"I know what a tide is," she interrupted.
He shrugged and jogged after the others. They pounded across the beach toward the waves, whooping
in sounds that needed no language.
Emily watched, envying them their freedom and fighting a wistful sense of abandonment.
She felt a shy tug on her hand. Dani gazed up at her, grinning toothlessly. "Emmy," she said.
Her heart contracted.
Kawiri had spun around to jog backward. "Make haste, Emily. The day won't last forever."
"For a while it seemed like it might," she said softly.
Clinging to Dani's hand, she pelted after him, scattering sand in her wake.
* * *
Justin sat high atop the sandy bluff overlooking the beach. The wind raked his hair from his eyes, but
not even the ocean breeze could cool his fevered musings. His gaze was locked on the beach below, drawn like the tide to the enchanting child-woman dancing through the waves.
Who the hell was she?
Had women changed so much since he'd left England? Emily was so little like those he had known in London that she seemed to be some exotic species, both irresistible and mysterious. Her mercurial
moods both compelled and exhausted him. She was nothing like his addle-witted mother and even less like his vapid sisters. Their only concerns in life had been which gentlemen were going to sign their
dance cards for the next ball. His stunning fiancee, Suzanne, had slapped his face in the lobby of the Theatre Royal when he'd informed her he'd rejected his inheritance, but at least he had understood her motive- healthy greed.
As Justin watched, Emily lifted her skirts and frolicked through the shallow waves, tossing her head
with laughter as the children splashed her. Droplets of water caught in her hair, sparkled on her skin.
A flower nestled in her hair, a crimson splash against her chestnut locks.
Had some man wounded her? Justin wondered. His hands clenched into fists. He'd like to get his
hands on the wretch. The image of her being ill used at the hands of some scoundrel filled him with
both jealousy and rage. And grief-a wistful longing that he could have known her before the shadow touched her smile.
She knelt in the wet sand, cupping her hands around a castle tower while Kawiri dug a moat with his toe.
Had some wealthy rake seduced her? He knew only too well the morals of his London. Propriety and upright thinking were the false gods of society. What went on behind closed doors was another matter.
A man could do what he liked to a woman as long as he wasn't caught doing it. The sinking sun dipped behind a cloud, and Justin shivered. David's wealth had given him and Nicholas the means to escape London's stifling confines, but what means had Emily been forced to use? If left alone without the guidance of her guardian, would David's daughter be forced into similar straits?
The children took their leave in laughing clusters, leaving Emily alone on the beach. Justin stood,
hoping to slip away before she caught him spying on her. But at that moment the sun clipped away the edge of the cloud: its rays struck his chest with a fiery warmth. Emily shaded her eyes and he knew she had seen the sun glint off his watch case.
Their gazes locked and held for a long time before she turned her face away and stared out to sea.
Justin scrambled down the bluff, but the proud curve of her back warned him to silence. He was beset
by a terrible urge to touch her there. To lay his palm against the warm satin of her bare skin and draw
her into his arms. His breath caught in his throat, trapped by an unbearable wave of longing.
He swallowed his questions, hesitant to shatter anything as fragile as her pride. "I saw you in the village."
"Forgive me for intruding. I hope I didn't stop you from healing any lepers or raising any natives from
the dead." Her voice was as brittle as her stance as she swung around to face him. "Where are your followers? I expected you'd be trailed by a veritable parade of blind men and paralytics."
Her mocking tone stung him less than the depth of her emotion. It was not a child's petulance he read in her darkened eyes, but the anguish of a woman.
He stretched out his hand, no longer able to keep from touching her. She recoiled visibly and his fingers slowly curled into his palm.
He fought to keep his voice steady. "You're not the only woman to flee to this country to escape an intolerable past. If someone has hurt you … if a man has hurt you . . . ?"
Justin's compassion stabbed Emily like a blade. She wanted to scream, "You! You've hurt me!" but the words were locked inside some dark, secret place.
Her gaze raked him with all the cool contempt she could muster. "I'm not like them. You're not my savior. I'm not compelled to spill my sins to the mighty Pakeha."
He stepped back, and she suddenly knew what made his face so compelling. His features came alive
with every emotion. Even pain. A desperate need to comfort him flooded her. Fighting it, she struck
out like a wounded animal.
"What is it, Mr. Connor? Haven't I put you high enough on my pedestal?" She stalked him, spurred by some dangerous need to move him, to elicit some reaction that would prove he was no marble saint, but only a flawed creature like herself. "You enjoy their adoration, don't you? It must be very gratifying for
a man like you."
A moment earlier she wouldn't have thought it possible, but his face had closed now, gone as immobile
as a Maori totem. His words were clipped. "What sort of man might that be, Emily?"
"Patron to valets. Friend to lizards." She drew the crimson flower from her hair and ran it up his muscular arm, tracing teasing swirls on his sun-heated skin. "Is that what you want from me? Blind adoration?"
His body was rigid with tension, but the uneven rhythm of his breathing warned her she had affected him.
Tilting her face to his, she rubbed against him with a boldness that would have shamed a feline. "Shall
I fall on my knees and wash your feet with my tears?"
Emily was mocking him. Mocking his faith and his life. And all Justin could think of was the kittenish softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. He wanted to free them from their thin band of calico,
to feel their lush curves brand his skin with their naked splendor, to stroke their coral tips to aching fruition with his fingertips. The velvety petals of the bloom opened against his skin just as her lips might open to his tongue's invasion, her body to his fierce possession.
She must be truly mad to taunt him in such isolation. His senses sang with the relentless rhythm of the sea. How easy it would be to push her down on the bed of sand and take her without any of the niceties society demanded.
He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her crudely and deliberately into the cradle of his thighs.
Emily hung in his embrace, her courage melting in the heat of his wary, smoldering gaze. Somehow he had seized the moment and made it his own. She trembled with a primitive fever, but still she met his gaze squarely, refusing to lower her lashes, refusing to shy away from his blatant need.