"You are unpardonably late, Lieutenant. Your guests are preparing to leave."

Guests? Her overtaxed mind struggled with the word before she remembered. A dinner party? She was supposed to care about a dinner party after the night she'd put in?

"Kiss my ass," she invited and started passed him.

His thin fingers caught at her arm. "As Roarke's wife you're expected to perform certain social duties, such as assisting him in hosting an important affair such as this evening's dinner."

Fury outdistanced fatigue in a heartbeat. Her hand curled into a fist at her side. "Step back before I – "

"Eve darling."

Roarke's voice, managing to convey welcome, amusement, and caution in two words, stopped her curled fist from lifting and following through. Scowling, she turned, saw him just outside the parlor doorway. It wasn't the formal black that made him breathtaking. Eve knew he had a leanly muscled body that could stop a woman's heart no matter what he wore – or didn't wear. His hair flowed, dark as night and nearly to his shoulders, to frame a face she often thought belonged on a Renaissance painting. Sharp bones, eyes bluer than prized cobalt, a mouth fashioned to spout poetry, issue orders, and drive a woman to madness.

In less than a year, he had broken through her defenses, unlocked her heart, and most surprising of all, had gained not only her love but her trust.

And he could still annoy her.

She considered him the first and only miracle in her life.

"I'm late. Sorry." It was more of a challenge than an apology, delivered like a bullet. He acknowledged it with an easy smile and a lifted eyebrow.

"I'm sure it was unavoidable." He held out a hand. When she crossed the foyer and took it, he found hers stiff and cold. In her aged-whiskey eyes he saw both fury and fatigue. He'd grown used to seeing both there. She was pale, which worried him. He recognized the smears on her jeans as dried blood, and hoped it wasn't her own.