Bliss drew a deep breath and let it out again. “There is only me,” she said seriously.

“Thank God for that,” Jamie muttered, shoving a hand through his hair. “To think I came back ’ere to ask you to forgive me—”

Bliss’s eyes went round. “You did?”

“Aye.” He folded his arms stubbornly. “Of course, that’s all changed now. What the ’ell were you doin’?”

Bliss bit down on her lower lip, running mental fingers along the shelves of her mind in search of a believable answer. “I was writing a novella,” she said at last.

Jamie looked both wary and skeptical, and his arms were still folded. “About what?” he wanted to know.

Bliss dropped her eyes. “It’s a love story,” she confessed, with feigned shyness. “About you and me.”

It was a mark of his male vanity, Bliss thought later, that he believed her.

During supper, when Jamie left their table temporarily to go and speak to some people on the far side of the dining room, Bliss flagged down a waiter and pressed her letter of recommendation into his hand. “Please see that this is delivered to Room Thirty-six,” she whispered.

Peony, who was sitting across the table, looked every bit as bored and irritable as Bliss felt. “What are you up to now, Mrs. McKenna?” she asked dryly.

Bliss shrugged. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Peony Ryan anymore. The woman seemed to have too much pride to ever stoop to being a man’s mistress, and yet her relationship with Jamie was obviously intimate, emotionally if not physically.

Peony sighed and took a sip of her wine before trying again. “Jamie’s not a man to trifle with,” she said. “If I were you, Bliss, I wouldn’t push him another inch.”

Choosing to disregard the warning, Bliss watched Jamie as he shook hands with the man he’d been talking to and started back toward his own table. “What’s happening, Peony?” she asked. “Why is he keeping us inside the hotel every moment of the day? I’m about to suffocate!”

“You’re not alone there,” Peony replied dryly. “But he has his reasons.”

Bliss brought one fist down on the table for emphasis. “I want to know what they are!” she cried.

Peony’s reaction was the last one Bliss would have expected. She began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Jamie asked irritably as he rejoined them at the table.

Peony went right on laughing. Only when her mirth had subsided did she say, “I warned you to stay on the straight and narrow, didn’t I? Now you’ll have your comeuppance, Jamie McKenna!”

Jamie gave Bliss a wry, private look that said he’d have more than his comeuppance, and she felt her blood turn hot at the prospect of being alone with him.

As it happened, Bliss was asleep when Jamie joined her in bed, but she awakened to find him unfastening the buttons of her camisole with light, agile fingers. “Ummm,” she whispered, stretching luxuriously as he slipped his hand between satin and alabaster to caress her bare breast. Her nipple went deliciously hard against his palm.