Claiming Colleen

“Sixteen months ago I kissed you, and a few months later, you slugged me in the jaw in Jake’s Place parking lot.”

Her mouth fell open but she didn’t utter a word. She didn’t know what shocked her more: the fact that Eric had again brought up that kiss on Sunset Beach or his reference to her impassioned, impulsive act last summer…or possibly the evidence that said jaw was now hovering a half a foot away from her upturned face.

“I…I’ve never apologized for that. I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I didn’t bring it up because I was looking for an apology.”

“No?” she mouthed. She stood frozen to the spot, even though she knew she should back away.

“Which do you regret more?” he asked.

When she just stared at him, her bemusement obvious, he clarified, “The punch? Or the kiss?”

For a stretched few seconds, neither spoke. The silence was absolute. Colleen wondered if they both held their breath.

Dear Reader,

Hello, and thank you for reading the latest installment of the HOME TO HARBOR TOWN series! Of all the Harbor Town heroes and heroines, I feel as if I have such a fond spot for Colleen and Eric. Sometimes I could perfectly hear their snappy, sparking banter in my head. They’ve grappled with their attraction and seeming dislike for one another in the background of the first two Harbor Town books, so I was especially glad to give them center stage for their own opposites-attract, emotional, very passionate romance.

Colleen Kavanaugh is a woman who knows her own mind, and she’s convinced the last person on the face of the earth that she’d fall for is arrogant, know-it-all, playboy Dr Eric Reyes. Eric has always resented the fact that their shared tragic history has created such a barrier between him and ColIeen, and he’s not above using the circumstances of their siblings’ upcoming wedding as an excuse to get closer to her.

I hope you enjoy Colleen’s realization that the heart can be blind, and that an avowed enemy just might offer the ideal opportunity to learn, to grow, and to love with the full force of the passionate Kavanaugh spirit.

Find out more about the rest of the HOME TO HARBOR TOWN series at www.bethkery.com.

Beth Kery

BETH KERY holds a doctorate degree in the behavioral sciences and enjoys incorporating what she’s learned about human nature into her stories. To date, she has published more than a dozen novels and short stories and writes in multiple genres, always with the overarching theme of passionate, emotional romance. To find out about upcoming books in the Harbor Town series, visit Beth at her website at www.BethKery.com or join her for a chat at her reader group, www.groups.yahoo.com/group/BethKery.

Claiming

Colleen

Beth Kery

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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I’d like to thank my editor, Susan Litman, for having

faith in these stories and for her excellent suggestions in

crafting and content. Lea, thank you as always, for

your generosity and valuable feedback. My heartfelt

appreciation goes out to my husband, who manages

never to tire of my frantic schedule and who always

seems to offer the exact kind of support I need.

Prologue

Sixteen months ago

The spring evening was unseasonably hot and humid, but the remnants of winter still lingered in Lake Michigan. Colleen Kavanaugh Sinclair shivered for the first five minutes of her swim, but by the time her internal clock told her it was time to turn back toward shore, the cool water felt delicious sliding against her heated skin.

Her swim off Sunset Beach was as much a part of her summertime routine as taking her children, Brendan and Jenny, to soccer or baseball practice. Traditionally, her first swim of the season happened on this weekend. But this Memorial Day would be her last swim here. This evening, she was saying goodbye to Sunset Beach.

She climbed onto the sand and dried off, thinking of all the times she’d cavorted on this beach with her brothers and sister while their mother, Brigit, sunbathed and chatted with her friends. The late-night bonfires and holiday barbecues. Her sister’s water-skiing events—never again.

Colleen had acquired her final memory tonight. Her favorite public beach had been gobbled up by the wealthy elites of Harbor Town. She’d personally gone and spoken out against the privatization of the public park at the last few city council meetings, but in the end, money talked louder than she could.

Movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned and saw him standing there.

“It’s a nice night,” Eric Reyes said, his voice low.

Colleen froze in the action of toweling off her bare belly, caught off guard by his bare-footed, silent approach in the sand. His dark eyes flickered downward, making her skin tickle with sudden awareness.

She knew who he was, of course.

He’d already finished high school by the time Colleen and Liam attended Harbor Town High. She’d known who he was before that, though. He’d worked for the local landscaper. More than once, the tall, dark boy with the serious expression had caught the attention of Colleen and her friends when they saw him working shirtless in the park or unloading a truck on Main Street. She’d heard once through the grapevine that he was Harbor Town High School’s best hockey player.

Eric Reyes wasn’t like Colleen, or Mari Itani, or any of her other friends who vacationed with their families in Harbor Town during the summers. He was a year-rounder who worked and who didn’t have the time to while away the hours on one of the beaches in the charming lakeside vacation community.

One summer before the accident—she couldn’t recall which summer, precisely—Colleen had been walking with several of her girlfriends down Elm Street and saw Eric Reyes coming out of the Harbor Town Library, several books in the crook of his arm. He’d paused on the sidewalk, probably struck by the gaggle of suntanned teenage girls. Her friends had grown predictably giddy in the vicinity of a good-looking, older boy, but when Colleen’s eyes met his, she’d given him a smile.

Now they stood face-to-face again, strangers who shared a past. Fifteen years ago, her father had killed his mother in a three-way car crash. The lawsuits against Derry’s estate had drastically altered the Kavanaughs’ economic status. Eric had used his portion of the lawsuit to go to medical school. Now he owned a luxurious Buena Vista beachfront home, and she was the trespasser on the familiar beach.

Now she was the outsider.

Seeing him standing there caused anger to flare hot inside her, the strength of it shocking her a little.

“Are you going to call the police?” she asked him quietly.

“I hadn’t planned on it, no. Why, are you about to do something illegal?”

She had a wild urge to manually remove that little smirk he wore.

“It’s illegal for me to be here. I never saw you at any of the city council meetings, but surely you know about Sunset Beach becoming private.”

“I know about it.”

“Yeah. I thought so.” She unfastened the band at her neck and began to work a comb through her hair. “I can’t imagine you wanting the beach to remain open to the great unwashed.” She glanced at him in annoyance when he chuckled. He raised his dark brows when he noticed her scowl.

“You look pretty clean to me.” His gaze once again flickered down over her bikini-clad body. She stiffened. It didn’t offend her, his glance, or creep her out like some men’s stares had in the past. It did unsettle her.

Bedroom eyes.

The phrase leapt into her brain unbidden. Dark eyes…knowing eyes. It surprised her a little, to feel this strong sexual current emanating from him. How dare he, given their past, look at her with such potent male appreciation? So what if practically every female in Harbor County would have patiently waited in a mile-long line to be on the receiving end of a sultry gaze from single, gorgeous Dr. Eric Reyes? Not every female in Harbor County shared the same messy, tragic history with him that Colleen did.

She stepped closer and tilted her chin in a subtle challenge. “You never did answer me. Did you vote ‘yes’ for the homeowners taking over Sunset Beach, or not?”

“Of course I voted for it. It was an excellent investment. I would have been a fool to turn down the opportunity.”

She gave a soft bark of laughter and stepped away, shoving her things into her bag, her rapid, abrupt movements betraying her swelling agitation. She felt weak…vulnerable…unable to control her reaction. The realization sent her already frothing emotions into a boil. Words poured out of her throat against her will.

“That’s the only thing you thought of when the opportunity arose? What about the townspeople? What about the local kids who take swimming lessons off Sunset? All you thought about was the investment? The money? Don’t you have enough of that, Reyes?”

“You know what they say. You can never have too much.”

Her long hair fell in her face when she jerked her head up and glared at him. The slant of his mouth told her he was angry…maybe as angry as she was. He’d been provoking her.

He’d succeeded.

Never one to back down from a dare, Colleen dropped her bag back on the beach and stepped toward him. “You came out here to taunt me.”

Something flashed in his eyes, an emotion she couldn’t quite identify. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I? You didn’t come out here to throw it in my face? This beach wasn’t just one more thing you can take from a Kavanaugh? This isn’t your victory lap?”

He shook his head slowly. “You really are a little princess.”

Her heart started to pound out a warning in her ears. She stepped closer, her jaw clenched hard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You didn’t know that’s what the guys used to call you? Little Princess Kavanaugh. Well, I’m real sorry if I knocked off your crown.”

“How dare you say something like that to me,” she breathed out through a constricted throat.

“Seems to me you dare worse, only you don’t seem to mind if your insults are based on ignorance.”

She was so furious—so agitated—her consciousness went hazy. Maybe it was because her heart was charging like an out-of-control locomotive, but the world took on a surreal cast. When she turned jerkily to retrieve her items from the beach, she stumbled and nearly did a face-plant on the sand.

Eric caught her left upper arm, then steadied her further by grasping her right. She tried to jerk out of his hold, made a little wild by boiling emotion.

“Colleen, stop it. Please.”

His voice barely penetrated her chaotic emotions. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. The explosion of feeling had come out of nowhere.

Or maybe it hadn’t.

Maybe it’d been brewing since the night she’d gotten that phone call while she was at camp when she was sixteen years old. Maybe this cyclone of feeling started to coalesce when she’d learned her father was dead, as were three other people he’d crashed into while he’d been driving drunk.

She heaved again, trying desperately to break his hold on her, but he was every bit as strong and fit as he appeared. Instead of releasing her, he cursed beneath his breath and turned her toward him, now holding her securely by her shoulders. Distantly, she realized her cheeks were wet with tears. Humiliation surged through her. She hated that he was staring at her with those concerned, knowing eyes, seeing the evidence of her vulnerability.

“Let go of me,” she grated out.

But as her feet faltered in the soft sand yet again, he brought her closer to his body, attempting to steady both of them at once.

“You’re going to hurt one or both of us. Just calm down,” he said, his voice low, but resonant with emotion.

His warm breath struck her from above, whisking across her right temple. She went still in sudden awareness. His arms were around her, her breasts were plastered against his chest. His heat penetrated though his clothing and emanated into her damp, naked skin. Her eyes widened when she felt his body harden against her, as if he’d become aware of her at the precise moment she’d become aware of him.

“Colleen?”

She blinked. His quiet voice had felt like a caress.

She wanted to look up into his face at that moment…open herself to him…just a crack.

The realization made her start to struggle again, this time with increased force. Her heart bounded in her chest as if in a panic to escape her rib cage. She caught him off guard after her moment of stillness. He cursed—loudly this time—when she forced him off balance. They both went down on the beach, a surprised oomph escaping her throat at the impact of her hip hitting the sugar-soft sand.

“Are you okay?” he asked anxiously.

“I…I…yes, I’m fine.” The abrupt fall seemed to have popped the anger right out of her, leaving her stunned and breathless.

She stared into his face. He sprawled over her body, his elbows in the sand. He felt large and hard, covering her with plenty to spare. She couldn’t comprehend how his eyes could be so dark and yet blaze so hot.

The moment stretched like a live wire drawn taut.

Colleen didn’t know how it happened—had he leaned down, or had she strained toward him?—but suddenly his mouth was on hers, his lips firm and demanding. Hungry.

Everything transformed in a split second. Need rose in her with the strength of a striking talon. She tangled her fingers in his hair and scraped his scalp with her fingernails. He groaned low in his throat and slanted his mouth at a different angle, his kiss somehow tender and ravishing at once. The tip of his tongue slid along the seam of her lips.

She parted her lips and slid her tongue against his, arching her back into him, this time of her own volition, compelled by sudden, driving desire. The hardness of his chest was such a welcome relief to the aching tips of her breasts. She pressed down on his back, desperate for more of the sensation of him. Heat seared her from the inside out, softening her, filling her…thawing her.

She gasped in dazed disapproval when the pressure of his mouth disappeared. Eyelids heavy, she met his gaze. He stared down at her, his facial muscles rigid, his nostrils slightly flared. He looked exactly like what he was: a virile male primed to stake his claim. Part of her longed for him to do just that.

The other part saw the question in his eyes. His bewilderment struck her like ice water splashing on her heated face.

She shoved him away. Reality must have hit him at the same moment, because she didn’t have to push very hard. He rolled off her. Colleen found herself panting softly and staring up at a lavender-blue sky.

For a full ten seconds, she just lay there, her body vibrating with shock and the remnants of blazing arousal.

It couldn’t have happened.

She touched her lips with her fingertips. They felt damp and slightly swollen. She sat up abruptly at the undeniable evidence that she hadn’t been under the influence of a bizarre hallucination.

Eric lay on his back in the sand, staring blankly up at the darkening sky. He looked like she felt—as if someone had just taken a swing at his head with a two-by-four. He didn’t move, but his gaze flickered over her. His eyes focused when they found her face. They softened.

Two thoughts soared into her brain, the first causing anguish, the second panic.

She hadn’t felt desire that powerful, that imperative, since Darin had died.

No. She’d never felt anything like that.

She scrambled up from the beach.

“Colleen!”

She grabbed her shorts and hurriedly stepped into them, nearly falling over again in the process. She refused to look at him, but out of the periphery of her vision she realized he’d sat up and was watching her.

“Colleen,” he repeated. “Don’t leave. Talk to me.”

Her heart felt enlarged, like it was pressing too tight against her breastbone. Unwanted tears blurred her vision. What was wrong with her? She’d just kissed Eric Reyes like her life depended on it. Now his deep, low voice coaxed her in the twilight.

“Just…just leave me alone,” she said haltingly—stupidly—before she yanked her T-shirt over her head.

He picked up her tote bag, holding it out to her like a peace offering. “I didn’t come out here to ask you to leave. I’ve watched you swim here the last few summers. I came out here tonight to tell you to continue.”

Her head swung around, and their gazes locked. She wished like hell she didn’t believe him. His kindness was too much to bear after that sudden upsurge of grief and anger followed by that inexplicable blaze of pure desire. A wild need to escape overwhelmed her.

Tears blurred her vision as she grabbed her tote bag and jogged across the sand, leaving the source of her turmoil behind.

Chapter One

The first thing Colleen Kavanaugh Sinclair saw when she walked into Dr. Fielding’s familiar examination room was her son, Brendan, slouching in a chair. The second thing was her arch-nemesis standing nonchalantly next to him. Once she took in Eric Reyes’s unexpected presence, pretty much everything faded from her awareness for two stunned seconds.

Of course, he wasn’t really her arch-nemesis. That was just stupid. An enemy would have to mean something to her, and Eric Reyes did not mean anything.

“Colleen, Dr. Reyes mentioned that you two know one another.” Dr. Fielding’s voice interrupted her dazed disbelief.

She blinked and forced her attention to Dr. Fielding. He looked especially short, round and amiable while standing next to the brooding, dark tower of maleness that was Eric Reyes. Dr. Fielding had moved to Harbor Town around twelve years ago, soon after Colleen herself had returned. He’d delivered Brendan and her daughter, Jenny. Because he hadn’t lived in Harbor Town at the time of the crash, he clearly didn’t get the history and thick emotion that ran like a humming electrical wire beneath his seemingly innocuous statement about her and Eric knowing one another.

“Did he?” Colleen returned, eyebrows arched.

“Yes, he’s told me you two work together at The Family Center. Wonderful place. I’ve heard Colleen speak twice now about the facility,” he said, turning to Eric. “Once for the Rotary Club and once for the Pediatric Society in Detroit. She’s a talented public educator and speaker, in addition to being a gifted clinician. But I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Eric,” Dr. Fielding said.

His warm, friendly glance between Eric and Colleen melted when he noticed Eric’s wooden expression and Colleen’s averted gaze. She inhaled deeply for courage. If Eric could seem so calm, so could she.

“I work at The Family Center,” Colleen corrected. “Dr. Reyes is a volunteer. He comes in a few hours a week.” Blessing us with his supreme presence, Colleen finished silently. Eric’s mouth twitched, as if she’d spoken the words out loud. If she hadn’t been thrown so off balance by Eric’s unexpected presence at her son’s doctor’s appointment, she probably would have had to hide a grin at the knowledge that her arrow had hit its target.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him quietly instead.

Eric held up a chart. “Dr. Fielding consulted with me about Brendan’s case today. I examined Brendan. Even though your son hasn’t quite finished his course of penicillin, I recommended an X-ray and bone scan. We’ve received the results.”

“You recommended them?” Colleen repeated. She hadn’t realized he’d examined her son, although she now recalled Brendan mentioning a funny, cool young doctor dude who had looked at his foot last week before Colleen had taken him for X-rays in a different part of the hospital. Dr. Fielding had said he’d have a specialist take a look at the foot, but neither that comment or her son’s description had brought to mind Eric Reyes, who, in Colleen’s opinion, was an interfering, arrogant block of ice. Sure, he might have that glossy, dark, movie-star-quality hair and angular jaw that kept the secretaries at The Family Center wide-eyed and breathless. And she conceded he possessed an authoritative yet trustworthy bedside manner.

But Colleen’s days of being overwhelmed by those surface charms were long over.

“Dr. Reyes is Harbor Town Memorial’s finest orthopedic surgeon, Colleen. I immediately went to him when I had questions about Brendan’s foot problem.”

Her brow crinkled. She glanced anxiously at Brendan. Her son gave a small, sheepish shrug and rolled his eyes. Her heart squeezed in her chest in compassion for him. She knew how much he longed to be back playing football, how much he despised all these doctor appointments. The “foot problem” had become the bane of his twelve-year-old existence.

Over the past month, Brendan had acquired a limp. Initially, it’d hardly been noticeable, but it became more pronounced every day. Brendan denied any serious pain, insisting there was only a dull ache in his right foot. Colleen had assumed he’d pulled a muscle or gotten run over by an unusually big kid at Little League football practice, although Brendan and his coach insisted nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. She’d made an appointment with Dr. Fielding, not really expecting anything more than the normal bruises and sprains Brendan had acquired over his active boyhood years. Dr. Fielding had discovered internal swelling and recommended a course of antibiotic treatment. Much to Brendan’s distress, Dr. Fielding had also put the kibosh on any more football for the rest of the season.

Eric Reyes was an orthopedic surgeon, though. His presence at this day-long hospital visit implied the foot problem was a good deal more significant than a bruise or infection.

“He needs a specialist? It’s that serious?” Colleen asked Eric.

“Brendan hasn’t responded to the course of oral antibiotics. The swelling of the soft tissue has increased, as has his pain. Considerably,” Eric replied.

She knew patients at The Family Center responded to Eric to an uncommon degree, seeming to instinctively trust his intelligent, incisive, perpetually unruffled manner. What he was saying in that even, authoritative tone didn’t soothe Colleen at the moment, however. It frightened her.

This did sound serious.

“Your pain is worse?” Colleen said, turning to Brendan. Her son shrugged again.

“It doesn’t hurt that bad,” Brendan mumbled.

“On a pediatric scale of pain, Brendan is scoring in the high category,” Eric said.

“Brendan, why didn’t you tell me you were hurting so much?” Colleen asked worriedly. Brendan hunched down, revealing little to her but the crown of his dark gold, wavy hair. She forced down a maternal desire to go over and hug him. She swore her son had skipped preadolescence and moved right into teenage rebellion. It bewildered her at times, how independent he wanted to be, how withdrawn he could get. One second he’d been an adorable, chubby two-year-old, the next he’d become an impenetrable puzzle.