Nice try. But he wasn’t putting her on the defensive.

She smoothly tucked her hair behind her ears and took a half step in his direction, bringing them less than a foot apart. “You want me to call your bluff?”

“Go ahead.”

“Sure, Zach. I’m your wife, so let’s have children.”

He stepped in, bring them even closer. “And you claim you’re not flirting.”

“I’m not flirting,” she denied.

“We’re talking about sex.” His deep voice hummed along her nervous system, messing with her concentration.

“We’re talking about babies,” she corrected.

“My mistake. I thought you were making a pass at me.”

She inched farther forward, stretching up to face him. “If I make a pass at you, Zachary, you’ll know it.”

He leaned in. “This feels like a pass, Katie.”

“You wish.”

“I do.” He didn’t laugh. Didn’t back off. Didn’t even flinch.

They breathed in unison for a long minute. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and the urge to surrender became more powerful with each passing second.

He seemed to guess what she was thinking. “We won’t stop this time,” he warned.

She knew that.

If he kissed her, they’d tear off their clothes right here in Sadie’s sitting room.

Sadie’s sitting room.

Kaitlin cringed and drew away.

Zach’s expression faltered, but she forced herself to ignore it, pretending to be absorbed in the furniture and the decorations, moving farther from him to peer through the door into Sadie’s bedroom.

It took her a minute before she thought she could speak. “Sadie seems like she was an incredible person.”

“She was,” said Zach, his tone giving away nothing.

Maybe Kaitlin had imagined the power of the moment. “Do you miss her?”

“Every day.” There was a vacant sound to his voice that made Kaitlin turn.

She caught his unguarded expression, and a lump formed in her throat.

For all his flaws, Zach had obviously loved his grandmother.


“Back then,” Ginny informed Kaitlin and Lindsay from where she lay on a deck lounger, head propped up, beside the Gilbys’ pool, “Sadie was a pistol.”

While Lindsay was chuckling at Ginny’s stories of growing up on Serenity Island, Kaitlin had been struggling to match the seemingly meticulous, traditional Sadie who’d been in charge of the Harper castle for so many years, with the lively young girl who’d apparently run wild with Ginny.

Both Kaitlin and Lindsay were swimming in the pool. Right now, their arms were folded over the painted edge, kicking to keep their balance while Ginny shared entertaining stories. The water was refreshing in the late afternoon heat. A breeze had come up off the ocean, and dozens of birds flitted in the surrounding trees and flower gardens.

Kaitlin was beginning to think Serenity Island was paradise.

“It wasn’t like it is now,” Ginny continued, gesturing widely with her half-full glass of iced tea. “None of these helicopters and the like. When you were on the island, you were here until the next supply ship.”

“Did you like living here?” asked Lindsay, stretching out and scissor-kicking through the water.

“We constantly plotted ways to get off,” said Ginny, with a conspiratorial chuckle. “Probably ten kids in all back then, what with the families and the staff. We were seventeen. Sadie convinced my daddy that I needed to learn French. Mais oui. Then I convinced him I couldn’t possibly go to Paris without Sadie.”

“You went to Paris?” Lindsay sighed, then pushed off the pool wall and floated backward in her magenta bikini. “I love Paris.”

Kaitlin had never been to Paris. Truth was, she’d never left New York State. Shelter, food and education were the top of her priority list. Anything else would have to come after that. Though, someday, she’d like to see Europe, or maybe California, even Florida.

“We took one year of our high school in France,” said Ginny, draining the glass of iced tea. “Came home very sophisticated, you know.”

One of the staff members immediately arrived with another pitcher of iced tea, refilling Ginny’s glass. She offered some to Kaitlin and Lindsay, filling up a fresh glass for each of them. They thanked the woman and set their glasses on the pool deck in easy reach.

Kaitlin had spent several hot hours today prowling through the castle. The dusty attic rooms were particularly hot and stuffy. Now she was grateful for the cool water of the pool and the refreshing glass of iced tea.

Ginny waited until the young woman left the pool deck and exited back into the main house.

Then she sat up straighter, leaning toward Kaitlin and Lindsay. “Zachary’s grandfather, Milton Harper, took one look at Sadie in those diaphanous Parisian dresses and, boom, she was pregnant.”

Kaitlin tried to hide her surprise at learning such an intimate detail. Back in the 1950s, it must have caused quite a scandal.

Lindsay quickly returned to the pool edge next to Kaitlin. “They had to get married?” she asked.

Ginny pointed a finger at Lindsay. “I’m not recommending it to you,” she cautioned. “You girls want to know how to catch a man nowadays?”

“Not necessar-”

Lindsay elbowed Kaitlin in the ribs. “How?”

“Withhold sex,” Ginny told them with a sage nod. “They can get it any old place they want out there-” she waved a hand toward the ocean, apparently including the world in general in her statement “-but you say no, and he’ll keep coming back, sniffing around.”

“Auntie,” came Dylan’s warning voice. But it held more than a trace of humor as he strode across the deck in a pair of blue jeans and a plain T-shirt. “I don’t think that’s the advice I want you giving our lady guests.”

Ginny harrumphed as he leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek.

“You’re cramping my style,” he admonished her with good humor.

Ginny looked to Lindsay again, gesturing to her grandnephew. “This one’s a catch.”

“I’ll try not to sleep with him,” Lindsay promised. Then she covered her chuckle with a sip from her glass.

“You’ll do more than try, young lady.” Ginny, on the other hand, seemed completely serious. “I like you. Don’t mess this up.”

Lindsay sobered. “Yes, ma’am.” But as she spoke, Kaitlin caught the smoldering look that passed between her and Dylan.

For all her plain-spoken, sage wisdom, Ginny had just made a fatal error with those two. She might as well have dared them to sleep together.

“Help me up, dear.” Ginny reached for Dylan, and he grasped her hand, supporting her elbow, and gently brought her to her feet.

It took her a moment to get stabilized, and Dylan kept hold of her.

“Now that you’re here,” she said to him, “I thought I might call Sadie-” Then she stopped herself, a fleeting look of confusion entering her aging eyes. “Silly me. I meant the rose garden. I think I’d like to visit Sadie’s rose garden.”

Dylan slid a look of regret in Lindsay’s direction. But there was no impatience in his voice when he spoke. “I’d be happy to drive you down,” he told Ginny.

Kaitlin hopped out of the pool, adjusting her mint-green bikini bottom and making sure the straps had stayed in place. “I’ll do it,” she offered to both Ginny and Dylan.

She’d love to tour Sadie’s rose garden. There was a picture of it in its heyday on the wall of one of the drawing rooms in the castle. She’d driven one of the little golf carts between the houses that afternoon, and it was very easy.

“Thank you, dear,” said Ginny as Kaitlin scrubbed the towel over her wet hair. “You’re a good girl. You should go ahead and sleep with Zachary.”

Kaitlin stopped drying and blinked at the old woman in shock.

“Those Harper men aren’t the marrying kind,” Ginny elaborated.

“Zach already married Kaitlin,” Lindsay offered. Then she froze halfway out of the pool. “I mean…”

“Are you pregnant?” asked Ginny, her gaze taking a critical look at Kaitlin’s flat stomach.

Kaitlin quickly shook her head. “I’m not pregnant.”

“I’m sorry,” Lindsay squeaked in horror.

“Well, I don’t know how you trapped him,” said Ginny matter-of-factly. “Sadie and I have despaired that he’d even give any woman a second glance.”

Kaitlin looked to Dylan for assistance. Did the situation require further explanation? Would Ginny forget the entire conversation by morning?

But he was too busy struggling to control his laughter to be of any help.

“We’re, uh, not sure it’s going to work out,” Kaitlin explained, feeling as though she needed to say something.

“Well, how long have you been married?” asked Ginny, slipping a thin wrap over her shoulders, obviously oblivious to the undercurrents rippling through the conversation.

Kaitlin hesitated. “Um, a few months.”

“Then you’ve already had sex,” Ginny cackled with salacious delight.

“Who’s had sex?” Zach’s voice startled Kaitlin as he appeared from between two of the pool cabanas and came to join the group. His curious gaze darted from one person to another.

“You and Kaitlin,” said Dylan.

“What?” He took in Kaitlin’s bathing suit-clad body, his intense gaze making goose bumps rise on her skin and heating her to the core.

“Ginny and I are going to the rose garden,” she announced, swiftly wrapping the big towel around her body. There was no reason she had to remain here. Dylan could bring Zach up to speed.

She and Ginny headed for the cabana that held her clothes.


Sadie’s rose garden had obviously been a spectacular showpiece in its day. Some sections of the formal gardens had been kept up over the years by the castle staff, but it was obviously too much work to keep it all from overgrowing.

As Kaitlin and Ginny had made their way through the connected stone patios, beside gazebos, along stone trails and past the family’s beautifully preserved chapel, Ginny shared stories of fabulous weekend-long garden parties, and of the dignitaries that had visited the island over the years.

Kaitlin got a picture of a carefree young Sadie growing into a serious, responsible young woman, with an abiding respect for the heritage of the family she’d married into. All signs pointed to Sadie and Milton being very much in love, despite the pregnancy and their hurried wedding.

Ginny clipped flowers as she talked, and Kaitlin ended up carrying a huge armful of the roses-yellow, white, red and pink. They were fragrant and gorgeous.

At the end of their walk, Ginny pleaded exhaustion and asked Kaitlin to take the roses up to the family cemetery and lay them on Sadie’s grave.

Kaitlin had easily agreed. She’d delivered Ginny to the Gilby house and into the care of the staff there. Then she’d followed Ginny’s directions and driven one of the golf carts up the hill to the family cemetery.

Visiting the graveyard was a surreal experience.

Isolated and windswept, it was perched on the highest point of the island, at the end of a rocky goat track that was almost more than the cart could navigate. She had stopped at the end of the trail to discover a small, rolling meadow dotted with Harper and Gilby headstones, and some that she guessed were for other island residents, maybe the ships’ crews or staff dating all the way back to the pirates Lyndall and Caldwell.

Wandering her way through the tall, blowing grass, reading the inscriptions on the headstones, she could almost hear the voices of the past generations.

Both of the pirates had married, and they’d had several children between them. Kaitlin tried to imagine what it must have been like for Emma Cinder to marry Lyndall Harper in the 1700s. Did her family know he was a pirate when they agreed to let her marry him? Had he kidnapped her, snatched her away from a loving family? Did she love him, and was she happy here in what must have been an unbelievably isolated outpost? The castle wouldn’t have existed, never mind the pool, the golf carts or the indoor plumbing.

While she read the dates on the old stones, Kaitlin couldn’t help but picture Zach in pirate regalia, sword in his hand, treasure chest at his feet. Had Lyndall been anything like him-stubborn, loyal, protective? Had Emma fallen in love with Lyndall and followed him here? Perhaps against her family’s wishes?

As she wandered from headstone to headstone, Kaitlin tried to piece together the family histories. Some of the lives were long, while some were tragically short. Clipped messages of love and loss were etched into each stone.

A mother and an infant had died on the same day in 1857. A tragic number of the children hadn’t even made it to ten years old. There were few names other than Harper and Gilby, leading Kaitlin to speculate the daughters had married and moved off the island.