Face the Fire by Nora Roberts Page B

in that area. As for me—well, a woman has a certain sentimental vision of the first time she gave herself to a man. I can remember that particular event fondly, even if I came to regret my choice of partner.”
    “I never meant to—” He broke off, swore.
    “To hurt me?” she finished. “Liar.”
    “You’re right. Absolutely.” Whatever came from this point on, if he was indeed fated to lose her, he could and would be honest about this one thing. “I did mean to hurt you. And I’d say I did a damn good job of it.”
    “Well, you surprise me at last.” She turned away because it hurt to look at him, to see him stand there with his back to the shadowed mouth of the cave that had been theirs.
    To feel the echoes of that boundless, consuming love she’d once felt for him.
    “A clear truth, after all these years.”
    “Meaning to do something at twenty doesn’t mean I can’t, and don’t, regret it now.”
    “I don’t want your regrets.”
    “What the hell do you want, Mia?”
    She watched the water tease the shore in its endless flirtation. She heard the edge in his voice, knew it as a sign of a rising and reckless mood. And it pleased her. The more unsettled he was, the more she could feel in control.
    “A truth for a truth, then,” she said. “I want you to suffer, to pay, and to go back to New York or to hell, or wherever you choose, so long as it isn’t here.”
    She looked back over her shoulder at him, and her smile was cold as winter. “It seems so little to ask, really.”
    “I mean to stay on Three Sisters.”
    She turned back to him. He looked dramatic, she thought. Romantic. Dark and broody. Full of anger and turmoil. Because of it, she indulged herself and gave him yet another push.
    “For what? To run a hotel? Your father managed to run it for years without being here.”
    “I’m not my father.”
    The way he said it, that small, verbal explosion, triggered more memories. He’d always had to prove himself, to himself, she thought. The constant internal war of Samuel Logan. She shrugged.
    “Well, in any case, I imagine you’ll be bored with island life soon enough and escape. As you did before. ‘Trapped,’ I believe was your term. You felt trapped here. So, it’s just a matter of waiting you out.”
    “You’ll have a long wait,” he warned. He hooked his hands in his pockets. “Let’s get something straight, so we can avoid going around the same loop again and again. I have roots here, just as you do. The fact that you spent your twenties on-island and I didn’t doesn’t change the fact that we both come from the same place. We both have businesses here, and beyond that we have a purpose, one that goes back centuries. What happens on and to Three Sisters matters to me as much as it matters to you.”
    “An interesting speech from someone who walked away so casually.”
    “There was nothing casual about it,” he began, but she had already turned her back on him, was already striding toward the bluff.
    Let her go, his mind ordered. Just let her go. If this is fate, it can’t be beaten. Shouldn’t be, for the good of the whole, fought against.
    “The hell with that.” The words ground between his teeth as he went after her. He grabbed her arm, spun heraround so quickly their bodies collided. “There was nothing casual about it,” he repeated. “Nothing impulsive, nothing careless.”
    “Is that how you justify it?” she tossed back. “Is that how you make it right? You left because it suited you, and you come back because it suits you. And because you’re here, why not see if you can stir up some old flames?”
    “I’ve been pretty restrained in that area.” He yanked his sunglasses off, threw them on the ground. His gaze was burning, blistering green. “Up till now.”
    He crushed his mouth to hers, let himself take, let the storm of emotions that had shadowed him since he left the cave break over both of them. If he was to be damned, he’d be damned for