Chapter 2

“Michele!”

He caught up with her at the northwest end of the beach as she approached a ridge of volcanic rock jutting up from the sand that marked the boundary of the hotel’s private beach.

When he grabbed her hand and forced her to stop, pulling her around to face him, she felt an instant of anger and half raised her free hand as if she would have pounded on his broad chest.

She stared up at him, her clenched hand motionless now. She could see him clearly in the moonlight, and she wished it was dark because she knew he could see her just as clearly.

“What are you running from?” he demanded.

Almost idly, she noted that he was in excellent shape since he wasn’t even breathing hard from the race. Her own heart was pounding, and she couldn’t seem to draw enough air into her lungs. “Let me go,” she demanded.

He released her hand but only so that he could grasp both her shoulders firmly. “I want to know why you’re running, Michele.”

She felt smothered by him, trapped, despite the open space all around them. He was so big, and he’d caught her all too easily and quickly in spite of her head start. She couldn’t escape him. But she had to stop this before something irrevocable happened, before it was too late. Panic rose in her, and this time her fists did pound against his chest.

“Let me go! I won’t let you do this to me, I won’t!”

Ian barely felt the blows. He had run after her instinctively, thinking only of stopping her because there had been something wild and frightened in her eyes. It was in her voice now, in the supple strength of her slender body as she fought desperately to get away from him. Her words made no sense to him, but the thin sound of her voice did. She was afraid of him somehow, almost terrified, and the realization was like a knife in his chest.

He should have released her simply to reassure her that he wouldn’t hurt her, but he didn’t want to see her run away from him again. Without stopping to think, he pulled her into his arms, trapping her hands between them and holding her firmly.

“Michele, stop it. Be still. I’m not going to hurt you.” He forced himself to speak quietly. She went on struggling for a moment, but then her breath caught as her movements made her lower body press against his, and she seemed to freeze.

A small wave lapped over their feet gently. His hands were on her bare back now, and her skin was every bit as soft and smooth as it looked. Her hair had come loose, tumbling down her back and over his hands like warm, heavy silk. She was utterly still, hardly seeming to breathe, but her delicate body was pressed against his and he could feel every curve, feel the warmth of her.

“No,” she said in a very soft but distinct voice. Her head tilted back slowly as she looked up at him, and moonlight shimmered darkly in her eyes. Against his chest, her fingers uncurled and spread, but she didn’t try to push him away.

His own fingers were moving, lightly probing the straightness of her spine as one hand slid up toward her nape and the other found the small of her back. She felt so fragile against him, so feminine, and his entire body was reacting wildly, all his senses so sharpened it was almost painful. His heart hammered against his ribs, and a jolt of pure, raw desire settled in his loins with a throbbing ache.

“No?” he murmured, knowing that they weren’t talking about fear now. Her eyes were wide, fixed on his face, her lips slightly parted and trembling.

“Don’t do this. Don’t let this happen.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

His arms tightened around her. “You knew it would happen, didn’t you? That’s why you ran.”

The admission she had made horrified her, leaving her painfully vulnerable. “That’s insane! How could I possibly even think— Let me go, Ian!”

“You knew,” he repeated, his voice deepening and going rough. “You felt it, too.”

Michele shook her head, but it was a helpless not a negative gesture. If she had felt trapped before, it was nothing compared to this feeling. The very suddenness and stark force of the attraction had granted her no time to find a defense, and her effort to escape had been useless. And somewhere inside her, deeper than thought, was an acknowledgment of inevitability.

Being in his arms felt so right. Her body had known that the instant it had touched his, and she couldn’t deny the sharp excitement surging through her.

Michele felt him move, a subtle shifting that brought her more intimately against him. She gasped at the sensation and managed a single, strangled protest. “Don’t.”

Ian bent his head slowly, blocking out the moonlight until all she could see was the glimmer of his eyes. Her own eyes closed slowly as his lips touched hers. For an instant she sensed that she was poised on the brink, as if she still had a choice. But then the choice was made, and there was no going back. She felt herself melt even closer against him, her arms lifting to his neck, her mouth opening wildly beneath the increasing pressure of his.

As easily and simply as that, something detonated between them, and the shock waves of it made them both shudder. Ian gathered her even closer, lifting her up against him so that she was nearly off her feet. Her breasts were pressed to his chest, burning him even through their clothing, and her yielding loins fit his as if their bodies had been made for each other.

Michele was drowning in waves of heat, totally helpless against what was happening. She had been kissed before, but the experience had always left her unmoved. Apparently she wasn’t a sensual woman; she had never felt the slightest urge to go beyond kisses. In Ian’s arms, though, no simple urge drove her; the need to be closer, to have more of him, was a compulsion stronger than anything she’d ever felt before.

His mouth was hard and hungry, the deep exploration of his tongue making her entire body quiver. She responded without thought or hesitation, the urgency inside her sweeping all else before it in a tide of need. Every stark, new sensation was somehow familiar, as if she had always known how it would be with him. The hard strength of his chest compressing her aching breasts, his taut belly against hers, the throbbing fullness of his loins nestled intimately in her yielding softness—it was all familiar and what her body craved.

His hand tangled in her hair, and his legs widened as his other hand slid below the small of her back to hold her harder against him. Pleasure exploded inside her, hot and dizzying, and a moan of desire caught raggedly in her throat. Then he lifted his head abruptly, and the sound she made in response was a murmur of disappointment.

“Michele.” His voice was dark, liquid, the heavy need in it a sound that was almost pain. His entire body was taut, and his chest rose and fell as if he had run some desperate race.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered, tightening her arms around his neck as she tried to pull his head back down.

For an instant, Ian almost gave in. The slender body in his arms was warm and willing, moving against him even now with a need that matched his own. And her breathy plea snatched at his control, the implicit surrender filling his mind until he could hardly think of anything but drawing her down to the wet sand and fusing their bodies together in a heated mating. Only the sure knowledge that she would hate him afterward gave him the will to stop.

Both his hands found her hips, and he gently forced her lower body away from his. She squirmed in his hold, trying to move closer again, and Ian bit back a groan. Harshly, he demanded, “Who am I, Michele?”

She blinked up at him, bewildered. “Ian,” she murmured.

His hands tightened, and he made himself go on, hating this. “Ian what? Finish it.”

Her lips, pouty from his kisses, quivered suddenly, and she went still in his grasp. “Stuart,” she whispered.

“Is that who you want in your bed?”

The stark question went through Michele like a cold knife, bringing sanity at last. Her arms were still around his neck. She removed them slowly, then stepped jerkily back until his hands dropped from her. Her legs were shaking, her body was shaking, and it hurt to breathe. Part of her wanted to cry out to him in anguish, demanding to know why he had spoiled it, why he’d had to remind her of what they were; another part of her was trying to cope with the enormity of what she’d almost done.

“Thanks…for reminding me,” she forced herself to say as steadily as possible.

“I want you, Michele,” he said in a low voice that was almost guttural. “Right now, right here in the sand, I want you.”

She was dimly aware of understanding that he had stopped because the choice she would have made in the heat of desire was a blind one.

Michele knew it, too. Her mind had been programmed implacably against him for twenty years, yet her body craved his desperately at the first touch. There was no way to reconcile that conflict. No way at all.

She drew herself up stiffly. “You shouldn’t have come out here after me,” she murmured. “You should have let me run.”

He shook his head slowly. “You can’t run from this.”

“I have to.”

“Michele—”

“I have to. I won’t destroy my family, Ian. That price is too high; I can’t pay it. There can’t be anything between us. Not even peace.”

“There is something between us. It isn’t hate, and God knows it isn’t peace, but it’s real, Michele. You can’t ignore it. And you can’t run away from it.”

“Watch me.”

He swore under his breath, then said roughly, “And if I pulled you down in the sand right now? If I kissed you and touched you until you were holding on to me just the way you were a few minutes ago? Could you run then?”

With naked, simple honesty, she answered, “No.”

He took half a step toward her, almost as if her admission had yanked at him, then stopped and held himself as stiffly as she. “But you’d hate me, wouldn’t you?”

“I think I would.” She felt tears sting her eyes and blinked them back. Her hands spread unconsciously in a gesture of helplessness, then fell. “Stay away from me, Ian. For both our sakes. For the sake of that torch we might be able to carry better than our fathers have.”

“And that’s it?”

Michele felt impossibly tired; her entire body ached dully with the throbbing echoes of what he had awakened in her. She nodded and turned away from him.

“Wait.” He hesitated, then muttered an oath and shook his head as if he were at a loss. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew her small clutch bag. Holding it out to her, he said, “You left this at the table.”

She accepted the purse automatically, and then kept walking back up the beach toward the hotel.

He didn’t follow her.

She found her shoes near the door she’d run out earlier and picked them up without bothering to put them on. Her hose was ruined, she knew, and both sand and the residue of salt water clung to her feet and ankles. She didn’t care. Ignoring the few curious stares she garnered in the lobby, she crossed to the elevators and rode up to her floor.

She felt immeasurably changed and numbly bewildered by the suddenness of it. Yesterday she had been confident and secure, her emotions on an even keel, virtually detached from the feud that had altered and ruined so many lives. But in only a few short hours, her detachment had been stripped away from her.

Her father had often been annoyed by her disinclination to join him in cursing the Stuarts, but he had shrugged away her lack of venom because he loved his daughter. Perhaps he even knew on some level that hate was a particularly ugly thing on the face of a woman. Still, it had never occurred to him that at the core of herself she didn’t hate as strongly as he did. He simply expected it of her.

And she knew without a shadow of a doubt that if he discovered how close she had come to lying in the arms of his enemy, it would devastate him.

Michele had once thought the feud rather melodramatic, but her wry amusement had died on the day she’d first seen—really seen and understood—the depth of her father’s hatred. She’d been no more than thirteen, becoming a woman with all the reluctance of a tomboy, and she’d fought her father fiercely when he had decided it was time for her to wear a dress and play hostess for some of his business dinners. Since her mother had died years before, he had been without a hostess, and Michele unwillingly had accepted that role.

Michele leaned against her door for a moment, then fumbled in her purse for the key and let herself into the room. She closed and locked the door and tossed her purse onto the bed, dropping her shoes on the floor.

It was during that first business dinner that a chance remark by one of the guests showed her the feud in a new and far more serious light. She had left the room for some reason, returning moments later and reaching the doorway just in time to hear the remark. She couldn’t remember the exact words now, but one of the men had said something about how beautiful Charles Logan’s daughter was going to be one day. She had paused, unexpectedly pleased. But then another man laughed and said something that had driven the pleasure away.

“Stuart has a son just about the right age. That young man has a roving eye; take care it doesn’t light on Michele. What perfect revenge that would be!”

She had felt shock, and then she had seen her father’s face and had understood what hate really was. His stony expression and the cold glitter in his eyes had been so dreadful that she had felt sickened by it. And even though his response had been uttered lightly, she had heard the implacable truth in it.

“The day a Stuart lays a hand on my little girl is the last day he’ll ever see. They won’t even have to waste money burying him because I’ll blow the bastard into a million pieces.”

She wasn’t a little girl now, but she was still her father’s daughter, and though the appalling truth that she had virtually invited seduction might possibly stop her father from getting his gun and going after Ian, nothing would prevent him from disowning her.

Ian was far less concerned by what a relationship between them would do to his father, she knew. Perhaps his father was less bitter. Or perhaps it was just that Ian knew what was, to Michele, a painful truth; a man could sleep with the daughter of an enemy and call it revenge. Or he could simply confess to a sexual attraction and shrug off who she was.

But a woman…no, it was different for a woman. To sleep with the son of her father’s enemy would be the worst possible blow she could deal her father, and one from which he would never recover.

She was on the point of collapsing onto the bed when there was a sudden hammering on the connecting door to the next room, and a lively voice called out.

“Michele! Hey, open up—I made it!”

Jackie. Her best friend since childhood, and the one outsider who understood all too well the hatred between the Logans and the Stuarts. Orphaned and living with an aunt and uncle, Jackie had spent more time in Michele’s home than in her own while they were growing up, and as a result, she had heard the Stuarts cursed for most of her life.

Michele glanced down at herself and then stepped to the mirror over the dresser. The reflection she saw made her wince. Her hair was tumbled wildly around a pale face, her lips swollen and reddened, her eyes holding a strained, darkened expression. But there was little she could do about her appearance; another bang on the door indicated that Jackie was waiting impatiently.

Opening her side of the connecting door, Michele deliberately spoke first. “When did you get here? I’ve been walking out on the beach.”

Jackie looked her up and down, and then laughed. “No kidding. You look like hell, friend.”

“Thanks a lot.” Michele kept her voice light.

“As a matter of fact, the desk clerk told me he thought you’d gone out. I just got here a few minutes ago. Keep me company while I unpack, will you?”

“Let me take a shower first. I’ve got sand practically up to my knees.”

“Okay,” Jackie said amiably, turning back toward the open suitcases on the bed. “I guess you’ve eaten?”

“Uh huh.” Had she? She couldn’t remember. But she wasn’t hungry.

“Well, I’m going to call down for something. The airplane food was the usual cooked cardboard. Want anything?”

“Not to eat. Some iced tea.”

“I’ll order it.”

Michele retreated from the doorway. She got a sleep shirt from one of the dresser drawers and went into the bathroom. The bright light in that tiny room, unlike the shaded lamps of the bedroom, showed her even more clearly how she looked. Jackie had noticed nothing unusual, but Michele knew her friend too well to expect her to go on missing the obvious.

She stripped out of her clothing and took a long shower. When she got out, she dried off and wrapped her thick hair in a towel, then pulled the sleep shirt over her head. She was trying not to think, to keep her mind blank, but another glance in the mirror brought back vivid memories of Ian’s kisses.

She looked kissed, thoroughly kissed, her lips faintly swollen and their color deeper than usual. She held a washcloth under cold water and then pressed the cloth to her mouth in an effort to erase the signs.

What she was doing sent a pang of bitterness through her. How dreadful to feel the need to wipe all evidence of a man’s kisses from her face! Especially when she had invited those kisses and had responded wildly to them. Michele fiercely pushed the thoughts away.

Room service had come and gone, leaving a tray on the small table by Jackie’s balcony doors. Michele took one of the chairs—the one out of direct light of the lamps—and poured herself a glass of tea, while Jackie took the other and began eating the club sandwich she’d ordered.

“So, how’s Martinique?” she asked cheerfully. “I know you’ve already explored since you got here yesterday.”

“It’s just what the travel brochures promised. The scenery is gorgeous; wait until you see Mont Pelée. Fort-de-France has colorful houses and palms lining the streets. It’s really beautiful.”

“Well, since you were walking on the beach tonight, I gather the hotel has a respectable one?”

“So-so. It’s only about half a mile long, and we’re so close to the harbor that there’s a lot of water traffic. But the hotel grounds have a lovely garden, and there’s a big pool.” She conjured a smile. “The service is good, the food’s fine, the bed’s comfortable, and rum is cheap.”

Jackie giggled. “Neither of us likes rum.”

“Well, it’s cheap if we want any. In the meantime, we can lie on the beach or by the pool, and when we get tired of being lazy we can explore the island. I only got a quick look at it today, so there’s plenty left to see.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Jackie said with a luxurious sigh. She was a redhead with bright green eyes and a vivid face. Full of life, she seemed like a sister to Michele, who had loved her since they were children.

“A nice vacation. Speaking of which, I thought you were going to be held up a few days?”

“The crisis was resolved sooner than expected.” Jackie grimaced. She was employed by one of the television stations in Atlanta, where crises occurred on a regular basis, especially in the news division where she worked as an assistant to a producer. “As soon as the dust settled, I told Doug I was gone and vanished before anything else could happen.”

“He didn’t waylay you at the airport?”

She grinned. “Obviously not. I’m here. I could have sworn I heard somebody calling my name in a pitiful voice as I escaped into the wild blue yonder.”

“Leaving a note for Cole?”

Jackie’s piquant face softened instantly at the name of the man in her life, but then her mouth twisted. “A message on his answering machine, dammit. He was out of town.”

Michele hadn’t yet met the paragon who had stolen her friend’s heart, but she’d heard his name often enough during the past weeks.

“Where is he this time?”

“Lord knows. You’d think even a sales representative would know where he was going, but Cole never seems to. He barely had time to send me a dozen roses with a note. He said this trip would last only a couple of days, so I’ll try calling him tomorrow. I wish he had been able to get time off. It would have been great.”

“Thanks,” Michele murmured.

Jackie cocked an eyebrow at her. “Not that you aren’t loads of fun, but boasting a gorgeous man on my arm is definitely preferable to my childhood friend and roommate from college. Besides, I want to find out if he snores.”

“You haven’t yet?”

“Who’s had time to sleep?” Jackie managed to look both deliciously happy and slightly self-conscious.

Michele felt a pang of envy, and instantly smothered it. Smiling, she said, “Then why on earth are you taking your vacation with your old college roommate? I know we planned this trip ages before you met Cole, but I would have understood—”

“I know, but he said he was going to be working long hours for a while, and I needed a break. Besides, Cole and I are too new to be making demands on each other. I don’t want him to get the idea that I can’t move a step without him.”

“Just don’t feel obligated to stay here with me.”

“I won’t.” Jackie finished her sandwich and rose to resume her unpacking, adding in a calm tone, “By the way, what’s happened to you?”

Michele sipped her tea to give herself a moment. “What do you mean?”

“Look in a mirror. I’d guess you’ve had some kind of shock. Obviously you’re not going to volunteer any information, so I suppose I’m going to have to pull it out of you.”

Michele had always confided in her friend. But this was something she couldn’t confide to Jackie, who would never understand; she might not have Logan blood, but she had adopted the family and seemed to be convinced that a Stuart was the lowest animal on earth.

Michele felt very alone, trying to think of something that wouldn’t be a lie—and wouldn’t be the truth.

Jackie continued to unpack, but darted inquisitive glances at her oldest and closest friend. At last she said softly, “It must have been pretty bad.”

Drawing a deep breath, Michele said, “I need to wrestle with it by myself for a while. Do you mind?”

“Your father and Jon are all right?”

“They’re fine.”

Jackie nodded. “Okay. Just don’t forget I’m here when you’re ready to talk about it.”

“I won’t.”

After a long, thoughtful look at her friend, Jackie announced she was going to take a shower, and Michele returned to her own room and moved around restlessly.

The ringing of the phone startled her. She frowned as she went to the bed and sat down, glancing at the clock on the nightstand before answering. Jon wouldn’t call twice in one day unless…

“Hello?”

“Michele, don’t hang up.”

She felt her heart begin to pound, and swallowed hard. It was the first time she’d heard his voice over the phone, but she had no trouble recognizing it. “I wasn’t going to,” she said steadily. “I wanted to tell you something. Jackie got here a little while ago, so I’m not alone now.”

“And you want me to stay away,” Ian said flatly.

“I told you that on the beach.”

He was silent for a moment, then sighed. “That isn’t going to be easy, Michele. I meant what I said out there. I want you.” His voice was low, and the last three words were a husky demand rather than a mere statement.

Michele leaned her head back against the headboard of the bed and closed her eyes. Why didn’t she just hang up? She should hang up. Her pulse was racing and she felt hot. “Even if I knew I could trust you, it wouldn’t be possible. Don’t you understand?” Her breath caught as the haunting suspicions flooded up from the depths of her mind. “Or maybe you understand all too well.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Do you want to destroy my family, Ian, is that it? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

“This isn’t about our families, dammit, it’s about us.” His voice had sharpened and gone hard. “You and me, and what’s between us. It doesn’t have a thing to do with anyone else.”

“You’re wrong.”

“No, I’m not. Twenty generations, Michele. Twenty generations of people living with hate and suspicion. Maybe you want to be part of that, but I don’t. Your brother can hate me to hell and back, and I won’t fight him. Do you understand that? I won’t fight him. If I have to, I’ll leave Atlanta, but the feud stops with me.”

“Why?” She cleared her throat and steadied her voice. “Why are you so determined?”

His voice went low and rough again. “I held a Logan in my arms tonight. Maybe it never would have happened if we hadn’t met in paradise, but it did happen. I can’t be certain about much, Michele, but I know I could never hate you. So how could I hate your brother?”

Tears stung her eyes, but still she was remembering Jon’s evasiveness earlier. What if something was happening, or about to happen, in Atlanta that would force Ian to hate? What if her father and Jon gave him no choice?

“Michele, please trust me. I won’t do anything to hurt you, but I can’t stay away.”

She drew a shaky breath, fighting an intense longing. But clashing with that were suspicions and fears and the overwhelming knowledge that it just wasn’t possible. “If you don’t want to hurt me, you have to stay away. Goodbye, Ian.” She cradled the receiver gently.

For three days, Ian stayed away. He made certain Jackie never caught a glimpse of him. He recognized the redhead as the one who, on the rare occasions he had been anywhere near her, had looked at him as if he were a leper. He had always felt more hostility coming from her than from Michele.

Still, he managed to watch Michele from time to time as she and her friend came and went. She was clearly bent on spending as little time at the hotel as possible, probably to keep away from him. But on the third day Jackie dragged her out to the pool, and Ian overheard the redhead laughingly say that she’d had enough sightseeing for a while and wanted to be lazy.

A slow anger built inside Ian when he saw Michele glance uneasily around. The hellish feud between their families had done this to her—and to him. A grown man and woman, attracted to each other yet fighting to ignore their feelings because they were supposed to be enemies.

Attracted? Lord, the word was useless to describe what he felt when he looked at her.

It had hit him only the night she’d hung up the telephone on him that he had wanted Michele Logan for a very long time. He had vivid memories of her at varying ages…and of his admiration for her talents and determination, as well as her beauty. He had known it somewhere deep inside him for years, but it wasn’t something he had allowed himself to dwell on because the very idea had been unthinkable.

Until now. They were thousands of miles from home and the battleground both recognized; perhaps that had made it easier to consider the unthinkable. And after he’d held her in his arms, had been burned by the fire between them, the unthinkable had become the necessary.

Watching her during those three days, Ian went over and over it in his mind. He listed all the arguments against them, tried to see and understand that her risks would be greater than his, asked himself why he couldn’t just forget this insanity.

But when he saw her just after dawn on the fourth day, he knew that he couldn’t forget her, he couldn’t let her run away, and he couldn’t stay away.

The sun was barely up, hanging low and brilliantly orange over the island when he came out of the garden and caught sight of her on the strip of sand. The beach was deserted except for them. She was walking slowly along the waterline toward the place they’d stood when they’d kissed. And just as it had been before, he followed her without thought.

She reached the low ridge of volcanic rock, and this time climbed up a couple of feet and sat staring out at the sea. Her shining raven hair was hanging down her back in a simple braid, the end tied with a bit of lace. She was barefoot and wearing a white dress that made her look even more delicate and feminine than usual. The dress had a full skirt and thin straps tied on each of her shoulders.

She was unaware of his approach, and Ian reached her before she saw him. He felt his stomach tighten as he stepped up to her. He was standing literally between her legs; she had her feet braced apart on the rock, her skirt bunched up carelessly and draped between her thighs. They were nearly at eye level since he was still on the sand.

Michele’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say a word.

He didn’t dare move closer; even without touching, their proximity and provocative positions charged the air between them. But he couldn’t help lifting his hands and resting them lightly on her thighs just above the knees and below the bunched folds of her white skirt.

“Where’s your friend?” he murmured.

“She’s sleeping in. She isn’t a morning person.”

“Have you been out here every morning? If so, I wish I’d known.”

Michele cleared her throat softly. “I usually run in the mornings. I didn’t feel like it today.” She was trying not to shiver in pleasure as his thumbs rhythmically brushed the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs.

“I tried to stay away,” Ian said roughly. “But I can’t, Michele.”

She started to push his hands off her but somehow couldn’t complete the motion; the moment she touched him, it was as if her own strength drained away. She was throbbing for his touch.

He wanted to move fully into the cradle of her legs, to kiss her moist lips, to feel her in his arms again. The driving urge to lose himself in her until there was nothing on earth but the two of them and the fiery heat of mating was so powerful it filled his mind and sent a shudder through his body.

Her eyes closed suddenly and her slim hands gripped his wrists almost frantically. “I don’t even trust you,” she said in a voice that was nearly a moan. “Don’t do this to me!”

Ian drew a deep breath and grimly hung on to his control. How could they sort through the tangle of thoughts and emotions when their physical response to each other was this explosive? It was almost impossible to think at all. He’d never wanted a woman so badly in his life, and it was clear that her need was just as great.

“Look at me, Michele,” he ordered tautly.

She caught her breath, her lids lifting slowly to reveal shadowed, haunted eyes the color of a mountain fog.

“Let me teach you to trust me. Give me a chance. Give us a chance.”

“Even if—” She broke off as he shook his head briefly.

“One step at a time,” he urged, his voice still rough and strained. “We have to be sure. If you can’t trust me, we’ll never know how it could be between us. It’ll end right here.” He wondered if he had a hope in hell of keeping that promise when he could barely hold his own desire in check. “Please, Michele,” he added softly.

She felt something inside her give way, deeper than the first wall that had crumbled the other night. And quite suddenly her mind was clear and quiet, the pain of indecision gone. As if she’d been straining against some irresistible pull and had finally let go and accepted the inevitable.

She gazed into those striking pale blue eyes, and her hands slowly relaxed their grip on his wrists. “All right,” she said unsteadily. “Now what?”

Ian turned his hands to catch hers and stepped back, gently drawing her down to stand with him on the sand. “Now we try to get to know each other,” he said.

Michele looked up at him, her fingers unconsciously clasping his. “I’ll have to tell Jackie.”

“How will she react?”

“Not well. She practically grew up in my house, so she’s heard the Stuart name cursed most of her life. I’m not even sure she’ll keep the confidence.”

“She could call your father or brother?”

Michele shrugged. “I’ll try to talk her out of that. I don’t want them to know, Ian. I don’t want to hurt either one of them if—if it isn’t necessary.”

He nodded, accepting that. “Why don’t you both have breakfast with me? On that little terrace by the garden.”

Not sure Jackie would even consent to sit at the same table with a Stuart, Michele managed an uncertain smile. “I’ll ask her.”

Ian held her hand as they began walking back toward the hotel. Striving for lightness, he said, “Tell her she can be watchdog, and protect you from the dragon.”