the file in front of him and she didn’t want to distract him as she noodled around on the piano.

Iris slid the sliding doors closed behind her and sat gratefully down at the piano. She’d left her lyrics upstairs but that was okay. She preferred to work on the sound of a song separate from the words for a while before she combined them.

Her hands melted over the keys as she reclaimed the top melody of the song that she’d nailed last night. That part was working well. It was bright and flirty and brought to mind a first date on a summer night. Pure pop. She loved it. But she stumbled as she tried to find the bottom harmonies. She had the gravy and now she needed to find the meat and potatoes. The structure that would hold the song up. She tried and tried again, but it just wasn’t right.

As she usually did when she ran into a road block like this, Iris thought back to the original feeling that had inspired the song within her in the first place. The agent’s smile. The first time she’d seen it. That flash of white against his coppery skin. Unexpected and burning brightly. The song had nearly rocketed out of her right then and there.

The skittish part of her hesitated to really dwell on that moment, that image. It was inappropriate and complicated and, she was sure of it, pathetic. She was sure that he viewed her as the inept little waif who couldn’t take care of herself. She thought back to the way he’d had to feed her that orange. God, she’d been completely helpless. And now she was shivering over the memory of his smile. Yeah. It was too pathetic.

But there was another part of her. A part that she’d kept secret for so long, definitely from her mother and even from her twin, that didn’t think it was pathetic to swoon over the agent’s smile. It was the part of her that read romance novels and watched shirtless men walk past on the beach. It was the part of her that threw out lyrics that weren’t exactly right and always brought her songs up one more notch to perfect. There was a strong, virile part of her that asked for what she wanted. And this was the part of her that let her brain call up that image. His teeth, his perfect lips pulled back. And it was that brave, obstinate part of her that thought back to the agent’s eyes. Marcus’s eyes. Black and menacing and alluring. Eyes that immediately challenged her and sucked her in at the same time. Eyes that had made her feel like a magnetic charge was raising the hairs on her arms.

And just like that, the bottom notes of the song revealed themselves. Sticky and powerful and magnetic. The notes were assertive and brutal and when she threaded the original, light melody back through the new part, the effect was intoxicating. Even without the lyrics, the song screamed of all the facets of a new crush. The bubbling drunk butterflies, the sweaty insecurity, and, she realized with a jolt, the lust of it. It was a feeling she hadn’t known she was capable of having. But here it was, plain as day in the song she was writing.

The coffee pot appeared over her shoulder and Iris sprang to her feet, the song cutting off abruptly as Marcus refilled her now empty cup.

He raised an eyebrow at her as he landed a rough, hot palm on her shoulder and firmly sat her back down on the piano bench. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

His voice rumbled through her as he finished leaning over her.

Iris cleared her throat and commanded her heart to slow the hell down, to no avail. “Sorry I’m so jumpy.”

“Well, you were abducted and locked in a basement just two days ago. I think you’re entitled to some butterflies.”

Iris winced at his choice of words, but not for the reasons he thought. Marcus cursed himself when her body folded inwards. He was a dumbass, casually reminding her of the incredibly traumatic ordeal she’d just undergone. He didn’t know that she was wincing at his use of the word butterflies. He didn’t know that she’d just been musing on them, in an entirely different context. One that had involved the color of his teeth, the wattage of his smile, the gravity of his eyes.

Iris reached out for her newly filled coffee, but he stilled her hands as he splashed in a little of the half and half he’d brought with him.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Silence crept over them and Marcus knew he should be leaving now. But instead, he found himself sitting on the piano bench next to her, facing the opposite direction. Their shoulders brushed just briefly before she straightened and set her coffee back down, rested her hands on the keys of the piano.

“So,” he found himself saying, “you’re a musician.”

Iris bobbed her head from side to side and Marcus caught a whiff of the shampoo she’d used that morning. He realized it was his shampoo. The kind that he left for himself in the bathroom that adjoined the room she was staying in. His room.

He shifted himself on the piano bench. She shifted too.

“Sort of,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m a songwriter. For my brother.”

“Your brother’s a musician?”

Iris cocked her head to one side and squinted her eyes a little, as if she were trying to figure out whether or not he was lying. “You don’t know who my brother is?”

“I just read in your file that his name is Owen Stanton. And that he’s your twin.”

“Yeah,” Iris nodded. “But his stage name is O Wolfgang.”

“No shit?” Marcus chuckled a little. “I didn’t realize. Damn, you can’t turn on the radio without hearing one of his songs.”

Iris grinned, quick and gone. She gave him a long sip of the blue in her eyes. “One of my songs,” she corrected.

“No shit,” Marcus repeated, going back through his mind, trying to call up one of the many O Wolfgang songs he’d heard over the last few years. He hummed a few bars of the one he’d liked the best. It was a song about a third date, about what happens at the end of the night. The beat was sultry and expectant, telling the listener everything the lyrics flirted around.

Iris hummed along with him, immediately catching the melody on the piano, making it come to life.

Marcus laughed again when she trilled her fingers on the last notes. “You really wrote that song?”

“Mm-hmm.” She nodded. “I write all my brother’s music.”

“I like that song,” he said, and then added without thinking, “It’s sexy as hell.”

Iris’s face flamed up like the sky on the fourth of July as she turned quickly back toward the piano keys. “Well, uh, good. That’s what I was going for with that one.”

Marcus cast around for something else to say. “So, is it just piano for you? Or do you play other instruments too?”

Iris turned back to him, her fingers noodling on the keys absently. “I love the piano. But yeah, I can play most instruments.”

“Most?” he asked incredulously.

She shrugged sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s just something that comes naturally to me.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“Oh.” She leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest and squinting. The movement brushed their shoulders against one another again. “I’d have to say mandolin. Or the harp. I’m not as good at the harp as I am at other instruments and I like that. It kind of plays hard to get with me.”

She grinned at him and he found himself grinning back. Their faces weren’t more than ten inches apart and Marcus found himself standing up out of self-preservation. He was beginning to suspect he was making this harder on himself than it had to be.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

He could feel Iris’s eyes on his back as he strode across the room with the empty coffee pot. He knew he was being abrupt. So he turned back before he slid the door closed again. “I like the new song you’ve been working on. It reminds me of something. But I can’t tell quite what.”

He left Iris staring after him, frowning as she tried to figure out exactly what the hell that meant.