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uneasy thinking about her out there in the night. Out there alone. He wanted to protect her, damn it.
    And every hour of the day, he pictured how the concise, neat script in her journal had grown wild and erratic as she described that captain’s assault. Grant remembered the blood that had splattered down to the page as she’d recorded the event.
    The man had discovered Miss Scott and attacked, but before he could truly harm her, Victoria launched herself onto his back, trying desperately to strangle him. While reading the words, Grant had cheered her.
    The cutthroat had flung her off and turned once more to Miss Scott, but Victoria had run at him again scratching and kicking. When he read how the bastard had backhanded her, Grant had held the journal so tightly his fingers made permanent indentions in the moist cover.
    He’d been proud when Victoria spat a mouthful of blood on the man’s boots, even while dreading his reaction. But then Miss Scott had been behind him, bringing down a rock….
    Grant wasn’t an emotional man, so the blinding rage he’d felt toward that bastard had staggered him.
    As did his fear.
    He’d felt desire for Victoria, and couldn’t help comparing himself to that captain.
    Christ, he wasn’t anything like him. It was inconceivable to Grant how a man could hurt a woman or touch a girl.
    Damn it, Victoria was no girl at nearly twenty-two. She was strong—able to hold her own. But another part of him argued that though she was older, she was still woefully naïve. She was strong, but still in an incredibly vulnerable position.
    It wasn’t until the moon had set that he slept.
    Â 
    Finally, he slept.
    As Tori waited at the edge of the camp, she watched the captain contemplating the stars, his face in a pattern of scowling, relaxing, and scowling again. She’d wondered the other morning why he unrolled his pallet directly under the one break in the canopy of limbs above and decided he wanted to prevent anything, or anything living, from falling on him. Now she knew he lay so he could look to the sky.
    The thought was incongruous with her idea of him as the forbidding, stern captain, but then she was rethinking him anyway. Though she had no experience, no touchstone or guide stick to determine a man’s duplicity, she’d begun to believe he was telling the truth. He’d come for them.
    Now to get Cammy to believe. This morning, when Tori related her exchange with Captain Sutherland, Cammy had said she feared he’d taken the information from her journal. Tori admitted that she was torn, with half of her thinking Sutherland told the truth, but Cammy had seemed more concerned about any possible journal mention of the cave.
    When Sutherland’s eyes finally slid closed and the rise and fall of his chest grew deep and even, the wind had picked up to sieve the palms and curl waves ashore, as though in tune with Tori’s unsettled feelings. She wrapped her arms around herself. Why had the sight of him gazing up at the stars softened something in her?
    Lost in thought, Tori trudged back to the cave and was surprised to find Cammy waking.
    â€œYou’ve made a decision,” Cammy said, stretching her arms over her head. “It’s written on your face. So, do you think your grandfather sent him?”
    Tori scratched her ear. “Yes.”
    â€œEight years after the fact?” Cammy sat up and brought her knees to her chest.
    Tori sat on her own pallet and considered the question as if she hadn’t already done so fifty times. “I know I shouldn’t, but I think he came for us.”
    â€œAre you trusting him because he’s handsome?”
    Tori flushed and stared at her toes. He did easily fit her idea of a rescuing knight with his tall frame packed with muscle, his expression intense and resolute, but he also exuded a sheer force of will that she had never reckoned with. He wanted her on that ship. “No,