‘Get yourself decent,’ he growled in a voice he scarcely recognized, and her head jerked up and she hauled herself upright in fright, reaching for her discarded bikini top. She clutched it, hauling it against her but not before he’d seen what lay beneath.

She was almost ten years older than last time he’d seen her. She had a woman’s body now. A full, sensuous collection of curves that together could make a man…

‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped, cutting across his thoughts. She frantically retied her top, then reached down and grabbed her towel, wrapping it round herself tightly and hanging on to it for dear life.

‘I own the island,’ he said mildly and waited for her reaction.

It didn’t come. She didn’t say anything.

‘I need to speak to you,’ he said at last. ‘That’s why I brought you here.’

‘You could have telephoned. We aren’t exactly in the Dark Ages.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But telephones are bugged.’

‘Yours?’

‘Yours.’

She gasped at that, incredulous. ‘Why would anyone bug my telephone?’

‘Because my entire kingdom wants to know what happened with us.’ He hesitated. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’

‘If you want to drag me back screaming.’

‘Holly, cooperate.’

‘Give me one good reason why I should.’

‘You owe me the truth!’ It was said with such passion that it brought her up short. Her eyes widened and there was suddenly a trace of uncertainty in her eyes.

‘I owe you nothing,’ she whispered.

‘You bore my son.’

It was said with such heaviness, such dull certainty that it hurt. He saw her flinch. The fingers that had been clutching her towel so tightly loosened. It was as if she suddenly had nothing more to protect.

‘I did,’ she whispered. Her gaze met his, steady, unapologetic, but behind the defiance he saw a hurt that ran bone deep.