"Your sweet little dove tossed Carter on his ass. Twice."

Douglas was momentarily dumbstruck. "Really? Well, I still feel sorry for today's women. Imagine living in fear of being mugged."

Noah chuckled. "Save your pity for her mugger. If Sloan doesn't have a black belt in karate or whatever it was she used on Carter, then she's damned close to it." He glanced at his watch. "I have a phone call to make."

"Are you going out tonight?" Douglas said, belatedly noticing that Noah was wearing a suit and tie.

When Noah said he was, father and daughter both looked at him as if he were abandoning them to an unspeakable fate by leaving them alone with each other. Courtney even sounded bitter. "So, who is the lucky lady tonight?"

"I'm having dinner with Paris and Sloan—"

"The man has no shame!" Courtney announced to the ceiling. "He's hitting on sisters. It's incestuous!"

"—and Paul Richardson," Noah added, ignoring her and speaking to his father.

"Who is he?"

"Sloan's friend."

"Poor guy," Courtney mocked as she pulled her headphones back over her ears. "He's about to lose his girlfriend to Palm Beach's most eligible, most devastatingly handsome bachelor."

Courtney's prediction was far from accurate. In fact, as far as Noah could tell, Sloan Reynolds barely knew he was part of the foursome at the Ocean Club, which wouldn't have bothered him except that she was beginning to intrigue him. For one thing, it was difficult to assimilate that the delicate, golden-haired beauty seated across from him in a sexy black cocktail dress was the same disheveled athlete who'd thrown Carter on his ass that morning.

When he listened to her chatting with Paris or Paul Richardson, Noah couldn't imagine how he'd mistaken her for being boring or witless last night, but if he asked her a direct question himself, she seemed unable or unwilling to piece together a long sentence. If he didn't address a comment directly to her, she avoided looking at him altogether.

Richardson was another enigma. Although he'd come with Sloan, he was paying as much attention to Paris, and Sloan didn't seem to mind. Paris was full of surprises, too. Noah had known her for years, but tonight she was more animated with two strangers than she'd ever been with him or anyone else he'd ever seen her with. Moreover, Noah had the impossible impression that Paris was developing a genuine fondness for her sister's boyfriend.

If he hadn't been being made to feel like an outsider, Noah would have found the evening completely fascinating.

The dance floor at the Ocean Club was separated from the dining room by a trellis covered with tropical plants, and while they were waiting for dessert to be served, Noah decided to get Sloan on the dance floor, where she couldn't ignore him as easily. He actually anticipated that she'd decline if he gave her the opportunity, so he got up and walked around to her chair before he asked her to dance.

Her head jerked up and she stared at him in surprised dismay. "Oh, no. Thank you. I don't think so."

Caught somewhere between amusement and annoyance, Noah looked at Richardson. "Do you have trouble getting her on the dance floor, or is it just me?"

"Sometimes," he admitted with a relaxed grin; then he looked at Sloan and jokingly said, "Noah is going to look like a wallflower if you leave him standing there. Men have feelings, too, you know. Have a heart and dance with him."

Noah noticed how slowly and reluctantly she stood up, and he noticed that she seemed unaware that every man she passed on the way to the dance floor stared at her. In his experience, beautiful women were always conscious of their appeal, and the fact that she either didn't care or didn't know, further added to her allure. When he took her in his arms on the dance floor, she held herself as far from him as possible and focused her gaze on the third button on his shirt.

Sloan was so tense that her body felt like a piece of plywood. Noah Maitland had been watching her like a hawk all evening, and now she was forced to dance with him. He made her so nervous that she couldn't come up with a coherent sentence when he asked her a direct question. He was so incredibly good-looking that women had given her envious looks on the way to the dance floor, and the men stared at her, too, wondering what possible attraction she could hold for someone like him. He was Sara's dream, but he was Sloan's nightmare.

She realized that the more she ignored him, the more interested in her he seemed to become; therefore, she thought it was logical that the best way to turn him off would probably be to act interested in him. Except Sloan couldn't do that, because that would require flirting with him or at the very least looking straight into those mesmerizing silver eyes of his, and she couldn't make herself attempt either thing.

Noah moved automatically to the music, trying to remember the last time he'd danced with anyone who acted as distant as Sloan, and he gave up when he got as far back as prep school. He decided to loosen her up with a little flirtatious conversation. "What do the men in Bell Harbor do to impress you?"

Startled by the new, slightly intimate note in his baritone voice, Sloan said the first thing that came to mind. "They don't."

"That's a relief."

"What is?"

"It's a relief that they don't impress you either. That way, I can soothe my wounded pride with the knowledge that I'm not the only one who can't get anywhere with you."

For a second, he thought she wasn't going to bother answering; then she finally focused those remarkable purple-blue eyes on him. "I meant they don't try," she said, looking at him as if he were being absurd.

Noah abruptly abandoned the rules of sophisticated repartee by which he normally lived and took a direct approach. "Tell me something?"

"I'll try."

"Why is it you're perfectly able and willing to carry on a conversation with everyone but me?"

Sloan felt as stupid as she knew she sounded. "I can't explain it."

"But you do notice it?"

She nodded.

Noah looked down into those long-lashed eyes that she finally raised to him, and he forgot how frustrated he'd been a moment before. He smiled. "What can I do to help you relax?"

Sloan heard something distinctly sexual in that, and it completely unnerved her. "Are you flirting with me?" she asked bluntly.

"Not very successfully," he replied just as bluntly.

"I wish you wouldn't try," she said honestly. Softening her tone, Sloan added, "But if you ever come to Bell Harbor, I have a friend I'd like to introduce to you. Sara would be perfect for you."