Crystal was just attempting to tame her hair when Mark called out, “Are you all right in there?”

“I’m fine,” she yelled back before turning the water off. Grimacing at her reflection, she put the comb down and decided there wasn’t much more she could do at this point. She was in need of a shower, but that could wait until she got some answers from Mark. Schooling her features into an impassive line, she opened the door and tried not to drool in his direction. Did the man have to be so freaking hot? You probably wouldn’t have been stalking him for months at the office if he weren’t quite so good-looking, her inner voice chided.

She had been smitten with him practically from the first glimpse. Mia had caught her ogling him in the coffee shop of Danvers one morning. She’d unknowingly poured half a container of sugar in her coffee, while watching him add creamer to his. Then she’d done something completely juvenile and pulled her cell phone out to snap a picture of the unsuspecting hunk. She had thought him the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Tall, dark, and polished in his obviously expensive suit. He’d seemed so unaware of all of the female attention centered on him. One thing that had really drawn her attention was how he’d run a hand through his hair repeatedly as if stressed over something. Crystal had never been prone to developing crushes, but something had changed for her in that instant. There was no denying her attraction to him. She must have looked at the picture she had taken dozens of times, and her curiosity had been well and truly whetted.

Maybe it was the fact that she was more lonely than she would care to admit, but she found herself watching for him around the office from then on, even going so far as to go to his floor for no reason other than to catch a glimpse of him again. She’d also checked social media and been thrilled to find he had both Facebook and Twitter accounts. He wasn’t a celebrity as such, but according to Google he was a wealthy business owner who attended high-profile charity events on a regular basis. He was photographed often at these gatherings, no doubt due to his drop-dead good looks. Possibly a big part of her attraction to him was the fact that he appeared so opposite from her ex-husband. Bill had never possessed the type of power and confidence that Mark seemed to emit so effortlessly.

She snapped from her daze as he looked her over as if checking for injuries before motioning for her to follow him. He flipped on the lights to dispel the darkness as they passed through a hallway that was made almost entirely of glass. She saw water in the distance and was just opening her mouth to ask about it when he glanced over his shoulder, saying, “The house is on the ocean. I live near Jason and Gray.”

She’d been to both Jason Danvers’s and Gray Merimon’s homes since she was friends with their wives, Suzy and Claire. Well—technically, her sister, Ella, was friends with them. Crystal was more like an acquaintance through her family connection. She liked both women a lot, though, and sometimes had lunch with them along with Ella, Suzy’s sister-in-law Beth, Mia, and more recently, Emma, Ava, and Gwen. Gwen Day and Mia Gentry were her best friends, and she was lucky enough to see them at work almost every day.

“I thought you lived in Charleston,” Crystal blurted out before realizing that she wouldn’t know that unless she’d been looking him up online.

He didn’t seem to find anything strange about the question, though, saying simply, “I have homes in several places. Living in a hotel gets old after a while, and since I’m spending a great deal of time in Myrtle Beach now, it just made sense to have a more permanent place here.”

Mark flipped on another light and she saw they were now in a gourmet kitchen straight from the pages of a magazine, with designer black granite countertops and a huge island. Next to it were a commercial-size stainless steel stove and refrigerator. The area was easily five times bigger than her galley kitchen in her own apartment. If she had this kind of space, she thought, then she might actually enjoy cooking, a pastime that had been spoiled for her during her marriage to her ex-husband. Bill had insisted on a full meat-and-potatoes type of meal each evening, which in itself might not have been bad if he hadn’t felt the need to criticize her efforts the entire time he was cleaning his plate. No matter what she made, it was never good enough for him.

She perched on the edge of one of the barstools that he’d indicated before saying, “You have a really nice kitchen. Do you cook a lot?”

He smirked as if she’d said something amusing. “I’d like to say that I’m a whiz in the kitchen like the Merimon brothers, but my skills in that particular area are pretty basic. I can do enough to get by, but I’m on the go a lot, so I tend to eat before I come home.”

Laughing, Crystal said, “I’ve heard Suzy and Beth talk about how Nick and Gray were raised to work out their problems in the kitchen. I guess they cooked with their mother while they talked. It sounds as if they could open their own bakery if they ever decided to change professions.” Thinking of her own overbearing mother, she added, “I wish I had grown up with someone that nurturing.”

Mark paused for a moment in the act of adding bread to a toaster, then he said quietly, “Yeah, I wouldn’t know a whole helluva lot about that either. Celine DeSanto’s idea of parental bonding was to help my father remain upright until dinner was finished. Otherwise, he’d be passed out cold before the salad course was over.”

Crystal didn’t know what to say to the information that he’d just revealed. The stiff set of his shoulders said that he wouldn’t welcome her sympathy, so instead, she changed the subject. “So, why am I here? I’ve put together enough to know that I must have gotten sick—possibly on your shoes,” she added weakly. “But I don’t recall anything other than that.”