“Ginny, I’m leaving next week for Mexico.”

“Next week? Were you going to tell me as you walked out the door? Oh, God, Steve, I thought this time it would be different, that—Take me with you.”

After a silence that seemed far too long, he shook his head, a faint smile crooking his mouth. “I suppose if I don’t, you’ll just follow me anyway.”

“Yes,” she said, “I will. And I’ll make certain that I’m an inconvenience.”

He laughed and hooked his hand behind her neck to pull her hard against him, his breath wafting across her cheek as he bent to kiss her.

And then everything else was forgotten as Steve scooped her into his arms, carried her the few steps to the wide canopied bed against the wall and tossed her onto the mattress, his lean body following her down as he slid his hands beneath her silk dressing gown. She arched upward, hungrily, reaching for him and twining her arms around his neck.

There was no more talk as they came together with a savage intensity. Lips and hands made new and remembered discoveries as their bodies moved apart, then joined again, the passion that was always between them reignited. The restraint of the past month was gone, replaced by the familiar need that always consumed them. And Ginny knew that she would do whatever she had to do to stay with him.

He was her past, her present, her future….