Free Overnight Sensation by Karen Foley Page A

sleep with Garrett Stokes after knowing him for so short a time.

    What had made Helena risk her life for a man who, despite their intimacies, was a virtual stranger? Although really, looking at the guy, Ivy had a pretty good idea what had driven Helena to act as she had. Garrett Stokes was the embodiment of everything sexy and masculine. He was a true-life hero, a guy who would risk everything for what he believed in. A woman would have to be crazy to let a man like him go.

    While Ivy would have preferred to talk to Helena Vanderveer herself about her experiences, that was clearly out of the question. But asking Garrett Stokes to give her details wasn’t. And not just for pointers. For the whole shebang.

    GARRETT LAY IN A ROPE hammock beside the casita he’d claimed as his own, enjoying the darkness and listening to the night bugs in the trees. He cradled a cold beer in one hand and idly pushed the hammock into a gentle swing with one bare foot on the ground. In his other hand, he held a photo. He’d pulled it out of his wallet hours ago, and despite the fact the sun had set and he could no longer see the image, he hadn’t put the photo away. He smoothed his thumb across the snapshot, feeling the familiar creases from where it had been folded and tucked into his wallet so many times.

    It was a picture of Ivy, taken several years earlier. If he closed his eyes, he could see the image in his mind. A younger Ivy, laughing into the camera, a hand lifted to capture the errant corkscrew of hair that had blown across her cheek. She was at the beach, and he could just make out the sweep of ocean in the blurred background. The shot wasn’t a posed one, like the promotional photos she’d done for the release of her films. It wasn’t a paparazzo photo, either, taken without her consent or knowledge. It was a joyful candid, captured by someone she’d trusted. Garrett didn’t know for certain, but he suspected her brother, Devon, had snapped it.

    Garrett had carried the photo with him since shortly after Devon James had died. Once the doctors had declared him dead, Ivy had briefly been allowed back into the small hospital room. Garrett knew she had no memory of the soldier who’d occupied the narrow hospital bed next to her brother’s, and why would she? The curtain between the beds had been open enough for her to see him, but his head had been bandaged and his face swollen and discolored to the point where his own mother would have had difficulty recognizing him.

    Through a medicated haze, he’d watched her weep before carefully placing the photo on the blanket that covered Devon. Garrett must have made a sound, because for one instant, she’d looked over at him. In that split second, his entire world had shifted.

    Her departure had caused a rush of air to billow over the bed, and the photograph had fluttered from its resting place and drifted to the floor beneath Garrett’s bed. Several days had passed before he’d been able to get a janitor to retrieve it for him. His promise to Devon aside, he’d had some half-baked fantasy that he’d find her and make her smile again, the way she did in the photo. After a while, the photo had become his motivation, the reason he’d endured the months of torturous rehabilitation necessary to his recovery.

    It was stupid, he knew, but sometimes that photo had been the one thing that kept him going. He had told himself that once he was fully recovered, he’d look her up. He’d make sure she was doing okay, just as he’d promised her brother. Although Garrett had indeed followed her career, he’d never gotten up the courage to contact her. He’d told himself she was doing just fine, that she didn’t need anyone watching over her. But he’d watched over her just the same, albeit from a distance. Their relationship probably never would have amounted to anything more than a distant infatuation. But the day Finn had approached him about making a movie had changed that.

    Even