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was—alone in a locked
room with the one man who was truly dangerous to her designs. With
her skirts up about her hips. With him pressing his
all-too-persuasive body into the softly yielding flesh of her own.
With an erection fueled by years of frustrated desires.
    As if reading her thoughts, he softened his
tone. Still holding her head in his massive hands, he said, “But
that’s over. We’re together now. I’ve come here to rescue you.”
    She put her hands to his shoulders and pushed
him away. “Just what is it you’re rescuing me from? ”
    “From the clutches of England, of
course.”
    She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I
rescued myself from England, thank you very much! Did you
imagine I’d wait all this time, like some damsel in distress, for
you to fashion a miracle and rescue me? When I had no indication
that you ever thought about me at all?”
    His hand stilled in the act of reaching for
her breast.
    “I thought about you always. I never stopped
longing for you.”
    “You never sent me word. Was I supposed to
read your mind? Wait for a man who walked out of my life without so
much as a backward glance? Without regrets of any kind?”
    “You’re wrong, Gabé. I regretted very much
having to leave you behind.”
    “You regretted? You knew what you were
going to do and you didn’t tell me. You could have made any number
of choices. You could have taken me with you. If you’d told me what
you were doing and asked me to wait, even...but you’d have had to
trust me, wouldn’t you? I might have told my father—whom I
despised—what you were up to. I can’t believe the arrogance of you
thinking you could waltz back into my life and dictate my future
after all you did to me.”
    His hand made the arrested journey and slid
over her breast. “Is a future with me so formidable a prospect?” he
asked in a husky tone.
    She shoved him away and fought to sit up.
“Future? What kind of life would I have with you? A pirate’s wench?
Hunted by the law? Hung by the neck till I’m dead? You don’t seem
to understand, Rodrigo. You stand in the way of all I hold dear.
You once told me I didn’t fit into your plans. Well, now you don’t
fit into mine.”
    “You have no feelings for me at all, I
suppose?” he said in the tone of a man who was beginning to feel
rejected.
    She lifted her head defiantly and said,
“None!”
    His eyes narrowed and a hard, calculating
gleam replaced his vulnerable gaze. “You wanted me once.”
    “ But I thought you were someone else! You played your part so well, I believed it. I thought we’d be
married and you’d bring me out here, and together we’d revive Beau
Vallon.”
    “Beau Vallon is an empty dream, Gabé. It
always was.”
    “It’s not an empty dream to me. And it’s what
I’ve always wanted from you. What feelings I had for you died the
minute you deserted me. I’ve achieved everything I always wanted,
with no help from you or any other man. I’m not the innocent girl
you left behind, looking to you to remedy the injustice of my life.
I’m a grown woman who knows what she wants and knows how to get it.
I just don’t need you anymore. I don’t even need what you once
provided. It was fun pretending with you, I won’t deny it. But you
were an escape from a life I found intolerable. I have the life I
want now. And you just stand in the way.”
    “So you choose Beau Vallon.” He got up and
began to pace the cabin. “You don’t know what you’re choosing.”
    “That’s none of your concern.”
    “If you didn’t care about me, why write a
play about me, and act out the part yourself? Why show me to the
world as the image of your secret longings?”
    She had an eerie sense that she was once
again an actress in her own play. Except that she’d changed roles,
and he was the one in control. “What I longed for, ”
she said heatedly, “was for my father to give me what he’d stolen
from my mother. I used you, Rodrigo. I knew if I could