Excerpt from Sun, Sand, Murder by John Keyse-Walker, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I am the customs officer for Anegada, and a special constable on the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force." For a reason that I could not fathom, the reply was delivered in a formal parade-ground voice. I instantly felt like an ass.

Cat came smartly to attention, lifting her outstretched hand into a snappy military salute. "Yes, suh!" she replied, drill sergeant sharp.

I felt like a huge ass.

An up-at-the-corner grin flashed across her face. I laughed. She laughed, no girlish giggle, a woman's laugh, warm and full.

"Mary Catherine Wells," she said, introducing herself. She dropped her hand from the salute and extended it in greeting again.

"Teddy Creque. It is a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Wells." I shook her hand. She allowed it to linger in my grasp. An invitation?

"My friends call me Cat. You can call me Cat." The sly grin again.

I was barely able to compose myself enough to collect the clients and their fishing gear, stamp their passports, and load them into my battered Royal Virgin Islands Police Force Land Rover. As I backed out of the parking space, my eyes were drawn to the sway of Cat's hips as she strolled back to the helicopter. Her timing was impeccable as she glanced back and caught me looking. The grin appeared a third time, followed by a little wave. I was hooked like a bonefish.

After that first encounter, it seemed as if events took over. I was not the instigator but certainly a willing participant. Cat's imp grin evolved into a saucy smile. Her playful eyes developed a seductive spark. When she flew in with passengers or cargo, the banter between us was light, smart, and sexy.

She flew in one day a month after our first encounter with guests for the Reef Hotel. After they were met and driven away, she offered to share a thermos of coffee with me. We sat in the shade of the terminal shed and talked for an hour. She told me about growing up "everywhere" as an army brat, how the military was her family business, and how she had become a pilot and served in the Persian Gulf in Operation Desert Storm. My part in the conversation was a description of my work as a fishing guide and a few tales of life here on the island.

I told myself that it was just friendly and innocent, but we both knew what was crackling just below the surface of our conversation. We were on the brink of acting out the same play that had been acted out a million times since the first innocent man had a coffee with an innocent woman he had not told his wife about. I spent the entire drive back to The Settlement that day convincing myself that nothing had happened and nothing was happening.

The following week Cat flew in with a cargo of spare generator parts and a six-pack of Red Stripe. We drove to Windlass Bight with nary a word, drank the beer, and made love on a blanket in the shade of the sea grape trees.

Then I went home to Icilda and the kids. As Icilda made dinner, she complained about a rude customer at the hotel restaurant who had left no tip. Tamia whined for permission to go shopping with a friend on Tortola over the weekend. Kevin proudly showed off a report card with all Bs as his marks. It was like any normal night in the Creque household, except for Cat's gasps, and her ultimate exclamation, playing out in my memory as a background soundtrack to the evening. It was like any normal night, if a normal night included the searing guilt of betraying your wife and children.

So it had been for these past few months, once or twice every week. Cat and I had savored each other's bodies neck-deep in the clear waters of Bones Bight. We had hasty, half-clothed sex against the wall of the deserted airport terminal. She had rocked languidly atop me at Table Bay, the motion of her hips timed to the thunder of the surf against the offshore reef. It was not love, or even the shadow of love. Neither of us harbored that illusion. It was lust, pure and simple. We took sex hungrily from one another and did not ask many questions, of each other or of ourselves.

Excerpted from Sun, Sand, Murder by John Keyse-Walker. Copyright © 2016 by John Keyse-Walker. Excerpted by permission of Minotaur Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.