Patrick's voice followed her along the boardwalk from the restaurant to the fishing pier, exasperation breaking through his normally cool facade. She didn't turn to watch him, didn't have to. She knew he was following. His determined footsteps echoed on the long pier, a weathered wooden structure that was deserted but for Sabrina, her irate fiancé, and a single fisherman.

The white-haired fisherman leaned over the railing and ignored Sabrina as she passed, his gaze following the fishing line into a moonlit ocean.

Why hadn't she turned right instead of left as she'd left Annalina's? A simple change of direction and she'd be fleeing from Patrick on the sturdy concrete of the parking lot.

Beneath her feet, far below the weathered boards, the Atlantic danced, gentle waves swirled and crashed. Sabrina kept her eyes on the waves in the distance, far beyond the end of the pier. A full moon touched the water, made it sparkle as if the waves were sprinkled with diamonds and silver. It was so enchanting she could almost forget that she hated the water. All water. Lakes, rivers, and especially oceans.

"Dammit, Sabrina!" Patrick yelled.

At the end of the pier, Sabrina stopped and turned to face the man who had asked her--a hundred times or more, it seemed--to marry him. Tonight, after an unpleasant late dinner in the newest of her chain of seafood restaurants, he had demanded that she set the date.

"I'm too busy to think about a wedding right now. You know that." She lifted her chin, decided too late that it was a childish move, and as Patrick reached her she lowered her gaze to his chest. "With the new restaurants and all the changes...."

"Your father's been gone nearly eight months." Patrick whispered, his voice taking on a tested patience. "This opening went fairly well, and we've got four months before the Wilmington opening."

Sabrina smoothed her sensible navy skirt. It was a transparently apprehensive gesture, and unlike her. She didn't allow anyone to make her nervous.

"There's so much to do."

"And Sabrina Steele has to do it all herself," Patrick snapped. "The chef almost quit tonight, you know. It took me nearly an hour to calm the man down. You don't tell a chef of Paolo's caliber that there's too much red pepper in his signature dish." His patience was fading quickly. "Are you ever going to learn that you can't do everything alone?"

Patrick put light pressure on Sabrina's chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. It had been coming to this for months, but she'd tried to convince herself that her growing doubts about Patrick were the result of the stress of her father's death and the sudden responsibilities that came with her new position as head of his company. Steele Corporation owned and operated twenty-eight Annalina's restaurants, and there were four more slated to be opened in the next eight months. Stress.

But it was more than that. Or less. In her heart, Sabrina knew the answer was much less complicated.

She didn't love Patrick. There had been a time when she'd felt something more than this ... not true love, not passion, but a kinship. Their unofficial engagement was three years old, and in that time they'd settled into their relationship like a pair of old shoes. Broken in, comfortable.

This wasn't the way she wanted to spend the rest of her life, and she knew there had to be more than this to a relationship. It wasn't as if she asked for the moon. Sabrina Steele was nothing if not reasonable. She didn't expect her life to be exciting. It never had been, and she didn't expect that to change. She wasn't the kind of woman anyone would call wild. Or beautiful. Or irresistible.

Sabrina Steele was competent and unfailingly practical. In a crisis she could keep her head when everyone else was frantic.

And Paolo's dish had been entirely too spicy for this Florida crowd.

Her fingers twittered at her side. Even if she wasn't the most exciting woman in the world, there had to be more to life than this.

She and Patrick hadn't made love in months. First, there had been her father's sudden death to deal with, and after that there was always something ... a business trip for her or for Patrick, an out-of-town emergency, a headache. Sometimes hers and sometimes his. They didn't live together, and when they were traveling out of town, as now, they didn't even share a hotel room.

Appearances were important, they agreed. She was his boss, after all, and had been long before her father's passing.

Something had to happen.