Marshall sipped from his glass of wine, and tried not to anxiously check his watch. The reservation had been set for eight, he'd arrived maybe five minutes prior to that, and Eva had always struck him as the punctual sort. She'd be here. Even if only to tell him she'd changed her mind, Eva Turner wasn't the sort to leave a man high and dry without a perfunctory phone call to bail.

So why was he nervous? No, that wasn't the right word. Excited. And Marshall couldn't recall the last time he'd felt so eager on a first date. Or, as he tried to recall, the last time he'd showed up at a restaurant ahead of the woman?

Perhaps he was old-fashioned to think it was a man's place to pick-up and drop-off the woman, a mark of his mother's insistence that her boys grow up to be thoughtful and chivalrous gentlemen. But Eva was a far cry from the sort of woman he usually encountered.

She had a prickly, difficult and, some would say, abrasive quality, but he found her...refreshing.

And there was more there to be uncovered.

He'd seen glimpses and flashes of the woman underneath the hard shell that made him want to discover the rest. To strip her bare until he found the soft and supple promise of more than just her naked curves.

Eva wasn't about mincing words and Marshall had to admit he'd admired her candor. She'd made her reasons why both direct and plain; her intentions and motivations clear and without misinterpretation. She wanted the simple, the casual and the easy, which was all he was able to provide. This was likely to be one of the most exciting summer affairs he'd experienced in a very long time.

He felt her seconds before his eyes actually found her in the crowded restaurant, sort of an electric hum along the back of his neck that had the little fine hairs standing on end. And as he took in the pleasing little package, Marshall had to admit, with a pop of surprise, Ms. Turner cleaned up rather well.

Gone were the stressed jeans and shapeless t-shirts in favour of a bold, deep blue dress that showcased she had a lot going on beneath her usually shabby attire.

Particularly a pair of interesting legs, made endless thanks to sexy little heels. She'd freshened up her face with makeup, though she didn't wear much and certainly didn't need it.

The combined effect almost made up for the hatchet job haircut which she'd managed to style and soften in pleasing curls and waves to frame her lovely face.

Rising, Marshall pulled out her chair. "Ms. Turner."

Eva slid into the proffered seat, crossed a leg and thanked God she'd managed to cross the length of the dining room without breaking her neck. Why oh why had she let Jenelle talk her into the shoes was a question she'd wrestled with all the way to the restaurant.

He'd seemed anxious when she saw him sitting there, all alone with only a bottle and couple of glasses for company. His hair tied back, the golden tail skimming the crisp collar of a navy shirt tucked into grey slacks cuffed at the ankle.

All easy masculinity wrapped up in casual elegance.

The second he'd locked eyes on her, the way his face had lit up with surprise and heat and stunned male pleasure; his gaze sliding all the way down to rest on those pumps...was enough to weaken the knees. Eva had to give Jenelle her dues for hitting the mark.

This time.

"I'd ordered this while waiting. I hope you're partial to merlot."

She watched as he poured out a glass from the bottle had he waiting on the table. The deep, full-bodied red glowed in the low lighting.

"Wine is wine." Eva raised her glass, took a sip and allowed the lush, spicy notes to dance along her tongue. "But this is delicious." She sipped again, humming with appreciation. The ambience steeped in old world charm and modern sophistication. Because it was a fine, soft evening the windows were thrown open, allowing the evening breeze to float around them, carrying with it a hint of salt and the steady rush of waves.

The combined effect was intoxicating. As was the glimmer in his eyes when she shifted hers back and realized he was watching her intently.

"You look incredible."

"You sound surprised."

"I am," Marshall admitted, rolling the stem of his glass between his fingers. "I haven't seen you in anything but your usual grunge gear since we first met."

She jerked a shoulder, without insult or apology. "I like being comfortable. And I don't have anyone to impress on the island. Or anyone I care to."

"So, your standard choice of attire is a shield?"

She could have lied, it would have been easy to deny the observation, but for the sake of playing the game, Eva decided it would be in her best interest to pick and chose her battles. He was sharp, and would call her bullshit if she wasn't careful. There was nothing wrong in admitting that she downplayed her appearance.

"Yes. They're a shield. I also wear wedding gold band from time to time." She gestured to her now naked ring finger. "The girls are another shield, too. Most men won't approach a woman with such extensive baggage."

Easing back, Marshall's head listed to the side. "You really weren't kidding when you said you weren't looking for a man to complete the picture, eh?"

"I never kid about things like that," Eve answered accepting the menu from the waiter and paused long enough for them to place their orders for appetizers and entrees.

"If I wanted a relationship then I would have one. But I don't. Being a parent is time-consuming enough. Add in the business and I'm swamped. I don't have room for a committed relationship. Not full-time. And the girls don't need a surrogate father who will never truly love them as his own."

There was hurt there, Marshall realized. And a lingering resentment that he doubted even she knew she still carried. "Speaking from personal experience?"

First landmine of the evening, Eva thought. But still safe enough to answer. She'd agonized over this in the shower and decided she needed to give him something to chew on. Otherwise this was going to be a very long and painfully awkward evening.

"No. I didn't have a father in my life. My sperm donor, as I've taken to calling him, took off when I was an infant. Growing up my mom certainly had her fair share of men in and out, most of whom didn't stick around long enough for me to remember their names, let alone their faces."

"Being a single parent is tough," Marshall said, with a nod to Eva. "So no siblings, then? She never remarried and had more kids?"

"No, she had her hands full with me and Alyssa so-" catching herself too late.

"Alyssa?"

"Cat," she supplied lamely. "Gorgeous little calico. Died when I was twelve."

Marshall nodded but the tension in his brows said he wasn't entirely sold.

Thankfully the arrival of the server with their appetizers provided the diversion she needed. Once they were alone again, Eva broke the silence first, turning the conversation towards safer ground.

"So," Eva spooned up a bite of gnocchi, savoured the lush little ricotta pillow enrobed in creamy sauce, "why did you leave Haven?"

Marshall topped up his wine, pouring with his left, and set the bottle between them. "For love, is probably the romantic answer, but the truth is closer to I just needed a reason to break away. To see something beyond the simple small town life. And the mainland might have been safer, easier, but I didn't want safe. Neither did Gillian. She'd got a scholarship to University of Toronto for Biochemistry. We'd dated throughout most of high school and she'd asked me to come with her. So I did."

"And what happened to Gillian?" Eva scooted her plate closer to Marshall so he could sample a bit of her meal.

"We broke up exactly three weeks after we unpacked."

Eva snorted. "That blows."

"Yes, but it lead to lots of heartbreak sex with young college co-eds and a few mid-twenty career types. I wasn't lonely for long, not with my good looks and small-town boyish charm," he said, eyes glittering and offered her a sliver of steak from his fork. "But the breakup had created a bit of a problem, financially, you see? We'd planned to live together and split expenses, now I was on my own and trying to foot all the bills with no job and no savings."

"Why didn't you just pick up and go back to Haven?"

"Cause I'm too stubborn for my own good, as my mom would say. Besides, I'd come this far and was determined to make it work. Call me a sucker for punishment."

Eva nibbled on a toasted point of flat bread, narrowed those compelling brown eyes; a translucent shade of amber framed in smoky black. "So what did you do?"

"What I did best. I gambled."

"Oooh. A card shark, are you?"

"One of the best," he said without a hint of hesitation or humility. Seeing her glass was running low, Marshall reached for the opened bottle of sparkling water.

"My uncle taught me during the long summer months when he'd come down to visit and help my father with his contracting business. We'd play cards during our lunches, perched up on roofs or under the low hanging limbs of trees. But more important than the rules, my uncle taught me how to read people. It's the players more than the cards that tell a man what he needs to know in order to win the game."

God how he missed those days. Sitting around in the summer heat, sipping on beers after a long day of sweat and labour. The way his uncle would let fly a raunchy laugh and give Marshall a nudge every time a cute girl walked past.

But soon enough Uncle Benjamin's pack a day and love of bourbon caught up with him, and saw him in the ground at an early fifty-seven. The first kick in the teeth lesson that life was too fucking short.

"I was good as a kid, but as a man, I was untouchable. Thanks to a couple of tourneys, made enough to put myself through school, pay my rent. Every table I joined, I'd walk away flush."

"If you were that good, why'd you stop?"

He scraped his teeth across his bottom lip, chewed on that for a moment. "Because it took over my life. Brought me to some dark places and around darker people." Breaking a roll in half, Marshall watched the plumes of steam emanating from the soft flesh. "Just because I was good at it didn't make it any less of an addiction. Or dangerous."

Complete, unobstructed honesty. Eva sat for a moment, surprised and impressed. Most of what he'd relayed she'd already known from her careful research when he'd first come to the island, but she hadn't expected such...candour. Not from him.

Not on a first date.

The evening flowed with wine and conversation. And to Marshall's surprise, he was enjoying himself immensely, even though Eva had managed to keep most of the talk centered on him. Whenever he'd tried to swivel things back around, going in with the light and easy sort of questions he'd used to soften a difficult subject up during an interview, she'd expertly outmanoeuvred him time and again.

Despite his every ploy and tactic, Eva hadn't budged an inch and when the time came to pay the tab, he hadn't learned much of anything that he hadn't already known from the start.

A skill he found wildly arousing.

"You were rather impressive in there." He held open the restaurant door, allowed her to step out ahead of him into the humming street.

Pashmina wrapped around her shoulders, Eva smiled coyly up at him from beneath lowered lashes. "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you." Marshall shook his head with a smile. "Shall I hail us a cab?"

"No need. I drove here."

"Then I'll walk you to your car."

She hadn't parked far. Just around the corner in an open lot tucked between two condos. Marshall timed the moment perfectly, so that when she turned to say good night, he made his move.

He was smooth, his arms sliding around her waist, unhurried, with the leisurely stroke of hands around her hips. Giving her time to react, to pull away-if that was what she wanted.

Eva stood her ground and his mouth followed next, a whispered rub against her jaw, a skim of teeth against her lips. And when they parted, a welcomed invitation, he dove in.

Slow and deep and thorough.

A throaty hum purred in the back of her throat and trickled out with a sigh. She'd kissed plenty over the years, and certainly wasn't without her own skill but this man was fire.

And electricity. And lightening.

All wrapped up in one delicious package of muscle and man. Her hands rose to skim over wide shoulders, drawing him closer so that two well-toned bodies brushed and teased.

Firm hard lines against soft, willing angles.

Oh God, she'd forgotten how good this could feel.

Those lips slid down her throat, slow as honey down a spoon. A lazy exploration with teeth and tongue until Eva's eyes crossed. His hands shooting up her sides, thumbs circling under round, fullness of her breasts. And when his teeth sank into the delicate lobe of her ear, she whimpered through a moan.

If this kept up she would be ready and willing to have him take her on the hood of her car. Pedestrians and bystanders be damned. Groaning, she laced her fingers in his hair and hungrily yanked that incredible mouth of his back to hers for another bone-melting kiss.

Pressing against every hollow and line of his impressive body. Needing heat, friction and contact. Eva wanted that muscular build in a hundred different ways, all of them hot and sweaty and gloriously naked. And she wanted it now.

"We should go." Eva sank her teeth into his meaty, bottom lip. Tugged. "We should get out of here." Or the back seat would do. For round one, at least.

Marshall moaned against that suggestive little bite and the way her fingers curled around her belt. It didn't take a genius to understand-to know what she meant. Only an idiot would say no...He'd only planned to sample-to taste, to assuage the growing snarl of need that he hadn't been able to shake since that first, breathless kiss on the beach.

God, he wanted her. The ache of his erection had him almost cross-eyed and a second longer he was sure to beg. But somewhere in the distance, in the deepest recesses of his coherent thoughts, instinct cautioned him against moving too fast.

"Yeah, we should." And though it killed him, Marshall let her go. "Don't worry about me, I'll take a cab. Good night, Eva."

Disbelief, amusement, intrigue and the heat of sexual frustration all wrapped up in a stunned expression worth capturing on film, he thought. And smiled. So he wasn't going to be the only one caught up in tangled sheets tonight.

"Are you sure?" To pretend she wasn't surprised required a set of skills Eva didn't yet posses. He was saying no? Walking away? There was a twist she hadn't seen coming. Not after a kiss like that.

She'd tasted his hunger, felt the rush of need surging just beneath the skin and the way his hands hand tightened on her body, those long, nimble fingers flexing around her waist, she'd been sure he was a breath away from ripping the dress off her body.

His eyes searched her full of lust and something obscured by the night.

"I want you, Eva. More than I expected."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Problem is I want more than a night. Or a few. I want possibilities. I want tomorrows. I want to see what one day brings as it leads to a next, knowing that there could be room for more."

Eva's heart sank. "I can't give you that."

"I hope you change your mind," he said, and tortured them both with a final press of lips that made her insides ache. The feeling bittersweet. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Have it your way," she sighed, stuffing her car key into the door and tossing wave over her shoulder as she slid inside.

Only when Eva's car turned out into the street did Marshall finally-finally-breathe. Goddamn, he thought, the need for her still thick in his blood. The taste of her still rolling on his tongue. A ripe, potent flavour that had his belly growling for more.

Marshall had prepared himself for just about anything, but not such easy abandon. She'd been so open, so...pliant. Any other time, place or woman he wouldn't have hesitated to take her home.

But Eva was different. Exciting. And he wasn't about to see the game end in one, heated night of really...really awesome sex.

He was going with the slow burn. Drawing out the tension and wear her down. Tonight's little interlude had been the first step. She thought she had him so neatly figured out. So easily cornered. He'd thrown her off balance, and looked forward to doing it again. Soon.

And while Marshall knew he was going to suffer the worst case of blue balls since college, the look on her face was well worth the pain.

The cure for which, he thought with an uncomfortable shift to the left, was expensive Scotch and a cold, cold shower.