The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

housekeeping staff had found the exchange hilarious, and the story was soon all over the resort. Afterward Kate found extra towels every day in her room.

    Jared made no secret of their liaison and Kate soon realized that everyone, from the resort staff to David, Letty and the colonel, was delighted with the way events were unfolding.

    It should have been a perfect island affair, and Kate told herself it would have been if it weren't for two things. The first was that the end was preordained. She was, after all, holding a return ticket to the States. Whenever she allowed herself to dwell on that fact, she got restless and depressed and had to consciously push aside the emotions.

    The second factor that stood in the way of her total enjoyment of the affair with Jared Hawthorne was a little harder to pin down, but it filled her with increasing unease. It had to do with the fact that she had seen him make another midnight trek to the Hawthorne castle with Max Butterfield and she had begun to realize she did not particularly care for Max. His incessant references to the great novel he had not yet written reminded her too much of her ex-husband.

    On the night Jared and Max made the second trip to the castle, Jared had taken Kate back to her room right after dinner in the hotel dining room. He had made hot, urgent love to her and then told her he had to go home early because the baby-sitter couldn't stay with David past midnight.

    Something had not rung true. She had known Max was back on the island, however, after being away for a few days. Kate had lain awake for a long time after Jared had left, questions and doubts and pure curiosity tumbling about in her brain. Then, drawn by a premonition, she had dressed in jeans and a dark shirt and walked down the path through the jungle to the point where it branched off to the castle.

    She had stood concealed in the shadows for a long time before she had heard Max's complaining voice and the sound of his labored breathing. A moment later the fat man and Jared had passed her on their way to the castle.

    Kate had waited a long time for them to return, but finally had given up and gone back to her own room. She did not get much sleep that night.

    No matter how she looked at it, Jared had lied to her. He had not hurried home to his son.

    The next morning, Kate sat in a lounger on a terrace overlooking the cove and wondered what to do next. Over and over again she toyed with the idea of confronting Jared and asking him what was going on, but she always backed off from that approach when she remembered that he had deliberately misled her. It was obvious he did not want her to know what he was doing with Max Butterfield. If she confronted him, he would probably lie to her, and she didn't want to hear his lies.

    She had to face the knowledge that, though Jared might appear to have stepped straight out of her fantasies, the truth was, she knew very little about him.

    "Good morning," sang out a familiar, cheerful voice. "How's the antistress campaign going?"

    Kate shook off her somber mood and smiled at Letty Platt. "Terrific. I feel like a new woman. And I've got some fascinating reading." She indicated the diary of Amelia Cavendish that lay in her lap.

    Letty glanced at the leather-bound volume. "So Jared has let you actually touch his precious old Hawthorne journals, I see. Congratulations. He's very protective of those books. Keeps them in a locked glass case."

    "I know and I don't blame him. They're fascinating, once you decipher the handwriting. They're in amazingly good condition, too. But that's because the paper used in the old days was of such fine quality, not like the cheap, disposable stuff we use now."

    Letty nodded, sitting down on a nearby lounger. "Discover anything interesting about our founding father?"

    "This is Amelia's diary, not Roger's, and yes, I'm finding out a lot of interesting tidbits. For example, did you know that she had been in love with Roger Hawthorne since she was a young girl?"

    "Really? I thought he just happened to spot her when he went back to England looking for a bride."

    "Nope. She was the daughter of the lord who owned the estates that bordered his father's lands and she'd had a crush on him for years. He was well aware of it, the cad. Used to tease her unmercifully. But he also danced with her when she made her come out in London. He kissed her that night. Listen to this, Letty."

    I was transported the moment his lips touched