The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

how your brain would have worked—exactly how it did work when you finally discovered who I was."

    Margaret felt cornered again. He was right. She would have been instantly suspicious of his motives if she'd known who he was back at the beginning. "And you really didn't need inside information from me?"

    "I already had most of it. Nothing you told me was particularly crucial one way or the other. In fact, if you'll stop and think about it, you'll recall that you didn't talk all that much about your job. You mostly talked about the career in writing that you were working on. I heard all your big plans to work two more years in the business world and then quit to write full-time."

    "I wish I could believe that." She clasped her hands in front of her, remembering her terrible feeling of guilt at the time. "I felt like such a fool. I felt so used. I went over and over every conversation we'd had, trying to recall exactly what I'd told you. I knew I had to go straight to Moorcroft, of course. He had trusted me. I had to make up for what I'd done to him."

    "You didn't do one blasted thing to him," Rafe roared. "I was the one you screwed."

    She frowned in annoyance. "You don't have to be quite so crude about it."

    He spread his hands in a disgusted movement and made an obvious grab for his self-control. "Forget it. I'm sorry I mentioned my side of the story. I know you aren't particularly interested in it. You're only concerned with your side."

    Tears welled in Margaret's eyes. She blinked them back as she sank down onto a bale of hay and tried to think. "It was such an awful mess at the time," she whispered. "And when I tried to do the right thing by warning Moorcroft about you, you turned on me like a…a lion or something. All teeth and claws. The things you said to me… You ripped me to shreds, Rafe. I wasn't certain for a while if I was ever going to recover."

    "You weren't the only one who felt ripped up." Rafe sat down beside her, elbows resting on his knees, his big hands loosely clasped. He stared straight ahead at a pretty little gray mare who was watching the proceedings with grave curiosity. "I wasn't sure I was going to make it, either." He paused for a moment. "My mother says it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me."

    "She said
what
?"

    "She said I needed a jolt like that to make me pay attention to something else in life besides business." His smile was ironic. "Believe me, after what happened last year, you had my full attention. I couldn't stop thinking about you no matter how hard I tried. I've put more energy into getting you back than I've ever put into a merger or a buy-out."

    Margaret thought she really would cry now. "Rafe, I don't know what to say."

    He turned his head, his eyes glittering with intensity. "Say you'll give me a chance, a real chance. Let's start over, Maggie. For good this time. Give me the next two weeks and be honest about it. Don't spend the time looking for excuses and a way out."

    The love for him that she had been forced to acknowledge to herself last night made Margaret lightheaded. She looked into his tawny eyes and felt herself falling back into the whirlpool in which she had nearly drowned last year. "You are a very dangerous man for me, Rafe. I can't go through what I went through last time. I can't."

    He caught her chin on the edge of his hand. "You're not the only one who wouldn't survive it a second time. So there won't be a second time."

    She searched his eyes. "How can you be so certain?"

    "Two reasons. The first is that we learned something from that fiasco. We've both changed. We aren't quite the same people we were last year."

    "And the second reason?"

    He smiled faintly. "You aren't working for Moorcroft or anyone else, so the pressures you had on you last time don't exist."

    "But if they did exist?"

    Rafe's smile hardened briefly. "This time around your commitments are clearer, aren't they? This time around you'd know your first loyalty belongs to me."

    "What about
your
loyalty?" she challenged softly, knowing she was sliding deeper into the whirlpool. In another moment she would be caught and trapped.

    Rafe cradled her face between two rough palms. "You are the most important person in my life, Maggie, love. My first loyalty is to you."

    "Business has absolutely nothing to do with this?"

    "Hell, no."

    "If there were to be a conflict between our relationship and your business interests, would our relationship